Let's Take a Minute to Reflect

Before we forge forward, let's take a minute to reflect. There's been a lot going on in our nation and a lot of emotions running high. It feels like everything around me is best described as frantic. I believe as apprentices of Jesus, we've been called to a different rhythm in the midst of the storm. Let's talk about it.

Here's where we talked about it on my other podcast As We Grow: 

"On Rest and Grand Learnings"

More thoughts on Sabbath from Season One:

The HOW & WHY of Our Family's Sabbath Rhythm
How I Began My Sabbath Rhythm
Reframing Resistance to Sabbath
How To Start Your Own Sabbath Rhythm 

Add your voice to the table here . . .

Instagram: @joyabaddotcom

Website: JoyAbad.com

Email: hello@joyabad.com

Sign up for my monthly newsletter here and receive a free "Couch-to-Sabbath" plan to guide you to start a sabbath rhythm. 

Transcript

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Coming from a person who has spent decades learning how to bury her emotions, this has been an emotional time for me. And I want to jump right in this week and talk about a way that we can better prepare ourselves for when life hits the fan the way it's been hitting in these last few weeks. Yikes! Here we go. Welcome to season two of the mentors table. Yay! I'm very excited to be here with you guys today and excited for our new format. The way that we're gonna do things around here is gonna be a little bit different, and I think you're really, really gonna like it. I've been really looking forward to this first chat that I have with you. But as always, before we get into the episode too far, we want to take a minute to settle, to be still, and to allow ourselves to focus and come back into our bodies and be present in this moment while we are listening to the podcast. So if you could all take a deep breath in with me and let it out slowly. Relax them. Relax your shoulders. Relax your belly. Relax your leave in your feet. Open your hands. Take another deep breath. The thoughts, the cares, the worries, the pain that is running right now. To just flow out of your hands and surrender to God and focus back here on this moment now. All right, let's get started. So I wanted to start the season off with a little bit of a pep talk, but also a confession and um a challenge for us to just go after a little bit of better in our walk this week. Um in real time, in the last couple of weeks, we have been experiencing as a nation the pain of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but also the intense division and fighting and labeling and arguments over defining terms and labeling what's right and wrong, and who's right and wrong, and what are the right choices to make in this season. And just recently I watched the memorial service for Charlie Kirk and his wife's powerful, powerful eulogy, not only honoring God, but calling all of us to be better and going first by forgiving the person who murdered her husband and the father of her children. I believe that we do not get to the place that Erica Kirk so beautifully modeled for us without creating some intentional rhythms of surrender. And I really believe, and I talked about this more in my other podcast, As We Grow with Gretchen and Joy, that you can find, I'll link it to the show notes down here. But I talked more about how if we as a country had already had a rhythm of Sabbath, and defining Sabbath for those of you who did not tune in for last season, Sabbath, the the word Sabbath or Shabbat literally has two meanings to cease and to celebrate. And when you build that into your weekly rhythm where you stop, you stop working, you stop worrying, you stop toiling, you stop consuming in the sense of like electronic type consumption, and you choose to celebrate, you choose to open your hands and surrender to God, celebrate his goodness all around you, and remember that without your work and toil, the world keeps on spinning and God is still in control. If we had a rhythm like that as a nation already built into our lives, then I believe that every time that we face something as divisive, something as painful, something as shaking as watching somebody be assassinated for exercising his right for free speech. We will instead of going into this frenzy and this panic and this place of pain so intense that we aren't even sure which way is up. We will instead have that muscle memory built to surrender in those moments, to go straight to God who is our source. I believe that Erica modeled for us a level of surrender that she did not get to overnight. She got to because she was practicing it on a consistent basis, and you have to practice, you have to put in the time before you get to the trial to be able to actually surrender and make your focus God and God alone in those times. So here comes the confession part. While I see how much our nation went through really difficult pain and questioning and division, and I see that it could have been better, it could have gone completely different if we had all had a rhythm of rest and celebration and worship and surrender built into our lives. I see that that would have been better. I can see how that could have literally changed the entire narrative, it could have created an even more beautiful and God-honoring moment in our nation's history. And while I see how powerful Sabbath is, and while I understand that it needs to be practiced, my confession is there was still room for improvement in my Sabbath rhythm that was really broadcast strongly to me through this whole situation. I just realized that as I was understanding the importance of Sabbath, seeing how it could take our nation and our own hearts individually to a different place in a time of trial and great pain, I realized I didn't have that level of Sabbath built into my own life. I talk about in my in season one of the podcast about how our Sabbath rhythm is very fluid, um, not flexible. Fluid because water can bend and move into any shape that you push it into. Whereas if something is flexible, it will reach a breaking point. And I think that's important because if we honor Sabbath in a fluid way, then we will not reach a breaking point where we just give up on it completely. But also, I realize that there are always invitations within Sabbath to go a little deeper, to really on a neurological level, really, really deepen the path between pain and surrender in my brain. Where I can not just turn my screens off, not just eat a fun meal with friends and dessert afterwards, not just set some time aside for my family and do something fun, like go on a hike. But I am seeing now that my rhythm of Sabbath needs some intentionality of focusing my eyes and fixing them on God. I've heard lots of people talk about their Sabbath rhythms, and I think it's important to not get too detailed as to what my specific Sabbath rhythm is because that can quickly become for all of you type A and Enneagram ones out there, a list by which you find your identity, you judge your failures or your successes, and just realistically by which you fall headfirst into legalism. So I don't think that that is important nor the focus here. But I think that there are foundational principles or components of Sabbath that we can all find our own way of practicing in our own lives that can bring us back to that baseline of ceasing and celebrating. And I'm realizing now that in my own rhythm, there is not an intentional setting aside of time to focus on God, to process, to feel, to really just give the focus back on God. My focus is more on the celebrating and the ceasing and less on the source of it all, God. And so I'm here to confess to you that I want to do better, and you can feel free to hold me accountable to that as I'm going to explore in my own life what that looks like. What I was gonna say before is that I have heard other people talk about their own rhythms, and some of them do something as simple as sit in a certain chair and just spend some time in silence and feel the feels from that week that have been stored up for that whole week. Other people are intentional to journal, um, other people are intentional to read a psalm or to pray a specific liturgy and set that time aside for pressing into God. And I think that all of those are great starts. I think it's gonna look different for all of you that are listening. I do not want this to be a talk that gets you into some sort of shame or guilt that you need to do more and you start shooting all over yourself. It's not that we should do X, Y, and Z. It's that we're invited to press in even more. And I think that a national tragedy, such as we've just gone through, highlights our understanding of what our baseline is. You know, we're all gonna fall back to our lowest level of training, and when things get really hard and it all hits the fan, what is your lowest level of training? What are you gonna fall back to? Where are you going to look for answers? Where are you going to look as your source? Are you going to take time to rest? Can you rest? I believe that all of those things are um components that spiritual muscle memory that we build up by repetition and rehearsing by doing fasting over or not fasting, sorry, by doing Sabbath over and over again. All of those things will build our spiritual muscle memory so that we can rest, so that we can stop, so that we can worship God and look to Him as our source. I just found too much of my own life pointing to when things started to hit the fan and things got hard. I was not turning to silence, my Bible prayer and meditation. I was turning to my phone and I was turning to my social media and to influencers, and I was listening to podcasts, and I was trying to find out what everybody else was saying so that I would know what my stance was on this. But my only responsibility and the only definition of my stance on any situation that I am up against needs to come from God and God alone. And that is what I believe is a there's a room for improvement in my Sabbath habit. And I just want to encourage and challenge all of you to step into a little bit more in your own Sabbath habits. Now I know that many of you may have listened to a lot of what I said about Sabbath in episode one, or sorry, in season one, and you haven't started anything, and it has felt too overwhelming, too much, and um almost impossible to start a practice that you see as a very slippery slope into legalism and just aren't sure where to start. I want to say, listen, none of us have it figured out. I am not your model sabbather, if that's a word. I am the one that needs to hear this as much as anybody else. And so if you haven't started, then maybe your first step is something small like what we're talking about, and sitting in silence just for like 10 minutes on a weekly basis. Maybe it's journaling intentionally. You pick one day a week that you sit down and you do 20 minutes of journaling. It doesn't even start with a meal for you. Maybe it just starts with just a little bit of time of reflection set aside, fixing your eyes back on God. I think that's a beautiful start to Sabbath. And I just want to encourage you, if you have decided that there's too much to try and take on, and so you just won't do any of it, this is your invitation to start really, really small. And this is my time to confess, even with a bigger start, there's still room for me to grow, and I really see the need for that now more than ever. And so I wanted to bring that to you, ladies, so that you can also share with each other and share with us what are the things that you are struggling with a Sabbath rhythm. And do you see the value after going through a crisis like this of how it could have helped you fix your eyes on God as a as a muscle memory or a reflex almost in a time of so much pain? Let's all name our little bit of butter, as my wonderful friend Jenna would say. What's that little bit of butter that we can do in Sabbathing this week? Would you guys take a second and click in the show notes, text the show, and tell me what your little bit of butter is? And if you know somebody who had a particularly difficult time going through all of this and needs a little bit of encouragement, but not just empty encouragement, but encouragement with a action step behind it that can help get things back on the right track, could you share this with them? I would really, really appreciate it. I believe that all of you can and will put some action to these words and we can all encourage one another together as we continue to develop our habit of Sabbath in our own lives. As I mentioned in the season two preview, I wanted to give you guys a little bit more of my own personal life updates. I'm gonna tag them here at the end of the show so that if you run out of time and you get to the important stuff first, but I just wanted to let you guys know what's going on in our life and as best I can when I am on Instagram. I try to put more personal or family things in my stories as opposed to my posts, so you can always kind of follow along there as well. Okay, so just real quick, it's fall, y'all. Oh, and I don't know about you, but fall is my absolute favorite season. So much so that I named my third child Autumn because I absolutely love this season. And we are at the peak right now here in Wyoming. There are so many yellow leaves on the trees. The light in the evening is golden, the weather is starting to cool, but it's still a little bit warm. It's so peaceful. I've got my decorations already up, I've got my pumpkins on my porch. I am a little nervous about the deer in the area and possibly the moose coming and eating them. So I'm gonna have to bring them in each night. But it's fall and I am loving it. I'm loving having this season. I'm also really loving the girls being back in school and giving me a chance to focus more on my writing, on my podcasting, on the things that bring me so much joy that I believe that God is inviting me to grow in my life right now and in this season. Do you guys pick a word for your year or a word for your season? I have picked words for my year before. I've gone back and forth on whether that's really effective. A lot of times by February, I don't even remember what my word is. So here I am. But then um I have been encouraged by Jenna in her one of her habit courses to pick words for my season as well. And those words just really kind of help set the direction that all of my other habits, such as what my morning routine looks like and what my um focus of my time is on, is all going to trend toward that word for the season. And I really felt like God gave me the word for fall as is expectant. And so I really believe that this is a season that I have been invited to be expectant, and I'll be real honest, in a time where there's so much pain going on in the world around us, that is something that is a little bit more vulnerable and more difficult because I have been disappointed in so many different ways. I mentioned before that I was disappointed, felt a lot of disappointment over the summer because it just didn't look the way that I had um dreamt that it would look. But there were still beautiful things that came out of it. And similarly, I believe that even in the pain and even though the world doesn't look the way that I want it to look right now, I can still be expectant. I have done a lot of praying, a lot of work on myself through counseling. I have done a lot of um fasting and and lifting other prayers up to God. I have done a lot of sewing as far as choosing to follow rhythms that God puts forth in the Bible and um make those a regular part of my life, even when it's uncomfortable or even when it's difficult. And so I feel that God is saying it's okay to be expectant to see some fruit. And what better season to be expectant in than fall? The harvest season. And so I am going with intentional optimism. I don't know, I have trouble using the word optimism because it sounds so like flighty and um shallow, but intentional expectancy that I am gonna see some fruits in this season in my life and that it's also okay to harvest. I believe that this is a word for myself, but I also wonder if it's a word for you as well. Are there things in your life that you have decided because of how hard things are right now? It's not really fair to be expectant for fruits from previous things that you have done to show up. Because I would say, Hey, why don't you give yourself permission to be expectant again? It's okay to be expectant. You worked really hard on those fruits beforehand, on those plants and sowing those seeds and cultivating the ground. And it's okay to expect a harvest even when there's pain happening all around. Maybe that harvest is gonna provide some hope. Maybe it's going to provide some help or some nourishment and comfort for those around you. It maybe that fruit isn't just about you, maybe it's about everybody all around you, and that's why we live in community, and that's why I think that it is okay to be expectant. And so I invite you to ask me if I am staying in a spirit of expectancy, and I would invite you to come and join me in this fall and being expectant. All right, guys, next week I will see you again around the table. Have a great day.