Latest / The Rooted Woman Podcast / The Rooted Woman: Episode 9: Rooted Rhythms
Transcript
- Courtney: Hello and welcome back. so happy to have you here today. We are in the middle of the Rooted Woman audio series here on the podcast and today we are going into episode nine. So before we get started, I want to encourage you, if you have not listened to the beginning intro episode and episodes one through eight, I do encourage you to go back because they truly do build on each other. But if not, hey, welcome, jump right in. This will still resonate with you. I am sure of it. So today we're gonna be talking about something called rooted rhythms and stay tuned because I've been dropping little hints at the very end of the episodes because there are changes coming and there's just so many things that I've been working on in the background. I'm going to drop another hint today. So stay tuned for that. We're gonna be talking about rooted rhythms and habits. These small habits that can change truly everything. We've been talking about small shifts. Now let's take those little shifts and build habits out of them. You know, we've been really kind of diving into the idea of those transformations that happen in our lives, not needing to be this like overnight overhaul, overnight success, complete start over. We really can just reset, shift a little bit and see the change in small ways while we're working towards the bigger goal. So here's where habits come in, because eventually as you continue to repeat that process over and over and over again, and you're being led by the Lord in this specific direction of your life, you will see that you are building habits. Habits can be good habits and they can move us towards our goals or they can be habits that are barriers to getting to where we want to be. So we will do a little habit inventory at the very end of this. This just makes me so excited. I'm laughing because I'm a behavior analyst. So I've mentioned that in previous episodes. but that's what my degree is in and it's very interesting when you see the intersection of all the things that I learned in school and all the things that the Lord has done and what his word says and just bringing it all together is like me nerding out over here. So if you hear me just like chuckle or get overly excited, that is why it's because I'm really passionate about all of this and I'm excited to bring and share my passion with you. I want to read Colossians 2, we're gonna read 6 through 7. So, therefor as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. There's a lot here, right? So, as you have received Jesus Christ the Lord, right? So, You have received him and if you have not, I want to pray for you at the very end of this episode. Maybe it's your first time hearing about it in this way and you just stumbled upon this podcast by accident. We're going to pray about that today. But many of you have already because you've been in the Holy Habits challenges, you've gotten into the Bible study things, you're in the free accountability group. I know that many of you already have received Jesus and are walking with the Lord. But ask yourself here truly, what does it mean to walk in him, to walk with him? to walk in according to his will for our lives. We've kind of touched on that in previous episodes as well. So just really take time to reflect on whether or not you are walking with him. If there's that, again, that still small voice, that little gentle conviction that you have been ignoring and haven't leaned into, that was part of last week's episode. Make sure you are going and reflecting in that area so that you can continue. This is a continuous reevaluation in our lives. continuous recalibration and a continuous reflection to be able, those are all our words, to be able to really make sure that we are doing this because it is nothing that we can do consistently and perfectly without taking time to pause and really look at ourselves, look inward and do a little audit because we are not God and so our human tendencies and our flesh will get in the way from time to time and we have to make sure we are reflecting there. And then it says we want to be rooted and built up in him. Okay, rooted. We've been talking about this a lot lately. What is rooted? Well, I want to be rooted in His Word. I want to be rooted in Him. When I'm rooted in something, I'm connected to the source. I'm getting nourishment from the source and I'm able to grow because of what the source is giving me. The source is the Word. The source is the Lord. The source is Jesus. The source is Holy Spirit leading and guiding in our lives, right? Making sure we're rooted in all of those things and not... in our own fleshly desires or in the ideas of this world or that the things that people have said about us or the direction that maybe somebody else gave us in our lives. And then it says, built up in Him and established in the faith. The only way that you could be built up in Him and established in the faith is if you are constantly making that next faithful step. the next right thing, asking the Lord, what do I do here? How do I obey you more? How can I die to my flesh in this instance? I really want this thing, but I know the Lord has told me not to watch that show, read that book, do this thing, talk to that person in this way, gossip with this group, and so you set it down and you remain rooted and allow him to build you up because he wants the better thing for you. and that's how we become more established in our faith. We can't get established in something. Again, think of a new job. Okay, when you walk into the new job, you might actually be familiar with a lot of the processes that they have, especially if you've worked in the field before. But when you have a new job, you still have to learn the expectations and the role and the responsibilities and the guidelines within that specific job. You are not gonna feel established in that job on day one. In order to be established in something, it's something that we are. working through and practicing and remembering and putting into play in our lives over and over and over again. The reason why people are so skilled and talented at certain jobs, think of a construction builder or a plumber. Like we call specific people for specific things because they are established in their specific field and we trust that they are going to do a good job, right? I want to be so established that the Lord can trust me with the plans and the dreams and the visions. that he wants to show me, that he wants to give to me, that he wants to allow me to walk into, and I can't be established if I'm not rooted in him in the very beginning of it all. It says, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. And that's so important to me because it's almost like this pause to recognize the work that the Lord is doing, this pause to recognize the things that you have done that are maybe different than the old ways and patterns that you used to do things, right? So just making sure that you are pausing long enough to Clap. Clap for the heavens. Like, thank you God, we give you glory, this is amazing. And also clap for yourself. I'm so proud of myself for making that choice. I really wanted to, I don't know, read that book. I wanted to read the next one in the series, but even after the second book that I read, it was like, whoa, that was too much and that was getting vulgar and I know I shouldn't read that. When that conviction comes in and you say no to the next thing, even though you're like, I just really wanna know what happens, it's like, yeah, but do I need to? Does that glorify God? Is that? helping me to build up my faith and be established in him and grow in him and allowing him to be truly my source or is the source now something else? So I just wanted to start there because again, it is really good to know the why and walk into the how with the why and the back burner because you know, okay, this is the reason why we move in this direction. This is. This is the foundation of it all truly. And when we're building habits, it is very difficult to build a habit if you don't know the reasoning why you're doing it because otherwise we'll just live off of fleshly desires. That's how maybe not so great habits get formed, right? If you have a habit of smoking, if you have a habit of overindulging in coffee or alcohol, if you have a habit of gossiping, if you have a habit of shopping on Amazon, if you have a habit of... X, Z fill in the blank with whatever the Lord is revealing to you in this moment if you have those habits and you don't know the why behind it. Like why do most people, why would most people say that they have a habit of smoking? Most of them are like, actually I don't want to. I've never talked to a smoker that's like, I willingly chose to become addicted to smoking cigarettes. Like I've never had that conversation with somebody. Almost always I have talked to somebody who was like, I don't know how I got into this and I really don't know how to stop. Same thing with drinking, same thing with coffee, same thing with overspending. It's like, whoa, I don't even know why I'm shopping, but I keep buying things and I get on social media and then I feel bad about the things I don't have and I shop a little bit more. Why do we do those things? It's fulfilling a fleshly desire. If we don't know the why, we will always, what's the word, lean on default, the word I'm looking for, default to. the fleshly desires that we have because we don't have the why to guide us towards the right thing. But when the Lord is our why, it is going to constantly be our reminder to move in the direction that he's calling us to go. And again, remember this, you're not going to build like this rooted life going back to the verse. You're not going to be rooted and become established in these huge giant moments of change. It is going to happen with your rhythms, with your habits, the things that you are Continuing to do in practice like I mentioned with you know, somebody in the trades They are practicing that skill every single day on the job And so will you practice the skill of being rooted in him every single day on the job because we are on mission if you read the word we are on mission and Everything that we're doing maybe you're like, yeah on mission as a stay-at-home mom. No mama Those babies are your mission you are on mission You're like I don't do anything except for go to work and come home to my husband and we watch a show together You are on mission as a wife. You are on mission when you go to to work, are on mission when you go to the grocery store and you see somebody struggling and you receive a word of encouragement that you're supposed to give them or you pause and you pray with them, you are always on mission. And that mission is not going to be fulfilled if you are constantly thinking that you need to have these big, giant hurrah moments in your life to build to where you need to get to. And really I think we build that off of discipline, but we think that we need to like muster up maybe the word is more I'm really losing words today muster up like more discipline and more motivation or more time people will say like I don't know how people have the time for this it's really not finding more time it's finding a few extra seconds I love I saw a video the other day and it was like the same amount of time plus two seconds right so maybe it took five seconds to walk in the door kick off the shoes and throw the jacket over the the chair, but it only took a two extra seconds to put the shoes in the cubby and hang the coat up on the coat rack to keep a tidy or home. Usually those small shifts are little two seconds, two minutes here and there that we can utilize to better surrender to what the Lord is asking us to do. Lasting change will happen when you continue to focus on those small repeated acts of faithfulness, that small job that the plumber started with. I'm going to keep going back to that because I actually love that example because it is true. You don't call an electrician to do your plumbing. You call a plumber to do your plumbing because they do plumbing every single day. And a plumber didn't start by doing an entire piping project in somebody's house. They started by maybe fixing a toilet and then fixing a leak and loving like, hey, I love helping people to not have this huge water problem in their house and I want to work on this and so I'm going to study what else I need to learn in plumbing and I'm going to become a plumber, right? Well, if you want to become a rooted woman, then you need to just study. God's word on how to be rooted and you need to continue to surrender to him in those small little choices that we make every single day. And I think, so I've been kind of shifting things around, as you know, and kind of changing the structure of things on the back end. And I will keep alluding to that and giving hints here and there, just because everything's not ready overnight, but it's been fun to be like, when this part's ready, I can share a little bit more about it. Or when I have this thing ready to go, it's just been fun to kind of drop, I guess they're called Easter eggs. I never knew that before, but like little hints, like Easter eggs, I don't know. I saw that recently and I'm like, I actually like calling it like that. thinking about rhythms in our lives, right? Just using that word rhythm, and I've seen it all over the place lately, and I've talked about this for so long because remember, I used to be a perfectionist, so I had a very strict routine. When I became a mom almost eight years ago, I realized I could not carry out that strict routine with a child, and I needed to adjust and adhere to being a little bit more flexible, and so I stopped looking at things as routines, and I started looking at them as rhythms, and from that point on, I would say like six to 10 months postpartum with my First, I was like, okay, I have a rhythm and I want to envision myself just dancing through the day with the Lord. And I want to be so connected to him that it's not me and my idea of the routine that I should have, rather the grace that I have for the rhythm and the dance that I'm dancing with the Lord throughout the day. This came through studying the word and watching God work through rhythms all the way back in Genesis. Creation in itself is rhythmic. Day and night, seasons, planting, harvesting, work, rest. God is a God of order and he is a God of rhythms. And we often want these huge big breakthroughs and God is a God of breakthrough as well. But typically the breakthrough comes from surrender to him, not building it ourself. But when we walk in those rhythms, we have more grace, we have more room, we have more rest, we have more margin in our lives. And so it leaves room for God to bring the bigger breakthrough in our life because we're not so fixated. I keep using the, I have one hand facing up, open palm, and then the other hand karate chopping it because that's what I was doing in my life. was like, okay, 430 a.m. do this, 5 a.m. do that. Just so chop, chop, chop, chop, chop through my whole entire day. But when I found out like no I can actually live within a rhythm instead of this strict routine It was like this piece overcame me because for the first time I feel like I truly had some breathing room in there. And it's funny because I think our human nature actually resists going into a rhythm. And it's kind of funny because when you start learning how to dance, my husband and I took a dance class before with our marriage class team of leaders, and then we ended up doing... a follow-up dance lesson as well. And just so fun, because when you're trying to find your rhythm, it doesn't look perfect in the beginning. You know, we're trying to learn the back step, and I'm trying to let him lead, but I'm also focusing on my feet, and I'm pretty type A personality, so I'm like, want to dance right, but also I want him to lead me, which requires me to really surrender a little bit more to what I think the next step is and go with where he's stepping. And sometimes he wants to spin me, so... I need to move in that direction versus stepping backwards. And you know, it's just funny when you think about the actual act of dancing. And sometimes in the beginning, you step on toes and you make the wrong move and you get off beat and that's okay. You just pick up where you left off and you come back with your partner and you let him lead and you guys figure it out together. And it truly is a depiction of walking with the Lord. And I think sometimes we resist rhythms in our lives because we want the dramatic change. I recently shared on social media, like we're always looking for this bigger, dramatic change and people applaud the dramatic change because it's like wow look at that before and after of that home renovation. Wow look at that before and after and how much weight she's lost. Wow look at that before and after nail transformation, hair transformation. It's always in our faces all day long so we feel like we need this dramatic change because that creates the dopamine hit and we've trained our brains to look for those things and to be validated by the applause that comes from the dramatic change but in reality Small change is very, very, very significant. If you move something one degree when you are in surgery, you could cost somebody their lives. Small change is actually really, really significant. So if I need to stay on track where I'm at right now and there's no grace for that small... little shift here and there, I'm gonna stay on track, I'm gonna let the Lord lead me. And when he says, shift, pivot here, I'm going to shift and pivot. I'm gonna stop trying to overhaul my life and jump 90 degrees over to the next thing that I want to do and realize that I can do this thing with the Lord in this rhythmic way and it's going to be so much more. beautiful and significant and impactful in my life, but we we resist it because it feels like it's too hard to get to you. It's too hard to overcome. It's too hard to see the dramatic change, but I'm telling you don't look for applause anymore. Don't look for applause when you are going through these transformations. Don't look for applause when you're making the small shifts. Let people come to you eventually and say How did you get from here to here and you get to tell them it was through the small changes that nobody saw, that nobody clapped for, and you did it because you truly just had a surrendered and obedient heart before the Lord? That's gonna be 10 times more impactful for the kingdom and give God so much more glory than the big dramatic change ever will. So I wanna give practical, I'm all about like biblical truth, practical application, let's reflect. know, really, really honing in on this lately. I wanna talk about five different ways to live rooted or have rooted rhythms. And this really goes into a lot of the things that we do within the Holy Habits challenges too. But these are like the precursors that help us to build the habits, okay? So these are not the habits themselves, it's the precursors to build the habits. Number one, you have to have a daily connection point with God. If... He, again, going back to the last episode, if we are trying to be connected, fine, in branches and these roots to the source and we're talking about things that way, and we sever that connection, what is our source going to be? Something will always replace it. A thirsty plant is thirsty. Something will always replace it. And if it's the wrong thing, it's not going to do the right thing in our lives, right? And so just making sure that we have that daily connection point with God. This morning I woke up and rolled over and I had a child in my bed and She said how come when you woke up you said, thank you God for this day Thank you that I'm alive and she's like why were you thanking him to be alive? And I'm like because I'm thankful to be alive. She's like, did you think that you weren't going to be alive? I'm like, no, I didn't think that but I'm just like wow another day and his grace is so good like thank you for allowing me the opportunity to live today and It's just like the smallest thing like I took a breath in the morning and I'm grateful for it. And if I start my day with that connection to the Lord and with that gratitude in my heart for something as small as a deep breath when I wake up, how much more will I be grateful for the rest of the day? And that stems into rhythm number two, really renewing your mind. Scripture over social media, truth over the way that you're feeling, leaning into the conviction over the desire, right? And really remaining rooted to Him. as we kind of sift through the yeses and the nos of our day and making sure that what we are consuming is helping us to grow as Christ followers in our lives. Because if social media, I saw somebody share on social media recently, she was like, I'm sad today and then showed her screen time on social media. It's like, yep, adds up. It does add up. So renew your mind daily and be careful of what you're putting in your mind or putting in front of your eyes that affects your mind. Then number three, steward your body well. Focus on sleep, focus on movement, focus on nutrition, not vanity, stewardship, okay? If you are connected to the Lord, you're renewing your mind, why would we not wanna steward our bodies well? This doesn't have to look perfect. Again, we talk about it in our holy habits challenges. I don't care if you do a 30 minute strength training workout every single day, but move your body, move your body. If you go, sometimes I'm like, I want to complain about having to run up and down the stairs so many times as a mom. to grab the next thing, it's like, okay, I got this person's socks and then this person realized that they needed socks and this person left their doll upstairs and I keep going up and down the stairs and I could tell them, like, go and grab it yourself and I could complain about it and sometimes I get there. But in reality, I'm like, wait, this is movement. This is movement. So sometimes I'll go up the stairs sideways two by two and I'll work my glutes. Sometimes I'll run up the stairs. Sometimes I'll go up like lunge position two by two just to work my quads. Like I'm always like, how can I make this movement matter? Especially in a season where it feels difficult to do like a full true 30 minute workout of strength training every single day, right? Cause that's not expected. I'm just expected to steward my body well. Same thing with sleep. Yesterday I was like, okay, I'm going to go to sleep earlier. Then of course a child came in, gotta love it, and that's okay, those things are going to happen. But I started wearing an eye mask that truly covers the under eye so that no light is peeking through. And it just helps me so much. Once that goes on, it's like, no, I'm... going to bed. Even if I have a thought, like I can hold it till the morning and if it's not there in the morning, then it wasn't that important. If I do feel like it's important, I've got a pen and paper next to my bed, I can write it down. If I forgot to do something and I need to do it, it's like, sure, I can get up and do that thing. But really, once that goes on to me, I'm like, I'm done. I'm done with the day. And it's my little sign to just make sure I'm getting enough sleep. And I wake up within the same 60 minute window every single day because it helps me with my sleep patterns and I'm not saying that this is something that you have to do but again just making sure that we're stewarding things well doesn't have to look perfect. I don't have the same bedtime, the same wake time, the same routine every single day because mostly I have children and they will interrupt that routine if I tried but I have rhythms and those rhythms have really helped me to steward my body well. And then number four goes into resting intentionally. Do you have a Sabbath? That is going to be my question I'm just gonna leave you with right there. Do you have a Sabbath? And do you have breathing room? I loved my podcast episode with Kristin Brunias from the Overcomers Podcast. Know her in personal, in real life, and she's an amazing person. She's an amazing woman of God. The growth that she has had is wonderful, and I loved talking with her about making sure that we're not jam packing our schedules so tight that there is no. breathing room. We have to have breathing room. If you don't have breathing room, where is the room for the Lord? Truly. That is just, yeah, gonna leave that there. Have a Sabbath, have breathing room, have a margin for rest. If you're not resting intentionally, you will burn out and it's very difficult to remain in rhythm and enjoy the rhythm when you are constantly feeling depleted. And then rhythm number five is truly living on mission. If I tell myself every single day, my goal is to live on mission. Number five, rhythm is just truly living on mission. If your goal is to just surrender to the Lord, to obey Him, to trust in Him, to walk with Him in all things, then you are going to naturally be doing this. think about this in the ways of serving and encouraging and using your gifts and your talents to just give God glory in all that you do, living on mission. It will change your perspective even as a stay at home mom, even as just a girl that goes to work and comes home to a husband or goes to work and comes home and she's single, that's fine too. It will change your perspective of how you use your time, of the yeses and the nos that you give, of the attitude and the perspective that you keep, and it will help you to walk and remain rooted with the Lord. I hope those five were helpful for you. They are going to help us in our next Holy Habits Challenge, which I cannot wait to share more about. Stay tuned. I'm going to actually leak some of that at the end of the episode. Reflection questions. You know, I've been big on this lately. I want you guys to be reflecting because this audio series is not just another podcast. It truly is supposed to build on each other and help you kind of walk through some of these things to reflect and to grow from it. So number one, which rhythm feels strongest in your life right now that you can continue with? I want you to try to figure out what's working. and then ask yourself what's not working, right? So which rhythm is strong? Which one needs your attention? And focus on that. I'm gonna keep this rhythm over here. Maybe your nighttime routine is awesome. You're like my nighttime routine is golden. I don't need to change it at all. I'm gonna keep that. I don't wanna change anything about it. I'm going to honor it. I'm gonna protect it. That nighttime routine works for me. Morning routine, not so much. I need to hone in on that. I'm going to reel that in and here's what it's going to look like. And then write that down. What would it look like to make small shifts in that specific rhythm of your life. That's it. Those are the reflection questions. Just choose one rhythm to focus on, not five, not 10, one. Commit to it for at least seven days. Watch what God does through simple, faithful steps and small, gentle convictions and really lean into Him in this season and I bet you, you will see some growth. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you so much for this episode. I thank you for all that you're doing in my life and for the people around me and the women who are listening. know God that you are on the move and you are working on our behalf and for your glory, Lord. And so it's just so beautiful to see and to hear about and to be able to pray over other people with Lord and see the testimonies that come from that prayer time together, Lord. So I just pray, God, that you continue to move, that you continue to lead, that you continue to guide, that you continue to convict, Father, and that as we move forward and surrender perfectionism and and striving that we can move forward in these gentle rhythms with you Father and that as we move in those rhythms we can remain rooted to you that we can be more established in our faith as your Word says and that we can show you gratitude for each and every small step and not only wait for that big victory moment Father and if there's a woman who's listening today who's like I actually have never truly given my life to the Lord God I just pray for her today I pray Lord that you will just lavish her with your love today Lord that she will recognize all that you've for her father that she will be able to confess her sins and come before you and say I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I believe that he is the Son of God who died on that cross for my sins and that I am going to heaven because I am surrendering to him today and Lord I just pray God that you will capture more hearts that you will save more souls and that you will help us all to walk so rooted and connected to you father thank you for being the source the best source help us to die to our flesh every time it tries to rise up and become the source instead of you and God just help us to yeah just celebrate the transformation that's happening in our lives in your mighty name we pray amen. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you listen to that prayer or listen to the episode and you're like, whoa, I really truly haven't surrendered to Jesus before, I want you to go ahead and reach out to me. You can do that in my DMs. You can also email me at rootedwithcourtney at gmail.com. I would love to just sift through that with you to pray with you and to welcome you into the sisterhood with Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And I also want to invite you to stay connected because we are going to be doing another Holy Habits Challenge that's going to be called Rooted Rhythms. There is going to be a devotional that goes along with it and I truly believe that the focus is not going to be on checking boxes every single day but seeing small and impactful transformations in our life. So stay tuned for that. I will be announcing more soon. That's my little quote-unquote Easter egg for today. I'll be back here next week with episode 10. Thanks for joining me here.