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Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
293. When God Repositions You, Part 1
What happens when life's unexpected trials leave us feeling drained and unmotivated? Join us as author LaTan Roland Murphy shares her insights from her latest book, "His Strength, Her Joy: Finding God-Powered Fulfillment." Discover how LaTan draws from personal experiences and scripture, illustrating the profound impact of seeking Divine strength when our own energy is depleted. Through heartfelt dialogue, LaTan nudges Janell to share an emotionally vulnerable story in hopes of imaging how God repositions us for greater impact and fulfillment.
Order LaTan's newest book: His Strength Her Joy
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Today's episode is brought to you in full by Heart Lift International, a 501c3 dedicated to making home and family the safest, most secure place on earth. Learn how you can donate and support the podcast at heartliftcentralcom. Now settle in for today's remarkable conversation with Janelle. Now settle in for today's remarkable conversation with Janelle, wherever you find yourself today, may these words help you become stronger in every way.
Speaker 2:A reading from His Strength, her Joy, finding God-Powered Fulfillment. Truth is, life is filled with a gamut of unexpected happenings, big and small. We can never be prepared for certain interruptions. Of course we face normal life distractions that slow our pace Unwashed dishes and laundry to be done, a flat tire before school, carpool or someone's boo-boo meeting attending. Someone needs our something more and we feel as though joy left town taking the last little bit of strength we had left. With a daily schedule thrown off, we are often left wondering will my life ever go as planned? Will I ever be able to complete my dreams with all these unexpected things In a split nanosecond?
Speaker 2:Life, as we've known it, can feel oddly distracting. With screeching sirens of change surrounding us and sounding alarms within us, we find ourselves shocked to find our plans for sunny days have turned to mostly cloudy, with a little chance of sunshine. A husband announces he no longer wants to be married. A college-age child informs he or she no longer believes in the Christian faith in which you raised them and or is struggling with his or her sexual orientation. A lifetime career ends abruptly. Anxiety rises with bills increasing and money diminishing. A best friend suddenly dies, your health diagnosis looks grim or that of a loved one. Your aging parents need increasing amounts of your time and attention. You're left to wonder how to pursue your personal plans and dreams and also be there for and deal with loves in your immediate household Husband, children, grandchildren, dogs, cats, pet parakeet even the low-maintenance goldfish that presses his face toward the distance between you and sustenance Everyone wants in your space.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to today's Heart Lift with Janelle. I am, janelle, your heart lifting guide for this heart lifter's journey. Today we have the remarkable LaTan Rowland-Murphy, one dear friend to my soul and to this podcast. Oh, we're finally airing this show. It has taken me a while. Latan, thank you for your grace. Her new book, his Strength, her Joy, finding God-Powered Fulfillment, is the perfect follow-up episode to my conversation with Alyssa Strauss. When you Care, it can seem like the demands of our lives are way bigger than the reserve we have for them. But LaTan reminds us of Colossians 1.17 in her new book. In him that would be God, our Heavenly Father. All things hold together In God, in Jesus, in the power of the Trinity. All things hold together. There's that word all again. So LaTan ushers us in, she invites us in this conversation to think about how God holds every minute detail of our life together as we care for everyone in our life. Let's welcome LaTan to the show. Oh heartlifters, guess who is back? Guess who's back, my favorite, latan Murphy. Hello, hi, latan.
Speaker 3:Oh, I love you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love you more. I'm going to try to bring down my volume and my. I just get so high up there in the octaves when I'm talking to you because you make me smile.
Speaker 3:We need each other, don't we?
Speaker 2:Well, I needed you from the moment I saw you from afar. So it's kind of been that relationship, as I have talked about in our earlier conversations. Seeing you from afar is like that's a woman I need talked about in our earlier conversations. Seeing you from afar is like that's a woman I need to know. I need to know her.
Speaker 3:well, it's been a while since we've been forever. And it's always so easy. Yeah, you know, it's just wonderful. Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 2:You're so welcome. Well, your new book we've already been talking off. I said I should have pressed record a long while ago because this book His Strength, her Joy we could just sit on that and then Finding God-Powered Fulfillment. I have taken apart every part of the title and the subtitle already and just reading through it and preparing because, okay, I want to know where you got his strength, her joy, where did you come up with that? This is your new book out and that in and of itself is enough to just rip apart for the next five hours His strength, her joy.
Speaker 3:I love that any of your listeners who can relate to what I'm about to say. When you get to the end of your own strength, you realize I need something more. And sometimes we just forget and we move in life in our own strength right Until we recognize oh wow, why do I feel so empty, why do I feel so lifeless inside and so unmotivated? I don't know if you've ever felt that way.
Speaker 2:Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 3:This is what I hear, and so I remember standing in the kitchen and I was in the process of praying about what should my next book title be? And I remember praying the simple prayer and saying Lord, I need you right now. I need you in every place. Everything that I cannot be, I need you to be that. And right now I need your strength.
Speaker 3:And all of a sudden, that scripture verse from Nehemiah came up the joy of the Lord is my strength. But the Lord turned it on its axis and he said everything that I am is all that you need, and everything that I am in, all that you are not, is enough to carry you, not just in this moment, but from. I've been carrying you from the time I knitted you together in your mother's womb and I will carry you. He says that in his word in Isaiah, that he'll carry us till the end, to the finish line. So his strength, her joy, came out of me realizing how unfulfilling so many scenarios of my life was and that I needed a God powered fulfillment in my daily and I needed his presence. I needed to.
Speaker 3:It was almost like a wake-up call, janelle that I realized like we take for granted this gift of God's presence with us 24 hours a day. And we forget that he never leaves us, he never forsakes us, and when we can't be enough, he is the enough.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm smiling because I really want to run and go get my journal. It's not right next to me but I'll add it in here, that portion of Isaiah where he says oh, hold on LaTan, I'm going to go get it.
Speaker 3:Hold on it's too good, go get it. We're having coffee and tea, let's do it. Hold on.
Speaker 2:Okay on latan, I'm gonna go get it. Hold on it's too. It's too good, get it. We're having coffee and tea, let's do it. Hold on, okay, let me find it because I I think it's pretty. It's astounding to me that you're in Nashville, I'm here in Suffolk, virginia, and God is speaking the same message to two of his daughters, who I think that's just astounding because this was a middle of the night. I will show in the. There's my journal here. I wrote God has and will always carry me. Wow, a direct word from my loving father.
Speaker 2:I awoke with a harsh esophageal spasm that just wouldn't quit. I was up at 315 until dot, dot, dot, falling asleep on the couch behind me. Until morning I had met with my psychologist. I, because of my mother's nervous state, can ever find ease and peace on a nervous system level. His answer was an immediate yes. He didn't take a breath. Plasticity, he says Plasticity, he's almost 80. He's amazing, it is possible.
Speaker 2:And then then I heard God whisper Isaiah 46 in the night season. So I'm going to read it. Listen, this is that of the voice. Listen, you who count yourselves among Jacob's descendants, all the remnant of Israel? Okay, that's you, that's us. Is this it. That's it. It is you, not I, who have been carried, who have been carried from before you were born. It is you, not I, who have been carried from before you were born, indeed, when you were still in the womb. It just blows my mind, this is blowing my mind. I was taking care of you and when you're old, I will still be there carrying you. Listen to how many times he says carry when your limbs grow tired. Now I've got neuropathy in my feet, so I have all these physical things, my limbs. I can hardly walk on my legs when your limbs grow tired. Your eyes are weak and your hair is silvery gray. Well, we're dying it, but it's silvery gray underneath. At least I am.
Speaker 2:I will carry you as I always have, I will carry you and save you Always, always, big, big word, big word. So, latan, here you are, and that carry means bear your burden. I will bear you, I will bear you, I will put you on me and carry His strength, his strength.
Speaker 3:Do you feel the joy though coming? I feel that as you press into that Release, I feel that is the whole message of this book. History is women like you and I who need god to literally carry us through and around and over, and sometimes under situations that we have no control over.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm going to get so excited.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. I love when God you know I always love. I always say to my husband I feel like when God's in a word for me, that I hear it from three different ways. Maybe there's something to that, I don't know, you guys but maybe it's the Father, son and the Holy Spirit speaking the same message from their hearts. But when you went and you said I need to go get my journal after I said that about that word that God spoke to me. It's so exciting to me because I feel like we are so connected as believers to God's heart and then to one another's. Yes, in conversations like this. Thank you for your show. Thank you for what you do to bring voice to women's hearts.
Speaker 2:Oh, I feel encouraged already, like thank you for saying yes to the conference, and I said yes to a conference that put us together and I, honest to god, think I have come miles and I'm so much further along, yeah, in my mental and spiritual, health and emotional states. But then, once again, here I'm, 315 in the morning, I mean on the floor crying out to God. And there you are in Nashville, and it does say. It does say what I know to be true through the COVID wilderness, he's raising up an army of women who are going to stand shoulder to shoulder. You and I have talked about this parade. We've gone down that. I'll put the link to that powerful conversation that we had and he's doing something, but it's not what I thought. No, I wonder, I want to hear what you think he's doing.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's going to look like anything we've ever participated in before.
Speaker 2:Okay, tell me more.
Speaker 3:I know you're writing about it you should look for the norm I. I think we need to be praying into what appears from the world's perspective as abnormal, because God is not about the earthly norm. He's's not a part of that. He says that he is connected to angel armies. Yeah, what he does is not just his own self, which would be enough, but he has angel armies also working intricately in our lives to direct us, to watch over us, as you said so well. As we both said carry us, because I can't carry it anymore.
Speaker 2:I can't do what I used to do. I can't I physically, emotionally, mentally and you just said that and you write about it so profoundly and I'm going to just read snippets I just want you right now what then? Because you just said it, you were not feeling, I'll just use the word fulfilled.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the things that I thought like. Sometimes, you know and I have young writers you and I work with people that are wanting to be a writer, wanting to be a speaker, but they don't realize that once you arrive there, you are so depleted in your own human strength that if you are not tapped into this supernatural source of strength that you and I are talking about today, then even that place of arrival is unfulfilling, because it's it's all becomes this self-abased kind of works that we lose sight of what our why really was.
Speaker 2:In the beginning.
Speaker 3:And I know it's not just me, because I hear other people who've been like older women like you and I, who are seasoned speakers and writers and teachers of God's word, and they're telling me the same thing. But what I feel like when you said what do you think God wants to say now? He says in his word that there would be a great falling away, and I see that happening, and I see that great falling away meaning that we are losing heart, we are pulling backwards from God as we thought he was, which can be such a powerful thing if God's girls can realize that from a distance, sometimes pulling back and saying, okay, what does God look like now, in my now, what does he look like in my future? And from a distance, we can see the mountains so much better than we can when we've been crying out and saying God, where are you, where are you, where are you?
Speaker 3:And we can't even see forward, because all we see is ourselves.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 3:I'll see his hand in front of me, Right, and there's nothing wrong with those kinds of prayers. I just think God's wanting to reposition his daughters so that we can get a much broader open view, much broader open view. Grasp once and for all how powerful he is, how amazing he is, how mighty he is, what a force to be reckoned with that he is and how he is on the scene of our lives. Not just Him, but the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and angel armies are fighting for us and warring for us to be joyous yeah, To be joyous about the fact that we have all that.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. Joy is the pivot for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're looking for something else, though, to bring us joy.
Speaker 2:We are have been.
Speaker 3:For sure have been, and that's where the unfulfillment comes in. Yeah, so he has to be enough, right?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, yeah, but I just the two things I just wrote down. I'm trying to write and I know you can hear me writing, so I don't care. No, no, but the reposition, yeah, yeah, Like repositioning, Yep, Almost. Oh, it's not almost, it's as strategic as a chess game. I don't play chess, but it would be just as strategic. And that might be an old cliche, but to me it's the truth. And in our botanical garden that I've just joined to help bring some peace and grounding into my life, has a life-size chess set right. And so my husband, when we went, we just just both of us, like he can play a little I don't know how to play at all, but I'm like is this what's in heaven Like?
Speaker 2:is this God's like? Just moving that woman? We're just talking women here moving that woman, women who've known like women. These are women I've known in the ministries, you know. We've been connected for decades, you know, and I hear now I'm hearing you say what I just heard two hours ago another really powerful writer and speaker that we both know say the same thing and I am. It's taking my breath away because I know you personally. I know what you've written. I mean, to this day, our conversation on women in courage is the top podcast episode. So go figure. You know it's like okay, we should have done more with that, you know. But it's like a good should. But it's never too late. It's never have done more with that, you know, but it's like a good should, but it's never too late, it's never.
Speaker 3:What is he? You know he's repositioning, because those things no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just thinking. I got excited when you even repeated what I said about repositioning, because I thought of your story that you were sharing with me, about the stance God put in your heart to take about a situation.
Speaker 2:Will you share that Because it ties in. Okay, heartlifter, I'm gonna take a deep breath here Because I trust LaTan. I am going to share this very uncomfortable story that I've had locked up in the vault of my heart and hopefully it will somehow relate to something maybe going on in your life where you are being required to have a courage you did not know you had, an assertiveness you did not know you had, but because of the work we do here, you were able to face it and yeah, here we go. It's got some expletives in it, so bear with me, okay. Okay, latan, you asked me to share a story and I really I'm sharing it as ethically as I know how. I honestly said to you before we hit record that I didn't know if I'd ever share the story anywhere because of the content. But here we go, because it is a story about his strength, his strength and her joy. So good, and to me, after I tell you the story, the joy was about my granddaughter's joy and the legacy and the lineage of my work and life in my family. So we're at her second birthday in Belgium at a park, a lovely park, and there's a cafe very close to the park that you just walk across and you can get treats and things like that and it's lovely, it's a lovely setup for families.
Speaker 2:And so I had to go to the bathroom like nobody's business, like if I don't get to the bathroom there might be an embarrassing problem. You can just read into that at 64 years old, in a foreign country, drinking and eating foreign foods and water. So I go to the bathroom and my daughter had said my older daughter, because my other daughter was with me too. So there were, it was all of us, and my other daughter is pregnant as well. So I she says, just go through the black door, you go straight and go to the right. You see it? Well, I did that.
Speaker 2:But it was a weird bathroom, like many European bathrooms can be, and you usually have to pay a euro. Whether you have the time to try to put that euro into action, you have to pay here. But I go to the right, which I guess now look like the women's bathroom. But I was in emergency mode so I wasn't paying attention to all the details. But there was a mom with a big stroller and she's changing the baby. So I couldn't go in there. So I just go straight and I thought if this is the men's bathroom, so be it, I go in.
Speaker 1:I lock the door. I feel this for you. I am on it.
Speaker 2:I'm like I look back, as you would do. I don't sit on, I'll never sit on a public toilet. Okay, there you go, and I just look back and I have time to think about it and it's full and it's got poop floating around in it and I'm like, okay, well, probably it'll just flush, because it's just probably wasn't flushed before and I'm not, I don't try to worry about it, so I just do a little. I didn't do a lot like a little, just a little thing of poopoo and tiny, like just enough that I had to go.
Speaker 2:And so, golly day, here I am and I turn around and just kind of go oh, I hope this flushes, and I flush it and it explodes. And all of a sudden I'm hearing this banging on the door at the same time and I'm like, oh, hold on, it's overflowing. And I'm pulling my pants because I didn't want to wear the. This is terrible. It's like this doesn't even happen. This can't be real. When I look back, I went, this didn't really happen to me, but it did, and so I'm getting out.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't happen to me, I'm getting out of it, trying to get my shoes out of it, just trying to get out of the, I'm going to say the word yeah, shit. And so I opened the door and there stands this man, you know, very handsome um, has like 40 ish and maybe younger, and has on, like you know, a utility outfit. So it's probably either the owner or somebody who knew the toilet was backed up and had gone to get clothing to cover his clothing and come to fix it and I go out, oh my God, it's overflowing, it's broken. No kidding, no kidding, it's broken. Why did you go in there? And he's yelling and there's a whole cafe full of people and I'm just dying and I thought he might stop, but he didn't. He persisted. I just said I'm so sorry I didn't do this.
Speaker 3:He's like humiliating you publicly.
Speaker 2:Shaming, humiliating, oppressive, it was oppressive.
Speaker 2:I've been here with the oppression thing, yeah, so I just start like trying to get the heck out of there. But he follows me and he's yelling behind me. Now I got to clean up your shit, I've got to clean up your shit and all little Christian women. I'm sorry, this is just the way it was and he's just yelling it. And there I mean it's Saturday, it's a full, full cafe, and and later, when I thought about no one came to my rescue, no one. And uh, I just finally felt within me uh, I'm going to now, since I've analyzed it a thousand times, it was a strength. It was God said to me turn around and take a bear stance. That's so powerful, Just turn around. I didn't know it, it happened in a millisecond, but I turned around and I just took a stance and I just said not my shit, not my shit.
Speaker 3:Maybe two pebbles. That's really a powerful message right there for your listeners, like just on the heels of what we're talking about, with how I feel God is wanting to reposition His daughters. I think we have been rolling around in it and calling it ours, things that people put on us, right, yep, and all it does is leave us feeling weak and lifeless and joyless and everything that this book is not about. And we can't experience God-powered fulfillment if we are really allowing the daily circumstances of human nature consume us. And this is a thing that's real. This is stuff that happens to people. It's just you and I have to share our stuff, because that's what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 2:It's so true and I really thought I wouldn't share this. I love that you did this because you're standing with me, because you make me strong, you make me pray.
Speaker 3:Many things happen like that that sometimes you're like, lord, is this? Is this the devil causing this? Is this you trying to teach me something? Is it both? Is this the devil causing this? Is this you trying to teach me something? Is it both? But there's a lesson here.
Speaker 2:If I can be, let me interfere, because in that happening I didn't have. There was no. As usual, there's no time to go. Oh, is this God, Is this the devil? It was just take a bear stance, stand against this. And I put my hands up to him because he's flailing, you know. He just didn't take a breath and I just said I'm very sorry. And then I just turned around and I proceeded to go order what I had been given to order from my daughter and son-in-law and the front couple of friends, and stood there and a woman with beautiful, a beautiful woman behind me. I looked around and she just kind of went. She was embarrassed for you, she felt my shame, yet you know. Okay. So, but let me finish just quickly. So I proceed to get my things. I'm just standing there while he's running in and out, like, but I'm not looking, I'm just taking my stance. He didn't come back.
Speaker 2:I feel like I pushed away the darkness and put a shield in front of me and then I went back and my two daughters obviously they know me and so they probably could see that I was gray or that I was like either flushed or and I went she's not going to believe what just happened. I went kind of into my old self like you've got to know what just happened, and my older daughter, whose daughter was the birthday, Elena's birthday she just said, mom, please, not now, Not now, Not now, Not right now, not now, not now, not now, not right now and I got kind of angry, but I didn't. My body, which is we talk a lot about this here when you do your work, your heart work, your emotional work, you have a capacity within you to rise up and emotionally regulate, and that's what this was about. I was able, through God's work in my life, to emotionally regulate and go, let it go.
Speaker 3:Not right now, and that's a perfect example of how we have more strength within us as women to reposition ourselves, to face life and situations and all the dung that we have to push our way through all the dung.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we don't even realize the power that we carry within us. And I loved that story for so many reasons. There's so many layers to that that you could just do multiple shows, I know, but I loved it just for what it means with my heart in writing this book and how it fits with this message of you literally repositioned yourself physically and then it's like our souls catch up to that, like our souls come into alignment when we choose to reposition ourselves, our flesh. And then you repositioned your soul and then your emotions got in line behind those two and then you were able to flow from that beautiful grandma place of legacy that you want to leave for your daughters and for your grandchildren. And I can only imagine when you got back and you told them the story, they understood why you were so flustered then and I told it briefly but we really didn't go deeply and that was the part that was frustrating.
Speaker 2:but to to continue on cause. I think it's his strength. Her joy was that later, after the party and not when the party was closing down, closing down one couple from two different countries, the parents of one of the little two-year-olds and then another mother of the parent, from another country, both in different ways, came up to me and said they just like, who are you Like? You're the calmest woman I've ever like.
Speaker 3:Because they heard that right. They heard that whole scenario and saw that.
Speaker 2:No, nobody. Nobody heard it, Nobody saw it. No, no, no but this was just.
Speaker 3:They recognize something on you. Literally, that is the presence of God.
Speaker 2:His, her, his strength, her joy and my, my daughter, saying mom, not now. I later came to unpack and understand that she was actually a vehicle of God to say we're not carrying this into our next generation. And that's the word that Christ has kept, keeps bringing to me is tell the next generation, tell the next generation. Those are the words I'm getting and I feel like when I got home from and got really home to Virginia and was able to unpack it and really sit with it and God is just, it's that women of God, heart lifters, older matriarchal women in the church, that is what we're being called to, I think. So Take the bear stance and not take anybody else's dung, but put the hands up and say no, I've got to protect the next generation. The legacy and maybe that's the shift I think it even started with young moms, oh yeah, yeah, the legacy and maybe that's the shift, I think it even has to do with young moms.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah for sure. So I don't know that your daughter will ever have opportunity I pray she doesn't to experience that kind of humiliation.
Speaker 2:No I don't think she will.
Speaker 3:But none of us are exempt from a dose of something like that, where we're totally embarrassed, humiliated, stripped down in front of other people, emotionally exposed and left to feel vulnerable with a situation that we are alone in it. Yes, and that's what these women.
Speaker 3:there are 10 women in this book His Strength, her Joy, who no girlfriend could go with them, like, nobody could go with you into that place in the bathroom to experience the circumstances that were not what women like, but you just didn't have choice in that moment.
Speaker 3:And then to have somebody take and use that to put you on display in an embarrassing way in front of everybody. I'm thinking of the first chapter in this book where Sarah was subjected to her own husband's choices and it positioned her literally as part of a harem. When she is bound to Abraham as his wife and he wants her to lie and tell Pharaoh that, tell the king that it's his sister, she's his sister, right. So even that whole humiliation like that nasty situation that Abraham was going through with his fear and his insecurity and all of the things that he was disappointed about his journey to Canaan then to feel, okay, where is, where's the food, where's the supplies? Okay, I got to figure this out. That's kind of how we move. Sometimes it's women is going about life in our own strength and we tend to position our own selves in places like Abraham did that then subject other generations to our fears.
Speaker 2:So, yes, oh, let's hand, keep talking.
Speaker 3:So it kind of ties in so well with what you went through. These are every day Y'all. This is the stuff we don't think about, Like. I'm so glad you shared that, because our walk with God is going to look so different in the days to come. You guys, it's going to look like nothing we've ever experienced before, and this is for every young woman, every young mother, no matter what age you are from you know, 13 up to when Jesus calls you home at 120, healthy and strong, I hope. But this message is for all of us who want to have God-powered fulfillment as the centerpiece of our lives and not just allow ourselves to become unraveled by emotional circumstances that leave a bitter taste in the younger generation's mouths.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, you've got to say that again. You just really do.
Speaker 3:I mean our lives can unravel us completely right, completely leave us undone. And it's the small things. It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 3:Oh no it doesn't have to be anything big, it can be like that bathroom experience. Oh yeah, I'm finding people are on edge more than ever. I couldn't agree more. People cut you off in traffic more than ever. People have no disregard for senior citizens or they'll take their car and just go right in front of an elderly person who's trying to put their shopping cart away at the grocery. And I'm seeing this and watching this and realizing, okay, like something shifted with our culture. Like how, how do you want your sons and daughters to move in this new normal?
Speaker 2:sons and daughters to move in this new normal. I have to ask you because I feel like his strength, her joy, okay, finding God-powered fulfillment, like I said at the beginning, just the title is enough to unpack, because I do feel like it is a prophetic posturing and positioning, and you just said that. To me, the most profound thing, that how we as yes, I do believe this is for young moms too, it's for every mom, every, because we're speaking.
Speaker 2:I believe so much in the power of mothering and maternal. I've done so much research on really the power of that office to be placed in the office of mom or mothering even mothering other children, if you're not a per se mom of your own children.
Speaker 3:Because we all are birth, we all are givers. We are givers as women, so yeah, yeah, everybody.
Speaker 2:If you're not, if you, if we don't develop the capacity to be able what you just said was to be able to image in those kind of situations, whether it's in a grocery store or a foreign country or wherever you are, in your own home, in your own marriage, in your own relationships with your children. But particularly I guess that's what I beat the table over, and you know that is I need to be as emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally healthy as I can be. So in those moments, which are millisecond moments, where we are attacked, oppressed, oh goodness, you have to grab a hold of.
Speaker 3:You have to center yourself in that moment, be so mindful 24, seven of the presence of God that we carry within us and that we are never alone. And you know, what I love is that I see you in my mind there in that, in that pastry shop or wherever you were, and I see you literally. The Lord took over you and he spoke a word over you. He was literally carrying you and saying reposition yourself, girl. Like pull it together and stand up straight. Your crown's going to fall off. Like come on, you got this. And then you go out and you go to the party a little undone, because that's what it is y'all we're like. I mean, look at the Psalms, david was all over the place. He gives me so much hope for me, like one minute, we feel like we're strong and we have it together.
Speaker 3:The next thing to God, like I'm just, and you know like it gives us so much hope. And then here you are, out there wanting somebody to hear you, but God had already heard you. And then in the second chapter, it's the story you know about Hagar. One of my favorites she felt unseen and unloved and so pushed aside.
Speaker 3:And then God sends an angel to remind her who she was, and he doesn't just call her by name, he reminds her of her positioning in life, which was servant of Sarah. He reminds her, like I don't just see who you are and I don't just know your name, just it's not even a word in the vocabulary, spiritually. But you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. But he says I see your positioning in life and it's a treasured one by God. It's enough for me to come and meet you here and speak about it. And that's what those women did for you, these strangers that met you there and reminded you that you're not an unraveled, undone woman, that you are a godly daughter of the most high God of the most high God and they call out in you what you really are, which is calm and loving and nurturing, and all the things that you give to your clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or just even beyond vocation like this is where I feel like I wanted to really get your heart, because I feel like, particularly in the industry that you and I are in, with Christian publishing, writing, speaking, all of those things that are very public, very performance oriented, or whatever is the real God fulfilling power and purpose of our lives, those moments, I think it is.
Speaker 3:I think that we make it about things in our mind. We write narratives, thinking that we need God's strength when the divorce comes. When we do need God's strength, of course, when the child decides he doesn't or she does not want to follow in the ways of the Lord and you raise them to love Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yes, I just read that whole passage to the readers that you write so beautifully. You know, yes. And also you talk about dreams like you know, dreams that you know these plans. I'm going to read it. Sure, we make our plans, set our dreams into motion, but life pulls us sideways or down with its unexpected happenings. It's in times like this we'd be wise to ask ourselves and here.
Speaker 2:You say it how can we posture ourselves to be strong and joy filled in moments that matter? Having 12 more books published in my life do I want that? Yes, would I love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever heart lififter you in your life think is my dream for my life. I guess what this and your book, what I'm reading, is repositioning me in my own home to. I'm going to read it one more time to be strong and joy filled in those real moments that matter in life, not what I think matters.
Speaker 2:I have a. I have a skewed perception and I'm getting super powerfully excited because we live in a world that tells us this is success, and I think for me, that was one of the biggest successes I'll ever have in my life. And it was successful because obviously, god was with me. No-transcript, spend time crying on this floor, whatever, any way I can, so that I can become a whole person, a whole woman who can image in front of now the next generation that I have looking at me what it means to follow Jesus, to be whole and to be someone they would want to emulate. And in that moment, to me, I do believe, and it's just coming to me right now. This is fresh. It's like I'm dang proud of myself. You should be. Ooh, heartlifters. We are going to pause. This was a super hard episode for me, super hard episode for me, and I could not have done it without the divine connection of my dear friend LaTan. She brings things out of me that make me uncomfortable. She urged me to share the story. I can't tell you how long I have resisted telling this story to you, but with LaTan's strength I was able to share it because I really believe that was his strength, his strength, her joy, pivotal moment in not only my life but my legacy.
Speaker 2:Because at some point in our life we have to determine, we have to say no more, no more, no more. Satan, devil, whatever you would like to call the evil one, that which brings evil and hate and devastation into our lives. We have to turn around, face it, take a bare stance, hands on hips, like Wonder Woman that's a power pose and say I'm not going to deal with you, I'm done, done, d-o-n-e. That's when we say I'm done, done, I'm done with listening to the threats of the evil one to destroy me and destroy my legacy. I've worked really hard. My husband and I are still working hard.
Speaker 2:As you can tell from the story, the evil one doesn't let up. He doesn't let up because, you see, the stronger we get and the more that we know it's God's power in our life, his strength, not ours, that enables us to have joy. Well, the evil one really hates that. Even more. Hence in my book Stronger Every Day. Once that came out, I felt weaker every day Because I committed. I wrote the words of that book that I try to live and the evil one just continues to go. Uh-uh. No, yeah, I'm going to get you, I'll get you, I'll make you fall. Well, not going to happen, not on my watch.
Speaker 2:So LaTan and I talked about Isaiah 46, verses 3 and 4, and I'll read from 5 to 7 as well. Make this a meditative moment. Heartlifter, listen to me. God says this is God speaking to you, you, descendants of Jacob, all the remnant of the people of Israel, you whom I have upheld since your birth and have carried you since you were born, even to your old age and gray hairs. I am he. I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you. With whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared? And then he writes in verse 6 and 7,.
Speaker 2:Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales. They hire a goldsmith to make it into a god and they bow down and worship it. They lift it to their shoulders and carry it. They set it up in its place and there it. They lift it to their shoulders and carry it. They set it up in its place and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move, even though someone cries out to it, it cannot answer. It cannot save them from their troubles. Remember this, keep it in mind, take it to heart. You rebels, remember the former things, those of long ago.
Speaker 2:I am God and there is no other. I am God, there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that. I please Wow. You see, god's not a statue made of gold.
Speaker 2:When people say or describe me as religious, I say no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not religious. I have a vital relationship with God. That is real. I say no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not religious. I have a vital relationship with God. That is real. It was made real to me through his son, jesus, who was a prophet, who walked this earth and gave his life for me and once he left this earth he gave me a comforter and I call that comforter spirit. So God says I have carried you, I have upheld you Even to your old age. I will sustain you, I've made you, I will carry you, I will sustain you and I will rescue you. I needed rescuing that day in that cafe. You, I needed rescuing that day in that cafe.
Speaker 2:Excuse my expletives, but I needed you to hear what really happened and not soften, not normal times. So how might you be invited today to turn around, face the evil one, take a bare stance, a power posture, and say a power posture and say not my shit. Sorry, I'm not going to soften the blow. I used to say everyone's business is not my business. But these are hard times and sometimes we really have there's. Like my older daughter will say, mom, sometimes there's just no other word. There's no other word. Then like with them. This is not my shit. And that translated into the season in which I was living as a counselor, coach, hearing really hard stories and I was falling apart. I was receiving vicarious trauma. That's my issue, not my clients. That's my issue, I own it. I just needed a break or, as I really feel, need a team. If I'm going to do that kind of work. I need a team, I need support, I need others who are wiser than myself or who I can collaborate with.
Speaker 2:Letan talks about that in her book His Strength, her Joy, divine Connections. So I just challenge you today, invite you really to listen to the words of Isaiah 46 again and again. Let them pour over you wherever you are right now. God has carried you since you were in your mother's womb, since your birth. He's carrying you now. He's sustaining you, supporting you, bearing your burdens. He is Lean on him like never before so that you can receive his strength into your body supernaturally. That was just such a supernatural day for me and I invite you there. We're going to continue this conversation with LaTan in part two, which I will put out on Friday with LaTan in part two, which I will put out on Friday.
Speaker 1:Until then, where we can keep this remarkable conversation going, please share today's episode with a friend and invite them to become stronger every day. Heartlifter, always remember this you have value, worth and dignity.
