Latest / A Heart That Beats for Home / 67. Embracing Life's Unpredictable Seasons

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67. Embracing Life's Unpredictable Seasons · A Heart That Beats for Home

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Hello friends, welcome back to another week here on the podcast.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So grateful to have you with us today, especially after taking the whole summer off, a little pause in our normal programming just to rest and reflect, and I hope that your family had a wonderful summer season, that you're back into the swing of things with fall and kids going back to school, new, tighter schedules.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: For some of you you might be struggling to get back into that.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: For others you might have been craving that and are so thrilled to have a little bit more routine in your lives, but so grateful to be back here in September, october and November before we go into season three already in January.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: How is that possible that we have almost two full years under our belts here at the podcast?
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: So grateful to each and every one of you that tune in.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you for those of you that reached out to ask when is it coming back.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It was so great to know that you were watching for those drops and that you will be back with us here week after week.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: We have some really exciting stuff coming in the next couple of months as well as into next year, and so today I just wanted to take a few minutes, kind of just reset, going into fall, and share a little bit about some lessons that I learned this summer, just some things that God is teaching me, and then also just some encouragement on what it means to cultivate a strong family.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So our podcast slogan here is A Heart that Beats for Home, cultivating Strong Families and I really had to dig into that word and really just learn a little bit about cultivating, because obviously in general I knew what that is and it's the passion of my heart is to cultivate strong families.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: But when you really dig into that word, I really felt like this summer was a season of cultivating in so many different ways in my own life, in the life of my family, in the life of those around me, and we're going to dive into that just a little bit.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: But first off just wanted to talk through a couple of things that God really opened my eyes to this summer.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: The first one I have to chuckle because, as a type, a little bit type A a little bit OCD, and select things, I get an idea in my head and I'm super excited about it and I run pretty hard sometimes to a fault.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I have to check myself and get back in line.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: But I know when we were here together the last time in May, we talked quite a bit just about the season of rest and that a little bit less than being so goal oriented this summer, always making myself have like this to do productivity measure ahead of me to kind of gauge if I'm doing well, I was really determined to set out this summer just to really rest and slow down, to grow in a lot of areas that I wanted to grow in, and it's funny sometimes how what we think is going to be the plan turns out to be something totally different.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of the Bible verse in Proverbs 16, 9, that says we make our plans but the Lord determines our steps, and if there is no truer scripture than that for my summer, that could have been our life verse and, looking back, I see God's hand all over it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: But also just it has taught me a lot about the control that I want to have over the plans and I know that I had shared in May, when we were wrapping up to go into the summer break, that I was just super excited about taking the summer off, just so I could have a lot of time with my family.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: The podcast takes a lot of time and energy.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: All things that I'm super passionate about doing, get very excited about doing and honestly love doing the podcast brings a lot of joy and I feel like God has opened so many doors and continues to open doors, just for myself, for the listeners, for the growth of the podcast, for the special guests that are coming on, the opportunities that are happening and just the things that I believe God is going to do in the future with the podcast.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: It also takes a lot of time.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It takes a lot of effort, and so I really felt in, like March, kind of the stirring that God was just telling me, like Nikki, just take the summer off.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And I, in full transparency, I really struggled with that because when I decided to do the podcast, we launched January of 2024.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: The commitment that I had made to myself, kind of to hold myself accountable, was if I was going to do a podcast, if I really felt like God had called me to do this, and I had confirmation from my family, from other people in my life, mentors, that that they agreed that this was something I should move forward with.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to do it as like a cute little hobby.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I was going to do it with intention, I was going to show up regularly and I was going to release a podcast without fail, every Thursday on a given schedule, and that, when I showed up that I was going to do it with excellence, that I was going to do it with it covered in prayer and to bring good content that mattered, that I thought would encourage families to do that very thing, which is to have a heart for home and to cultivate strong families, and that the people that God would bring through whether it be guests that appeared or different things that I was able to bring to the podcast that God would just use it.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But I was going to show up every Thursday.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So in March, when I started thinking about taking the summer off, I struggled with it because I thought, man, is that cheating?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Is that cutting short?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe something that I had promised to myself, but just felt an overwhelming sense of nope, you are supposed to take this pause, you are supposed to take a break, partially because of stats too.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to make decisions in business or in anything, finances, whatever it might be based on data.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: And what does the data tell us?
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: What does the spreadsheet tell us?
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Looking and having wisdom in discerning information, and last summer it was very clear that podcast numbers went down a little bit over the summer, which to me makes so much sense because moms are busy, we're out of schedule.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I know myself.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I have found that even coming back into September.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Now I am catching up on a lot of my favorite podcasts, I'm catching up on books that I had started reading and I sat down for the summer.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: There's less routine and schedule, and so also some of the data was telling me like summer for our demographic of podcast is a really great time to just kind of hit pause.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Some people are going to use it to get caught up on episodes that they haven't had a chance to listen to.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Others will use it to get caught up on episodes that they haven't had a chance to listen to.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Others will use it to re-listen to episodes, and then some will just be so grateful when they come back in September and they don't feel like they're 12 or 14 weeks behind.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And so I came to peace with that and really felt like maybe God is giving me this break in the podcast so that this summer I mean in my brain I had it all figured out I was going to be at the lake, I was going to spend so much time just really focused on praying through and planning and organizing and lining up and scheduling all of the stuff that was going to happen in the podcast for the next year, so that when we came into September as a family and I got back home, things would just be smooth.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And so I thought, well, of course God is encouraging me, nudging me towards taking this break so that I can just get super prepared and show up in September just in a really great space and friends.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that I maybe spent three to four hours total over the course of the summer working and planning on the podcast.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Now, there were definitely times that I was running things over in my brain or making a quick note about a topic or maybe a special guest that came to mind, but as far as like sitting down and digging in and really getting a head start, it absolutely did not happen.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And it didn't happen for a ton of reasons, primarily because this summer didn't look anything like I expected it to look or anything like past summers have looked for us, and I am okay with that.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I've had to come to grips with a lot of things feeling out of control the last couple of months and it has just been a really, really odd, an odd summer.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: And so the first thing I learned is that things don't always go as planned, but there is good in all of it somewhere somehow that we can see.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And so, first of all, I am just so thankful that God gave me that nudge to take the break, because had I not paused the podcast for June, july and August and the summer that we had would have been the summer that I was trying to also put out a podcast every week.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It would have been physically impossible to do.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Just with the different things that happen some of them we'll chat about it would have been physically impossible for us to do.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And so just God, in his kindness to me, in his just always knowing what's best, allowed me to take that break so that I wouldn't have this additional heaviness this summer of also feeling like I'm totally falling short in this thing, that I wouldn't have this additional heaviness this summer of also feeling like I'm totally falling short in this thing that I have committed to.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: That's important to me, that I believe God has placed on my heart, and so I'm just, I'm thankful for his kindness to me in that.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And so this summer, man, it was a wild one, and a handful of things just made it really, really different.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: This was a season where I saw, more than maybe any other time in my life, the ability to live with such opposing feelings at the same time.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So to be in a place of such grief but also have a lot of things in life that were bringing so much joy, to be in a place of total physical exhaustion, also mixed in with these unbelievable times of beautiful rest and retreat, and just this, this conflict in my spirit, of all of these things happening at the same time.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Without going into a lot of details, this summer just entailed a lot of illness of people that I really love and care for and decline in health of people that I really love and care for, and of unbelievable celebration of weddings and things for people that are just the most precious people to me.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And, in the exact same month, unbelievable loss and grief, with a tragic death of a dear friend.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And walking that path of navigating all of these different things with my family and the emotions that were happening here in our home around that.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: To walk that grief with the family that was experiencing it as they're just so precious and dear to us and being in the mix of that, but then also having just really beautiful things that were happening, having these pockets of time where I got just precious time with my son as a 15 year old at the lake, just him and I, because of how work schedules for my husband and work schedules for my girls and school schedules worked out that this was the first year in the last well, 23 years, I guess, of having children, that I didn't have my kids with me all summer, and that seems weird to say 23,.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Right, and I know we've talked a lot before how you don't just get 18 summers.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I am firsthand that you get way more than 18 summers, and I hope that encourages some of you that are like looking down, what you feel like is doom and gloom of oh my gosh, they're 17.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I only have one more summer.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I was so privileged my husband and I and our kids to have had the last 23 summers together full time, all of us, all, five of us well, three of us and then four of us, and then five of us as our family grew.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And so this year was really jarring for my system, which is the second thing that I learned is that home is where your people are.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: We so often think like, oh my gosh, home is this place, it's this address, it's these four walls that are filled with memories, and so deeply I experienced this summer that home is wherever my five people are together, and I know how precious and how special those times are now.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: And so this summer, just to experience having our girls at home, because they were working full-time and they're in school and they have all of these commitments and then me and my husband and our son up at the lake together.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of that time my husband was traveling out of state for work and so a lot of times my family was just kind of I'd look at my Life360 app and I'd be like, oh my gosh, my people are all over the country and I don't like it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And yet I know that it's just part of life and so you know people are probably listening like, oh my gosh, snap out of it.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Your kids are 23 and 20.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: But the reality is it's navigating a new normal, and anytime that we navigate a new normal we have to figure it out, and sometimes it might feel dramatic to somebody that's hearing me talk.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Other times people might totally be able to relate to it, but for us it has just really been navigating a new season, and part of it, I think, for me as a mom, and I feel like it was totally different.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: We've had a daughter in college for four years, away from home, and this felt even different.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I felt like when all of us were together and the oldest was away at college, it even felt different than this kind of division that happened over the summer and I think part of it for me and a stage that I'm going to have to really figure out and navigate and probably find some really great guests that can come on the podcast and talk to us about this as parents is how to be okay with our kids struggling, facing rejection, working really, really hard and feeling overwhelmed, coming up against really big adult things.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And I think part of my soul and just the uneasiness this summer was I was trying to be in like rest and retreat mode but I knew and was involved in conversations with my girls who were back here who were facing just a lot of different difficulties with a lot of stuff that felt like they were really struggling and it killed me not to be here helping them.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I am a helper by nature and I feel like one way that I get to show up to really love my family well is to just be a helpmate, not only to my husband but to my kids, to step in and to do those things like make sure we're eating good, nutritious food or making sure that the house has a level of order and peace and joy to it, helping with the laundry when they're working 12 and 14 hour days or they're cramming for the big exams to be able to feed them and take care of them and I don't always do that perfectly and there's seasons where I just I can't be as available, but it was really hard for me to be away, knowing that I couldn't step in.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say and save them but in a little bit of a way, as a mom, I think there's so much of us that naturally wants to step in and save our kids and I am telling you next week's podcast we have an unbelievably special, amazing guest coming on and we talk a lot about this concept of tough parenting, like tough love parenting and not just being somebody that always swoops in and saves, but letting our kids navigate and struggle and ultimately figure out how to manage life, how to manage lots of responsibilities.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: But if I'm being honest, it's tough.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: It's tough to change those roles and to say things.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: My kids always laugh at me specifically more when they say mom, can I?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And they're asking something that they probably know is like oh, it's not a great idea, but they want me to say yes or no and my, my common response now is like that's a great question You're 23 or you're 20.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You should probably make that decision.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: My 20 year old is the is the prime candidate of that question and we always laugh and chuckle.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: But I'm like you're 20.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: You need to make your decisions, even with the 15-year-old.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of decisions that I don't need to make, that you're 15 and you can learn to suffer results and consequences of the actions that you take.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Now, obviously, on some things at 15, I'm going to very clearly say yeah, absolutely not or for sure.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: That's a good option.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: But as the kids get older, just navigating, being okay with natural consequence or natural benefit and joy it's just as awesome when your kids are trying to make a decision.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they make a decision and it doesn't go well and we learn from that.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Other times they make a decision and it's exactly the decision they should have made and God opens amazing doors and opportunities and reward for them because of how they pursue that.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And so just this summer was odd for me to be in this state of loving the time I'm having with my son and seeing him.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I just feel like he has just become a man.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I kept sending pictures all summer to the girls of their brother up at the lake.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Just every time I would look at him.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: There was one day, specifically, where I was driving and we were coming home on the eight hour trip.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Him and I ended up having to make the eight hour trip home, eight hours one way three different times this summer for the wedding, for the funeral, for just other things that we needed to come home for that weren't expected.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And so this one trip I kept looking back at him and every time I looked back I was like why does he look 25?
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: He looks like he should be going off to his job with a family and I'm like it's so crazy how quickly boys grow up.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I always have said that I feel like my girls quickly boys grow up.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I always have said that I feel like my girls.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The stage of going from like a girl to a woman in a female, I think just like takes longer.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But I feel like these boys they're like a boy and then all of a sudden you look and they're like a man.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: You look back and you're like, oh my gosh, that kid has like massive quads and he's got hairy legs and he's got like a jawbone and just these features that are like what in the heck happened that just all of a sudden you became a man and so beautiful parts of that and navigating, really just wanting to dive in to life with him.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: In these last handful of years that he's home, and then also just this letting go of our kids, I think I also have feared moving into the future.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: A girlfriend asked me this summer, like what does life look like for you in four years?
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: And it kind of paralyzed me in a way, because when I started really thinking about it like I am very aware and we talk about it here on the podcast a lot I am very aware that in the near stages there is a good chance that I will be home alone in this house with no children, and that's amazing because it means that they're going and they're doing and they're pursuing and turning into adults, which is everything I've wanted since they were born is to raise them into good humans who are contributing to society in a good way, and so an important step of that is moving out of your parents' house.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I also have a husband that travels a ton, and so there was this moment when I was talking to my girlfriend where I'm like I've always been aware that my kids are leaving.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: My middle daughter owns our dog and so she's the one that will take the dog when she leaves.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So the dog will be gone.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And then I'm like, oh my gosh, my husband travels a lot for work and I had this moment with my girlfriend that I was like, oh my gosh, I am going to be in this home with no dog, no husband and no kids.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And it was like this moment of panic, like I don't know that I'm okay with that.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And yet at the same time I told her but I could never get rid of our house, like our house is like everything that I know about raising my kids for the last 15 years is in this house.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: But my heart at the same time was telling me maybe part of this that God is preparing you for to have your kids in multiple places and to feel so torn and conflicted and not at total peace is to remind you that your home is not the actual building.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Just like the church is not the building.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: The church is the people and getting out and sharing beyond the walls of the church.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That's truly church.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Just like family is less about the family home and it's more about the community that we have with the five of us and anywhere that we're together, whether that be in a small condo, if it be in this house, if it be somewhere else, that I will be okay, because home is just about my people.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And so it was just like this really weird summer and I did not get to plan and prepare for this year.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I did not get to read and to rest and to grow in a lot of the areas that I wanted to.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: The one thing that I am super grateful that it was just a little small discipline that I just kept with, no matter how hard the days were, was this Bible in a year that I'm trying so diligently to finish and over the course of the summer.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I am about 15 days behind.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: But when I look back at what this summer looked like, the things that came our way, I'm grateful that I'm not 90 days behind and instead of beating myself up for being 15 behind, I just see that as an opportunity to go okay, nikki, just continue to cultivate this really good habit of digging into God's word every day, and what I have done this last year compared to the years prior, I need to celebrate as growth instead of being frustrated that I'm a little behind, so I'm super grateful that I'm still pretty much on target for that and continue to grow through reading God's word.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: But other than that, I feel like all of the other things I said I was going to grow in, I really didn't, and instead maybe God gave me different areas that I needed to grow in.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Just this week, in thinking through the podcast and coming back and doing some recordings of episodes that are coming in the future, it really just kept resonating with me, like Nikki dig in a little bit on this word cultivate, because maybe what God was doing this summer was really just cultivating in the soil of your heart things that needed to happen for you to be able to grow.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: And I hope that that is an encouragement to moms and to families everywhere, because when we think about cultivating strong families and that really is my prayer for my family I know that it's the prayer for many families that listen to the podcast and I think it's the key for society to be successful and, by be successful, return to values and morals and the fruits of the spirit.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: And so it's my prayer for not just my house and the homes that listen and the community, but as a country.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I pray that the focus will turn back to hearts that really do beat for home, and dads that are pouring into their kids and being mentors and leaders, and moms who are humbling themselves in service and in kindness and compassion and in just loving their families and their spouse as well, and husbands who are loving their wives the way that Christ loves the church, and kids who are respecting and honoring and growing in their own faith and going out and making a difference in the world.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And so, looking at that word, I kind of started doing a deep dive.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And of course, when we think about it cultivate you can look at it in a lot of different ways.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: When you're cultivating, the spirit, your heart when you're cultivating crops and the one that kind of caught my eye was when you're cultivating to have a healthy crop, and it said that the process of prepare and then till and then plant and then tend, and that really resonated with me because I think sometimes in life we have to go through seasons that maybe there's just a lot of tilling and I feel like summer for me.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe some of you can relate, maybe you're just coming into a season where you feel like everything is just being tilled, and for me what that looked like was just this plowing through my heart, through hurt, through questioning.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's hard not to ask why, god?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: It's hard not to try to put up walls, it's hard not to get frustrated when things don't go your way and really just allowing God to till my spirit, to till the hard parts in my heart that want to have a lot of control when ultimately I don't.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: It goes again back to that verse we make our paths, but the Lord determines our step.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: No matter what I lay out as my goals and my dreams and I can work for those, but if I'm working at them in a way that I'm asking God to please lead and direct open doors, close doors there are going to be seasons of tilling that look nothing like what I had on my plan or on my forecast, and there have been those seasons in my business.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: There have been those seasons in my marriage.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: There have been those seasons in my business.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: There have been those seasons in my marriage.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: There have been those seasons in our finances or in my disciplines.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And that word till like I just can see the tractor going through the field and it's all of this hard soil that's just like not even really absorbing water and it would not grow good plants, good crops.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: But you get that tractor out there with all those spikes and that manpower behind it or that motor behind it and when you really dig in and you turn up, you start to get some softer soil, there starts to be a better opportunity for crops.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And then we plant and then we tend.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: And it's this cycle of prepare until and plant, and tend, and prepare until implant intent and prepare until implant intent.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And I just see God doing that in my family and people that I care greatly about and love.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Some friendships that I have and that was a highlight for me this summer is just there are a handful of friendships that are just precious and God just reminded me this summer who those people were.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: They showed up in some of my darkest hours.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Some of them were family, some of them are just really good friends, some of them are precious neighbors.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And God also brought random people into my life that I hardly knew.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: That took a moment to minister and to really just pour into my family, pour into me, pour into people that I loved.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And it just brought to light to me that cultivating strong families, really making that cultivate word, a verb and looking at what does it take to cultivate, and it doesn't just mean that we show up and it's easy, and we have this laundry list of things that we're going to do as a family and because of X, y and Z, the outcome or the output for our family is going to be success.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: The reality is sometimes the most fruitful tilling comes in the most painful seasons and I've seen that in my life.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I experienced it this summer.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not totally out of the tilling season.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I know that God is still tilling some stuff in us and through us and just trusting him with the process.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: No matter what stage you are at in your parenting mama, as you are just listening to this, and you have kids at all these different stages, every stage of parenting has really beautiful things that are so wonderful and has things that are really difficult, and that's just part of life.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: It's part of tending to other human spirits, it's part of humbling ourselves and being selfless in how we serve.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But I just want to encourage you to just take a look at where are you at right now in this season of your life.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: What seems to be difficult?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: What's the pain point that you have right now in your life that keeps coming, what seems to be difficult, like what's the pain point that you have right now in your life that keeps coming up.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And then maybe ask yourself what is God doing right now?
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Or what am I maybe refusing to let God do?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: What am I resisting in what he's trying to till up in me?
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And sometimes for me this is bad habits.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes for me this is lack of discipline.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Sometimes for me this is full on choosing not to put on the fruit of the spirit.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: It's an active choice to I am not going to be joyful today because so-and-so didn't do what they were supposed to do and if they would show up, then it would be easy for me to be joyful, or it'd be easy for me to show love, be easy for me to be kind, and that, unfortunately, is going to be a roadblock in day to day to day if we cannot look inward and say that's not an excuse.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I don't get to be kind or joyful because people are doing what they're supposed to be doing.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I'm choosing to be joyful because the joy of the Lord is my strength, because I am putting on the fruits of the Spirit, because I am tilling and actively trying to cultivate these habits in my household so that we can, in turn, cultivate a strong family, a family that is in relationship with one another, a family that is respectful, that operates from a space of integrity, that honors the Lord in our actions, that serves in our community, that shows up for other people.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to just keep digging into that concept of cultivating, prepare till, plant, intend, and I pray that it's something that you will maybe look at in your own life, in your family, like I said, in those places of pain points in your marriage, in your parenting, and just be able to, instead of resisting the tilling and resisting that hard soil that needs to be broken up, just inviting God, your spouse, your kids into an active process of doing that as a family.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: And so I'm excited, as we come into these next couple of months, as we wrap up season two, there are some really beautiful things coming.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And again, god in his goodness, coming home from the lake two weeks ago on a Saturday, being like I have no idea what we're going to do for the podcast and literally within 24 hours, receiving a phone call that just kind of blew my socks off of an interview that's going to happen next week, that you'll get to listen to it.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Just God is he's kind.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: He's kind in giving us reminders that, trust me, I've got you, trust me, I've got this.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Trust me, we're in this together.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do it in your own strength.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Just lay down your control, keep being diligent, do the part that you're supposed to do and trust me for the rest.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And so that is what I'm doing for this podcast, not just for the next couple of months as we wrap up this year, but for however long God sees and has plans for this podcast to move forward.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I will be laying it at His feet and allowing Him to take the reins, no matter how many times I have to lighten up my grip in the process of getting to that point, over and over again, because I'm a slow learner, but just asking him to cultivate in my heart, in my family, through this podcast and in any interaction that I have, just a spirit and a life that reflects who he wants me to be, not what I strive to be.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And so we're going to have a great end to this year.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Friends, make sure that you come back next week for a really amazing, exciting interview, and I'm just excited to be back here with you in September as we get into fall and schedules and all things routine with our kiddos, and just to be able to do life alongside you.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: So if you listen in here whether you listen in the car driving or maybe in your ear pods as you're doing laundry or dishes I am just grateful that you choose to show up here every week.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It is such a humbling experience to know that people are listening and that the voices that we're bringing here in all of the amazing guests that we get to have on, are voices that are being used to encourage you in your walk.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: And so thanks for being here, thanks for sharing the podcast with others.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: It's so fun to see the podcast continue to grow and we just appreciate you being the ambassadors that are out there spreading the word.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: So until next week, friends, take care.