Latest / High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm / Gaining Perspective God's Way: When You're Tested

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Gaining Perspective God's Way: When You're Tested · High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the High Level Wife podcast.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and here we do Marriage God's Way, and it has been a hot minute since I last recorded new content.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's because we've been moving from Illinois to Kentucky, and my desk is finally set up.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Our house is mostly set up at this point.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I'll be honest, the last just couple weeks have felt like a month, and the last few months have felt like a year in some of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows, and um into bits and pieces over the next few episodes that I think would encourage you and challenge you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um as I know the best thing is to be real and raw and vulnerable, and to I'm sure that a lot of this you'll be able to connect with me on and be like, yeah, I've been there, or maybe I haven't been there yet, but now I know what to do when I go into a season like that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if you've been listening for a while, you know that God has really had me in a preparation season for the last couple years now.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it started with the front end a lot of breaking, a lot of pruning, um, and then has moved into preparation and training and testing of faith, um, which is good.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And these are all things that I pray for.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I specifically prayed, Lord, break me, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, Lord, search me and know me, Lord, send me.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I looking back, I'm able to see all the ways that he did things.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's so funny because you know, we pray the hard prayers of Lord, test me, and then when the testing comes, we're surprised by it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe that's just me.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes me a second sometimes to realize that oh, this is testing, this is testing of my faith.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is what I asked for, this is what I prayed for, and I know the goodness that is ahead that is in store for me if I lean into this and walk through it in the spirit, right?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that it's easy, it just means that I have the right perspective.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I that's probably the title of this episode today is perspective, because uh we can have an experience and we interpret that experience, and that's what forms our perspective, and then based on that perspective, we will sorry, taking a drink because I was super excited to record new content, and then yesterday at my son's football game, um, and it started like a few days before of just a minor cold uh from one of my kids that gave to me so generously, and it it reached the pinnacle yesterday of after my son's football game, just like almost completely losing my voice, where you go to say something and like half of it comes out and half of it doesn't.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I have my coffee here, I my warm coffee to help soothe my throat.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I think that this is so important, and I I want to unpack it for you.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, perspective, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We can go through an experience, and then the way that we interpret that experience becomes a pattern for how we continue to move forward and interpret everything else, right?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's good because typically it keeps us safe, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it keeps us in what we know, but when when when we're growing, that's not helpful.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can't address what we're not aware of, right, we can't address what we're not aware of.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we're not aware of it, the fact that we're trying to stay safe, so our brain is on hyperdrive of looking for all of the potential danger through this lens of experience that we had, right?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: That thing happened, but it's in the past, but now it's continuing to infiltrate our present and it's continuing to shape our present, and this is where we get stuck in marriage.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I did personally, and I work with women every day that are coming out of that stuckness um of these patterns of learning to be able to identify them, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so I I've said that you know it's been kind of it's kind of been like high highs and low lows, and there were two really two really actually three really big moments of just high highs and low lows, and recognizing, oh, the Lord is testing me in this, and I can lean into it, but I need to stand on the truth, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so learning like what do I know is true of God, what is true right now, and what can I stand on?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first was when um we had already we had already been like a week in a hotel in Illinois, and then we we checked out there and we came down to Kentucky um to spend what we thought would be one more night, but it ended up being two more nights in a hotel.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when we got to the hotel in Kentucky, I just had an overwhelming sense of anger come over me.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so interesting because when I talked to those closest to me, I said, yeah, I just felt like and I didn't feel I didn't understand at first, and I wasn't able to recognize it at first, but the Lord revealed to me, this is a spirit of anger, right?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And is this the way you want to walk?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and and so when I I told a couple of people this they're like anger, it doesn't like you at all.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I know it felt so unfamiliar to me, and yet I wanted to just like I'm done, I'm I'm checked out, I'm over this, and uh, but in my sleep or restlessness that night, the Lord revealed to me that this is a spirit of anger, and what is the truth that you stand on?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to stand figuratively in the battlefield of my mind that the joy of the Lord is my strength, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: The the spirit of anger, that's not how I work.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I work in a spirit of power and love and self-control.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So this will not well, this will not this will not dictate how I show up with my family for myself and my faith, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wrestled with that that night and chose to stand on the truth.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when I woke up the next morning, you know, I apologized to my husband and said, Hey, I'm so sorry, like that wasn't me.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm taking ownership of that, and I I will not allow that to steal our peace or our joy or the good things that we get to taste and see from the Lord.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was the first one.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second one happened.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: We we were in our house, we were in the process of moving in, which is overwhelming and of itself, but we also moved from 2800 square feet or 2600 square feet to 1800 square feet um with seven people, and you know, three of which of those people are teenagers, not quite full grown yet, but getting there.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you know, the Lord has in this process of preparation, pruning, pressing over the last several years, um, and preparation and and leading up to this current season was a lot of purging, a lot of getting to the bottom of like, why am I buying stuff online, or why do I feel the need to do these things or have these things, or you know, and really getting to the root of a lot of these patterns and a lot of these um ways to seek comfort that were of the flesh and not of the spirit, and that were not disciplined, was not stewarding well what the Lord had given me, and you know, it was it was a painful process, but such a freeing process, like simplifying, purging, get rid of blessing others.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like it it's a painful process, but it's life-giving, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, anyway, so we get here, we're going through this process.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever moved had a company move you, it's very overwhelming when everything is unloaded and everything gets moved inside, and your house is just full of boxes, and you're trying to figure out like you're you're going from one blueprint to a like for us, it was completely different.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we had boxes labeled dining room, we don't have a dining room here, so like we couldn't uh we couldn't be like, Oh, put the dining room box in the dining room.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: We like, we don't have a dining room, so you know, so much of it like all went in the garage, or it went in a storage room we have downstairs, which actually is not a storage room, an actual room, it just doesn't have any windows, so it can't be considered a bedroom.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there was overwhelm in that moment.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't know about you, but I tend to get frustrated with the fact that I'm human, that I have limitations, and it's a pride thing, it's a self-reliance thing, it's it's just me not walking with the Lord relying on him.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's it's me saying, like, I can only count on me.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the Lord is in a mighty work in me through this, but it still comes up sometimes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there was one night where my husband um was saying some things about like the fact that we hadn't been intimate for a while, and I was like, Well, yeah, you know, we've been moving, and we literally were all seven of us in one hotel room and two beds.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, obviously, like we both had understanding in that that it was it was a short term, it was a season.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even want to say a season because it wasn't that long, right?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a short term thing of moving, and um could I and and you know typically I would like defend myself and be like, oh well, you know, we got a lot going on and all these things, and I just I just agreed with him.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you're right, I haven't been pursuing you, like I haven't been pursuing intimacy with you, and you're right, and you know, but that led into a night of like crying myself to sleep and waking up and just having this general spirit of heaviness and like all of these thoughts going through my head of like you're a failure as a mom, look at this, you're a failure as a wife, look at this, you're a failure in the business world, look at this, you're a failure with leading a high-level wife, look at this, like all of these things that like by the time I I finally fell asleep, like my last thoughts were like, Tomorrow, I'm like calling Tommy and I'm telling him, like, I, you know, I can't run high-level wife anymore, and I just need to focus on my family.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I just like I raved, like I hit a low, low point.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, one thing I learned through this, right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think that this was another testing of what is true.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to catch all these thoughts and and realize like, these thoughts are not of the Lord.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am anointed by him for high-level wife.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: God placed me and my husband together because of the specific specific calling agitations he has in our life and the specific ways he knit us and how I complement him.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: God chose each and every one of our kids to be our kids, and so all of these areas that I was allowing my thoughts to go crazy on not it was not true.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was straight up bold-faced lies.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had to shut that down.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was driving to Goodwill or to the grocery store, I can't remember, and I just I didn't even turn on the radio.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Partly that's because our antenna is broken and I'd have to like set up my phone and turn on uh streaming, but um, I just started singing a song.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember what song I was singing, but it was a worship song, and I sang it loudly and I sing it badly, and sometimes I sing it quietly, you know, and I just was real before the Lord, like I'm sorry for believing these things, and then the Lord so gently corrected me through different avenues, through mentors, through um dear friends, um, and through providing me with like there were a couple podcasts that he directed me to and I listened to.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I didn't realize like how what happened through this testing was it revealed a heart that didn't trust God and how like who he made me to be and what he made me to do.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was questioning him.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't questioning him, I was outright like, I'm done, find someone else, God.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I realized this, you know, I just I came to that place of like, oh my gosh, Lord, I I'm so sorry.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I to question you?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he brought me to the passage in Job when God is responding to Job.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where were you when I formed this and did that?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and it's like Job's response is like, uh, I'm a wretched man.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I to say any of this?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I will sit here in my ashes.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, get it, got it, good.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so God just revealed that, like, when these lies come and they do in the battlefield of our mind, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna allow this to shape our perspective of ourselves and what God has called us to do and where he has us?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna stand on the truth and we're gonna refute the lies with the truth.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you notice in there, I picked up a weapon of worship and I picked up a weapon of prayer, and I picked up a weapon, God's word, the sword of the truth, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: That like cuts through between the sinew and the joints.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what I did, and that's how I fought when there wasn't anything in the tank to fight, right?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I also didn't make any big decisions during this time, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't make big decisions when you feel like you're raging out of control.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just don't do it, don't do it, okay?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing good ever comes from that, okay.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, pause.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: God never rushes, okay?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So just chill, you know, and and work through it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third thing was my husband and I got a call.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was really unexpected, um, uh, of just the person renting our house and how they were extremely dissatisfied.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, my husband and I, our first reaction wanted to be to uh be offended.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is our home.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to defend ourselves in our home, and you know, we wanted to be reactive, but you know, my husband handled that call with grace and just said, Hey, you know, this is our first time as land of the lords.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: We just asked that you'd have some grace with us, and you know, moving forward, we can um, you know, XYZ, and um, you know, we can we can work through this and and whatever, anyway.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was that, and so then you know, the phone call was over, and like I just felt like the spirit of offense just take me over.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just felt so angry, so upset, so like, what?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, like, and then like this is the house that we lived in for like almost five years, five years.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, was there something wrong with how you know?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because we love we loved it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so Zach and I just like we talked about it, we talked through it.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but both of both of us really sat in this spirit of offense.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're familiar with the book by John Bevere, The Bait of Satan, um, the Lord brought me to specifically, it was a sermon by John Bevere at some church, I don't even remember what church it was.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Zach and I listened to it together uh on Saturday as we were driving to back to Illinois for a Gabe's last game, our first playoff game, last game of the season.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, before we left for that trip, though, before we listened to that podcast, the morning after, you know, we were both pretty like downtrodden, had like some ups and downs of like venting with each other, like yeah, you know, um we both were pretty off, like you could just tell that we were both very downtrodden, and so and neither one of us slept well that night.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the next morning I just and it I just got vulnerable with my husband.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I said, the thing that's on repeat in my head is your house is just trashed, your house is just trash, and it kept playing on repeat over and over and over in my head.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband, he looked at me and he was vulnerable, and he was like, Me too, same thing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we came together, we we talked about scripture, um, and we just both realized that in that moment we were sitting in the trap, baited by Satan, to let offense steal our joy, and let offense steal our peace.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like we both just looked down and we were like, What are we doing?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: The joy of the Lord is our strength.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we got up out of that cage together, we prayed and we went about our way, and then God gave us that podcast to listen to, and it was such a great podcast.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was so good.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I posted it um in high level life for all of my wife clients because I think that a spirit of offense is often overlooked, but it's detrimental and it robs us of tasting and seeing the goodness of the Lord that He has for us.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was the third one.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was really a testing of our faith, it was a testing of our flesh, if you will, uh, because our flesh revealed um that we had some deeper attachments to this house than we thought.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it brought us to that place by God's goodness, by what he does in and through us when he's pruning us and refining us and testing us, like brought us to this place of like, well, if we have to sell the house, we have to sell the house, like, and we will, you know, um, and like loosing any any form of attachment, if you will.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, that's not the case, and it resolved itself essentially.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, you don't make decisions when you're raging, okay?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't make decisions when you're in the pit, you don't make decisions when you're on the mountain.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like we just be still with the Lord, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We go back to truth, and we need to understand how all of our life is an experience that we develop a perspective about, and we need to be very careful on what it is, right?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because the way that we're looking, it's like those the lens, the colored glasses that that color everything we see, right?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we have to be very aware of our own flesh, we need to be very aware of our natural tendencies um to defend ourselves or to argue our case or this or that or whatever.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and we need to lay that all down and we need to see what the Lord is actually doing, and to go to Him, to stand on His truth when it seems like nothing else makes sense.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: His truth always makes sense, and we stand on it firmly, and then from there we are able to move forward as the Lord leads, and then we don't allow the enemy to trip us up, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least for long, and we become better learners, quicker learners.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there'll be more episodes coming soon.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I really wanted to lead with this one for the first drop of new content, um, because I think we're all experiencing hard things all the time, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what we do with those hard things, specifically how we think about those hard things that is gonna make all the difference.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that we think about those hard things must be be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, our flesh will lead us all down all sorts of paths, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And our peace will be gone and our joy will be gone, and our intimacy with the Lord will be broken because all these things are now in the way rather than all those things being laid down, so that we can have deeper intimacy with the Lord, deeper intimacy with one another, deeper intimacy with our spouse, deeper, deeper understanding, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like wisdom and discernment, not by theory, but by experience.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is how we become those believers, those followers of Christ, that when the earth shatters and shakes around us, we are not shaken.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing can offend us because we know whose we are and for what we have been created.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I will see you on the next episode.