Latest / All The Light She Found / Don’t Make a Permanent Home Out of a Temporary Season
Transcript
- kelly: Well, hello, friends. I am so glad to be here with you on episode six of All the Light She Found. I'm your host, Kelly McGurk. I was thinking about what I want to talk to you guys about this week, and life always brings things along the way that I go, oop, there's a good one. And this week I've had some conversations with people, and there was a central theme of feeling stuck in a season. of your life and being like, okay, I guess this is my life now. This is who I am now. And so I was thinking about that and I was like, maybe we shouldn't make a permanent home out of a temporary season in our life. You know? Like When my husband died, and you know, you have the word widow. And so I was like, wow, this is my life now. Like I am a widow. I'm alone. if I fell down and hit my head and died, no one would find me for days. You know, I'm alone. And then eventually when grief started settling a little bit and I started to get my groove back. In life, I recognize that we can stay stuck in seasons and believe that this is what our life is. Or we can look for something different. And that's what I thought would be a great topic because I've had a couple of people share this week, you know, some hard things. And then they've just carried that as an identity for their life instead of going, Do I want to? Do I want this to be the identity of my life? Think about how often we say things like, I guess I'm just not a social person anymore, or I'm too old to start over, or I'm too old to be dating, or I'm bad at relationships, or I'm always gonna worry about money. I'm bad with money, or I'm just exhausted all the time. or like I said, I'm a widow or I'm divorced. Or I'm the one everybody depends on. I guess I always will be that person. Or maybe somebody whose kid doesn't talk to them and they feel estranged, and that's just how it's gonna be. You know, I think some of those things may be factually true in that moment, but there's an enormous difference between this is something I'm experiencing and this is who I am. Your brain, as I've talked about in all of the episodes, starts building a case. When we've been somewhere emotionally for a while, our brain starts expecting more of it. If you've found yourself to be rejected repeatedly, you're watching for rejection. If you've been overwhelmed for years, calm can feel strange. If you've been taking care of everybody forever, somebody taking care of you can feel uncomfortable. In relationships, if you found that they're unpredictable with friends or family or a partner, you know, you may not immediately trust people. If you've been grieving, laughing your butt off one night can almost feel disloyal. We start collecting evidence for the life we already believe we're living. When you think about it, we've talked about this before, but this is a different version of that. I hear people when they get divorced and they feel lonely and they feel like they're never gonna find somebody again. And then that's the story. They go on a few dates or they go on a dating app and they have some bad experiences and well, that's it. There's nobody out there for me. And that's the story they start to live. Sometimes we keep the season because we know who we are there. I've talked about this before. Moving forward sounds wonderful until you realize moving forward requires you to become someone you haven't practiced being yet. And then it gets kind of scary and real. like you ask questions? You start asking questions like, Who am I when my children leave home and have their own lives? Who am I if I'm not married anymore? Who am I if I'm happy after losing someone? Who am I if I stop being angry? Who am I if I don't have a crisis to organize my life around? Who am I if I actually get what I've been asking for? Like I've said before, sometimes you guys, misery isn't comfortable, it's familiar. And familiar and comfortable are absolutely not the same thing. comfortable is or familiar is seasons where we know all the rules. We know how to survive there. We know our lines. We know our role. And leaving that means stepping into a life where we don't know exactly what that's gonna look like. And that can be scary as hell, let's be honest. Some of the seasons that we leave were actually good. We don't only build permanent homes in painful seasons. Sometimes we refuse to leave the beautiful ones. You know, that's what people call or Bruce Springsteen would call the glory days. The kids were little, those were my favorite days. My marriage was wonderful. That friend group that I had, that was everything, and now I don't have one of those. Remember when your career used to light you up and now it drains you? And you stay stuck in the fact that it used to be beautiful? You loved being needed by kids or a family. Or remember when your family used to go to the same house every Christmas? You know, our family talks about that sometimes because we always gathered everyone together during holidays. And then when we all grew up and started having kids and my parents died and my aunt died, and then it's like a different stage of life where we don't all Have the opportunity to gather like we used to in the good old days. Some people get stuck in that. They say, if I can't have that life, I don't know if I want this one. And so they don't move forward. Sometimes moving forward isn't admitting the old life wasn't wonderful. It's admitting it was wonderful and now that season is over. And that deserves grief. But you guys, we can honor a chapter without trying to keep living in it. You don't have to hate an old version of your life to be willing to leave it and find something new. There's seasons where there's not a lot happening. Maybe you're waiting for a great relationship. Maybe you're waiting for cancer to clear. You're waiting for the clear zone. Maybe you're waiting for somebody to forgive you or waiting for the perfect job. You know, maybe you're waiting to know what's next. But when we do that, we start treating our current life like a waiting room and not a real life. You know, when people say things like, I'll be happy when I retire. I'll be happy when I when I find my person. I'll travel when I've saved enough money. I'll date when I've lost twenty pounds. I'll relax when my house is paid off. But sometimes the things that we're waiting for takes a year or five years or ten years, and then it never happens. And that's sad. I've had a few of those myself, you know? And you have regrets about that because you could have done something really great and you were waiting for this special moment or for something specific to happen. We can't keep putting our life on layaway while we're waiting for something perfect or one part of it to change. if we could stop asking ourselves when will this end? Maybe a more useful question for us would be, who do I want to be while I'm here? You know, like even if you're in a hard season, which God knows we all go through hard seasons, life life's on us, man. And it usually rains poops sometimes. It's like not one thing, it's a lot of things. And instead of asking, my gosh, when is this gonna end? It's like never-ending crap piles. Maybe asking ourselves, who do I wanna be while I'm here? That could change your perspective a little bit about how you wanna do your life, even in the hard parts. Because you don't control how long every season lasts. Because if we could control it, God knows we wouldn't stay in there long, let's be honest. Or if it was the beautiful season, we'd stay there forever. We don't get to control when someone calls. We don't get to control when someone gets a scary diagnosis. We don't get to control when grief lifts and we finally start feeling back to ourselves. We can't control when somebody chooses us. And definitely we cannot control every outcome, let's be honest. But we can ask, how do I want to take care of myself here? That's super important because when we're in hard seasons, a lot of times that's when we let things go that actually sustain us. The things that you do to keep you operating at your best level, we drop the ball on that when life becomes hard. Think about it, that's just kind of a normal response. You're exhausted so you stop working out. You're exhausted so you stop making meals, maybe you pick up takeout or fast food. You isolate yourself from people that you love or people that care about you because you don't want to burden them, or it's exhausting to tell the story. Instead, why don't we ask ourselves, who would I like around me in this hard season? What do I still want to experience even though I hate what I'm going through right now? Maybe ask yourself what parts of myself do I refuse to abandon even when life gets hard? Cause it does over and over. Even a dumb question like what would make today 5% better? What could I do that would make my day today 5% better? You can dislike the season you're in without disliking your entire life. Cause we can get caught up in a really hard season. When people hear change something, they picture some giant dramatic transformation, like quit the job, move to Italy, sell everything, find yourself. We gotta calm down, eat pray, love, Elizabeth Gilbert. We gotta calm down because sometimes we wanna throw all it out and start over. Wouldn't that be fun? Instead, maybe we just need to make one plan or go to one dinner, join something new that's scary. Change up a comforter in your bedroom. You know, apply for a few jobs that look interesting even though it's scary to think about starting over. Try something you're terrible at or you've been thinking you might be terrible at it and you were scared to try. I don't know, take yourself somewhere. I've had so many clients that tell me, I just really want to go sit in nature. Well go. Well, I don't want to go alone. I want to go see the ocean. It would bring me such peace. Go. Yeah, I don't have anybody to go with, or I don't have the time. Make time. Create evidence that your life is still moving and not stuck in a hard season. That's the goal. Just a little movement. Not proving everything is fixed or I'm fine. None of those things. Just a little movement so that you feel like, okay, maybe this isn't all there is. My life may still be happening. my life may still be working for me, even though this is a pretty hard season. Sometimes we emotionally identify with a season that our actual life has already started moving beyond. You can say you're lonely, but maybe if you look around, you've started to build friendships, but you're so used to saying you're lonely, you keep saying it. Or maybe you say you're lost, but you've made a few big decisions and you don't give yourself credit for that. You say you're starting over, but you've already started, but you keep the identity that you're starting over. You say you're brokenhearted, but you've laughed for two straight hours yesterday. I mean, both things can be true, but let's not stay stuck in an identity that we're starting to outgrow. You say nobody takes care of you or they don't care about you, but someone just showed up for you this week and you forgot that, didn't you? You say you're scared, but look at the crap you're doing scared. You're doing the things. Sometimes your identity hasn't caught up with the life you're living yet. Maybe part of moving forward is noticing, I'm not where I was anymore. Not completely through it, not magically healed, not living in a magical universe, but maybe I'm not there anymore. Sometimes in a season we think we're only staying for a little while and then we start unpacking boxes and then we put our toothbrush in the drawer by the mirror and then you start hanging pictures and then you start getting mail there and eventually you forgot there were other places to live. Maybe today isn't moving day. We don't need anything dramatic, maybe aren't ready to pack up the whole dad gum house, but maybe you're ready to just do something a little different. Maybe we can open a window. You know what opening a window looks like? Letting someone in. Sharing a little bit of your story. Asking someone for coffee. Take something off the wall, walk around the neighborhood, start looking at what's available to you in your life instead of staying stuck in one identity. Remember there's a world outside the address of where we live in a hard season. This season may have changed you or humbled you. I mean, I think we've all been there. Maybe it broke your heart. Maybe it taught you something you never asked to learn. And maybe there's pieces of that hard season that you'll carry with you forever. But carrying something with you is different from continuing to live in it. You can carry the love, the lessons, you can carry the person in your heart, carry the memories, you can carry the strength that you earned during that hard season, and you can carry the version of you that survived it. But we can still move. There are rooms you haven't walked into yet. You guys, there are people you haven't met yet that are gonna be amazing in your life. Mornings you haven't woken up to your favorite song that you haven't even heard yet. There are versions of you that haven't had a reason to become yet. Isn't that cool to think about that? This is part of your life, the hard season, when life lifes all over you. part of your life, but it's not all of your life. You guys, hope isn't always something you feel. Sometimes it's something you do. So maybe this week you didn't need to know where you're moving to next. So we just do one small step. I just want you to know. I've been through hard seasons. I've had them pile up and rain poop. And I've definitely had times where I'm like, great, this is my life. This is amazing. Yay. But I've had beautiful, beautiful seasons too. And a lot of those are over, but I carry those memories and those people and those best times. I carry those in my heart and they're a part of who I am. So if I can challenge you this week, if you're struggling in some area, whether you're in a bad marriage or you're in a tough time at work, or if you're going through some medical crisis that's scaring the crap out of you, or maybe you just lost a best friend, it's a hard thing. But you're strong. And maybe you start asking, what can I do in this hard season? That's gonna make me feel five percent better this week. Cause you guys, if you look around, there's always light. I'm Kelly. And this is all the light she found.