Latest / Overwhelmed to Overcomer / When the Losses Start to Pile Up

Transcript

When the Losses Start to Pile Up · Overwhelmed to Overcomer

0:03
Welcome to She Consider a Field podcast with coach, encourager, and fellow
0:08
entrepreneur and homeschooling mama of four, Anna McLaughlin.
0:11
As a homeschooling entrepreneur, you are uniquely positioned to impact the kingdom
0:16
of God, both deep through your investment in your children and wide through your
0:20
business.
0:21
And yet guilt, frustration, and overwhelm can hold you back from all that God has
0:26
for you.
0:27
Come with me on a journey to walk in deeper peace, purpose, and joy.
0:32
because God has given you a legacy to build and I'm here to help you enjoy the
0:37
ride.
0:42
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of She Consider a Field.
0:46
I am so glad you're here.
0:47
Thank you for being here.
0:48
I'll say it again.
0:48
I'm just so grateful that you have chosen to invest your time with me and just bear
0:55
witness to these early conversations that we're walking through where I'm still
0:59
like, what exactly, what are we doing here?
1:01
What are we doing here?
1:02
Okay.
1:03
So, I'm going to share with you in this episode, we're going to be talking through
1:08
basically this place that we can reach.
1:11
where all we see is our losses.
1:14
Okay?
1:15
So if you have had a year, and I have found this so fascinating, over the past
1:19
few years, I've really noticed how what the Lord does in the individual, he is
1:24
often doing in the corporate.
1:26
Think about what was going on in 2020 when there was just this kind of like baffled
1:33
experience, baffling experience going on in the world.
1:36
And yet the church had this
1:38
there were some common threads of like awakening, becoming more attuned to what
1:44
was going on, the subtext underneath the facade, right?
1:48
And we were kind of all going through that experience together.
1:52
Not everybody, but this subset and it bonded us.
1:58
I've noticed this over time.
1:59
And one of the things that I've been noticing as well in the church as of late
2:04
has been this sense of
2:07
discouragement and defeat, but it's not actually rooted in the things actually
2:14
being bad, but that there was a lot that was stripped away.
2:17
And now there's kind of, as the springtime is coming, there's this move towards, for
2:22
a lot of believers, this fresh wind stepping into the new space.
2:27
But sometimes we tend to be like Lot's wife and we look back.
2:32
We look back and we look at what we lost.
2:35
And the more we do that, there's this adage that says there's a reason the rear
2:39
view mirror takes up like 5 % of the whole windshield.
2:42
We were designed to look forward and not to look back.
2:45
But if we start to entertain this rear view orientation, we start to see how
2:51
large our losses loom.
2:54
And we start to feel the weight of that experience.
2:57
It can be hard to move forward.
2:59
Women of God, we're going to move forward.
3:01
But first I want to honor the space.
3:03
Okay.
3:03
So I'm actually going to share something pretty personal from my prayer journal.
3:08
I'm not going to be sharing the details of my life, but I'm going to be sharing this
3:12
space that I was in several weeks ago where I was looking back.
3:17
I was spending a lot of time looking back.
3:20
And for me in my prayer life, for about 20 years, I have journaled my prayers.
3:27
I write down what I want to say to the Lord.
3:30
worship, adoration, praise, thanksgiving, and then also challenges.
3:34
Here's where I am, Lord.
3:35
Here's what I'm struggling with.
3:36
Please help me do this in a faithful way.
3:38
Please help me see what you want me to see here.
3:41
And then I write down what I feel like he's saying back to me.
3:45
These are not audible voices, okay?
3:47
This is a sense of sensing his spirit and whatever insight, clarity, words that I
3:56
get from this time always gets
3:59
brought back before scripture and sifted there.
4:02
So if there's, if I am like, guess what?
4:05
I am supposed to, you know, something crazy, right?
4:09
God's telling me to just abandon everything I've ever built in my whole
4:12
entire life and start completely over and leave all the relationships I'm in.
4:15
No.
4:16
Okay.
4:16
Like we've got to sift it.
4:17
We've got to bring wisdom and it has to align with the word of God.
4:21
But these times of prayer before the Lord have been so foundational and
4:25
transformative in my life.
4:27
that this is a practice that I've really sought and committed to over the years.
4:33
Okay?
4:34
So I was just struggling.
4:36
I was looking back.
4:38
And I'm sharing this with you, not because I necessarily am trying to tell you about
4:43
my life, but rather because there is this common experience at times within the
4:48
church where we go through similar seasons and struggles.
4:54
I share this should it lift someone else's head.
4:57
Okay?
4:59
I felt like the Lord said this, you think I set you up.
5:03
You fear I'm not for you.
5:05
You struggle and strive to honor me, but you are in yourself effort.
5:08
Be as messy as you are before me, but seek my face as it truly is.
5:14
you are looking for solutions.
5:16
Every day you get up and quest for a different reality.
5:21
And then he went on to say like one in which, and he started detailing the things
5:25
that I have lost, that I had lost at that time, that I was wishing were not so.
5:32
So you quest for a different reality that doesn't look, basically that doesn't look
5:36
like your current circumstances.
5:38
Okay.
5:40
But this is your reality.
5:43
Will you be faithful here?
5:44
Will you love me here?
5:46
You have to first stop and be all here where it hurts, fully present in the death
5:53
before we can move into resurrection.
5:56
You have been endeavoring, y 'all, listen to this.
5:59
You have been endeavoring to whitewash your tomb instead of recognizing that you
6:04
cannot get out of where you are on your own.
6:07
You must acknowledge the death and put your hope in me for the resurrection.
6:13
Accept the tomb.
6:15
The deaths that you have experienced are real and cannot be mustered past.
6:20
It's been as bad as it feels.
6:23
It's as hard as it feels.
6:25
It's as disappointing as it feels.
6:28
It's as heartbreaking as it feels.
6:30
Feel it in all its weight.
6:32
No Pollyanna, no mustering.
6:35
Let it be.
6:37
Sit in the tomb.
6:39
Listen.
6:40
And wait.
6:42
for Sunday morning.
6:43
Oof!
6:44
He said, and then he went on to say this, you've missed the beauty in the tomb.
6:52
You've missed the beauty in the tomb.
6:55
Friends, have you missed the beauty in the tomb?
6:58
And I was like, what is, what is it?
7:03
What is the beauty in the tomb?
7:04
What is beautiful about a tomb?
7:07
And listen to this.
7:09
Tombs are where you learn to trust.
7:11
They're where old things that need to be stripped away die and are buried.
7:16
They're where you rest in a power greater than yourself.
7:20
They're where fears are overcome.
7:22
They're where strivings cease.
7:25
Love, your old man is dying.
7:27
That is why you are in so much agony.
7:30
Let it die.
7:32
Friends, let it die.
7:36
Life in this middle you've been living in this past year will not work where you are
7:40
going.
7:41
You feel like you are being ripped apart because you are.
7:44
Okay.
7:47
And then he went on to say this, this is the loneliest walk.
7:53
People see you and care.
7:55
Friends, people see you and care, but they cannot walk this with you, even if they
7:59
have made a similar walk themselves.
8:03
no judgment, it is not fruitful.
8:07
Friend, you have navigated deaths that you may deem harder, but the confluence of so
8:12
much loss and so much change in so short a time is no small thing.
8:17
Okay?
8:20
So we sit in the tomb and we wait for Sunday morning.
8:26
And we recognize, we recognize, and we believe, even though we cannot see, that
8:33
there is beauty in the tomb.
8:39
Does that land for you?
8:40
Man, like that landed for me and it brought so much peace and so much rest.
8:44
And even as I'm reading this, I'm like, man, this kind of became, this shifted my
8:49
belief, this prayer time, leaning into the reality that there's beauty in the tomb.
8:55
We don't, like when we are in hard spaces, we want to get past the hard space.
9:02
And that's what the Lord was saying to me when he was talking about whitewashing the
9:05
tomb.
9:07
That every day I was getting up and I was like, it's going to be okay.
9:09
We're going to get through this.
9:10
It's going to be fine.
9:11
We'll just step right over it.
9:12
And the truth of the matter was all the things that we were facing, they were
9:18
really hard and they were not moving.
9:21
These rocks were not moving.
9:23
And so I'm sitting there trying to muster up the strength to push them, to push them
9:28
over.
9:30
And meanwhile, he's saying, you got to sit there and let them be.
9:34
It's so,
9:37
It so echoes the imagery that we have of Christ in the tomb.
9:42
The rock that was rolled in front of the tomb when Christ was buried.
9:48
There was actually a ditch that the rock would be rolled into so that it rested up
9:55
against the tomb.
9:56
And then there was like a lip of ground to hold the rock in place.
10:01
The idea was no one's getting in.
10:03
Certainly no one's getting out, but they didn't think there was anyone to get out,
10:06
right?
10:07
The weight of that rock was just like staggering.
10:11
Nobody could do it by themselves.
10:13
And yet so often we try.
10:15
It's okay.
10:15
I got it.
10:16
Nope.
10:16
It's fine.
10:16
It's fine.
10:17
And we're pushing from the inside in the dark.
10:20
It's scary.
10:21
It's musty in there.
10:23
And we somehow think that we can affect our own resurrection by just willing it to
10:30
be.
10:32
But the power comes when we actually rest in the tomb and let the death.
10:37
process become complete.
10:40
The old man stripped away, nothing left but what he has given us, which it turns
10:46
out is resurrection power, right?
10:48
Okay, now there was one other piece to this season of prayer that I was in before
10:54
the Lord, and this came on a following day where I was still just kind of like
10:59
looking in the rearview mirror, looking in the rearview mirror, and that's the
11:03
beautiful thing about the Lord.
11:04
He provides such rich wisdom,
11:06
And then I come back the next day with the same complaint and it's okay.
11:10
Okay.
11:10
Let's tackle it again.
11:11
We're going to look at it from a different angle.
11:13
And here is what he called me to do.
11:16
This is my invitation for you today, friends, that you go through this same
11:19
exercise.
11:21
Now I'm going to tell you there's two steps to the exercise.
11:24
And I'm going to recommend that you actually, whether you're doing this just
11:27
in your brain, cause I know a lot of us are usually on the go doing other things
11:30
when we listen to this podcast or any podcast, whether you pause and you're just
11:34
listing things out in your head.
11:36
or whether you're actually writing.
11:37
And there is, yes, there's power in writing.
11:39
Putting pen to paper can be very cathartic.
11:42
It engages a different part of our brain.
11:44
I don't understand all that stuff, but I know what happens.
11:48
But better done, better done than perfect.
11:52
Sorry, I was like, what was that phrase again?
11:54
That's it, better done than perfect.
11:55
There we go.
11:56
So just do it in your head, because if you think you're going to circle back to this
12:00
because writing's better, tell yourself the truth.
12:03
You're probably not.
12:04
Just go ahead and say it out loud in your head or whatever, or say it in your head
12:06
or out loud or whatever you need to do.
12:09
First step is if you are in the season where you keep looking back in the rear
12:13
view, what things used to be like, wasn't it better when all of that stuff, you're
12:17
going to list it all out.
12:20
What have you lost?
12:23
And you can put a time bound on it.
12:26
What have you, if there's a, if there, if you're kind of coming, coming out of, or
12:31
in the midst of a season of loss,
12:33
You can just list in that season.
12:36
That's what I did.
12:37
Cause that's what felt the heaviest.
12:40
Or if you are kind of in this more global place of I have lived a life of loss, how
12:46
unfair that X, Y, and Z happened 20 years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it might be,
12:52
list your complaints.
12:53
Okay.
12:54
We're going to say it out loud.
12:57
So what have you lost this past year was mine.
13:02
Okay.
13:02
Cause that was my time period.
13:05
Okay.
13:06
So pause the audio, do the thing.
13:10
Okay.
13:11
Now, next step.
13:13
I guess this is a three -step process.
13:16
What have you gained?
13:18
Think about the things that have come into your hands.
13:21
Whether they're connected with what you've lost or not, just think about the things
13:24
that you have gained in that same period of time.
13:28
And so...
13:29
By implication, but I'll just say it like the losses are the things that you used to
13:34
hold that you valued that you no longer hold.
13:37
The gains are the things that you currently hold that you value or that you
13:41
got to hold for a season of time that you value.
13:44
Okay.
13:45
Pause again.
13:47
Don't listen to what's next until you've done that exercise.
13:49
Again, just take a minute.
13:51
Pause the audio.
13:54
Okay, here was the kicker.
13:58
The Lord said to me, and I offer to you, weigh them out.
14:04
Which do you value more?
14:07
For me, there was no contest, I didn't even have to think about it.
14:11
The value of what I now held so far outweighed the value of what I had lost.
14:16
It was incomparable.
14:18
Okay.
14:19
And I want to challenge you.
14:25
B, and I should have said this before.
14:28
Do not miss the things that have been birthed within you because of the losses.
14:37
Deeper peace and shakeable satisfaction, no matter what faith, courage, conviction,
14:46
impact, an elevated sense of the goodness of God, deep gratitude.
14:53
And sometimes we have to get honest about hard things.
14:56
I've talked in here before about my dad's passing.
14:58
There are things that shifted in my soul because of his death.
15:05
And I can tell you, I had striven for those things for decades, but there are
15:10
things that are settled before the Lord that had never been settled before he
15:14
passed.
15:16
I don't know whether that was a spiritual inheritance from my father, spiritual
15:20
inheritance from God as a gift in recompense for his loss.
15:24
I don't know whether there was some sort of shift in the heavenlies or what, but I
15:30
was forever changed because of his death.
15:34
Do I wish he was here?
15:35
Yes.
15:36
And I'm so glad I don't have to make that choice that God wouldn't come back down
15:40
and say, okay, you can actually pick, you know, how, how awful would that be?
15:45
But I, I am so much more able to advance the kingdom of God in my little circle.
15:55
because of my dad's death and what I received as a result.
16:00
So this gets hard.
16:02
It can be really hard to own those places, the gifts we have received as the result
16:06
of the loss.
16:09
but they're no less significant, all the more so, right?
16:13
All the more so because of the depth of what we lost in order to get what we
16:16
gained, okay?
16:17
So we're gonna weigh it out.
16:20
We're gonna ask ourselves, what do we value more?
16:22
And get really honest, if you're like, I actually would still rather have what I
16:25
had before, like, okay, and then go before the Lord and say, what do I do with this?
16:31
What do I do with this?
16:32
I'd like to have an answer.
16:33
I didn't even think I would pose that question, but let's talk about it if
16:37
that's where you are.
16:39
I liked the other more.
16:40
I would have rather gone back there.
16:42
Here's the deal.
16:42
We can't pick.
16:43
We can't cherry pick.
16:45
Like I'd like to have all the confidence and the subtleness and the peace and the
16:49
joy and the belonging that I have in my spirit that I received after my dad's
16:53
death and my dad.
16:55
I want them both, but it doesn't work that way.
16:57
Right.
16:58
Okay.
17:00
And the Lord said this to me.
17:01
So weigh them out.
17:02
Which do you value more?
17:04
And he said, you could not have the latter.
17:07
without having lost the former.
17:10
You want to cherry pick your blessings.
17:12
there it is.
17:13
All right.
17:13
So obviously it's already come into me.
17:15
It belongs to me now.
17:16
That's how I knew that cherry picking concept.
17:18
You want to cherry pick your blessings, but what truly could you have kept of the
17:22
former without giving up something far more precious on the ladder list?
17:28
Okay.
17:28
I'm going to see if there's anything else I want to share.
17:31
And from there, he just basically said, it's time to move your feet.
17:40
Listen, mama, with as many different things as you're juggling, I'll bet some
17:44
days you struggle to remember to eat breakfast.
17:47
Failing to take care of yourself not only dampens your joy, but it also impacts your
17:51
ability to serve those you love the most.
17:54
And yet you need an easy solution, something that will give you maximum
17:58
impact without being crazy complicated.
18:01
Sound about right?
18:02
Let me share with you my favorite supplement and the only one of its kind,
18:05
Modair's Liquid Collagen.
18:07
Since taking it, I've found more energy, more mental margin, and fewer lines and
18:12
wrinkles too.
18:13
My hair is also growing like crazy.
18:16
One product helps me look better and feel better, and it tastes great too.
18:20
Interested?
18:21
Click the link below for a free quiz to figure out which blend is right for you,
18:24
and then follow the steps to get free shipping and $25 off your order, because
18:28
healthy, well -fortified mamas build powerful legacies.
18:37
And so if you're in this place where it's like, I've been looking in the rear view
18:39
mirror, I've been looking in the rear view mirror, I've been looking at all the
18:42
things I've lost, I've been kind of like picking at the threads and feeling really
18:46
frustrated and hurting, here's what the Lord said to me that I offer to you.
18:51
Move your feet.
18:52
Put on your blinders and trust me.
18:54
So think about horses that used to wear those little black plastic things against
18:59
their eyes so that they could only look straight ahead and they couldn't look left
19:01
or right.
19:02
Okay?
19:03
So that is what the Lord...
19:04
That's the language between the Lord and I when I'm supposed to just stay focused on
19:07
the steps ahead.
19:10
Make a commitment to show up and do a handful of small things daily and put your
19:15
head down and do them.
19:17
For me, he said 90 days.
19:19
I think 90 days is a beautiful amount of time to just commit to something.
19:22
Say, I'm not going to look up.
19:22
I'm just going to show up and be faithful without judgment.
19:26
Okay.
19:27
Cause that's where we get in trouble.
19:28
We've talked in here before about how we like to take the seeds out of the ground.
19:31
Is it growing?
19:32
What's it doing now?
19:33
What's it doing now?
19:34
Guess what?
19:34
That's a great way to kill a seed.
19:36
Seeds don't like that.
19:38
That embryonic stage, we cannot take them out.
19:42
Imagine if we were pregnant and it's like, I just want to see the baby.
19:46
And they're like the size of a mustard seed or whatever.
19:49
That's not good for them.
19:50
The Lord knows we can't take things out of the ground when they're growing.
19:53
It's not good.
19:54
We need to set our sights and just say, judgment free.
19:57
I'm just going to walk forward.
19:59
I'm not going to look at results.
20:00
I'm just going to look at process.
20:01
I'm committing to this process.
20:06
and I said, my brain, I said in prayer, I said, my brain wants to fight against
20:09
this.
20:10
I bet I know you're out there.
20:11
Someone out there wants to fight against this and go, but I haven't had enough
20:14
training yet.
20:15
Or, but I really need to like, you know, pray a little bit more about this or, but
20:19
I'm not ready to start moving because I'm still really sad.
20:22
I hear you.
20:23
Okay.
20:23
I hear you.
20:24
Sometimes the path out of our heaviness is actually through motion.
20:29
Like sometimes we can, we don't.
20:33
In this kind of postmodern age that we live in, we tend to sometimes stop
20:38
everything as a culture when someone's feeling a certain way.
20:41
we need to take care of that.
20:43
We need to take care of their feelings and make sure they feel comfortable and make
20:46
sure they feel seen and they feel heard.
20:48
There can be some value in that.
20:50
I think prior generations, we were too prone to just walk over people, step over
20:54
the bodies and keep on moving.
20:55
Progress is needed, right?
20:59
Now we've kind of swung the other way where we can actually like,
21:02
sit with people in their pain so long that they stop believing they can get up and
21:06
move forward.
21:07
We can sit with ourselves in our pain too long and we can like be so focused on I
21:14
can't move forward until I feel better that we're actually missing that sometimes
21:18
the best way to start feeling better is by getting up and doing something.
21:23
Right?
21:23
You just think about those days where you're just feeling kind of blah.
21:26
And then all of a sudden you go outside and you're like, there's a bigger world
21:29
than what's in my own head.
21:31
Right?
21:32
So I said, my brain wants to fight against this.
21:35
And he said, I know.
21:37
That is because you want to do it perfectly, which will burn you out.
21:40
All right.
21:41
Someone needs this right now.
21:42
Do it imperfectly and remember all you have lost with gratitude because it made
21:48
room for all you have gained.
21:52
OK.
21:53
So friends, we're going to see the beauty in the tomb.
21:59
We're going to recognize that this is where the old things that needed to die,
22:04
die out and new things are reborn in us or born for the first time in us.
22:10
We're going to recognize that the things that we have lost that have fallen away,
22:15
we wouldn't be able to have taken hold of new things without losing the old.
22:19
Okay.
22:20
And we're going to trust the father and his goodness and move forward in
22:25
gratitude.
22:27
Okay.
22:28
So.
22:29
That's what I've got for today.
22:30
I want to hear from you guys.
22:31
That's the first time I've done anything like this, actually reading you guys
22:34
literally my prayer journal.
22:36
And so I would love to hear what resonated with you, whether it was an apt word,
22:41
like, is this something that's going on more corporately in the body of Christ?
22:44
And then how it feels to hear those words as we talk through this process of really
22:53
shifting out of this rear view mindset.
22:58
and looking forward, recognizing that there's gifts even in the tomb.
23:03
Okay?
23:04
Alright, my friends, until next time, you have got this.
23:12
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of She Considered a Field.
23:16
If you found value in this episode, I would be so grateful if you would leave a
23:20
review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
23:22
And be sure to share with a friend who needs some encouragement on her journey
23:25
today too.
23:26
Until next time, remember, you've got this because he's got you.