Latest / In His Circle / Fighting Discouragement with Faith: Holding On When You Feel Like Letting Go | Ep 34

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Fighting Discouragement with Faith: Holding On When You Feel Like Letting Go | Ep 34 · In His Circle

• 0:01
  Tiffany Windsor: Welcome to In His Circle, where real women share real stories and discover God's faithfulness in everyday life.
• 0:09
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm Tiffany Winds.
• 0:11
  Tiffany Windsor: And I'm Heather Brickstock, and we're so glad you're here.
• 0:14
  Tiffany Windsor: Whether you're joining us from your kitchen table, your morning commute, or your favorite quiet place, we pray these conversations encourage your heart, strengthen your faith, and remind you that God is still writing beautiful stories every single day.
• 0:30
  Tiffany Windsor: So come and pull up a chair and join us in his circle.
• 0:34
  Tiffany Windsor: Heather, can we talk about discouragement?
• 0:38
  Tiffany Windsor: Ah, yes.
• 0:39
  Tiffany Windsor: Let's do.
• 0:40
  Tiffany Windsor: It's not a topic that most people want to talk about.
• 0:44
  Tiffany Windsor: This came up in my daily prayer journal today, and this really hit me.
• 0:50
  Tiffany Windsor: It was a second sentence of two pages of prayer notes, and it reads, My greatest enemy isn't a person, it's discouragement.
• 1:00
  Heather Brigstock: That's powerful.
• 1:01
  Heather Brigstock: I think you're right.
• 1:02
  Heather Brigstock: I know you're right.
• 1:03
  Heather Brigstock: It's funny.
• 1:04
  Heather Brigstock: Um, when we recorded the podcast last week, Tiffany, I was really in the depth of discouragement.
• 1:09
  Heather Brigstock: And the Lord has given us victory over some challenges over the past few days.
• 1:13
  Heather Brigstock: But I was praying this morning.
• 1:15
  Heather Brigstock: I was in my prayer closet, and the Lord just really compelled me to stop and to thank him.
• 1:20
  Heather Brigstock: And as I was praising him, it reminded me of the hills and the valleys.
• 1:27
  Heather Brigstock: And it took me back in my mind to this funny time.
• 1:30
  Heather Brigstock: I was thinking about the manor and I was thinking about the highs and the lows.
• 1:33
  Heather Brigstock: And when Jeff and I bought the manor, I told you, we were not, we were not well capitalized.
• 1:38
  Heather Brigstock: We didn't buy the manor because we were the richest people in town.
• 1:41
  Heather Brigstock: We've never been super well capitalized.
• 1:43
  Heather Brigstock: And I don't say that in a bad way.
• 1:44
  Heather Brigstock: Jeff is so good with money, but we've always tried to invest.
• 1:47
  Heather Brigstock: We've shared with others and done different things.
• 1:49
  Heather Brigstock: So it's not like we've held on to money.
• 1:51
  Heather Brigstock: And then the Lord called us to buy this building.
• 1:53
  Heather Brigstock: And with an 1860s building, it's your greatest asset and your greatest liability all wrapped up into one beautiful package.
• 2:00
  Heather Brigstock: You want to fix the things that are, but you don't want to dig too deep because the farther you dig, the more that you find.
• 2:04
  Heather Brigstock: In fact, still today, there's parts of this building that we have not uncovered.
• 2:08
  Heather Brigstock: There's a drop ceiling in some of the rooms.
• 2:10
  Heather Brigstock: And I have not poked my head above the drop ceiling, and I'm not going to for a while.
• 2:14
  Heather Brigstock: We have seen the attic one time because we tied somebody's phone to a pole and stuck it up there.
• 2:20
  Heather Brigstock: But one of the challenges that we got with the building was that the building was in the 1860s, we're the fourth owners, but from 2015 to 2020, it sat emptied.
• 2:29
  Heather Brigstock: So nobody was here.
• 2:30
  Heather Brigstock: The property is beautiful, beautiful historic property with big trees all around it.
• 2:34
  Heather Brigstock: And in five years, our property became an animal sanctuary.
• 2:38
  Heather Brigstock: I'm sure if animals had phones and those phones had animal sanctuary apps, then we would be a green light for every animal around.
• 2:46
  Heather Brigstock: And so we had baby rabbits in the yard.
• 2:48
  Heather Brigstock: I mean, they were so tame.
• 2:49
  Heather Brigstock: We would go out and pick them up and carry them around the yard.
• 2:51
  Heather Brigstock: It was crazy.
• 2:51
  Heather Brigstock: But the animal that caused us the most grief were the squirrels.
• 2:55
  Heather Brigstock: The squirrels had bred here comfortably, safely for five years.
• 3:01
  Heather Brigstock: And the trees are old and they create patterns.
• 3:04
  Heather Brigstock: And so they were in the house.
• 3:06
  Heather Brigstock: Well, as we began working, we obviously they started to get out and they didn't want to be around the people.
• 3:13
  Heather Brigstock: The house is three stories tall and it has numerous nooks and crannies and obviously was in disrepair.
• 3:18
  Heather Brigstock: Corners were open, there were spots where things could get in.
• 3:20
  Heather Brigstock: They say a mouse can get in and something the size of a dime.
• 3:23
  Heather Brigstock: So these squirrels, they're rodents, they're sick, and so they can get in anywhere.
• 3:27
  Heather Brigstock: And I remember Jeff, he was so funny.
• 3:30
  Heather Brigstock: I hate vermin of all kinds, but he just does not do things that are outside should stay outside, and things inside can stay inside.
• 3:36
  Heather Brigstock: So I remember one time we had a vendor that was upstairs and she had candles, and it was a beautiful room, beautiful space.
• 3:43
  Heather Brigstock: And we were up here one day and there was a squirrel in the room with her candles.
• 3:48
  Heather Brigstock: And we're like, where did the squirrel come from?
• 3:50
  Heather Brigstock: Well, in the closet, there was a hole in the ceiling, and the squirrel had dropped down through the hole in the ceiling and was running freely through the room.
• 3:57
  Heather Brigstock: So we opened the windows and Jeff and my son chased the squirrel and it f jumped out the window and landed in a tree.
• 4:05
  Heather Brigstock: And so one was gone.
• 4:07
  Heather Brigstock: And then we had another time Saturday afternoon, business is open.
• 4:12
  Heather Brigstock: This squirrel saunters down the staircase and through the parlor, just like he owns the building.
• 4:18
  Heather Brigstock: Like it's his house.
• 4:20
  Heather Brigstock: We have customers all over the place, and Jeff chases it around and we finally get it outside.
• 4:24
  Heather Brigstock: But the problem was when we tried to get rid of the squirrels, it was just so hard.
• 4:31
  Heather Brigstock: And here in Tennessee, I guess animal lovers beware.
• 4:34
  Heather Brigstock: When you've got squirrels in your house for a while, it's fun and cute, but pretty soon you just have to get the squirrels out.
• 4:38
  Heather Brigstock: It's old wiring and it's not okay.
• 4:40
  Heather Brigstock: So you don't want to just like lead them away because they'll come back.
• 4:44
  Heather Brigstock: We had to get rid of them.
• 4:45
  Heather Brigstock: And so it was so hard.
• 4:47
  Heather Brigstock: Well, one squirrel, and I don't know what had happened, had died in the ceiling downstairs above the porch room.
• 4:53
  Heather Brigstock: And it had been a while because we started to smell it and it stunk so bad.
• 4:59
  Heather Brigstock: I know it sounds like such a silly problem, but we didn't know where it was.
• 5:03
  Heather Brigstock: The house appeared all sealed up.
• 5:05
  Heather Brigstock: And when you came in, and the first thing you smelled was the stink, it was overwhelming.
• 5:10
  Heather Brigstock: It's not that the stink was the worst thing ever, but we were going through a really challenging time in the business.
• 5:15
  Heather Brigstock: We had a lot of vendors that were changing.
• 5:17
  Heather Brigstock: That time we were not running the restaurant ourselves, but we were partnering with third parties, and we'd been through two miserable business partners that were just completely unpleasant.
• 5:25
  Heather Brigstock: And so it was a challenge to be able to not lose the ground that we had gained, still retain our integrity, try to have a great product and maintain costs.
• 5:35
  Heather Brigstock: And it was really heavy.
• 5:37
  Heather Brigstock: And then every day when you walked in and the building stunk so bad, it would make you crazy.
• 5:41
  Heather Brigstock: And I remember we used to close for a spring break and go down to Naples, his family's down there, and we shouldn't have, because it wasn't a good time to close, but we ended up doing it and we went down to Naples and we were so discouraged down there.
• 5:55
  Heather Brigstock: And he was down and I was down.
• 5:58
  Heather Brigstock: And it's one thing when you know the Lord's called you to do something, sometimes that's enough, but sometimes you need a little bit of wind in your sails too.
• 6:06
  Heather Brigstock: And when we came back up here, we just we were broke.
• 6:10
  Heather Brigstock: I remember walking in that night, and the building just reeked, and it felt like the bills were so high and the profits were so low, and there just didn't seem to be a lot of reason to go forward.
• 6:24
  Heather Brigstock: And I can still remember that night.
• 6:25
  Heather Brigstock: Jeff and I were the only ones in the building, and it was dark.
• 6:28
  Heather Brigstock: And we had pushed all the furniture from the front porch into the parlor, and it was a mess and it smelled, and we shut the front porch doors, which you never we never shut any of the doors here, but we shut the front porch doors just to see if we could stop the stink.
• 6:41
  Heather Brigstock: And we sat there on the on the floor and we we prayed.
• 6:44
  Heather Brigstock: And I can still see us praying together out loud and asking for God to do a miracle.
• 6:52
  Heather Brigstock: And I'm so thankful to be married to a man that when his back is up against the wall, he turns to the Lord.
• 6:59
  Heather Brigstock: So I remember being down there and we were praying on our knees, calling out to the God who knows our name and who we believe called us into this business.
• 7:06
  Heather Brigstock: And we got up that night.
• 7:07
  Heather Brigstock: It's not like the stink went away or anything, but the next morning we came and he tore down the ceiling in the front porch with the boys.
• 7:14
  Heather Brigstock: And Sam and I stained a new one, and it took a couple days.
• 7:18
  Heather Brigstock: We had to stay closed for another week, which hurt our revenue.
• 7:20
  Heather Brigstock: But we repaired the front porch, found two dead squirrels up there that was sick.
• 7:24
  Heather Brigstock: I don't know, Tiffany, like the Lord just turned a corner for us in our mind.
• 7:29
  Heather Brigstock: Things changed after that.
• 7:30
  Heather Brigstock: And it wasn't like they were always better, but I look back at that time as a turning point.
• 7:35
  Heather Brigstock: We were able to, after that, we took over the restaurant ourselves and started the climb to being restaurant owners ourselves.
• 7:43
  Heather Brigstock: Our vendor situation cleaned up exponentially.
• 7:46
  Heather Brigstock: Our customer base started to climb.
• 7:49
  Heather Brigstock: The front porch room was prettier.
• 7:51
  Heather Brigstock: We were finally able to seal up the building and get rid of the squirrels completely.
• 7:56
  Heather Brigstock: And I don't know what it is, but the Lord did a miracle for us.
• 7:59
  Heather Brigstock: He really did.
• 7:59
  Heather Brigstock: He prepared the way.
• 8:01
  Heather Brigstock: And it reminds me of David, and I think about this a lot.
• 8:04
  Heather Brigstock: I talk about this with my kids.
• 8:05
  Heather Brigstock: David was running from Saul, and he was there was someone after him.
• 8:08
  Heather Brigstock: I mean, he Saul was trying to take his life, and he was at the end of himself, and he had gone to the Philistine king and was fighting for the Philistines against the people of Israel, and finally hit rock bottom when he came from a battle one day.
• 8:24
  Heather Brigstock: And his wife and his children and all the other people, they'd been taken away captive, their treasures had been taken, their village had been ransacked.
• 8:35
  Heather Brigstock: And the Bible says that David's men talked about stoning him.
• 8:40
  Heather Brigstock: And I can only imagine he was depleted and empty.
• 8:44
  Heather Brigstock: And the Bible says this, it said, but David encouraged himself in the Lord.
• 8:49
  Heather Brigstock: And I can't tell you how many times we've gone back to that.
• 8:52
  Heather Brigstock: When resources fail, sometimes when people fail, when your vision fails, you go back to the one thing that never fails, and that's the Lord.
• 9:04
  Heather Brigstock: He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
• 9:08
  Heather Brigstock: You do that and you go back to your Bible and you read those Psalms like they're comfortable tennis shoes, and you let the word of God wash over you and clean your brain.
• 9:17
  Heather Brigstock: Even if it doesn't stick in your brain, it's like cleaning a basket.
• 9:20
  Heather Brigstock: It just cleans your brain and your brain will be better and more pure because of it.
• 9:24
  Heather Brigstock: You pray to the God who knows your name and who promises to walk with you through the good times and the bad.
• 9:30
  Heather Brigstock: We're not promised fair.
• 9:32
  Heather Brigstock: We're not promised easy.
• 9:34
  Heather Brigstock: You're not even promised to make it out like happy and okay.
• 9:37
  Heather Brigstock: There are people being martyred around the world, but you are promised that the God who knows your name will walk with you.
• 9:43
  Heather Brigstock: And as a Christian, we're promised heaven.
• 9:45
  Heather Brigstock: So we we encourage ourselves in the Lord.
• 9:47
  Heather Brigstock: That was not the last time that we've been down.
• 9:49
  Heather Brigstock: It's not the last time that we've been on our knees before the Lord in this building, but it's one of the ones that really resonates with me, mostly because of the stink.
• 9:56
  Tiffany Windsor: This is what I love about doing this podcast with you, Heather.
• 10:00
  Tiffany Windsor: I just came in and I said, What do you think about talking about discouragement today?
• 10:06
  Tiffany Windsor: And you have the most wonderful stories that are so alive here in Southwater Manor.
• 10:12
  Tiffany Windsor: And the fact that I've heard part of this story before, and the fact that you went back to that today as I'm sitting here.
• 10:21
  Tiffany Windsor: We're recording in the Tower Lounge, and I'm looking at the walls, which are made with bricks that were made on the property in the 1860s.
• 10:33
  Tiffany Windsor: The walls are three bricks thick, and I see plaster on here that over the years has lovingly started to fall off.
• 10:43
  Tiffany Windsor: And I was just looking past you as you were talking, and I thought, what life and what stories these walls hold.
• 10:51
  Tiffany Windsor: I had no idea that that would be the story that would come up today regarding discouragement, but it definitely paints a picture.
• 11:00
  Heather Brigstock: It's immersive.
• 11:01
  Heather Brigstock: You can see it and smell it and all the things at once.
• 11:04
  Heather Brigstock: It was powerful.
• 11:05
  Heather Brigstock: Discouragement does, it coats us, we carry it, it can make us or break us.
• 11:10
  Heather Brigstock: Just like you said from your quote this morning, we can let it dominate us, and a lot of people do, and a lot of people will.
• 11:18
  Heather Brigstock: If we succumb to discouragement, it will dominate us.
• 11:22
  Heather Brigstock: This is not in the Bible, but I do think as apropos, when we are discouraged, there's a lot of times different reasons for it.
• 11:30
  Heather Brigstock: I think it's important to look at the root and then remind ourselves that we don't want to throw poor little old me parties.
• 11:37
  Heather Brigstock: We call them plom parties.
• 11:38
  Heather Brigstock: And my dad says it's very hard to get people to come and they seldom bring gifts.
• 11:42
  Heather Brigstock: So he will allow me to have a plomb party, but he'll always say put a time limit on it.
• 11:47
  Heather Brigstock: So if you are discouraged and down, it is mind over matter a lot of times.
• 11:52
  Heather Brigstock: And just like we've talked about with other things, that's a muscle that you learn to flex.
• 11:56
  Heather Brigstock: So we don't allow ourselves to wallow.
• 11:59
  Heather Brigstock: Obviously, sadness is real, grief is real, the struggles are real.
• 12:03
  Heather Brigstock: We're not, we're not discounting the effect of negative emotions, but we're also saying that God is greater than our negative emotions.
• 12:09
  Heather Brigstock: And so we allow ourselves to walk through it, don't discount it, walk through the grief, walk through the sadness, but make sure that you come out on the other side.
• 12:17
  Tiffany Windsor: That is such great, great advice.
• 12:20
  Tiffany Windsor: Before we leave, let's gather together for our sister circle prayer.
• 12:25
  Tiffany Windsor: We'd love to pray with you.
• 12:26
  Tiffany Windsor: Heavenly Father, today I lift up my circle sisters who may be feeling discouraged.
• 12:32
  Tiffany Windsor: Some are tired from waiting, some are carrying burdens no one else can see.
• 12:38
  Tiffany Windsor: Some are wondering if their prayers are making a difference or if their work even matters.
• 12:44
  Tiffany Windsor: Lord, remind them that you have not forgotten them.
• 12:48
  Tiffany Windsor: When they feel weak, be their strength.
• 12:50
  Tiffany Windsor: When they feel uncertain, be their peace.
• 12:53
  Tiffany Windsor: When they feel like giving up, gently remind them that you are still writing their story, even in chapters that don't yet make sense.
• 13:02
  Tiffany Windsor: Help them keep trusting you one faithful step at a time.
• 13:06
  Tiffany Windsor: Fill their hearts with fresh hope and the quiet confidence that you are always working even when they cannot yet see it.
• 13:14
  Tiffany Windsor: And may they leave today knowing they are deeply loved by you.
• 13:18
  Tiffany Windsor: In the precious name of Jesus, amen.
• 13:21
  Tiffany Windsor: And as we say goodbye, I want to leave you with this thought.
• 13:25
  Tiffany Windsor: Discouragement may visit us from time to time, but it doesn't get to write the ending of our story.
• 13:31
  Tiffany Windsor: God does.
• 13:32
  Tiffany Windsor: If today's conversation encouraged your heart, I'd love to invite you to join our growing community over on In His Circle on Substack.
• 13:41
  Tiffany Windsor: That's in HisCircle.substack.com.
• 13:44
  Tiffany Windsor: That's where you'll find weekly articles, seedlings, devotionals, podcast episodes, and a wonderful community of women encouraging one another as we walk with Jesus.
• 13:55
  Tiffany Windsor: And if you know someone who could use a little encouragement today, would you share this episode with them?
• 14:01
  Tiffany Windsor: You never know how God might use one conversation to remind someone that they're not walking alone.
• 14:07
  Tiffany Windsor: Until next time, may God's peace guard your heart, may his word strengthen your spirit, and may you always remember you have a place here in his circle.
• 14:17
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm Tiffany Windsor,
• 14:18
  Heather Brigstock: and I'm Heather Brickstock.
• 14:20
  Tiffany Windsor: We'll see you next time.