Latest / Paradox Podcast / When Seasons End Part 1: Knowing It's Time to Move On

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When Seasons End Part 1: Knowing It's Time to Move On · Paradox Podcast

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  Foreign.
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  Welcome. Welcome to the Paradox
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  podcast where there are more than a pair of
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  dogs. In fact, this podcast features
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  three different doctors. Dr. Deborah Brazile,
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  Dr. Vince Johnson Jr. And me,
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  Dr. Deborah Woodson. In this journey,
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  we will examine spiritual concepts that appear to
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  be self contradictory, but actually they
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  uncover deeper underlying truths.
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  This means that many topics are on the
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  table. So buckle your seat belts, put your tray table
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  and your seats in the upright position because this
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  ride can get a little bumpy as it may
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  challenge your current intuitions. For the more
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  you know, the more you realize your knowledge is limited.
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  There is a whole world of knowledge waiting
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  for you to discover.
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  Foreign.
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  Well, today we're going to talk about seasons.
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  Particularly how do you know when a season is over?
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  Do you want to be like the 40 year old guy who reminisces and tells
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  anybody who can listen that he caught a ball on the one yard
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  line when he was 16, brother, that season
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  is over. Or do you want to be like the young lady
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  who's been in abusive relationships? So now she has a good relationship
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  but she's stuck in the abusive season.
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  So be a bug on the wall and listen to these episodes
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  on season.
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  Well, hey, hey, hey. Welcome to the Paradox
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  podcast. We're glad you here. You can be a
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  speck on the wall and listen in on our conversations
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  today. DEBORAH okay, so everybody,
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  we have some really interesting dialogue and conversation
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  and I think it's something that you're all going to identify with
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  because we get into these faith journeys
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  and we like to call them seasons. And I
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  didn't really hear about this terminology until I was a little bit older and I
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  was intrigued with it because I love God's creation and
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  the seasons of, you know, those beautiful blue
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  azure skies in September and the
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  beautiful leaves and the foliage and then the austerity of winter and
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  so on. And those seasons seem to be very,
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  very easy, very effortless.
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  And so I thought that's what a faith journey
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  season looked like. And I realized this is not true, that it's
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  not like, it's not like we're dancing and we're doing the waltz
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  and then they twirl around and we do the boogie oogie. You know,
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  it is, we get stuck almost
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  like a recorder,
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  you know, or almost like remember all the 45s and they'd
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  skip or they'd get stuck in the groove. And I feel like we get
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  stuck in these seasons. And so the dialogue tonight is
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  about how do you know when your season is over?
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  And, and some people jump out
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  of it too. Quickly, Deborah was just saying, which is a very interesting
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  take on it. But I think I'm the sort that I get
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  stuck in something, and I don't really, like, change all that much.
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  I like, pretend that I do, but I actually don't. And I get stuck.
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  So, Dr. Deborah, take it away. What's your experience with seasons?
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  Well, my mother used to sing this song. I hate
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  to sing every episode, but here it goes. Que sera sera
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  Whatever will be, will be the
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  future's not yours to stay Que
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  sera sera Because I always ask my mother,
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  when. When we gonna get there? Because we move so many times, okay.
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  And it's. It's very.
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  Deborah and I are very athletic. And. And I
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  was telling her, because I dance with the young girls. You know, I dance Zumba
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  with the young girls. And I was like, I hate to think that I have
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  to stop doing that at one point in my life.
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  I just. I just. I just. I just can't. And. And I said,
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  well, I'm gonna. I'll just lift some weights, Real light weights. And Deborah looked
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  at me, she said, you're gonna pick up the heavy. Amen. Do one,
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  too. Okay? Yeah, yeah. And she.
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  And you hate to have friends that sing your. Sing your song softly
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  like Roberta Flack used to talk about. But they were telling the truth.
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  She was telling the truth. What I have found out. I have some
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  statistics for you. Since I'm dyslexic, I had to write this down.
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  There are 453 mentions of.
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  And it came to pass. That's my favorite Bible verse. People,
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  like, if my Bible said. They're like, okay, Deborah's gonna talk about a Bible verse.
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  And I said, and it came to pass because it
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  says it 453 times. If you go to the Hebrew
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  Bible is over 1200 times. Mostly in the
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  Old Testament. Okay. Mostly in the Old Testament, which. And I've learned
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  when God repeats something over and over again,
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  it's important. And it came to pass as my favorite
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  Bible verse. Because sometimes I ask God, when's it going
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  to pass? I want it to pass. I want it to pass.
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  And sometimes he doesn't give us escape.
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  Have you ever prayed? Get me out of this. If you get me out of
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  this, I'll go to church every day. I'll say, Hail Mary's all the way.
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  Bargaining. Yeah, you want to get
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  out of it? And sometimes he says, no, baby, you're going to go through it.
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  You're not going to get out of it. You're going to go through it.
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  Because he has the best intentions
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  for our life, better than what we have.
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  And so he knows that certain things in working
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  out, let me tell you, building muscles, you got to break down yourself
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  first. I mean, you got to break it down and then you build
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  a muscle. It just doesn't come by thinking, oh, I would like to have muscles.
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  Okay. And it came to pass,
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  is very, very important for me, because I used to say,
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  nobody likes to change but a wet baby. Then I
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  had two boys, and they didn't want to be changed.
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  So even wet babies don't like the change.
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  Yeah. And Deborah, you were saying you don't like
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  change. You know, I really, I.
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  I teach creativity, right? And so I should be
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  the one instigating the change. And I'm really good at it with
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  my students. And they always think, and, oh, you're so wonderful. And, you know,
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  and I'm thinking, if only, you kn.
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  Because they. They think I. I really live it out.
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  And I do some of it. But,
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  you know, I'm not. I'm not that particularly great at it.
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  I have to punish. Punish myself. That's a,
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  That's a, you know, an erotic thing
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  to say. Yeah, it's a Freudian slip because I have to push myself out of
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  my comfort zone. And I do view it like it is punishment
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  because I tend to get really comfortable. But once I get out of my comfort
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  zone, then I'm like, what. What am I waiting for?
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  You know, why didn't I do this sooner?
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  Do you want me to talk about my season or you want to continue with.
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  Well, I can continue. Then we can go in and out.
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  Okay. I remember everybody says, oh, you're so good
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  lecturing. Let me share with you my
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  first lecture. Let me share with you my first lecture. I went
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  to graduate school and I didn't understand what stipends
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  were about. And the stipend means we don't give you the
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  tuition, but you gonna work for slave labor.
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  And I go to the office and the secretary,
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  I never. I always will remember this? Had this book on
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  her desk, and it said Human Sexuality. And she
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  said, these are your books. And I'm like, oh, it's so nice that your
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  actor school buys your book. She goes, no,
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  that's the class you're teaching at seven in the morning
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  tomorrow. Oh. And I was like. I was just
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  like, oh, oh,
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  I never taught before. And so you have to understand,
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  I looked like I was 17 in graduate school.
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  So I looked like a TV bopper. And then this was an
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  advanced class, so, you know, you could smell the fresh meat coming
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  off of my body. This is an
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  advanced class. And I remember at Arizona State, I was walking
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  down the hallways. It was like a scary movie. And it was the Life Science
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  building, and the lockers were breathing.
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  And then there was, like, these windows up at top, and the
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  dust. You know how the dust dances in the light. And the dust was coming
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  down. I felt like God was going right on me.
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  And I walked to the classroom, and a upper class person
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  said he would set up a film projector for me. That's when you had the
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  film projector. You had the threaded. And I thought he was being nice, but actually
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  he was like, what do they call it when they
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  flag you? I can't think of the word. They're pranking you.
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  Yeah, he would prank me. He pranked me. And he
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  said, okay. So I didn't have any time
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  to prepare. And he said, okay, okay. So if you get stuck, just run the
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  projector. And I'm like, okay. The class was hour
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  and 40 minutes. And by 15
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  minutes, I was done.
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  That's exactly. I was done. And so I walked up
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  to the projector, and he told me, just push the button. I pushed the button.
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  You know what? It came up. You guys, excuse me. You got children in the
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  room. Cover their ears. It came up. This is a
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  penis.
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  This is a penis. And my students said
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  to me, years later, like, nothing fluffs your
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  feathers. You don't get upset about anything. And I said,
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  because I've been through it. I mean, after this is a penis,
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  what else is there to say? What else is there to say?
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  So it was.
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  I wish the whole time it was over with. Matter of fact, my whole
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  graduate school experience, I wished it was over with.
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  And I remember when I went back to graduate school, I had to go with
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  a girlfriend. And we held hands as we walked through the building. It was so
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  traumatic for me. But of course,
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  because I went through that stairwall,
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  then nothing fluffed me.
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  Nothing fluffed me. And people like, what do you mean?
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  Well, one of my students brought her baby to
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  class. This is at Cal Poly. And I have. I have,
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  like. I have a silk shirt on. And her baby
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  started crying. And I was
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  nursing my son at home. Oh, no. So her baby started crying,
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  and it started getting wet,
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  thank God. And I was just.
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  I'm like, well, anybody got any. Any paper towels? I flipped
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  a paper towel in. And one guy goes, what is that doing?
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  I said, ask your mother. Go home and ask your students.
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  She was so upset. She was so embarrassed because the baby crying made
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  me lactate, you know, so in music,
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  we call that harmonic. Harmonic frequency,
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  right? That's in music, right?
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  Because one starts ringing and the other one responds.
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  Right? So. And. But I really taught my students
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  to, like, you know, hey, you have to laugh at yourself and you just move
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  on. I mean. I mean, come on. There's big. I had a silk shirt
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  on, so there were these big rings on my shirt because you know how
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  silk is. It just stays. And I just went on and it
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  was no big deal. And a couple of my students said, I really. You really
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  taught me something because you didn't. You didn't fold
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  in two. And I told her what happened to my. In my first day
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  teaching. This is a penis. So, you know, hey, lactation doesn't matter
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  after. This is a penis. Yeah. Amen to that.
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  And the verse life, I found it was. It is
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  a book in the. And the New Testament is
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  ecclesiastics, if I could say that, right?
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  And it's 3, 118 for every season
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  and every time under heaven
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  there is a place. And Ecclesiastes
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  talked about how trying to run after the wind is
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  useless, you know, and he substitute the wind for
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  material things. That's what he's talking about. You know, it's useless
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  trying to run after the wind. So what you're going to do, how are you
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  going to catch it? You know, it's there, but you can't grab it. So it's
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  like time. You can never save time. People are like, oh, I saved time.
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  Really? How did you do that? Did you take yourself off the clock?
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  There's no such thing as saving time. It's like if you don't sleep tonight,
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  you're going to. You going to catch up tomorrow? No, I mean,
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  it's. It's just. And it came to pass. And it came
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  to pass. And Ecclesiastics talks about that as a book of wisdom. I think
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  it was a. Solomon wrote it. I think Solomon wrote it. Yes. Okay.
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  Yeah. So what is your experience, Deborah, in things
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  coming to pass? Well, the reason I wanted
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  you to start off is because mine is, you know, kind of heavy.
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  And look, I don't want the listeners out there to
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  think that my life is terrible. Okay? I just want to say that up front
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  that, you know, even in adversity, I've had good things happen. I've really
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  been blessed and life has really been good. But Ecclesiastes
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  is, you know, funny you should bring it up, but it definitely
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  talks about cycles and laughing and then there's a time to
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  cry. And then there's nothing new under the sun. And. And to
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  me now, it's kind of liberating because I realized,
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  well, wait a minute, you know, life is not supposed to be perfect.
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  And you know, Solomon, the wisest man knew this.
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  So what I'm in right now
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  and I've been in for a while and I'm just going to kind of take
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  you through my life and I'm not going to go into detail on anything,
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  but starting. And around 2007,
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  my husband was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. Now,
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  if you don't know what it is, just look it up.
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  You'll understand that it really takes away humanity and affect and
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  it's real miserable for the caregiver too,
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  because the person becomes homicidal and suicidal and very
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  impulsive. So I lived that for seven years and
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  I really thought that was sort of the end of it. And Jesus really did
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  appear to me in a dream and protected
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  me in that dream. And I knew that I wasn't supposed to leave,
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  get out of it, try to avoid it. Not that I could have, but I
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  had to settle in. You know, when God says, okay,
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  I'm here and you're supposed to settle in.
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  And that's when we became real close. Remember Deborah?
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  That's when we became. Because Deborah came into my office and
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  knew there was something up, something wrong. I really hadn't told anybody at Cal
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  Poly because I just wanted to be treated normally and
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  I didn't want to be told, well, you know, you need,
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  you can't be here. Because I was the sole breadwinner then.
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  Because he had spent every cent he made on
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  I don't know where. I still don't know where the money went. Wow.
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  So it was definitely a trying time.
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  But then I thought, well, okay, I've been through my adversity,
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  you know, it's all good now. And it was a wonderful transition
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  for him. Great silver lining. Saw him in the afterlife and,
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  you know, etc. I hope you
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  were stimulated to think about your seasons.
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  You need to tune in next time when we explore part two
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  of how do you know when a season is over? You're going to hear the
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  rest of Deborah's story and Dr. Vince will start
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  in on his experience with seasons.
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  Hopefully the preceding conversations inspired you to think
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  deeper about your current beliefs. Tune in next time as we'll continue our our journey
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  through your self contradictory thoughts. God bless everybody.