The Gift of Limitations: Finding the Beauty in Boundaries w/ Sara Hagerty

Have you ever wrestled with the constraints life throws at you or experienced limitations that seem to fence you in? Wondering where grace fits into the picture and asking the question, are there blessings in the boundaries of our lives? Sara Hagerty, a writer of deep insight and experience, joins us in a profound exploration of finding peace amidst boundaries of personal trials, from infertility to the challenges of understanding God's love in times of stillness. Her candid stories serve as a testament to the surprising ways grace manifests in our lives, especially when we're grappling with the weight of feeling we have too much and yet not enough.

Sarah and I discuss the importance of honoring our limits, in everything we do from physical activities to finances to parenting. Through her story of ambition clashing with reality, we shed light on the realism in navigating life's challenges—a journey not just about reaching goals but also learning from the detours.

In the final segment, we delve into the connection between our emotions, self-awareness, and the pace at which we live our lives.  Our conversation invites listeners to slow down, listen to the signals of our limitations, and discover the power of presence in the narratives unfolding in our lives.

Join Sara and me for a conversation that will not only move you but might also reshape the way you view the quiet spaces where grace resides.

Book: The Gift of Limitations
IG - @sarahagertywrites
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Transcript

Sara Hagerty: 0:00

And I then kind of extrapolate that and I think God probably likes me better when I'm productive, Like I have more worth when I'm productive, and so to be able to wrestle with, how does God see me when I'm not producing for him, which is interesting because all these years later because I did that many years ago and I started to go, oh, I think he likes me when I'm not productive. I mean, it was a wrestle but like at the end of that time I started to go I think he might like me when I'm weak. I think he might like me when I'm not producing for him. I think he might enjoy me when I'm not knocking it out of the park as a mom or administrating my house or as a friend.

Ellen Krause: 0:46

Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. For those that may be listening for the first time, our podcast is an offshoot from our main platform, YouTube. Our channel is called Coffee and Bible Time, where our goal is to help people delight in God's word and thrive in Christian living. We also have a website and storefront with Bible studies, prayer journals, courses and more. Hi, Sarah, it's such a joy to have you on our podcast here today.

Ellen Krause: 1:18

I'm thrilled to have you on and I just want to tell our audience, like right from the get go, you really are an incredibly gifted writer. Like here, I felt like I was reading. I can't even wrap my arms around it, but I want to say like it wasn't what I was expecting, but in an amazing way Then, kind of the typical books that I see. So I'm very excited just about how you have poured into your vulnerabilities and your life into this book. So maybe why don't you just start out by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of grew into this topic?

Sara Hagerty: 2:10

Well, I think I got introduced to my limitations very young. I was newly married and after a few years we thought we would have children just like everybody else. And isn't this just kind of the rite of passage for being a woman, that you just have babies? And we experienced infertility, and for a long time. And so I would say my first brush with my limitations was in my 20s.

Sara Hagerty: 2:36

Going gosh, I had all these dreams and plans for my life and they're getting halted by something that, no matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I feel like I cannot change. And as I look back, hindsight is always 20-20. As I look back, I just see that same theme coming up in different ways. Now I have seven children and I would say, on the reverse side of that, I'm like, ah, my life's so full, I'm so limited, sort of dreaming about those days when I just had time, nothing but time. And so that's when I started to see, as I really experienced similar feelings having seven children and four that are adopted and three that are biological I started to realize that there's a theme here, and this isn't the first time I'm feeling this, and could this be just part of what God is doing in his people is letting us just bump up against our boundaries and figuring out a way, and helping us to figure out a way to find him there.

Ellen Krause: 3:35

Sure, I can only imagine that that experience that you had with infertility really was an awakening to self-awareness, that there is this big limitation, so to speak, in your own mind. Right, you and your book. The phrase that I kind of wrote down in the cover of my book was too much, but not quite enough.

Sara Hagerty: 4:09

And I think that's 2024, right, like we are living in a life where in one day, I can feel like it's all too much. How many more Amazon packages are gonna come to my door? And I'm gonna unpack and of course I ordered them right but I just feel like we have too much stuff, we have too many commitments, we have too many responsibilities, too many relationships and at the same time, I feel like my life is full of not enough and I'm feeling a subtle resentment for what I cannot have. And so I think that reality probably was planted early in me in my 20s and that was before kind of the information age explosion, because that was 20 years ago being brushing up against lots of life responsibilities and yet yearning and longing for something that I just could not have in having children, and what I found so interesting is your unthenticity there with seeing something that we all feel, but I think you even said it early.

Ellen Krause: 5:16

I'm like you didn't even realize this is what you were experiencing, but it does happen to all of us in many different ways the too much but not quite enough, and we're always kind of wanting to stretch those boundaries. Tell us a little bit about your running career and I know your father was very instrumental in that. Tell us about your experiences and challenges and what you learned from that.

Sara Hagerty: 5:52

Well, I think, for running for me is just. I mean, I still love to run. I've been running since I was 15. But there's one particular race that I think has stood out to me as a picture of what we do with our limits, when we feel our limits. I, many years ago now, I trained for a race and it was just a local women's formiler. I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia. This was a race that they had every year, but I knew, based on having run in an earlier year, that I could. Potentially I had qualified it. You know, I'd won an award or something, maybe third in my age group, and I thought, or maybe first, I don't know. And I thought, if I really trained, I bet I could win this race Now, this is this is not a 5k, it's not something.

Sara Hagerty: 6:32

It wasn't on a map, anybody's map it was just like a local race. But I spent an entire summer training for this race. I had somebody help me train and it was a season where we were walking through infertility and I was looking for ways to kind of have my mind beyond other things. We are also walking through adoption then too, and I trained in actually unusually cold summer. It was not warm, so I was training in you know 65, 70 degree mornings and then race day came and it was 85 degrees and I had my splits on my hand.

Sara Hagerty: 7:02

So runners will know that term where I just wrote the time that I wanted to get for each mile and I my goal was to win the race. I thought this is a women's formiler. Based on how I was training, I could win this race. And so we we line up at the starting line and I quickly learned that there were a bunch of women running who were Olympic trailers and they had not run in years past. So all of a sudden, seeing them up on the line and realizing like one of these things is not like the other, I'm thinking I'm not going to win this race and with a temperature, but I just kept my splits on my hand and I was determined, so I just pushed, pushed, pushed every mile and eventually I had a heat stroke just before the finish line. My husband ended up carrying me across the finish line and then disqualifying me for the race because, though that was totally romantic, it's not really something you can do in a race. But what I learned later, you know, after kind of researching heat strokes and even the psychology behind people who have heat strokes, essentially what happens is your body is giving you all of these warning signs saying slow down, stop, you need water, and I ignored every single one of those signs and I just kept pushing through to the point that, literally, I mean, I went a little crazy right before I collapsed, got confused as to where the finish line was and it really was just an up and back race started talking to people who were standing and thinking because my mind, I lost my mind.

Sara Hagerty: 8:25

And what's interesting to me, though, now is I think that sometimes we need pictures, physical pictures, to represent what we do in our hearts or in the spiritual, and it is a picture to me of when I see an experience, limitations or roadblocks. My natural inclination is overcome is push past, is ignore the warning signs. Ignore if my body's telling me I can't do it and become an overcomer. And sometimes I put like Christian language on that, like we were made to be an overcomer, and I push, push, push until I collapse. And I think many of us do that. Many of us actually become people we we don't want to be because we are so fixed on crossing over some limitation, on accomplishing something that seems like impossible, that we lose sight that God actually does. I mean his word says in Psalm 16, 6, the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. God actually does give us boundaries. We ignore them.

Ellen Krause: 9:26

Yeah. So you just kind of ignored the signs and then you experienced that heat stroke, which must have sounds awful.

Sara Hagerty: 9:39

I mean, it's my running forever and you know, once you have one stroke you tend to be having others, and so now I don't think about it as much, but because I'm not really racing, I just run for pleasure now. But it definitely did, but it's something that stuck with me. It was a larger picture to me of I ignore my. I ignore the warning signs when I've got my eyes fixed on something I think I need to have.

Ellen Krause: 10:04

And that seems to really be, I think, something that a lot of us do, and I was just thinking of kind of like financially. You know, in this world of you know your neighbors bigger, better you want to be, you know like them, or whatever situation that you might be in where you're comparing yourself and you know, maybe spending money that's beyond your limits, right, that you don't really have. That could be an example of this and the society that we live in, to like just everything on social media being so perfect. And tell us a little bit why you believe idealism has negatively influenced you.

Sara Hagerty: 10:52

I always used to think idealism was this beautiful thing, like I. Just I looked for people who had a high ideals. I wanted to model them. And it wasn't until my life started not started to not match my ideals that I started to realize, oh, you know, there's something here like I'm kind of getting myself in a bind here that is causing me a lot of resentment. And as I started to examine kind of naming my limits, naming the responses that I had to my limits, I started to see that I had created a whole world of naming ideals that wasn't necessarily the world that God was inviting me to enter into.

Sara Hagerty: 11:32

That I would have this picture of what motherhood would look like and I strove to just our strive to stroke, strived I'm a writer and I don't even know. I would just strive for that picture and and kind of similar to wanting to win that race, like, just read all the books, get with mentors, you could tell me how to get there, really want my kids to perform in certain ways so I could get there. And then, when I'm not there, I was just like, oh, it's great disappointment. And I started to see a pattern that I've got ideals that are actually preventing me from being present with what's real and right in front of me. I'm living for the ideal and I'm disappointed in what's real and what's right in front of me and I'm not responding to what's real. I'm actually just kind of continuing to respond to my ideal.

Ellen Krause: 12:17

How do you get out of?

Sara Hagerty: 12:21

that cycle. I think it's a process. We believers we like to skip steps, so wouldn't we like to just say, hey, girl, put your ideals aside, be present with what God gave you. But I think there's actually an easier way, which is just a slow submission to the life that God gave you right now. So I would say for listeners you know, everybody listening right now has something that they cannot have or that they want, that is not there, it's not happening.

Sara Hagerty: 12:49

And while I definitely think there is times for interceding and having faith, I also think to the flip side. There are times where the Lord might be inviting you to let it go, and part of letting it go is just naming. I want this and I can't have it. And I'm going to grieve that I cannot have what I want. And I'm going to give myself permission to grieve that I'm going to step away from the intercession for a little bit of time and let myself grieve that I don't have it.

Sara Hagerty: 13:17

And in the grief I mean we see this with the sawmists. You know God is Psalm 34. God is near to the broken heart and he saves those who are crushed in spirit. A lot of times we feel like we have splinters in our heart, but they're so small, they're just splinters, you know. They're a little paper cuts like why would I bring that to God when in the grave? Those are the things that actually draw in, draw God near to us, and so I think there's something to be said for grieving what we can't have and then watching what God does in that grieving process.

Ellen Krause: 13:47

Yeah, and you were kind of describing a little bit of that grieving process with your infertility and like how you went to running as kind of a way to get your mind off of it. There are some other ways that people can use, you know, really grieve maybe a limitation that they are deeply sad, and you also gave the example of your father passing away and just the limitation. Oh, I don't have my dad to go to or my children don't have their grandfather.

Ellen Krause: 14:24

Tell us a little bit, maybe some more examples of that and how the grieving process can help us.

Sara Hagerty: 14:31

I think grief is really important and a lot of us if you're like me are afraid to go there and so in many ways I think, just giving space for grief, you know, we think, well, I'm going to go there if my dad dies, right, or I'm going to go there if there's something major in my life. But we don't necessarily recognize that the small things are to be grieved also and that you thought you were going to get the promotion like you really thought you were and you worked really hard for it and you didn't get it. And that's actually a moment in time that God is allowing for you to grieve with him and to bring that ache to him. You, you know your best friend moved and that feels like, well, I should get over it. I've got all these other friends and we're going to stay in touch and technology, we can stay connected. But like that's a moment to actually grieve that I don't have. The community I once had, or dynamics at your church change and you, you're not feeling as connected there.

Sara Hagerty: 15:24

These are things that I think are all opportunities to grieve, but many of us feel really uncomfortable with grief because what if I go there and I don't get out. What if grief is a room I can't get out of? So I don't ever want to give permission to it. And then it comes out sideways and we get kind of bitter, we get resentful about our limitations. We keep trying to overcome them and we're tired, or we got headaches and we're not sleeping well, or stomach aches and our body's telling us like slow down, but we're pushing, pushing, pushing. Grief is a sweet way, it's a release valve to dealing with our limitations. When we start to feel them and we name them, there's a power then to giving ourselves permission to grieve them.

Ellen Krause: 16:07

Yeah, yeah, and it really kind of frees up in your own sort of personal space to allow God to do whatever else he has planned for you, with that limitation in mind that there will be other things. You kind of the whole grieving process and this idea of big emotions. How have you sort of avoided naming the big emotions in your life and why do you think people do that?

Sara Hagerty: 16:51

Yeah, I think we you know, I actually heard Kurt Thompson in a red. Kurt Thompson read about this in one of his books that one of the scary things about grief or suffering is we are afraid that it's not going to end. And so I think in many ways we don't want to give permission to our big emotions, because what if they just sweep us away? What if we just get lost? What if we start to experience them? And then we're done and we're always emotional and we can't get over it.

Sara Hagerty: 17:17

I actually think, in the Western world especially, we've done the opposite and we've silenced the emotions that are actually telling a story. They're not that they're all always telling us truth, but they are telling us a story about what's going on on our insides, and God was an emotional God. We look at the Psalms. The Psalms are full of emotions. Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The exact words that Jesus used on the cross. Psalms are full of the emotion, of emotions, and yet we as humans I think in human Christians a lot of times we go, oh, we've got to keep our emotions in check, we got to keep them in control, and we make that sound like that's actually spiritual, when in reality, we're maybe just afraid of them or afraid of them taking over, and we're afraid to give permission to our emotions, recognizing that God actually has a lot he can do to hold them. And when we let our emotions be held by God, it's a better release valve than just tamping them down and saying go away.

Ellen Krause: 18:16

Right. Right, because if you do that, that can, down the road, lead to a lot of other problems. When talking about all of this, it reminds me of when my daughter got married and just these conflicting emotions, like just the true joy and happiness for her.

Ellen Krause: 19:29

But at the same time I felt guilty, like even thinking, like I'm grieving her loss, her moving out of our house and I'm sad I'm not going to see her every day because she also moved, and it's when you have the conflicting things going on it just makes it really challenging. But I love how what you've done here is kind of said okay, that's a limitation, in my example, that Ashley is not here anymore. So how are we working within that limitation and how God is using it in ways that we never dreamed of? Right, because there's other things that come up and there's new little joys that can help take. You know, come in to play. So, sarah, you are it seemed like so self-aware to me and as we're going through you know your book you believe that it's really important to pay attention to yourself. What does that look like on a daily basis for you personally?

Sara Hagerty: 20:58

I think some of the low-hanging fruit is paying attention to our bodies.

Sara Hagerty: 21:02

Sometimes, when we can't actually figure out how to pay attention to what's happening inside of us and our emotions there's kind of two we can pay attention to what's happening in our bodies, like am I starting to feel a stomach ache? Am I feeling a headache? Am I overtired, even if it's just like throughout the day, kind of naming things that are happening in our bodies. Sometimes our bodies will tell us a story that our hearts are telling, but we just haven't learned to listen, and so our tiredness sometimes is a gift. Sometimes, if I'm overtired, it's actually the gift of God going. I put you in a frame that can't keep enduring what you're asking it to endure. I've put you in a frame that cannot handle all that you've said yes to, and so your tiredness is perhaps a gift. Perhaps it's the gift telling you that there are things that you need to reevaluate and bring to me, or that there's a part of your life that needs to move slower. I think in some ways our bodies do that. I think, if not our bodies, oftentimes our behaviors will tell us, like, for me, if I'm open in the fridge lots of times during the day or eating chocolate, like there's usually something underneath that. Or if I'm snapping at a kid or snapping at my husband, there is a breadcrumb trail back to an emotion. Typically, if I can sit and go, I just snapped at him.

Sara Hagerty: 22:21

What are the last four or five things that happen in my day that caused me to unnerved me, and how do I start to notice what those things are and how they're affecting me? I think self-awareness is a big term. For some it's very easy. For others, I think it's actually just starting to pay attention to our emotions, in the way that we react to things. It gives us data and information with what we could bring to God. Like I feel stuck in my quiet times. I feel stuck trying to dialogue with God. Well, could it be that there are bigger emotions that I just haven't named yet that maybe could be things that I dialogue with God about?

Ellen Krause: 23:04

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is interesting that in people there is a huge range of people that are so self-aware and others that aren't. I'm putting myself in the others that aren't, because I really was not, and it took my daughter one of my daughters to kind of teach me about that In my age group. I want to say, growing up, anxiety was not talked about, it just wasn't a thing. And I remember one time she said to me are you okay? And I was like, well, I'm feeling like a little sick to my stomach, but I'm not sick. She's like are you having anxiety? And I was like, oh, is that what that? And I was, when I put two and two together, to say, oh, my goodness, yes, the circumstances giving me a lot of anxiety. And here's my body showing it.

Sara Hagerty: 24:09

So, yeah, I think that's true for so many of us, and I think there are. You know, the gifts that God gives us is that when we can't like the message of my book, the gift of limitations, none of us can will ourselves into believing that our limitations are a gift. Everybody who's listening right now has some kind of fence around their life, something that's frustrating them, something that they want to overcome, something that feels very confining, and the message isn't well, girl, get over it and see it as a gift. We, just as humans, we can't push ourselves there, but the gift of God is that he puts us on a path to get there, and so my headaches that keep coming back could be actually telling me a story that God is using them to draw me in to the narrative that he is writing of my life. It could be that my stomach ache and my anxiety is actually the Lord going. I want to reveal to you what you cannot see, but what I see, so that I can partner with you in it.

Sara Hagerty: 25:11

I think the sweet message of this book is that we are. We don't have to will ourselves to be anywhere. We're actually already on a path. God is already bringing us to places where he's going to reveal to us the beauty inside of our fence line. We're looking over the fence. We spend days, hours, looking over the fence Instagram and Facebook. We're spending our time looking at what our neighbors are doing, and the Lord is using our life and our circumstances to draw, eventually draw us back to finding that there's a lot of beauty in the grass underneath my feet and the willow tree that's right in my yard and the bird's nest. That's just stone throw away, not over the fence.

Ellen Krause: 25:58

Absolutely. How can those longings be both positive and negative? Because I know like you're kind of we've talked a little bit about how you know when you go over the top and you're just constantly longing, you know that can have a negative effect, but how can it also be positive?

Sara Hagerty: 26:21

Oh, I think it tells a story of our heart that was created for so much more Like, in some ways, our idealism.

Sara Hagerty: 26:28

God made us idealistic because there's an eternity and that is perfection. You know, he made us with a desire for great beauty and wonder, and so in many ways, our longings actually unlock the parts of us that desire so much more than just standard American living. So that is a gap, and that's why I think, in some sense, is naming our limitations and naming the way that we feel about our limitations actually touch, tap us into desire, and desire is from God, desire is is what connects us, even to the heart of God, and so some of how we break out of standard American living is tapping into the desire that God put within us for wonder and for beauty and for a powerful story and for connectedness to a narrative that's not the one that we're controlling, for being on a ride that we don't have to actually make happen. Those are all things that are were put within us. This is the eternity put in our hearts, so, and I think our longings are really good and necessary, right.

Ellen Krause: 27:39

Right, and so would you say mostly than the negative is just kind of when we sort of latch onto that too tightly and don't keep what God's giving us kind of with an open hand.

Sara Hagerty: 27:55

Yeah, or it's what we do with it. You know, when I feel those long like for me with seven kids, I mean I say to my husband I'm an introvert who you know would do well to just talk to one or two people in a day. And so I think of I have a real longing for quiet and for the wonder that comes with quiet. I love to read poetry and take walks in the woods and I love reading novels and those are all things that are a little bit challenging, unless I'm including my, some of my little people in that. And so I think in some ways connecting to the fact that I long for beauty and wonder is really an important part of me not becoming cynical and bitter at the life God has given me, because there is a place for us to go. I really want this thing, and it might be the young mom going I really want sleep. It might be the 21 year old going I just want to fall in love. It might be the woman who's in a marriage that's especially challenging going. I just want to connect with him.

Sara Hagerty: 29:40

We are so afraid to name those things because we don't know what's on the other side of them, but I think when we tap into them and name them, it enables us to actually enter a process where we can grieve what we don't have with God. We have it with God, but grieve what we don't have. We can grieve with God. And in the grieving I think we see this God who gave permission to the desire, who weeps with us when we don't have it, who has a story for us that's still unfolding, even when we're not having that particular desire, that it's involved, it's nuanced. There's a paradox that in the not yet there is so much more to be had right now.

Ellen Krause: 30:19

Yes, there, sure is. You know you so beautifully wrote many examples, but clearly you enjoy nature and being outside and when you, when I read your book, I mean I felt like I was there, going on these walks with you. There is this element of slowing down and the importance of slowing down, and can you tell us a little bit about your productivity fast and how it can help slow us down?

Sara Hagerty: 30:58

Well, I started to notice that I felt better about myself when I was accomplishing things, and I think that's true for most of us. We like ourselves better or more strong. I like myself when I have vision. I like myself when I'm fulfilling my vision, I like myself when things run on time and my kids are well behaved, and I like myself when I'm productive. And so, in noticing that, I started to go huh, I wonder how I would feel about myself if I wasn't productive. Like I was kind of a little bit of a risk experiment. Like how would I? Because I know enough to know I don't want to have based my whole life on my productivity.

Sara Hagerty: 31:33

So I gave my I play these games with myself sometimes just like let me, for an experiment, for a period of time, let me limit my productivity, let me limit how much I can accomplish in the most productive hours of my day, which at that time was like between three or two and four when my kids were in rest time.

Sara Hagerty: 31:46

They were younger and so I would I grossly limited what I accomplished in that time. Instead of trying to get seven to 10 things done in my writing or around the house or, you know, just administrating life. I would try to get one or two done and then leave a lot of space for taking walks in the woods, reading poetry, not even having a quiet time, because sometimes I think we can approach our quiet times like they are productive. And so I didn't even know that wasn't. Even if I wanted to read my Bible, I read my Bible, but that wasn't my quiet time time. It was literally. I want to notice how I feel about myself when I'm not producing. I read poetry, I read literature and it was interesting to notice that, like I just that's when I could name I like myself better when I'm productive. I like myself better when I accomplish things and.

Sara Hagerty: 32:38

I then kind of extrapolate that and I think God probably likes me better when I'm productive and I'm have more worth when I'm productive and so to be able to wrestle with how does God see me when I'm not producing for him? Which is interesting because all these years later because I did that many years ago and I started to go, oh, I think he likes me when I'm productive. I mean, it was a wrestle but like at the end of that time I started to go I think he might like me when I'm weak. I think he might like me when I'm not producing for him. I think he might enjoy me when I'm not knocking it out of the park as a mom or administrating my house or as a friend.

Sara Hagerty: 33:18

And all these years later, after I turned to my manuscript for this book, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which was more a period at the end of a sentence than a new sentence, because they had already spent a year, year and a half, being sick.

Sara Hagerty: 33:30

So it answered a lot of questions for me. But what was interesting about all of it is I felt like the early building blocks of how do I navigate that started with my productivity fast, because many times with Lyme. I couldn't bring a friend to meal when they were sick and I couldn't. My kids were watching movies more than I'd want them to and I wasn't being super mom during you know, we're in the Lenten season now. I wasn't being super mom during that time or advent, like I wasn't doing all the things that would make me feel good about my motherhood or even as a wife, and to go, oh, I've been here ever and been unproductive and I remember he likes me when I'm weak and it's okay, like, and I actually get to see sides of him when I'm weak that I wouldn't see when I'm strong, right.

Ellen Krause: 34:22

Because we get to see that when we are weak he is strong, absolutely yeah, and I can't watch on to that like Jesus wants to yoke our burdens. That's something that's always been so, so comforting for me. That Lyme disease, I know, is just I can imagine you just felt really tired at times and just I had an autoimmune disease, or I do have one, and at the beginning stages of it as well, like this, I felt exactly like you're describing just that being unproductive and not understanding what's happening and but God, really just slowing me down Because I tend to, and I think probably a lot of people you know, my biggest complaint of the day is there's just not enough time in it.

Sara Hagerty: 35:24

Absolutely me too.

Ellen Krause: 35:27

To get all these things done that. I want to get done. Oh my Well, there definitely is this tension in life that we have between when it's too much and not enough. How do you personally navigate that, and how would you suggest our listeners go about doing that?

Sara Hagerty: 35:52

I think there's an invitation for all of us to slow down and observe ourselves and observe where we are in our story and observe how we're responding to God, to not just continue to live and react but to actually pause and consider. I think of the phrase slower still that I text back and forth often with a friend of mine slower still that I think in our 2024 lives we don't have a grid for what slow can produce. I think when we slow down, we gain the power of observation towards things that we've mostly been reacting to In terms of navigating. That too much. This life is too much, but yet it's not quite enough, because I want more. I think we have to step off the treadmill to be able to gain God's perspective. I think the first step of that is just looking around and noticing what we see, because when we're moving so fast, it's hard to see that.

Ellen Krause: 36:59

Yeah, really, that's so true. It's kind of like you're just going at such a rapid pace that things go past and you can't perceive everything, sarah, you have when you mentioned that you have seven children. How do you balance having your own personal needs as a mother and then also trying to work with your kids and teaching them what limitations in life and having a hope for a future?

Sara Hagerty: 37:51

I think somebody with my. It probably depends on your wiring and your band. My wiring is as I said before I love being productive and I love to achieve and get things done, knowing that I think in these later stages of peer I mean just the last decade or so my husband and I have both acknowledged that we have to find a new way to be able to do the endurance run of parenting. Four of our kids have been through pretty significant trauma and so they were adopted, and that has put us in a category of just again moving slower still and recognizing that it's a long game. The long game means you know I might and I go home school. So my kids. It might take them a little longer to learn to read, but it's really important that my husband and I have a connect every morning for 30 minutes. It may mean that you know we aren't, my kids aren't on some of the travel leagues or aren't able to, you know, have some of these great successes that they could as children, because we as a family need to move slower. So it's, in some ways, it's really settling into. What I can offer is giving it my best, and giving it my best sometimes might look like if I could give myself a grade, it's a C minus and being okay with a C minus and I say that knowing my wiring in my bed and I realize we have listeners from lots of different generations and I think my generation in particular we tend to be overachievers and we don't struggle with motivation. In fact, we struggle, to the contrary, with having too much motivation. So I may be speaking to women in my generation that I think we could benefit from slowing down and letting ourselves get some B's and C's in life in order to enable the endurance race.

Sara Hagerty: 39:41

So there's some staples that we just have. I mean I just I work out regularly, I have a quiet time every day. I, you know, my husband and I have a connect for 30 minutes every morning. There's things that are in our lives that we put there going. We want to run the long game, and it may mean we're less agile in the short term, it may mean we're less accomplished, it may mean we're less flashy, but we want to be in this for the long game, and the long game means we're going to put these staples in place so that when all of life feels like chaos and it certainly has for us at multiple points in the last few years. We have a few anchors in our schedule that just don't move and that's been a real help. I am, you know, I'm hitting the road a couple of times a week for a run and that move in my body. My husband's doing the same and that feels very helpful to be doing that, oh yes, absolutely, I would agree.

Ellen Krause: 40:37

The exercise does so many things for your body and your mind and all of that as well.

Ellen Krause: 40:44

And I would just add one thing to that, because I was very much well, I'm still am just I have like so many things that I want to do that I very often push out things that I truly love to do, Like maybe it's an art project or just any time to do some sewing or something like that. But I tell myself, oh, you know, you don't have time for that. You got to get these other things done, and when you get those done then you can do that. Well, that list never gets done, and it was. It was one of my daughters, Ashley. She's like mom, okay, we're having an art night, you know, once a week, and you're just going to stop doing whatever you're doing, and we have an art night on Zoom.

Sara Hagerty: 41:34

I love that. I absolutely, and I think if we like product productivity oriented people like us need to see that life is going to keep going and there's a whole lot of beauty to pause and celebrate right now.

Ellen Krause: 41:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, Sarah, as we start to wrap things up here, what is your goal for people who are who read this book and then tell our listeners how they can find out more information about you?

Sara Hagerty: 42:04

I think my goal is for people to not feel like they're alone or their circumstances are really I mean, they are unique but to not feel like, oh, these limitations they're resenting, that feeling will only go away when they don't have the limitations. My goal is to speak to the woman or man who is feeling incredibly limited and to say there's a purpose here and this doesn't have to be the end of your story. There's a story within this story. That's my heart and my desire and my writing. I write on Instagram I'm at. Sarah Hagerty writes the book the Gift of Limitations can be found anywhere where books are sold. But I also write for a monthly. I write a monthly newsletter within a private subset of that on Substack. You can find me, sarah Hagerty, on Substack and I write more frequently and I write a little bit more candidly for a private subset of people within Substack.

Ellen Krause: 42:59

Awesome. We will make sure that we put all of those links in our show notes and before we go, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions here. What Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?

Sara Hagerty: 43:16

So I have the ESV and, honestly, I used to use an Allen. Do you know the Allen Bible? It feels like it's the, it is the Lexis of Bibles. I loved it. It's a. I think it's like a goat skin exterior. It's just like basically could go through a war. But I decided this time around I just went to Martell's and looked and I picked the ESV, not illuminated, just their two column large print Bible, and I thought this is a new season and then I'm choosing a large print Bible. So Leatherband Large Print, that's my, that's my Bible of choice, though I will say I love, you know, I love to have on the side. I love the ESV study Bible. It's like huge. I mean, I feel like you, it doubles, as you know, a weapon in your house in case that breaks in. I use that too. I just don't carry it with me, gotcha.

Ellen Krause: 44:12

Yeah, esv is great translation. All right, do you have any favorite journaling supplies? I'm sure, as a writer, you've got some tools to tell people about that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience.

Sara Hagerty: 44:26

Well, my favorite journal is called the Growth Book. You can get that at Growth Roots Co and it's not cheap but it is worth every penny. The pages are like. I'm really picky about the feel of the pages of my journal and I've been using this one for I think I'm on like the eighth year and it's awesome, so I love those. I have an I-B-M-I-B-A-Y-A-M journaling pens that will leak through my Bible but they won't my journal, so I love those. I also love so that I feel like it's crossway that does this the illuminated. You can actually buy individual books of the Bible. So I'm studying this year. I'm studying First and Second Peter and I can they have an actual. I can just buy that thin First and Second Peter. So if I want to write notes and stuff but don't want to have them 10 years from now, I also go through the Psalms. That way too. It's a thick, just illuminated Bible. So it's one pages blank for you to journal and one page is actually the Psalms. I love those, yes those are great.

Ellen Krause: 45:27

Oh awesome, okay, last question what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

Sara Hagerty: 45:34

So I love the Blue Letter Bible and I feel like it's a little bit clunky, so it's not I. It is not an easy app. To well I should say website.

Ellen Krause: 45:44

No, it's an app I have it on my phone, yeah.

Sara Hagerty: 45:46

It's not easy to navigate, but I that for me, for finding the Greek and the Hebrew, is really helpful.

Ellen Krause: 45:51

Yes, yes, that is an excellent resource. Well, thank you, Sarah, so much for being here today to show us that there are blessings in boundaries and we can all experience deep spiritual growth through the limitations that we once thought held us back.

Sara Hagerty: 46:12

So and for our listeners.

Ellen Krause: 46:14

If you would like to learn more on this topic, be sure to get a copy of Sarah's book the Gift of Limitations Today. You can find the link in the show notes. We love you all and appreciate you listening. Have a blessed day.