20. Feeling Behind in Life? God Hasn't Forgotten You

Feeling behind in life? God hasn’t forgotten you — and you’re not too late for what He’s calling you into.
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🎬 Watch Next: Why God May Be Making You Wait  ➡️  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnrIjcb_fPw&t=2s
🎬 Watch Next: Feeling Invisible? God Sees You  ➡️  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_-PfvYXvo&t=2s

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#FeelingBehind #ChristianWomen #GodsTiming #FaithOverFear #PrettyDeep

If you’ve been feeling behind in life, afraid you’ve missed your moment, or unsure how to move forward in a new season, this episode is for you. Maybe your body is changing, your children don’t need you the same way, your career feels uncertain, or you’re wondering if there’s still more purpose for your life. The answer is yes... and God has not forgotten you.

In this episode of Pretty Deep, Petrina talks about what it looks like to stop striving and start walking with God one faithful step at a time. You’ll hear biblical encouragement from the story of Abraham, the reminder that God often gives grace like manna — enough for today — and a practical five-question framework called The Next Faithful Step.

This episode is part of 'The God You Didn't Know' — a season of honest conversations about the misunderstandings about God that quietly shape our confidence, identity, and peace. 

Watch the full series here  ➡️  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuIjdmA2_b_OmBO6i6_R8hEsJrkRSXsGz

In this video, you’ll learn:
* Why feeling behind does not mean God is done with you
* How striving shows up in new seasons of life
* The difference between fear-driven pressure and peace-led obedience
* What Scripture teaches us about trusting God without the whole map
* Five questions to ask God when you feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or afraid to move forward

⏰ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Are you starting over right now?
1:55 – Welcome to Pretty Deep
4:10 – The real reason new seasons feel so heavy
5:11 – My own story of starting over (and getting it wrong)
10:23 – A new season is not what you think it is
12:17 – What Abraham can teach you about taking the next step
14:53 – Five questions to ask before you strive again

Our mission here at Pretty Deep is to help Christian women move from striving, overwhelm, and uncertainty into clarity, peace, and purpose through a deeper relationship with God.

Disclaimer: This video is for encouragement, education, and faith-based reflection only. Please use wisdom, prayer, Scripture, and trusted counsel as you apply anything shared here. This video is not sponsored and does not contain affiliate links.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're entering a new life season right now, or you're sensing that God is leading you into one, but you feel pressure and fear and self-doubt, or you're feeling the sense that everyone else is further ahead than you, or you're feeling an exhausting need to figure everything out before you move. This episode is for you. Because starting over sounds very exciting until you're the one actually doing it. Until you're standing at the threshold of something new, looking around, heart in your throat, and thinking, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't feel ready. I don't know if I have what it takes. And I really, really don't want to get this wrong. And before you know it, without even realizing it's happening, you start trying to force it. You start trying to force clarity and confidence. You start trying to force the outcome, to figure it all out by yourself before God has even finished showing you the map. And underneath all that pressure, underneath the striving, there may be a question that you haven't quite said out loud yet. Am I already behind? Did I wait too long? Has everyone else figured this out while I was still standing here? In this episode, we're going to talk about what striving actually looks like and why it shows up so strongly when you're starting a new season. We look at what scripture says about how God leads his people forward. And then I want to leave you with a simple framework, five questions that you can ask God when you feel the pull to strive. I want you to leave today with something concrete in your hands. So let's go. Hi, I'm Petrina and this is the Pretty Deep Podcast, where I help Christian women to move forward from striving and overwhelm and uncertainty into a place of clarity and peace and purpose. And we'll do this through a deeper relationship with God. If you're new here, welcome. Hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. I want to name something before we go any further. Because starting over doesn't always look dramatic from the outside. It could look like a career that you're stepping away from or stepping into. It could look like children no longer needing you the way they used to. It could be a loss, a move. It could even be your body feeling different than it used to. It could be a creative idea that God keeps nudging you towards or a calling that just won't go away, no matter how many times you've tried to talk yourself out of it. Maybe you wouldn't even call it starting over. Maybe it sounds more like, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel so behind. I'm so scared I'll get it wrong. I don't feel confident. I have no idea how to move forward. And everyone else seems to know what they're doing. Why don't I? That is your new season. And here is what starting over can feel like if we're honest. It can feel like excitement and fear at the same time, like grief over something that has ended, like pressure to already know what comes next, or even like embarrassment about beginning again because you're old enough to know better and new enough in the season to feel like a total beginner. It can feel like comparison with people who seem further ahead than you. Fear of being seen trying. Or fear of failing publicly, fear of wasting time, fear of making the wrong move, fear that you've already missed your moment. Can I say something? Sometimes the hardest part of a new season is not that God is absent. It's that we are trying to carry the pressure of the whole future instead of just receiving grace for the next step. That pressure has a name. It's called striving. I want to make striving really concrete for you because it can sound like a vague spiritual word, but it shows up in very specific and practical ways. Striving looks like obsessively trying to figure out the whole plan before you can even take a single step. It looks like overthinking every decision until the decision makes itself for you, usually by default. It looks like constant comparison with other people, with their pace, their platform, their progress, and then measuring yourself against a race that you were never meant to run. It looks like saying yes out of fear. It looks like rushing ahead of peace and needing certainty before obedience. It looks like trying to manufacture confidence that you're not yet feeling, or trying to force open a door that's not moving or budging. You know, I know all of this, not just theoretically, personally. Some of you know that I started this podcast after a long season of waiting. What you may not know is what happened when God finally moved me forward. Because even when I started moving, I was still striving. I was trying to figure out what my podcast should be about entirely by myself. I wasn't bringing it to God or doing the slow inner work with Him first. I was just trying to construct the what before I had done any of the who. I was comparing myself to other creators constantly. I was watching what they were doing, how they were showing up, what was working for them, quietly trying to build something without first being clear on who I actually was and who God had made me to be. And all this in the name of research. And here is the thing that I've come to understand about that season. I was just not ready. Not because I lacked skill or experience, because I had 30 years of that. But because I had not done the foundational work, the inner work, you know, the slow, steady, thorough work of finding out who I was in Christ. And here's something I want to say about that kind of striving, because it shows up in every area of life, not just in your calling or your career. In my case, I do it with my children too. I love them more than I have words for. But God loves them infinitely more than I possibly can. And yet, I find myself trying to solve things that only God can handle. I worry about outcomes that only He can hold. And I try to fix in my own strength what was never mine to fix. That is striving. And you know what? It's dressed up as love. But underneath it is fear. Here's the most important distinction I want you to take away from this section. I'm not telling you to do nothing. Striving is not the same as obedience. Activity is not the problem. Doing things in your own strength, without God, ahead of God, or instead of God, that's the problem. The difference is this striving says, I must make this happen. And faithful obedience says, God, what is my next step? Striving says, I need the whole plan before I move. Faithful obedience says, Lord, I trust you with the path. Striving says, I have to prove that I'm capable. Faithful obedience says, Lord, I belong to you before I produce anything. Striving is driven by fear. And obedience, it's led by peace. Here's something I want you to hold on to. Striving will always feel like pressure. And obedience, though it may stretch you, it will never crush you. So, what changed for me? I wish I could give you one dramatic moment, one lightning bolt, or one clear day where everything shifted for me. But that's not how it happened. It was a collection of moments, slow, steady, cumulative. God working quietly on the inside of me, long before anything changed or was visible on the outside. And what he was doing over time was showing me who I was. He showed me that I was his, that he thought that I was qualified, not because of any certificate or credential or track record, but because he said so. He showed me that the experiences that I had lived, all the years of them, were not wasted. They were all formation. He showed me that the gifts that he had placed in me were real and meant to be used and definitely not mine to downplay. And when the penny finally dropped, it wasn't one moment. It was more like a quiet settling. A sense of, oh, this is who I am. This is what I have to offer. This is what God has called me to. In my body, it felt like relief, joy, and a sense of direction that I'd been trying all this time to manufacture by myself. It hadn't arrived through striving. It only came when I surrendered to God. Now, I want to be really honest with you. That work is not finished. It will never be completely finished on this side of eternity. The work of knowing who you are in Christ and of letting God reshape what you believe about yourself, that is lifelong work. Any work that God does in you is slow, steady, thorough, and it takes time. More time than we humanly want. More time than feels comfortable to us. But here's what I know: you don't have to be finished to move forward. You don't have to be fully formed to take the next faithful step. God doesn't wait for your complete transformation before he uses you, he walks with you through that transformation. I want to quickly bring something in here because over the last couple of episodes, we've been talking about something together. We've talked about waiting. You know, God, why are you making me wait? I've prayed about this for so long. We've talked about the hidden work that God may be doing in you in that season when nothing seems to be moving. We even talked about feeling invisible and about what it means to feel fully seen and known by God, even in the seasons when the world is walking right past you. And now here in this episode, we arrive at the natural next question. So God's been forming you and He sees you. He has not forgotten you. And now He's leading you forward. So what do you do with that? Here's the reframe I want to offer you. A new season is not an exam. Let me say that again. A new season is not an exam. So many of us approach a new season like we're about to be tested, like God is watching to see if we're going to get it right, choose perfectly, move fast enough, prove ourselves, produce something really impressive. But what if a new season is not an exam? What if it's an invitation? An invitation to trust God more deeply, to slow down enough to listen, to release our old identities that no longer fit, and to stop performing and start walking with God. What if it's a time to learn peace before we are productive? What if it's a time to move from self-reliance, which we just talked about being exhausting, into dependence, which is actually where the fruit of our labor will be evident. You don't have to strive your way into a season that God is leading you into. You can walk with him into that season. Now, I want to take you to a story in scripture because this is not a new problem. And God has been showing his people how to walk with him one step at a time since the beginning. So in Genesis 12, 1, God speaks to Abraham. And here's what he says: go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. Did you catch that? To the land I will show you. Not here's the full address, here's the five-year plan, here's a complete breakdown of what you'll face, how long it'll take, exactly what you'll need to do when you get there. Just go to the land I will show you. God didn't give Abraham a five-year plan. He gave him the next step. And what did Abraham do? He went. So Abraham didn't have the complete map. He didn't know the timeline. He did not feel fully prepared for everything ahead of him. But he did trust God who called him and he went. That is the model. That is exactly what walking with God in a new season looks like. Not certainty about the outcome, not clarity about every step. It looks like a call, a promise, or a direction. And a God who can be trusted with the rest. Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your path straight. So lean not on your own understanding. That is the antidote to striving. When we strive, we lean hard on our understanding. We analyze, we plan, we compare, we force. But the path is made straight by God as we walk with him, not ahead of him. And there's one more image I want to give you. Think about mana. When God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness, he didn't give them a warehouse of manna. He gave them what they needed for the day. Every morning, fresh, and enough for that day. That's often how God gives grace. Not enough to make us feel in control next year. Just enough for today. Enough for us to take the next faithful step. Now that's not lack. That is an invitation to come back to God every single day and to trust Him every single day. It's called faith in it. I want to give you something really practical to take away from today because I'm not interested in leaving you with a beautiful idea that has nowhere to land. And it's a simple framework. Five questions you can bring to God in prayer in your journal wherever you meet with God when you feel like you're pulling towards striving. So, question one is what has God actually asked me to do today? Not someday, not everything, just today, not the whole season, not the complete strategy, not the answer to every question you have about where this is going. What is the one thing God has asked you to do today? That question alone will fight off more anxiety than most of us realize. Question two, what am I trying to control? The outcome? Other people's opinions of me? The speed at which this thing is moving? Whether people can see my progress? Whether I feel confident before I obey, name it. You cannot surrender what you have not named. Question three, where am I confusing fear with wisdom? This one is subtle, but it's important because sometimes we call it being sensible. We say I'm waiting for the right time or I'm being responsible and making sure I'm ready. You know what? Sometimes that is wisdom. But sometimes, if we are honest, underneath the sensible language is the fear of being seen trying. The fear of failure, the fear of looking foolish, the fear of being a disappointment to somebody. Ask yourself honestly, is it wisdom or is this fear wearing a sensible coat? Question four, what would peace-led obedience look like here? Not passive or lazy or sitting still. Peace-led obedience might be brave, it might be uncomfortable, and it might still require you to do the hard thing, but it's not driven by panic. It's not running ahead of God or trying to produce only what God can produce. Question 5. What is one small step I can take with God? Just one. It might be making the call, writing the email, creating the thing, saying yes, saying no, or stopping the over-researching and just starting, praying before planning, having the conversation you've been avoiding, or opening your Bible instead of your phone. One step. Not the whole journey, not proof of concept, not evidence that this will all work out. One faithful step with God. And here's what I want you to take away from today. You don't need confidence for the whole journey. You need trust for the next step. So I've made a downloadable for you, the next faithful step worksheet with five questions, beautifully laid out, space to write. If you want, print it and write in it, and if not, use it digitally. It's completely free, and the link is in the description. Pop your email in and I'll send it straight to you. So if you're starting over or entering a new season, or even sensing that God is calling you forward before you feel ready, you don't have to strive your way into security. You don't have to prove that you're ready. You don't have to know the whole map before you take the next faithful step. God who led you there is more than able to lead you through there. I also just want to say that this is the last episode of season two. It has been such a privilege walking through this season with you, through waiting, through hiddenness, and now through starting over. Thank you so much for being here. Season three is coming, and I cannot wait to tell you what God has placed on my heart for it. Make sure that you are subscribed so you don't miss it. For now, let's seal this season the way I love to seal every season with prayer. Father, for the woman who's listening right now and standing at the edge of something new in her own strength trying to figure it out. Lord, show her that she was never meant to carry this alone. Quieten the striving inside her heart, Lord, not the obedience, the panic. The part of her that's trying to force or carry an outcome that she's not supposed to carry alone, that she's supposed to trust you with. Remind her that she doesn't need confidence for the whole journey. She just needs trust in you for the next step. Show her, Lord, what that next step is. Not the five-year plan, just the faithful next step. Lord, where she's confused fear with wisdom, help her see it, Lord, gently and help her to hand it over to you. Where she's comparing her pace with others, Lord, remind her that she's not running their race. Their race is their race. She's walking on her road with you. And she's not behind. She has not missed the mark. She has not missed her moment. And you, Lord, have not changed your mind about her. You called Abraham forward without the whole map. You are the God that gave the Israelites fresh mana every morning. Enough for that day. Always enough. Lord, lead her forward not in striving, but in resting and faithful trust in you, Lord, one step at a time. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Truly, thank you so much for being here today and for being here this whole season. If this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it. Think about the women in your life who are standing at the edge of something new, who are afraid or striving or who need to hear that they can walk with God instead of running ahead of him. Send it to them. And if the last couple of episodes in this arc have been speaking to you, I've linked the last two episodes below. We talked about why God may be making you wait and about what it means to be fully seen by him, even in hidden seasons. This episode really does complete that journey. Waiting, being seen, and now moving forward without striving. Grab the faithful next step worksheet in the description. It's free. And if you're not subscribed, please do. Season 3 is coming, and I would love to keep walking through it with you. So much love.