Navigating the Empty Nest: Finding Joy, Purpose, & New Beginnings with Edie Melson

Empty nesters, this episode is for you! Join Amber and Lisa as they welcome author Edie Melton to explore the joys and challenges of life after the kids leave home. Through personal stories and practical advice, they discuss maintaining strong partnerships, pursuing new interests, and adapting to changing family dynamics. Edie shares insights from her "Soul Care" book series, offering guidance on finding purpose in this new chapter. The hosts recount their own experiences, from humorous mishaps to emotional milestones, providing a relatable and supportive atmosphere for listeners.

Discover strategies for evolving relationships with adult children, unexpected grandparenting roles, and the importance of self-care. Learn about valuable resources, including Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference:  "Your Best Writing Life" podcast, and explore techniques like gratitude journaling to foster positivity. Whether you're approaching the empty nest or already navigating this transition, this episode provides encouragement, practical tools, and a sense of community. For more information and resources, visit our website at www.ediemelson.com and join us in embracing this new season of life with grace and enthusiasm.

Thank you for taking the time to like, subscribe, share, and comment. Visit leadingladies.life to find out more. Also, follow @leadingladieslife on social. Amber & Lisa are authors of the multi-award-winning book, Leading Ladies: Discover Your God-Grown Strategy for Success, which dives into the power of community and empowering women of faith to rise up and make a difference, using our gifts and faith to shine brightly in the world. Watch the Facebook Live edition on our YouTube Channel @coffeechatladies .

Transcript

[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone. And welcome to another coffee chat with Amber and my co author in crime, Lisa Burns. And we are here. I'm just trying to, I'm seeing this is a roll out of the bed day. Fireworks were last night until Goodness knows how late in the morning, but I expect them for the next month ahead.

[00:00:25] Edie, Melton, did you guys have, where are you guys? North, ah, on the Carolinas. And how late did the fireworks keep you up last night? Last night was actually worse than the 4th of July. We had two dogs, and so the fireworks were spectacular. Last night. So every time they went off, the dogs went off. So it's up till three o'clock and you're screaming, I think the dog fireworks are worse than the fireworks that are outside.

[00:00:56] Lisa, did you have the dog fireworks going off on? [00:01:00] And right now I just want to show everyone I have a puppy in the house. She's a great Dane and she decided she was just going to nibble on my chair. So I'm prepared this morning to get her attention quietly while we're on the air here. Yeah. It's so funny that we're talking about being dog moms, but I think that's the next step again, after being an empty nester, which.

[00:01:27] Is we're retraining our dogs. We're dog proofing our homes. We're clearing out things that could get chewed up that shouldn't get chewed up. And we have miss Edie, our golden scroll award nominee, along with leading ladies. I'm excited. She got nominated for her soul care when the nest is in bloom. Empty. I was practicing that I was practicing that this is really exciting.

[00:01:58] And this is your fourth book in the [00:02:00] soul care number four in the soul care series. So she has these lovely books about taking care of your soul and we're all in the season of empty nesting. Some of us have been longer than others. Some of us are empty nest is still in the nest, but they're. Trying to be empty.

[00:02:16] And then, so tell us a little bit about your empty nest. When did you become an official empty nester? When did that feeling start? I got introduced to Empty Nest the hard way. I went through a boot camp Empty Nest. Our oldest son went straight from high school graduation to Marine Corps boot camp to two tours in Iraq as a frontline infantry Marine.

[00:02:46] And bomb dog handler. Whoa. I didn't get that buffer zone of sending him to college or anything like that. It was like one minute he was there, [00:03:00] and the next minute he wasn't just there, but people were shooting at him. Oh, gosh. No. As the mom of three boys, I really felt like that prepared me for his two younger brothers.

[00:03:12] And I could not have been more wrong. Because the Empty Nest experience was different. Our middle son went off to college and he was super independent. Truthfully, I have no idea where he gets that. He didn't. Qualify for any scholarships. And the only way he could afford college, because he would not allow us to help him was to live in his truck.

[00:03:41] Oh my goodness. So he would have wifi. Wow. Emptiness number two. Emptiness number three was our baby. And he decided that After he had been to college a couple of years, [00:04:00] he decided he was going to pursue his adventure guide certification. So he went around the world climbing mountains. Oh my goodness.

[00:04:13] China, Peru, he went to everything. So now they all are married. Two of them have families and they all live within five miles of us. So that is good. And that's a challenge when you tell your kids all their life, trying to protect them, trying to keep them safe, trying to, and now somebody is on the front lines.

[00:04:37] Somebody's basically homeless living in their van and living in their car. And somebody is climbing mountains. That is pretty, pretty really, maybe you shouldn't do that, but now you're too old to say, Like me to put into timeout, that's just what that is. That's right. Not with me into timeout, not really willing to do that, but yeah.

[00:04:59] [00:05:00] So care is about putting moms into timeout when you can't put your kids into timeout anymore. It's funny because we were just talking a few minutes ago when we decided that we wanted to ask you on the show. So I said when I was about 40, 41, that. And this is way before Amber roped me into writing anything.

[00:05:22] I said, if I'm ever going to write a book someday, it's going to be about the stage of life that I'm in right now, because I don't feel like we're being honest or that we have been honest. We say we romanticize this time period and we lightly touch on things, but I hadn't had anyone really discuss it with me.

[00:05:42] I was sandwiched in between children leaving the nest and still kids home. Even a preschooler, my mom and dad had divorced. My mom was going through some severe issues mental health wise because of all [00:06:00] sorts of things and it felt like I just hadn't been equipped for this stage of life and what I needed to do to get through it sane to get through it being the best representation of a mom as I could be because I was so torn about the different ways I was having to handle all these scenarios.

[00:06:22] I want you to give us some really great information today about that. And it sounds like you had trial by fire. These young men put you out there. What was that? What was that like? And what can you share with us about what's in the book to help us get through this? I think one of the things that I learned is that there's no wrong way to go through the empty nest season.

[00:06:48] That we're much harder on ourselves than we should be. I think the, another thing that I learned, and probably the biggest thing I learned through my own process, [00:07:00] was my, I learned how to pray. Because you think you pray when they're preschoolers? But oh my goodness, right? Home right do anything. That's when your prayer life and I had to first of all Realize what the root of the problem was which was fear Afraid for him.

[00:07:20] So in this book we talk about fear and how to release that fear to God the other thing I did is I realized that I was looking at all the bad possible scenarios Of embracing the possibilities Sons are amazing men and they all came through those crazy times Better because of it. I also had to find learn how to find joy in the changes And I had to learn how to Process and let go of sadness because I discovered that being sad can become habitual.

[00:07:59] I [00:08:00] was addicted to it for a while, but just felt like the right thing to be. Yeah. Learn how to focus on making new memories because it felt like one of my fears was that I wouldn't be part of their lives anymore. So I had to figure out what does being part of my adult children's lives look as opposed to being part of their lives when they're at home.

[00:08:25] And I can tell you on the other side of it, it's better. One of the things that I think Phillip and I started doing is Reconnecting, you really do have to get to a point where you realize that there could have been some disconnect in your marriage with your spouse that has been filled with kids that you need to reevaluate, remake some new perspective on and reconnect in those areas.

[00:08:56] Can you really, the person you fell in love with, the one you [00:09:00] want, you wanted to spend the whole of your life with, do you still spending time with them? And hopefully the answer is yes. More than ever. Yes. The thing of it is Kirk and I have a very unique life situation. He came home to work from home in 1999 when our youngest child was three.

[00:09:23] So we have been, we shared an office for almost 20 years. And we did a lot of co parenting in ways that people who work outside of the home weren't able to. We were able to stay the course. As far as the changes go, the hardest thing for us was Kirk dealt with Empty Nest, but it looked very different for him as a man.

[00:09:50] And it was hard for me not to resent that. And I had to let go of that resentment and understand that he felt it as intensely as I did. It [00:10:00] just looked very different. Wow. Wow. What were some of the things that you saw, how some of the things that you saw that Kurt was processing emptiness differently.

[00:10:11] What were actually some of those things? He was better at embracing new possibilities because golfing with the boys and do things like that and they were much quicker to do outdoorsy things with him. They're all boys. I'm not, I'm a girly girl. I don't fish. I don't climb mountains. It was harder for them to find ways To share their activities with me than they were with him.

[00:10:44] Yeah and he has a really quirky sense of humor. He makes a joke out of everything, so when I was crying and carrying on, he would try to cheer me up. You're right. Make me mad, [00:11:00] humor to diffuse and I did not. Yeah. That's funny. Cause my husband's, there are certain things that he tries to help me in my, if I'm acting a certain way that he just tries to have, find a solution for to calm the moment.

[00:11:17] And sometimes you have to cry. And there is no calming, there is no easy solution. You want to know, you want them to be in the room and they're like, I can't handle this if it's just going to be crying all this time. And there is this, that strange dichotomy that I found. Guys like to have a solution. They like to provide that.

[00:11:40] And all of a sudden you're in a situation where you just have to, Process and you want someone to sit with you through it. And sometimes guys aren't as patient. I don't know. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they just go off and climb mountains with the boys. I think it depends on what their background was, where they came [00:12:00] from.

[00:12:00] My husband is a counselor. He's a biblical counselor. I feel like he was trying to prepare me for these moments years ago. Watch other women go through things and we would have little conversations. Can I just say, even when you have the conversations and you're trying to look in head and be prepared, sometimes your heart and mind are just not.

[00:12:25] for the real emotion of those moments. We were joking Wednesday, our kids, he had been off helping my son do life things in the morning. And I had taken our youngest daughter who's never traveled alone to the airport to go with two friends to Ireland for her 24th birthday. She's there right now. As we speak.

[00:12:46] And we got home and it's so funny. We met in the driveway. He had pulled in and was just sitting there. I pulled in. We both rolled down the windows in our car and just looked at each other. And it was like, when we got [00:13:00] married all those years ago, we did it. Cause we were just crazy about each other. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

[00:13:05] We wanted to do all things together. And then God blessed us. And these Beautiful people got to join our club in a sense, and then your life becomes so wrapped up in all of that and those roles that when they start to mingle off, it's like, all right, now what do we do with us? How do we reconnect? What can we do?

[00:13:30] Were there any moments like that and what did you and your husband do, Edie, to come back together during those times? I think one of the things we did is we decided to be deliberate about it. One of the things we did, one of the first things we did as empty nesters is we revisited where we spent our honeymoon.

[00:13:50] I'm in our honeymoon in Disney World. Awww. And we took a trip with just us to Disney World. [00:14:00] And revisited the kid thing together. We even took a few pictures that we had taken on our honeymoon and stuff. We tried to make sure that we were making time for still going on a date, that we weren't just sitting in front of the TV or him in his office and me in my office.

[00:14:22] And so we just, we also, we live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. We're up in the north part of South Carolina. And so we're real deliberate about taking day trips. And doing things. There's lots of great parks around here and just all sorts of things. We really just decided that we got married because we adored each other.

[00:14:47] And we wanted to make sure that we strengthened that bond even more. Wow. Yeah. You remember you adored this person, but it's it is [00:15:00] true. It is. And you do, but you sometimes forget the ways that you used to connect in that way. And one thing about intentionality of, I find that when you realize that you're spending the rest of your life with someone.

[00:15:18] You have to revisit almost all those feelings that made you fall in love with them sometimes and also be delivered about sharing, sharing that and making those moments intentional. I remember what I used to, Phillip and I, we walk the park every morning and he says, my, what am I? Biggest dreams in my life was growing old and sitting on a bench with someone that I love the person that I was going to spend my life with and I'm like, Okay, let's start sitting on that bench.

[00:15:51] It's what do you imagine your retirement to look like? What do you imagine that? And how do you imagine spending that time with your significant other? What [00:16:00] is what does that look like? And so try starting to make those intentional choices now, instead of later and intentional time. Now, I know that I've been thinking like, as even if you're a single parent and you're an empty nester, what does that look like?

[00:16:18] How do you adjust? Because I imagine that much more being more almost traumatic to all of a sudden be in an empty house, truly. How do you re figure, reconfigure your life in that? I think you go back to the way God designed you. Designed me as a writer. I process life through writing, and that's just the way I am, and so I think that it's important that we continue to nurture who God made us to be, and that makes us a better parent, makes us a better wife, a husband, [00:17:00] it makes us a better empty nester person.

[00:17:03] I think everything goes back to staying connected with God, taking all of these seasons to Him, and letting Him help us see what to keep and what to discard, what to look forward to, what to cherish as memories, and just unravel the whole mess, because He has the perspective we don't. It does.

[00:17:26] So true. It is so true. I know that it is that you do have to, and that's one of the things that we really wanted a lot of in our whole leading ladies ministry. We just want women to realize that there are more than their to do list. There are more than. They're more than their titles in life. They have an inherent meaning and purpose and who God's created them to be.

[00:17:51] And he wants us to realize who we are in him and all the beautiful gifts he's has for us. And. Edie, [00:18:00] did you ever go through a moment in your, I know you went through a very profound moment, actually, when your son all of a sudden lost his wife in a very traumatic, and she had, you had a newborn baby. Yeah, when she passed away.

[00:18:20] And so all of a sudden your life changed dramatically again, and you were stepping in as mama and dad again. To this situation, watching your adult children go through that. Yeah. It is something you experience too. Yeah. So how that's amazing that you had, you have to go through those moments. Who thinks of it when you have that bundle of joy in your arms and are little, someday this little bundle is gonna be an adult and experience a hard thing.

[00:18:54] Yeah. So how did, I'm sure you had to be a bit of a mom with, [00:19:00] okay. Reconfigure and learn how to do some of these things. And then also know when to step back and say, okay, now you take the wheel again. Yeah, it was a process. It was very sudden. It was an accident and it was. We went from happy, joyous newborn family to single dad with a baby who was breastfed.

[00:19:23] We stepped in and immediately I made the decision that I would be mom to our son. be surrogate caregiver to this baby, but I want to immediately empower our son to be mom and dad. I didn't want to, I wanted to keep the grandparent relationship. I didn't ever want this baby to grow up and be confused because my wish, my prayer is that because, Our son lost his wife at such a young age.

[00:19:58] I don't want him to spend his [00:20:00] life alone. So I was hoping that there would be someone come in as his wife who could be a step mom. And so I didn't want to muddy any of those waters. And I don't know, the only thing I can do is say it was God. giving me wisdom, because that is not in my brain to come up with, but that is how we approached it immediately.

[00:20:23] And we lived with our son for several months, but we would also take time away and space to figure out the hard things. And God was just right in the middle of it. It's funny because I learned a lesson about, about, Empty nesting through that our daughter in law was a she was a farmer. She was a micro and a gardener and she had a Houseful of houseplants Wow I am the Terminator when it comes to that.

[00:20:57] I [00:21:00] just, they see me and cringe and die because they're afraid it's going to be a long, horrible death if I die. But, I had to take care of these houseplants. Some of these houseplants were ones that her mother had gotten when she had her in the hospital. These plants carried huge weight. And when we came back home, we took most of them with us.

[00:21:24] Because a lot of them were, we, I was talking to a friend of mine and I said, I am terrified. What am I going to do if I kill these plants? These plants have been around for a long time. She said, they have healthy root systems. They've been well cared for. And you are allowed to make mistakes. And I realized that's the, that's it for empty nesters.

[00:21:47] We have given our kids good, solid roots. We have modeled good and bad behavior so that they can [00:22:00] learn from the good and the bad, and they have a good, solid, healthy root system, and we may not be perfect empty nest parents. But they'll survive, and so will we. Yeah, I told my Penelope, who's actually coming up on her 17th birthday, I said, I didn't know what I was doing when you were a baby.

[00:22:21] And I actually dropped you on your head a couple of times. And she said, that explains a lot. I said, but I learned. But I learned. And you still turned out okay.

[00:22:36] But it makes me think when we do pray for our children as they're growing up, and as they go away from us and establish their own homes, we pray that God will Meet with them, will have intimate relationship with them so that they too can know him like we know him. There's a different type of dependence upon the Lord that happens as a [00:23:00] young adult, that happens as you go into your own life, whether it's career oriented college, you start a new family and you pray that God will meet with them and will do all the things to keep them whole and then away from harm.

[00:23:17] And the crazy part is when God answers those prayers. Yeah. You realize God is not just answering prayers for them because they've learned to pray that way too, right? God is providing for them, but he's also kicking that prayer answer back to you because you've been laying them in his hands. every day of their life, showing himself faithful to them.

[00:23:42] And then you go, Hey, that's even faithfulness to me because this has been my heart's desire for them. He's just so good. And one of the things I think we often forget as mothers is God loves our kids even more than we love them. And we can never [00:24:00] fathom that. And we can never see God is pursuing them with the love that he has for us.

[00:24:09] It's more than we can imagine. They're, he's pursuing them in the same way. He's taking care of them in the same way. He honors that because he loves them. And it's not necessarily all about what we want. It's because he loves them. He loves them. And I think sometimes we forget that it's sometimes as mothers, we can have extreme mom guilt to say, Oh, I didn't pray for you enough.

[00:24:34] I didn't do this. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Is God who he is, who he says he is. And does he love us dependent on how much we pray or not pray or what we missed out on or what we did wrong. And I think that is. And when our, especially when our children go out and they're in situations where they could actually lose their lives, right?

[00:24:57] Does God, is God still there [00:25:00] in that situation? And we have to remember, God loves our children more than we could have, we could ever love them in this life. And he cares for them. Edie, what is the biggest, hurdle you've had to overcome as an empty nester, especially in, as the years go by of your kids being out of the nest.

[00:25:24] There have been several hard ones. I think the biggest one is learning to cope with the fact that I'm not part of their day to day lives. I'm not the first one they come to. No more late night chats on the bed. Teenagers. There's no toddler running to me needing a kiss because he has a boo on his finger.

[00:25:50] It has been trying to figure out how to stay, how to become friends. As [00:26:00] well as parents, because the fact is I respect my boys immensely. I think they are all doing life correctly. I would not go in and say, Oh, you need to fix this. There's nothing in their lives that I feel like really and truly won't either resolve itself or doesn't actually need fixing.

[00:26:21] And I've had to let go of getting and giving advice. And I've had to learn not to. with questions, not because I think they're getting it wrong, but because I just want to be involved. That's true. What if you want to nag them with questions? What if you feel like they're making the wrong choices? What do you do with that?

[00:26:44] One of the things you can do is you can go to my book where they're all exercises, write down some of this stuff. Instead of taking things to them, I journal it. And I ask God to give me insight. I [00:27:00] also started a very specific gratitude journal. After left, when I was trying to come out of that depression, learn how to feel grateful again.

[00:27:11] And I, so I made myself write down three things every day that I was grateful for. And for 30 days, they couldn't be the same three things. Wow. And now I keep a gratitude journal every day. I use bullet journaling system and every, at the beginning of every month is a calendar with a daily place for me to write something I'm grateful for before I go to bed.

[00:27:42] That's amazing. I love that so much. I want to bring up the topic of Sons and daughters in law and we get the parenting role shift with our own children. But then when God brings that person that we've prayed for them into their life, whether it's something, sometimes it's [00:28:00] not always something we feel comfortable with, but it's what our children are doing.

[00:28:05] And we have to somehow find a way to embrace that person. They already have a parent. Some of them may not, but for the most part, they don't need us to come into this situation either and tell them how to do it or what to do. Do you have any tips on that? How do you embrace that in law child? I call them my, I have two sons in love and I think they're wonderful and, but I also have to remind myself, I'm not their mom.

[00:28:35] Yeah. First of all, when my son started dating, I came to a deliberate decision that I would treat every girl they brought in the house like a potential family member. There you go. I did that, and then And there's nothing wrong with that! Friends with old girlfriends. But the other thing that I did is I decided early on that my girls all have moms of their own.

[00:28:59] They [00:29:00] all have wonderful mothers. I love all of my girls that the boys have brought in. But I have always treated them more like grandchildren. Somebody to be spoiled, not mothered. So I spoil them rotten instead of mothering them. So when I have the urge to mother them My love language is gifts, so I usually buy them something.

[00:29:26] Yes. I love that though. You are the best mother in law ever. I love that though. I love that mindset. It's, and I do believe that there are moments God can give you that relationship with them that can be intimate in the right moment where you can share when they ask. I've had my son in laws ask me questions that, I was surprised at that they were willing to talk about and I'm always so grateful.

[00:29:53] You've given us a lot today and I have loved every minute of this. I hope [00:30:00] you, yeah, we need to let everybody know that the book is to launch soon, right? I have a hint of what is this supposed to be coming up July 9th. Is that correct? Yes, of course. Amazon has jumped the gun, so it is on Amazon. So you can jump the gun too.

[00:30:20] I'm just joking. I'm super excited about this one. I feel like it was a long time coming. The publication schedule got delayed by a year because of our Daughter in law's passing. And, but I really believe God's timing is perfect. I'm super excited about this book and I've already hearing from people who are going to be empty nesters as of the fall.

[00:30:46] And so I'm really grateful that it's coming out in the summer to give people a head start on the processing a very different season. Yeah, it's so funny. You have, I love the [00:31:00] soul care series. Why don't you just go through all your soul care books and just give us the, I think everybody needs this as a set.

[00:31:08] I know there's writers everybody writes something, but share, share this, the titles in your series, if you would. The first one was Soul Care When You're Weary, and this one was actually born out of a caregiving season with my dad who had Alzheimer's. The next one was Soul Care for Writers, and this is for people who maybe just journal their thoughts.

[00:31:33] It's people who Not people who seek publication. One was delayed a year and it was soul care when you're grieving. And this one in the writer's marketplace book of the year it came out. And then the last one, and this will be the last one we think is soul care when the nest is empty. And if you go to boldvisionbooks.

[00:31:56] com, they actually have a set of [00:32:00] all four at a special price. That's awesome. I, and they are great. They're great books. And they're, I, so I encourage you, if you don't, if you don't own the, just buy the bundle, just buy the book bundle, they're great books. Everybody needs a lot more soul care and we neglect our soul care.

[00:32:20] So it's such a good thing to have on the shelf. One of the things I've realized is one of the things when we It's this empty nest suddenly happens is you have to start reimagining your space, reimagining right now. My, my husband's out for a few weeks. I'm trying to think about what I want to throw away.

[00:32:40] What rooms do you want to clean up? So we're not only, we're not only letting go of the children, we're letting go of our husband's old shirt. We have way too many old hiking boots with holes in them. Okay, there is so much stuff that our, the nest keeps its, so we need to clean the [00:33:00] nest sometimes. And this is a prime opportunity to get rid of some old shoes.

[00:33:05] And one. Things I did is I actually enlisted my boys and said, what do you think this should be? And so it became less about them losing a room and more, even boys are interested in helping you make changes. They were very happy to offer opinions and, Oh, I think y'all to do this mom, or what about this? Or what's another way to re engage with them and also to let them know, because some kids.

[00:33:35] Struggle more with emptiness than we do that really don't want to go by working together with them. It can help both of us. That's awesome. I love that. I don't want to let any more moments go by too. We need to let people know that Edie along with this book has many specialties. She is a speaker. She has [00:34:00] a blog, the right conversation, W R I G H T.

[00:34:05] No, W R I T E. Sorry, blogspot. com. She is a social media guru and has all sorts of, that's how I've met Edie. She's done some workshops at some conferences. She's a photographer. Yes. She takes the moments that we all want to remember forever and puts them in a picture and teaches us how to do that. And not to mention, she is co director of one of the most awesome, rocking writers conferences in the United States.

[00:34:39] Actually, I could say the world, I'm going to just say the world. The Blue Ridge Mountains. Christian Writers Conference. Is that it? To see if you're the name, right? Which by the way, I did not name it. So it's not which is so beautiful. I really, I just need to, [00:35:00] I need to get out to that side of the woods. We say that every, we've been saying that for the past couple of years.

[00:35:06] We need to make that happen next year. We really need to make it happen. We need to. So for those who are, for those who any wanting to write, have published books, this is just a, such a great writer's conference, probably the best of the best. I'd encourage you go look in the podcast, which is done by our friend Linda Goldfarb, who is listening today.

[00:35:28] And we have some, so that it's an amazing, you guys have Such a great thing going with that, with the conference and the podcast and just a wealth of wonderful, amazing people involved in that you guys had to check it out. And can you give us the website to find out more about the blue?

[00:35:45] Ridge Christian mountains, Christian writers conference. The website is much simpler. It's www. blueridgeconference. com. And our podcast is your best writing life with Linda Goldfarb. We are so [00:36:00] thankful for you being with us today. Would you just close this podcast with a prayer for people who are experiencing this season in their lives?

[00:36:11] It's honor to do that. Most gracious Heavenly Father, how I thank you for the fact that you have given us kids to shepherd and to nurture in so many years and so many seasons. And now Lord, as we're entering this new season, it's a time of letting go and acknowledging that we're not in control and facing some fears.

[00:36:36] And I just pray. That for every person out there who is experiencing this challenging time, that you would speak into their specific situation, that you would give them peace where there once was fear, that you would give them joy where they're battling sadness, that you will give them new relationships with these adult [00:37:00] children that Go exceeding abundantly beyond what they had with them as children.

[00:37:07] Father, I pray that each of us would turn to you that we wouldn't be ashamed of the feelings that we're dealing with and that you, we would allow you to help us navigate. What could be a minefield and instead show us how to fill it with the blooms that you have for all of the fun things coming up.

[00:37:33] We love you and we ask your blessing and we thank you for the way you answer this prayer in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys. Thank you for this time together. And we want to also remind people that we want you to share the live. We also want you to join us for the podcast we have, we are streaming live, our podcasts [00:38:00] on all podcast networks.

[00:38:02] We're excited because we're hitting, we're getting up to that. Thousand downloads and that's exciting because we started this from nothing and God, look what God can do. But so this was our season of life. So we would be so happy if you would download, share, leave a comment and subscribe. And until next time, enjoy your fireworks month because I'm sure we're going to hear them tonight.

[00:38:29] I'm sure we are. Thank you so much. We appreciated it. Yeah. Take care, everyone. Take care. Bye bye. In a world that often tries to confine and categorize, best selling book Leading Ladies discover your God grown strategy for success. Celebrates the diverse tapestry of women just like you and their unique journeys of faith.

[00:38:52] Join Lisa and I as we partner with over 30 women from every hue, age, and walk of life United by one [00:39:00] mission, to let Christ shine through our gifts. Wherever we are. Within the pages of Leading Ladies, you'll find a wealth of wisdom, inspiration, and practical guidance. These women share their personal stories, triumphs, failures, and the lessons they've learned along the way.

[00:39:17] Leading Ladies is more than just a book. It's a movement, a call to action for women of faith to rise up, support one another, and make a difference in the world. Together, let's celebrate the strength, resilience, and faith of leading ladies from every background and be inspired to let Christ shine through your gifts, wherever you may be.

[00:39:38] Leading Ladies, discover your God grown strategy for success. Available now wherever books are sold.