As special needs mothers, we fight the battle of discouragement on a daily basis. In today’s episode, Carrie discusses several tools we can use to safeguard our hearts from losing hope: rest, remembering, and filling. Most importantly, she reminds us that God cares and his desire is for us to cast our cares on him.
May 10, 2022; Ep. 85
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If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
As special needs mothers, we fight the battle of discouragement on a daily basis. In today’s episode, Carrie discusses several tools we can use to safeguard our hearts from losing hope: rest, remembering, and filling. Most importantly, she reminds us that God cares and his desire is for us to cast our cares on him.
May 10, 2022; Ep. 85
Timestamps & Key Topics:
Episode Links & Resources:
If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Carrie M Holt 0:00
Welcome to Episode 85 of Take Heart. I'm so glad you're listening today. This month we are talking about dealing with daily discouragement. Our mission here at Take Heart is to offer encouragement, give hope, and insight, so you can flourish on your journey as a special needs mom. In each episode, we explore monthly themes, share some inspiring stories and practical tips that you can put into practice today. As always, you can find more encouragement and resources on our website at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com.
Carrie M Holt 1:32
Hello there it's Carrie M. Holt today, and we're talking about the theme of daily discouragement. It can be easy to feel discouraged by life and the ongoing battles that we have to fight on a daily basis. I know I tend to feel discouraged when I feel like I'm fighting the same battles over and over again, on behalf of my child. One of these is handicap parking. Can I get an amen? It just seems like the lawmakers, who made the laws for handicapped parking, have never actually been in a wheelchair, or driven a van with a lift. Those lines were not made wide enough, and the van spots people take even when they don't need them. Sometimes I have so much anxiety about leaving the house and trying to find parking in a busy parking lot that I would just rather stay home. What is something that makes you feel discouraged? What is a battle that you get tired of fighting repeatedly? Discouragement is defined as, "being deprived of courage, hope or confidence. It means to obstruct by opposition or difficulty." Don't you feel like you're being obstructed on a daily basis? I sure do. One of the things that I've learned along the way is that I can get discouraged when I assume that the way that I feel today, and that the way things are going today is the way it's always going to be. Sometimes I just sink into a pit of despair. I've learned that it's wise not to assume that your current circumstances will always be the way they look today. There's a reason why in Matthew it tells us to take no thought for tomorrow and allow tomorrow to take care of itself. If God cares for even one sparrow that falls, and he clothes the lilies, he cares about you.
Carrie M Holt 3:28
What are some steps that we can take for dealing with discouragement? First of all, it is so important to give yourself lots of grace. It's okay to sit down and rest, to take a nap, and even to feel like you need a break. I have found that I am most deprived of courage and hope when I'm tired - when I'm tired in body and soul. Do you know how a toddler melts down when they're hungry and tired? I think it's the same way with adults. We just try to hide it better. Ask yourself some questions today. Are you eating well? Are you taking time to exercise? Are you getting to bed on time? Are you putting your phone down? Do you know it's important to shut our phones down about an hour before we go to bed, so our rhythms of sleep are not interrupted? What is one small step you can do to take better care of yourself today?
Carrie M Holt 4:30
Secondly, take the time to remember that God knows how you feel and he cares about you. Just like I mentioned earlier about him caring about the lilies of the field and a sparrow that falls, which is a very annoying bird, by the way, He cares how you feel. He doesn't want you to lose hope. He doesn't want you to be discouraged. When our son was much younger, we went through a time where we didn't have very much home care nursing, and at this time my son was very medically fragile. He was on a feeding pump for 20 hours a day, and he was hooked up to a ventilator, and my kids were about five years old and under, and I was just tired. We couldn't find any consistent nursing. I would meet with them, and kind of screened them, and then we would train them and then start to feel a level of trust, and then they would leave. They would be in our house for a week, and their husband would get a job in another state and they would leave. I can remember being very discouraged about the nursing situation that we had at that time. I was journaling about it, and I was pouring my heart out to God about the upheaval in our home. I was so frustrated because our son was also at an age where he was starting to notice the different faces in and out, and it was affecting him. There was so much instability in his life, and it was affecting him. God gently reminded that his son Jesus also knows what it's like to suffer. He came to earth as fully man and fully God, so he could know what it's like to sympathize with us. In the gospels, we read that there were times that he was preaching so much they didn't even have time to eat. There were times that he was tired, and he fell asleep at the bottom of a boat in the middle of a storm. He knew temptation. He knew what it was like to be denied by his friends, betrayed. He faced obstructions on a daily basis here on earth. He knows what it's like to suffer, and he cares about you. He cares about how you feel.
Carrie M Holt 6:40
Thirdly, I think it's important as we think about fighting daily discouragement is to fill up your mind and heart with the stories of courage. Other human beings just like ourselves that fought battles, and faced obstructions. I'm very story-oriented if you haven't already figured that out. I love to read good stories, especially true stories. I think as humans, we are story-oriented. Our family loves good movies. We love good books. Stories inspire us, and they remind us that we are not alone, that we're not the only ones who face hard things and live in hard places. One of my favorite stories as a girl was about the five missionaries that went into the Amazon jungle in Ecuador to reach the Waodani people who had never heard about Jesus. Unfortunately, these five missionaries were speared to death at Palm Beach, as it was called by the "Aucas" or the Waodani. But later on, many of the people in that tribe came to know Jesus as their Savior. Steve Saint, the son of Nate Saint, Nate was one of the missionaries, his aunt Rachel, and Elizabeth Elliott, who was the wife of Jim Elliott, went back to live with them. One of the men, Mincaye, who was the very man who had been in the killings, later became like a father to Steve and a grandfather to his own children. The gospel changes us. Not being bitter about something like that is beyond my human comprehension. In his book The End of The Spear, Steve says this, "what theWaodinihad meant for evil, God used for good. Given the chance to go back and rewrite the story. I would not be willing to change it. Sure, it was painful. But over time, I have begun to see the pain of Dad's death in a different light." This statement in this book just completely blows my mind. What it is, it's a story of courage. It's a story of walking with Jesus and seeing things over time, through His eternal perspective, that the souls of the people in this Waodini tribe were so important, and God used something very horrible for good.
Carrie M Holt 9:16
Lastly, and most importantly, this tool for fighting daily discouragement is to cast your cares on Him. Don't try to handle discouragement on your own. I find that I am most discouraged when I am trying to handle everything by myself, trying to figure it all out mentally, trying to make the plans, and wondering how it's going to work. I Peter 5:7 says, Casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you." Other versions say casting your cares on Him. It's easy to say that, but how do we do that practically? We aren't meant to handle the burdens of life on our own. The verse prior to I Peter 5:7, in verse six it says that we should humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. After that verse, it says, to be watchful as the devil is prowling about seeking to devour us. It takes humility, to cast our cares on Him because it means that we aren't trusting ourselves. In that earlier situation with our nursing care, I had to trust that God would provide and that God had a plan, and that he cared about my son even more than I did. Also, sometimes God's provision doesn't always look like we expect, either. We come to God and we tell him, this is how I want you to fix this situation. But casting our cares on Him means trusting him to provide a way that we might not even imagine. Maybe in that situation, it wasn't necessarily providing nurses in the way that I thought, maybe it was just the daily strength and stamina for me to take care of my son on my own, or maybe it was relying on help from other people. When I think back of that phrase in the scripture in I Peter 5, about casting, I think about fishermen or how quickly when it's hot, that my children when they were little, would shed their coats in the grass while playing outside. It means to literally cast it away as far as you can, to shed ourselves of the burden of worry, and to put the mantle of God's grace over us. He's going to be all you need at that moment, whether it's a guide, a friend, or a surgeon, who deftly manipulates his instruments to strip away our sin and our self-reliance. He will be a comfort. He is all that to you and more. The devil wants nothing better, to devour us into despair, where we lose hope and turn our backs on him. Make it a practice to cast your worries on him. Practically speaking, it means telling the truth about my situation at that moment, stating what I can't control, and asking God to take it. It's mentally focusing on today and not worrying about the outcome. Sometimes it's praying about the things that are seemingly so insignificant, but knowing that God does care about them. Just recently, it was getting the right grooming for my son's service dog. It was a care that was really weighing on me, and it seems so silly and something so small, but I prayed about it. I was really discouraged by it. I was in tears, and I had a really rough day the one day, but then the next day, I prayed and asked God to provide a way, and he did. It doesn't seem like God would care about something so small, but he does. What is some small care that you can cast on him today? Pray about it. Ask Him for wisdom. Ask him to take it from you.
Carrie M Holt 13:04
In closing, I want to encourage you with this promise from I Peter 5, later in the chapter. It says, "Resist Him, meaning the devil stand firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you." May it be so today. Dear Father, I ask that all those who are listening today will not be weighed down by the burden of discouragement. They will not lose hope in their daily battles that they are fighting. That they will remember to give themselves grace, to rest in you, to cast their cares on you, and to find other stories of courage to give them hope. Above all, to know in their hearts, not just in their heads that you care for them and that you understand how they feel. In Jesus's name, amen.
Carrie M Holt 14:33
Thank you so much for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is that your heart is encouraged. We are grateful you are walking on this journey with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com, and follow us on social media and Instagram or Facebook. If you have any questions or comments, you can follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from you. So feel free to email us and listen to next week as Sara shares about this topic of fighting daily discouragement.