How to Reset and Recalibrate Your Spirit

If it has been a week, this episode is for you. In addition to the collective weight of living through this socio-political era, many of us are navigating interpersonal and personal hardship. Maybe it was work. Maybe it was a relationship. Maybe it was the weight of simply being a Black woman in spaces that were not built to hold you.

But here's what we're moving away from today: the idea that we to surrender our peace and calm to the hard things. No, sis! Today, I'm giving you six strategies to help you shake the dust off your spirit and get back to it.  

Six Practices to Reset and Recalibrate:

1. Name what's real - Give yourself permission to be honest about what happened before jumping to gratitude (Psalm 142:1-2).
2. Return to your body - Rough weeks often live below the neck. Rest, move, eat, breathe. Physical care is spiritual care (1 Kings 19:5-8).
3. Tell yourself the truth about yourself - Not what the week said about you, but what God says about you (Psalm 139:14).
4. Reconnect with your why - A hard week cannot touch your calling (Jeremiah 29:11).
5. Do one small, sacred thing - Sometimes, just one intentional act can lead to the reset you're seeking. (Lamentations 3:22-23).
6. Get up - Know the difference between resting and ruminating. When you shift your body, you shift your atmosphere (John 5:8).

The Challenge: Pick ONE of these six practices and do it TODAY. Not this week. Not when things slow down. Today. Because the goal is not to recover from hard weeks faster - it's to be so rooted that hard weeks meet a woman who is already grounded.

great!b thank you!

10:19 PM

You're so welcome, sister!

I'm so glad I could help! You're building something truly beautiful and powerful with A Wide Open Space. Every episode is giving Black women the spiritual depth, practical tools, and permission they need to flourish.

Whenever you're ready to work on the next episode or anything else for the podcast, I'm here! Keep making your mark, Dean! 🎤✨🙌

 Sonnet 4.5

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to a wide open space. Here, our focus is strengthening our faith, cultivating ourselves, and creating lives that we love. I'm your host, Reverend Dr. Nishelle Gidry Stewart. Well, hello, my sisters, and welcome back to this Your Wide Open Space. I am your host, the Reverend Dr. Nishelle Gidry, and I am so glad that you are here with me on another Saturday morning. I want to just pause before we jump into today's very quick episode to just acknowledge that if you are like me, a woman who serves in ministry, we are right here on the heels of Holy Week, which, in the words of my sister, the Reverend Jessica Bass, is the Super Bowl of the church. And we know that Holy Week can be full of activities and responsibilities and pressure for those of us who serve in ministry. So I am acknowledging my sisters who serve and praying your strength through this week. Pray that you find times for grounding, finding that find times for um stillness and solitude, and that you will be met by God, met by spirit as you prepare to give all that you have to give. Whether you are preaching or just showing up, um, may your cup also run over. Um, we are also coming to the end of Women's Hurst Three month and just want to acknowledge all of you, all of you, because I don't care what you do, I don't care where you serve, I don't care what your title is. If you show up in any capacity that requires that you get out of bed and do things that some days you don't want to do, you deserve to be celebrated. Um, you are women's history every day. And so I celebrate you. I celebrate the women who have come before all of us, who have inspired us, who have opened up ways that make our possibilities even possible. So um, this is a way of life. This is how uh we want to celebrate ourselves and our sisters and our mothers and our aunties and our mentors. Our models, our muse is um 365 days a year, okay? And so I'm gonna go ahead and jump into it because um, you know, a lot is happening on a global scale, on a national scale. I don't care where you live in this country, I know that a lot is also happening locally and a lot of things are happening personally. And I want to talk today about how we can command our spirits and take our energy back. Um, yes, I know that there are systems that are at play and that we are living in a white supremacist. Um, I mean, I don't have enough words to talk about the regime that has been just unleashed in this country. I don't have enough words to express that I don't know how we are back in a situation under this completely inept person's leadership in this country. But I do know that what it has caused in so many of our lives is an upheaval and uh an uprooting of so much of our norms and so many, so much of our, not just our comforts, but our rights. And it has also unleashed unnecessary animosity from person to person, from community to community. And so much of that, you all, I mean, we we will be learning the systemic and cultural and political ramifications of this era and this administration for many years to come. But while we are still living it, so many of us are experiencing daily onslaughts to our spiritual wellness, our sense of peace of mind, sense of calling, place and purpose, and our basic sense of safety. And one thing that I am learning in this season is that if you don't have a command over your spirit, if you don't have your toolkit of how to call your spirit back, how to recalibrate your energy, this is going to be an even longer, you know, what, three and a half years of this madness left. And this week alone, I have had to do so much um spiritual alchemy, um, resetting my spirit, grounding my spirit, reminding myself who I am, um, just to navigate and and and to maintain. And I know that I am not the only one. I know that some weeks are harder than others. I know that some lines of work are harder than others. I know that if you don't have a support system that includes, you know, people with emotional intelligence. I know that if you are in a position of taking care of others, um, it can feel harder than it does for others. And so without getting into all of the varying levels and expressions of hardship, I do want to just I I give you this episode as something that you can refer to when you have to call yourself back uh from the brink of the anger, the anxiety, the frustration. And yes, even that feeling of like lashing out and descending into the lowest parts of hell when people are provoking you. Um and so let's just take a nice collective deep breath and remember the power of the spiritual authority that we have all been given to be able to command our spirits, like I said, to call ourselves back to ourselves and to remember that this chaos and this provocation are not our inheritance. And we do not have to lose ourselves in the process of trying to address it and trying to create a better world and a more safer context for ourselves and the people that we love. So maybe you are coming off of a hard week or hard few days or hard year, maybe. Maybe it was work or maybe it was a relationship. Again, like I'm recognizing that there's so many layers to what black women are navigating right now, in addition to the political. It is also deeply personal and interpersonal. So maybe it was work or a relationship, or maybe it was simply the weight of being a black woman who has to navigate spaces that were never created for you, never created to hold you, spaces that may be asking so much of you without any cultural compensation for pouring back into you and acknowledging what you have given and who you are in the space. Maybe it is the slow sort of grinding exhaustion of being the strongest person in the room or the room or the person who has to hold the room together. Maybe it is that bone deep fatigue that comes from navigating white spaces or navigating patriarchal spaces. Um, every single day, having to code switch or having to switch from, you know, putting on your boss hat to putting on your spouse hat to putting on your mom hat. Maybe it's the grief of permission that you have not been given to be fully human. Um, maybe it is the feeling of feeling like I don't have the visibility that I want. And um, I feel erased, I feel unseen, I feel unacknowledged. Maybe it's some physical um issue, maybe there's some sickness that you're navigating, or um, the weight of caring for an aging parent or a sick child or someone in your life who has who you feel drawn to to see about and to care for them. Maybe um there's some pain in your own body. I don't know. The laundry list can go on, but today's episode is all about you know what? Yes, all of these things are true. And there are other things that are true at the same time. There are alternate realities that I can tap into. There are counter-narratives that I can write, there are other spaces that nourish me. There are other relationships that do give me a sense of equity and mutuality. And so, whatever it is that you're navigating, I see you, not just I see you, but I am you. I'm with you. Today is really all about how to go back and fetch your spirit, how to go tap into the spiritual authority that you have that we have been given to create some hedges of protection around our mind and to reclaim our thought patterns from the ruminations uh that can result from being in a tight space. I want to give you six practices for recalibrating your spirit and calling your energy back to you. So let's get into it. Number one before you contend to yourself, I need you to name what's making right now so hard. Say it, do not spiritually bypass it. Don't jump straight to the gratitude before you let yourself acknowledge the weight of what you are standing in right now. Ignoring that there is a hardship that's happening in your life right now is not faith. It is not stewardship. That is what you call avoidance and spiritual bypassing. And so the first thing that I want to give you permission to do in this space where you're navigating whatever you're navigating is I want you to just be honest. Yeah, this is hard. This doesn't feel good. This is not what I signed up for. You can have that. This is for the birds. There is a biblical precedent in Psalm 142 where the psalmist writes, I cry aloud to the Lord. I lift my voice to God for mercy. I pour my complaints before God. Before God, I tell God my troubles. So the psalmist, which this is a psalm that is accredited to David, did not start with praise. He started with a form of lament, a form of honesty, a form of naming he poured out before God. And maybe it was something, I don't know what situation this would this psalm was was correlated to, but it does set a standard that in the life of even the most faithful, even the most purposeful, and even the most called, we have to normalize being able to complain to God. And I'm not gonna even spiritualize the language. Sometimes it's not a lament, sometimes there's there is no faith at the heart of it, which is I think what lament is. Sometimes a complaint is just like I don't like the circumstances, and I don't like the context that gives rise to the circumstances. It is an honest naming that I know we can all do better here. And it is an honest naming that I deserve better. That is the kind of access that we have to God, and that is the kind of access that we can have with ourselves if we would allow ourselves to remove our masks, to remove our scripts, and to just be honest. That's strategy number one. Name what's real. Strategy number two, return to your body. Yes, part of what I feel is a part of the political strategy in this time is this onslaught of um very, very overt stripping away of our liberties and our modalities and our freedom is like we're gonna just stress y'all out. We're gonna make you so anxious that you then begin to detach from holding us accountable. You'll detach from feeling angry enough to do something, to say something, to write a letter, to call your congressperson. We're gonna stress you out. We're gonna induce such a type of anxiety that you become detached, not just from your sense of power, but from your sense of reality. And so part of how we take that back is we have to get back into the body. The body, the body that is the home to that anxiety, the body that is the home to that fear. We've got to get that stuff up out of our bodies because we know uh the body does keep the score, right? And we have to move some of that energy so that it doesn't stay there and become something that we have to seek treatment for down the line. And so if you're recognizing that you've got some tight, tight shoulders or your neck is feeling sore, or you've got some pain in your lower back or in your hips or in your gut, if you are noticing that you're not sleeping through the night, or you can't fall asleep. Yes, these might be hormonal. Hello to my perimetapusal sisters, but this could also mean that you've got some energy that you've got to move through your body, your body. Your recalibration, your calling your spirit back can and often is um be somatic. It can't only be spiritual, it cannot only be prayer, it cannot only be intellectual, like being able to analyze a thing. But you've got to get into that body, go take a run, go sit in your bath, go get a massage. Even something as simple as go find yourself, if you have some body oil, treat yourself to a self-massage, rubbing on your feet, rub your hands, rub your lower back, you know, maybe say some affirmations. The peace of God resides here. The peace of God is in my body. I am releasing whatever you are releasing. Move your body, rest your body. Uh, eat something that's good for you. Maybe get a green juice or go get you some hot water with lemon, which is very good for digestion and very good for eliminating. And so don't go go get you a hot water with lemon. Take some nice deep breaths. Go take a walk outside. Love me my walking pad over here, but it doesn't have the same effect as putting on some shoes and going outside. All right, when I can see the sun, hear the birds, say hi to some neighbors. That's a different experience. Okay, so maybe lace up and go for a walk. These are not indulgences, sisters. These are ways that we can take ourselves back and say to ourselves and even to the situations that are that are fighting for our attention and our allegiance, you don't get me. I am still self-possessed and I still care about myself. All right. That's strategy number two. Strategy number three. And if I could, if I could just, you know, encourage you to take out a highlighter or take down a note, this is the one right here. And number three is tell yourself the truth about yourself. Not what this week said about you, not what your doctor said about you, not what that person who got you messed up said about you, not what your job or you know, your business partner or your parent or whoever, whoever had you all effed up this week. I'm not telling you, I'm asking you not to replay those messages, whether they were overt, whether they were covert, whether they were subtle, or whether they were absolutely meant to hurt you or to break your spirit. I want you to silence those voices right now and tell you the truth about you. You're not falling apart, you're not falling behind, you're not bad at your job, you're not a bad parent, you're not a bad friend, you're not lazy, you're not unprofessional, you're not whatever you name it. Let me give you some things to tell yourself about yourself, just in case you need a little script. You are a woman who is called, you are a woman who is in process, you are a work in progress that as much as you know you are still learning, you are a woman who is fiercely loved, you are deeply admired, and you are navigating a world in which critics can often be so much louder than supporters. You are a woman who is about her business. You have taken the steps, you have gotten educated, you've gotten your certifications, you've read your books, you've shown up for yourself, and you deserve to continue doing that. You are a woman who lavishes love upon herself because you know that you are worthy. And you don't have to wait on anyone else's agreement, you don't have to wait on anyone else's affirmation. And while they would be nice to get that, you don't need it. You are a woman who is loved. You have friends who love you, you have family, whether they're family by birth or by choice, who are celebrating you in this season. You are seen, you are important and you matter. Yes, and I want you to take a minute now to just fill in the blank to add to that whatever you need to hear. Yes, because more important than what I have to say about you is what you have to say about yourself. There is again in the Psalter Psalm 139, a precedent where the psalmist writes, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. All your works are wonderful, including me. This I know full well. In the words of the great Donald Lawrence, who is in my top three gospel artists or musical artists, literally of all time. Sometimes you have to speak over yourself. Sometimes you have to encourage yourself in the Lord. So I also want you to say, in addition to what do you say about you? What does God say about you? Ooh, I got a whole lineup that often makes it into my sermons of biblical affirmations that I speak over myself very regularly. I am blessed in the city, I'm blessed in the field, I'm blessed in my coming, in my going, am I lying down? Am I rising up? I am blessed in my labor and in my leisure. I am the lender, I'm not the borrower. And every tongue that rises against me shall be condemned. So you gotta, I don't know what you've got to do, sis. But if you got to get yourself a script, encourage yourself. Speak over yourself. In fact, I want you to go put that song on your playlist, because that is a that is such a powerful song because it just reminds us that there is still power in how we speak. The power of life and death are in the tongue. So if you go open up your mouth, stop talking about those situations, stop talking about those people. If you are going to utilize the spiritual currency of your language, start speaking life over yourself, start speaking life into yourself, start speaking life over the dry bones of your dreams that you've walked away from, or your projects that you've walked away from, or the work that actually brings you to life. And you've got to create something on the side. And maybe you've decided not to do it because you don't have time, or where's the money gonna come from? Sis, start speaking life over those dreams. Start speaking life over those visions, okay? And speak life over yourself. I am an artist, I am a dreamer, I am a creator, I build worlds. God speaks Speaks through me. God uses my talents as a vehicle to do transformation in this earth. Sis, take back your words. Okay. Take back your words. I just have to just pause because. Amen. Okay. Hallelujah. Okay. And I know I don't always like switch into preacher mode on a wide open space, but I'm going with God today. All right. All right. So what I just said is not wholly unconnected from strategy number four. And that is you need to reconnect to your why. And I want to also just pause here to normalize that people of purpose, people who are about that life, that purposeful life, about their, about God's business. And in the words of the great Katie Geneva Canon, doing the work your soul must have, you are going to come into friction. You are going to experience tension. And you might be sold out on the righteousness of your work and your purpose. But don't expect for everyone else to have the same persuasion and the same conviction about you. And I think that as soon as you can divest from needing that, you can just walk this purpose out with so much clarity and so much authority. But go ahead and reconnect with that sense of purpose, with that why. And I want to just say no hard day, no hard week, no hard season can touch your calling. It can exhaust you, it can discourage you, but it cannot revoke what God has called you to do. And it absolutely cannot revoke the gift of God that is in your life. I want you to come back to the reason why you said yes to your work in the first place. Come back to why you showed up to begin with. Go back to what drove you to go get that education or go get that training. Come back to the image of the people who are in need, or even that feeling of this is what I what I feel called to do. And it's because it makes me feel alive and fulfilled and satisfied. Like you got to come back, no matter your reason why. Whether your reason why is your grandmother who didn't get an education past second grade, or your auntie, who you had a front row seat to her trying to navigate life in the wake of being left by her spouse. Or even your why might be, you know what? I read about Maya Angelou suffering sexual assault as a child and not speaking for seven plus years in her childhood. And when she found her voice, she found it and she unleashed it. Like, I don't know what your why is, but I need you to take some time to reconnect with it. Sit with it and let that thing call you back to a sense of purposefulness right now. Okay. Number five, do one small sacred thing. You don't need a reset. You just need one intentional act that says, I'm choosing to return to myself. I'm choosing to return to God. I'm choosing to return to my calm and return to my peace. So again, maybe this is taking a walk or going to pour yourself a nice slow cup of tea, or one of my favorite things to do. I love to walk over to my coffee corner and make myself a pour over or make myself a latte. Or maybe it's like, you know what, forget that. I'm gonna go to my favorite coffee shop and let somebody else do it for me. Or you know what? I'd like to go find a wine bar and go sit and have me a nice tasting, nice three, three different wines and just enjoy or have a nice meal, or maybe I want to call up one of my girlfriends or FaceTimer out of the blue because I want to see her. You know, one small sacred act just because it fills you up. Maybe it's a worship song, maybe it's going to God in prayer, maybe it's uh unplugging and enjoying some time of silence and solitude. I think when we get back to this one small thing, if that one small thing, that sacred thing, is all we can squeeze out, let that be the reminder of what is written in Lamentations. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. God's compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, and sometimes faithfulness is not in the grand overtures of life. Maybe it's in a small sacred thing I can do right now. Such as a nice deep breath to just bring me right into this present. You got that at your disposal, sis. Which leads me to my final strategy. You can call your energy back, you can command your spirit by getting up. And I think Mary Mary has a song called Get Up. Yes, and I don't know why I didn't include this in my notes, but it just came to me. And it was a song that was in heavy rotation during some of the hardest seasons of my life. Says, get up. If you can't, yeah, I don't know. I I have to I gotta um go look it up. But look that song up. That is beautiful, it's powerful and motivating. But this is my last strategy, y'all, and it's simple. Get up. Not because rest is wrong, but because there can be a really fine line between laying in the bed and resting and laying in the bed and ruminating, replaying things that offended you, replaying scenarios that hurt you, replaying records that are just oppressive. Okay. And you know what I'm talking about. There is a kind of stillness that stops being restful and starts being stagnation, and your spirit will know the difference. It's it's what you call languishing, and it looks like lying down, but feeling stuck. And if you're honest with yourself, you know when you're slipping into languishing and ruminating and stagnation, and it's and you know from experience that that is anything but restful. So get up, get out of the bed, sis, or off the couch, or whatever. I want you to go wash your face. I want you to do your skincare routine. I want you to put some makeup on. Or if you don't put makeup on, I want you to do whatever you what feels good to you to elevate your vibration and feel yourself. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Go get dressed, okay? Give yourself somewhere to go. Give yourself a project to jump back on it. Come back around to that dream, that vision. Even if it's just in some. Is there a call you can make today? Is there an email you can send today? Is there something you can do today to move yourself to a place of, but I'm not going to languish. I want you to get up. I want you to get up in every possible sense. Get up out of that, that whatever it is that you've been laying on and you've been playing these images and scenarios and dialogues over and over again. Stop. Get up. Okay. Go do go do something to yourself. Go get some clothes on. Get out the house. Get some fresh air. Open a window. Something. This is what it means to move spiritually. As we've already talked about returning to the body and moving the body, movement is also spiritual. When you shift your body, you begin to shift your atmosphere. You begin to open up new portals when you start to see things differently. Or when you, or the kind of portal where it's like, you know what? I'm going to focus on something completely different. This situation or whatever it is, it's gotten enough of my time. And when you're really mature and honest, you can be able to say, and there's nothing else I can do. So I might as well stop circling the thing. Get up, get dressed, get out the house, do something. You make yourself available to what God has been trying to get to you that couldn't reach you while you were still in the place of your languishing. This is why at this point in my life, this is why I'm in the gym three to four times a week. Because I need the mental, I need the mental benefits. I need the way that it helps me to de-stress. I need the way that it helps me to dig into a different avenue of my own strength and my own power. I need the way that when I'm doing something that feels really, really heavy, I can grunt or scream. I know I probably annoy some of the people I work out with, but I'm very vocal in the gym. And part of it is because the thing is heavy, but part of it is also like I got some stuff to let out. And it's a way that God and me work together to keep my mind regulated. And here I'm thinking, and this is going to be my last word to you. There is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. You know, I love what I love so much about Jesus is that he was just all about like, when you're ready, I'm here. And you can change your circumstances. And there's a story in John 5 where he meets a man who has um, he was unable to walk. And for many years, you know, there was this um cultural belief that, you know, there was healing in the water of, I want to say Bethesda. I might be wrong. Um, but because he was unable to walk, he could never get to the water when the waters were stirred. And people who were also wanting to be healed, you know, no one stopped to check on this man. They were in a rush to get there while the waters were stirred. And so for many years, not only could he not get his healing, but he was watching everybody else get theirs. Well, here comes Jesus one day and is like talking to him, getting the context of the story, learning about him. Um, and he says to him quite simply, Rise, take up your mat and walk. In other words, you have been here long enough. And I know that there were all kinds of issues at hand and all sorts of barriers to your healing. But in this moment, what I really need for you to understand is that the greatest power is not just mine, because I could touch you and make you well, but the greatest power right now is yours. So why don't you rise? Why don't you get up that mat that you've been laying on and walk? It's time for you to get into a new space, it's time for you to get into a new season. The healing and the movement for that man, we're in the same moment in the same movement. So, sis, get up. Okay, rise, take up your mat and walk. Something is waiting for you on the other side of that threshold. All right, that was your six strategies. Got a little preachy here. Hopefully that didn't turn anybody off. But you know what? It's for who it's for. All right, and I hope that it was a blessing. All right. So here's what I want you to do. Here's your homework. I know this is a little bit of a different format, but one thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you something to do. All right. I want you to just pick one, one of these strategies, one of these practices, and I want you to do it before the day is over. And I want you to do this, especially if you're coming through a hard week or you're in the middle of something that feels really heavy. I want you to take the time to call your energy back, that the thing does not have to be over. You do not have to have a sense of resolution for you to come back to yourself, to love on yourself. You don't have to have a resolution to praise and thank God. You don't have to have a sense of finality or conclusion or knowing how a thing is gonna work out. You really just have to claim this moment and claim the power and the authority that are yours right now. All right. So just one, just one. And what I want you to do is start to think about how you can create a sense of rhythm with this thing. Because this is the truth. Again, if you are living a purposeful life, you're gonna come into these situations where there's pushback, where there's tension, where there's hardship, where there's uncertainty, where there is even what might feel like attack. But you know what? While you let God do what God does, you just stay under that secret place. You stay in that hiding place, you let God cover you, and you do what you gotta do to keep yourself together. Okay. And this, these have just been six strategies for you to do that. All right. I want you to understand that you don't have to wait for a thing to be over to begin to be well. And you can use this for your growth and for your stretching and for your own development. All right. So again, I hope that this was helpful to you. Go ahead and get up, go ahead and call your energy back, go do something for you, go do something for God, and I will see you next Saturday. If there's a way that I could be supportive, I want you to reach out. I am coming to the end of season one of a wide open space and already thinking ahead to season two. And so, how can this thing continue to serve you? Um, how can I serve you? I look forward to hearing from you. And again, call your spirit back, sis. Get up, get your mat, walk. Love you. Have a good week. And I can't wait to see you back out here in this wide open space. Take care. Thank you for joining me in this wide open space. If this episode blessed you, please share it with the sister who needs it. Subscribe, rate, and review to help other listeners find us. And as you go, may you walk boldly in your calling and flourish in the wide open space God has prepared just for you. Be blessed, be bold, and be beautifully you.