EP 26 Transitions in Life as a Woman

And we were kind of conversing about really our kids are kind of in the same ballpark of our age bracket and but even with transitioning with the kids kind of sort of in and out of our homes, that transition and then there's transition with work. And then we've talked about transition with our own family, with our parents as well as us parenting.

It's, it's so wide base, but yet in the midst of all of those things, I have to say it's really been a challenge and we really need each other to be an encouragement. So I don't know who wants to start first because like Chris we talked about to you for like had a lot of like all kinds of transitions. It's , you know, they say that one transition like the move or a sick parent or something like that, that that's a lot. But when you pile them on top , there's a lot of stresses in your life.

And um , my husband and I decided to build a home and I'm grateful to say we're on this side of it. We moved in a few weeks ago and we're very grateful for it. And it wasn't a horror story that we've heard, so that's good. But in the midst of that, my father got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and um, when his mom lived to 97 and he's 80 it , Florida. So it took us back. It was one of those, I looked at him and said, you owe me 15 more years, buddy. Come on.

So transitioning with a parent that is going through a life threatening illness and yet I'm a thousand miles away as well and I'm unable to help. I'm a fixer. I'm the server. I want to be there to help my mom. He was caregiving and it's been a real challenge and I'm grateful for supportive husband who's , he sends me out there when we're able to in those kinds of things. But it's hard.

It's very difficult to just say, I'm going to be praying for you because when you tend to be a mama and a fixer, and what can I do to help you? And you're not able to do that from a thousand miles away. You really have to get deep in your prayer life. You have to find those scriptures that you're standing on the word for. For him, for my mom, for us as a family, and um, it's a journey. I've never walked before.

Uh , my husband has lost both of his parents in the past five years, so we've walked through that journey, but it's , um, it's different when it's you, I'm just going to be honest. I left my mom, mom and dad in law. They were wonderful people that I had no idea. Until you walk that journey, you don't know. You don't know with the, Oh, what a Willie is, my sister. And um , and so we've transitioned with that.

And , um , when the , you know, we've learned even in talking together is we both have a different frame of reference even in our transition with it and losing our stuff this year. And I think the problem had been is it caught us totally off guard. Um, we live a few thousand miles away and I even live a few more thousand miles away on the other other coast. And , um , [inaudible] I had no idea that there was a health issue going on.

And by the time we got the message and, and had made arrangements a couple of weeks later to go check and see, it was only a couple of days after that visit that , um, he went home to be with the Lord and it was that transition. I think we're, we're still in it, you know , um , because I don't think we were really, there wasn't, we didn't have time to think it through and to mentally prepare spiritually even prepare.

Sure. Um, and so that transition kind of in the middle of it, I , yeah , I've had a lot of transitions it seems like lately. Um, I don't by choice, a lot of those have been handed to me. Um, and it's kind of like raising a son and a husband that are baseball players. Um , I've learned that they're curve balls in life and what , what I have learned from my son who was a pitcher, that the way to hit a curve ball out of the park, it's just sit back and wait.

And I think that's been what I have understood about transitions and those seasons of life. They're waiting periods and I'm not a big fan of sitting in that waiting around. Um , but I also know that when I'm sitting there, it's not a passive time. I , I've , I know that that is transitioned to something else. So I, I'm, I really find that that's where I put my efforts, my, my time with the Lord and seek him prayerfully as to what he's training me for, for the next transition.

So it's, you know, you kind of take them as they come and you figure out at that point, you know , um, what's he trying to teach me? What are, what can I glean? What can I learn from this? Becomes stronger and persevere and may it strengthen my character to share with others, you know, so has have transitioned . Sometimes they're like, again, it's not planned , but it was your family was affected by your condition.

Our business was leasing a space that we're running our business out of and [inaudible] into

I was reminded of it again when you talked about that waiting season. Um, and the relationship to that rating was as we wait on the Lord, we need to look at what does a waiter do when we go into a restaurant, a waiter comes over to serve, they are serving us. And that's what we need to look at our seasons of waiting on the Lord. We need to be serving him.

So when we're in the midst and we're in the journey of it, if we can refocus and instead of looking at our situation and feeling lost and hopeless and everything's undecided now , if we can just go back to, okay, board , I'm going to serve you in this season because I've already, as you said, given it to you. And you know, that's such a great analogy with the curve ball because that's really what we are.

We get, they get thrown at us and then we have to readjust and say, okay, wow , um, you know, we , we go to the Lord, we pray through, we stand on the scripture. But in that season of waiting sometimes is the hardest one because it's uncertain. And if we can use that time to be a service and serving the father's serving the Lord the kingdom. That's really what the life here on this about.

I realize the mantle that is passed generationally is coming my way. Whether I want to pick up that mantle a prayer or not, I'm , I know that we've all have aunts or mothers that prayed for us and you, you definitely can go there about your mom with that. But I'm for the first time realizing my parents as they are aging. Um, they will come a day when my mom won't be on this earth to pray for me. Okay .

And that is a very difficult place right now, my life, because I rely on my mom's prayers and I'm grateful for my mom's prayers. And I know that I am one of the few women in the world that are blessed to have that cause a lot of women is we minister to women. We realize that's one of the things we love about I refresh is we get to pray for those, whether they have someone or not to pray for them. But so many of them to go, no one prays for me.

And I'm facing a day when my mom and dad won't be on this earth and it's , it then becomes my responsibility and my husband's and he's a praying man. I'm blessed with that, but, but that's a huge transition as well. So you ladies had a beautiful praying mom, godly woman. You've transitioned that already. So what did that mantle look like to you and , and how did you adjust? He'd go , well, I would have to say , um, it rocked my world a lot. Um, I, I did not once again prepared to say goodbye.

I did not know that. Um, that she was going home to be with the Lord when she did. And I look back at it now cause it's been a decade. Um, it doesn't seems like yesterday. And yet , um, what I learned about my mom who was a prayer warrior and who was my spiritual mentor is that , um, I too now have become one. And I don't mean that in a haughty way at all, but it is, I have found that I , I, I used to just pick up the phone and call my mom.

Yeah. And instead of that, now I pick up the phone and I talked to my Lord. I talked to the father continually throughout the day. And it has, it has deepened my walk with the Lord in a place that I , I never knew. And I've, I've grown up knowing the Lord. We were very blessed with a godly heritage. Um, and yet at the same time, my mom wasn't a spiritual crutch to me, but in a sense it is, it is told me to go out and walk on the water.

And that's where I've taken my faith and I stepped out in that and I have learned and gleaned and I just can't learn enough. I have found that prayer is, is the catalyst of everything in my life that it, my , my communion with my father is what carries me through whatever transition I'm going through. Yeah . You know, so , um, the mantel , picking it up and running with it , um, seems a lot bigger , um , assignment than I think I'm, I'm qualified or ready to do. Right .

But in each of our own little corners of the world is , my mom used to say that is your place to minister whether was on the playground when my kids were younger, whether it was in a board room when I was, you know, doing negotiations or now when I'm in a different season of my life, that is where I'm minister and I can share the goodness of the Lord. So the transitions, we can't avoid them. Right. They are going to come our way anyway.

But I do think when we are walking with him closely in knit, that's what will allow us to just trust his timing in all things. It's good. He knows what's best. We know that transition. When Wendy and I experienced it, we've experienced it a little bit different just because of our frame of reference and where we went through. Cause I, we both were always relying on our, our mother to be, you know, what's God telling you?

And she would always put it back at us and she's trying to teach us nowadays how to hear his voice and walk in it.

But when you're thrust into a place where you no longer have that almost, we call it the crutch a little bit if forces you into the places and you know , and I think even Ravi went through a transition to have this spiritual mentor, the one that you, you walked alongside with , um , you now you take on those mantles and that transition, it's, you know, really when you look at it, it's painful and yet the goodness of God to help us in that place where then we have to be put into a place where we

have to step into it. You know, God helps us in that if we can rely on ourselves. Right, right, right. I mean, cause I think that's, you had a similar experience in transition.

Um, because she was always so quick to help that we did go through the same similar transition where she would start saying to me, you know, the Lord wants you to hear him. He's not going to always tell me he wants you to learn to listen. Um, and that was a season that I did not want to do. I did not take it willingly. Um, I resisted and said, no, it's easier just to call you.

Um, everyone was a little caught off guard and so I just stepped in and said, okay, first of all, we don't take the scripture out of context. And second of all, the Bible does not say this. This is your interpretation. What the Bible does say is this. And I really, for the first time felt that I had taken on that mantle. Then also that responsibility to her to help her great-granddaughter be well informed and to know the word of God as true.

Um, and so I would say, you know, just recently it be probably harder than it's hit me up until now, right

And so that would be like a mantel being put upon her, like a rope, a clown, something like that. It's a position. So when we were referring to a mantle , it's a position of the person of prayer and that household. And then to take Esther one step further, she then had a job to carry out to go before the King and saved the Hebrew nation. So , um, I obviously I don't think either mantles are that huge. I pray they're not that .

But God does have different jobs, different situations through the transitions of life, whether it's I'm praying for your family or defending the faith with your family or out in the community. We all have a role to play and that . So I just wanted to make sure that our listeners understood that term because I didn't want to be too , um , using the term we weren't familiar with. So, you know , I think in general we talk about any type of transition.

You know, a lot of times it's almost who walk in maybe a anxiety of the unknown and where it's gonna take us. Cause it's new territory where we have to go through and it's usually painful, you know , because whether it's transitioning of like the empty nesters or whatever it is, even if your children are young and they are going to school for that first time or they go to high school, they graduate and go to college.

All of those different challenges that we will walk through, the emotions that we all walked through, if it wasn't that God didn't give us his and as sisters to really hear is , that's what I've found is that Wendy and I where we, we lost our prayer warrior and that was my last words with her. I said, you cannot die. You must be declare the works of the Lord and us pray for my family. It was very selfish. Yes . And so , uh, I'm like, you can't because you are my covering.

And I realize when that was gone that that meant I did have to step into a place and I ponder that the week after. And that's actually what burst I were fresh was now I have a responsibility is who I went to for prayer. Right. And she would be sensitive to know how to pray, but I didn't realize when I really started reflecting on it. There's times when Christie , we've been praying together for years since my, our kids were really young.

We, our kids are , our youngest ones are the same age and there'd be times that she would feel prompting. I'm like, Oh no. If she has the prompting it is , please don't tell them that that transition would be like usually good one was usually preemptive of something that pleasant.

But when I realized to actually there are more people around us, if we will engage in realize that there are other praying people and if you haven't discovered that, that there are other people or we need to have to activate it and one another. And I think if anything, what it did, it activated a new part of my life that was dormant or non-existent, that it was probably there, but it needed to be exercised .

They had just like we do physical exercise, we had to work a muscle and it was not pleasant, you know? However, we liked results. And I think when we see each one of us, when we're going through a transition, whether it's with kids and work , uh , our families and loss or anticipation of something change in our life, or sometimes we don't have it, that we just need for the God, the father to really be present. And that's why I think all of us can say is our time in the word all the time.

Yes. Faithfully. Where it says, we're not necessarily called intercessors, it just says pray without ceasing. We all have that responsibility. It prepares us. So no matter what happens, right, we know that one, we have a great group that we can literally text each other or communicate instantly and we knew they will rise into prayer for us. But then we know our father truly hears those prayers, our own personal prayers.

But then it's like we have this little army we're going out and helps and you know, that's where we can, it can feel for each other and, and whether it's , uh , sending out text message or something to encourage each other. It's been a wonderful help in our transition . Second , make sure, well, let me, I also encourage our listeners too because , um, I live a few thousand miles away from this wonderful group and the home base of I refresh.

Um, but the Lord knew that and had been in the transition of, of our mothers , um, ongoing. He knew my heart's desires and he brought into my life. I'm an amazing prayer warrior, a woman who was become somewhat of a spiritual mother and mentor to me. And she, I call her my best friend. Um, she's in her eighties. Um, but she is someone that I had met and seen at church 20 plus years ago. And I was like, I wanna meet that woman. Oh, what a pillar of, of faith.

And , and she knew how to pray and tap in. And I remember telling my mom about this person. And it wasn't until about four years ago that things were just lined up that the Lord was like, I'm going to bring Mary Jane into your life. And this dear woman has become my , um, my spiritual mama , um , and has as encouraged and helped teach me how to pray.

And so the Lord knows that sometimes where there's a void or what have you, so that if you don't have, if you're not local and there's not a, I refresh prayer team close by , um, and you need someone tangibly and physically there, he knows that I would say just give those hearts cries to the Lord. But as we are also aware here at I refresh, you can contact us through the website and let us know how we can pray , pray for you or whether it's through social media aspect.

We're constantly, Damion is what it's called, right? Okay . Um, let us know what your requests are so that we can come together and um, stand in the gap for you and help pray those things to the father. So the Lord knows our hearts and he always in his perfect timing brings about, well, what we need. It's right. It's good. Cheryl, you said earlier , um , about the not knowing and so I spoke about our transition into the new house.

Well, it wasn't as easy as flawless as I've made it to seem earlier because we were supposed to sign on a Monday to sell our home and it ended up not being until late on a Friday, so we stayed in hotel every day waiting to hear, waiting to hear, are we signing today? Are we signing today? I can remember saying to my sister and my mom, I just knew what was going on. I can deal with it. It's the not knowing and so many times during transition. That's really the hardest part there.

Obviously with the loss of a loved one, those kinds of things. That's doesn't compare, but when we're going through something we don't know the end result, we don't know how it's truly going to be, whether it's in a marriage or whether it's with children. We were talking about our children earlier and transitions with those, so we all are in different stages. I have one in college. I have one out of college that's living at home and I don't know where they're going to go next.

I have daughter who's interested in moving to California after college. I have a son who hasn't quite figured it out yet, doesn't know. He knows he needs more education, but, and I that it's that if I knew I could tell him right, but he doesn't know. And , and so I have to continually give it to the Lord and say, real reveal yourself to him or please allow the destiny that you have set him upon this earth to fulfill, to be fulfilled. Don't let him miss this.

And I realized that a lot of our transitions aren't just our personal transitions, but it's our husbands transitioning and jobs, whether they change jobs or whether they retire, we're not at that state yet. But there , you know, all different places. I know in America today, a lot of people are transitioning because they don't have a job. So maybe you're going through that and you're unsure. So it is , it may sound flip it to you to say, give it to the Lord because you can't fix it.

But really that's the only way to get through these with peace. His grace is sufficient. His mercies are new every morning and great as his faithfulness. I know that in my life when we transitioned from Georgia, I was pregnant. I've met pregnant with our first child. We had no job, no insurance. So we're moving from Georgia to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Huge transition. And someone gave me the scripture. I once was old, once was young, but now I'm open.

I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor their seed begging bread. I lived with that scripture for years as I watched and God transitioned us into Tulsa and into the ministry and what we were supposed to do that that was a very difficult time and we had to trust in. So I'm saying God is faithful. God is faithful and his trust, I mean everything. I think we , we can hear , uh, with all of us. Cause we had to trust God and they had to have faith and it may take awhile for everything.

Even the unexpected things, there is a timing and it's always right on time for him, right. There's been things I've looked at recently. I'm like, why is there such a delay? And then all sudden when I'm having the wait process, then I'm like, Oh, I get it. I'm so glad I did not or something to happen because if we trust God and his timing, it really in our , the transition of what I've been walking through is doing a good work. Right. And we can't stop.

We just have to continue to trust him daily. Yeah . It's like if you pulled us to fly out of the oven and it's not time to pull it out, it would not be anything remotely close to what we want. So I trust his timing and all things. I just have to remind myself of that sometimes because , um, that's not probably one of my virtues.

Um, patients are waiting, but I have learned now though, I think I went through , um, a transition , um, and I, I think we're on a health journey and a few years back I had a mammogram that didn't quite go like I thought it would. And so it required another , um , visit and sitting in that waiting row and watching women come and go and come and go. And I'm still there. I go on. Okay. And so the only thing I knew to do, I had prayed.

I have prayed a few times , um , that morning on the way and while I was sitting there and I put praise and worship and , and continually fills good. Um, my thoughts with that.

And then when they finally called my name to go in for the first procedure and then it ended up being a second one, I will never forget that moment while I waited then for the doctor to come in and read the results, I sensed the presence of the Holy spirit and that Chase's was right there and everyone with me that I was not alone. So during all of the waiting period, he is with us there every step of the way. He's never, he never leads us and he never forsake us .

I mean, I also know from a year ago you're aware of , um , we transitioned from a job change that we had no idea what's coming 25 years in the same place and same job. And I did that. So as long as I had known my husband and that place and w our family did not realize when he was going to lose a job what w w I led .

And I would have to say now looking back at that, since we have now gone through that transition, is that his piece , which passes all my understanding, it, it was so ever-present and ruled and reigned through that period. When I looked back, there was no stress. There was no strain in our home, there was no anxiety. It was, it was the, it was an odd thing. But it wasn't an odd thing. It was a God thing. Right ? Because I totally know that he carried us through that.

And when it was time to open the next door, then the new job came. So, you know, with hindsight, you look back at and going , okay, I get it. But you know what, that piece carried us through. And that was what was so amazingly such a gift from the Lord. And have you ever been in a situation where someone goes, I don't know what I would do if I was in your shoes and you're like, I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah .

Isn't it wonderful how God gives us grace for the situations that we're walking through our true transitions? Because I can look at that and go, Oh my goodness, I don't know what I would do if my husband lost his job after 25 years. Thankfully I don't have, but I'm amazed. You're saying there was grace, there was peace. He's faithful. And I love how, whatever it is we'll walk you through. There is that grace and peace and we can count on that and he will see us through. That's good. Absolutely.

You know, if you are been going through a situation in your life, it's a transition and we have given you a whole gamut, you know, from, from family or work a children, whatever it is. The , the whole thing about that is , uh , God's faithfulness. And he never will leave us her for psychosis . Uh , he gives us all that we have and if we ask him, he says, if we lack, we ask. And he gives. That's simple. It truly is that simple.

And that's all he's asking for us is to look to him and trust him in the midst of we'd love to hear from you if there's something you've been going through, like Wendy had said is , um, you know, reach out to us, we'd love to pray with you. That is our joy. We delight in the opportunity to pray. It's an honor for us, you know, and even as rocket talked about serving, you know, and that waiting that you might be going through, this is a time for you to serve.

And if you aren't that I hope that will resonate with somebody you is God I need to serve. Where is that? Because then it gets our focus on not just our situation, right ? But on serving while the Lord's taking care of our own personal things. So we'd like to hear from you whether it's prayer requests, praise report, and what has God been doing and cause he's intentional. He's looking after us.

And until that time, we hope that as you hear this, share it with somebody else and maybe need a word of encouragement that