Day 29: God Sent Me Two Signs This Weekend

Have you ever wondered if the work you're doing is actually making a difference?

This weekend, God answered that question for me in a way I never expected.

Through two completely different conversations, I was reminded that sometimes we never truly know how our words, our kindness, or even a simple podcast can impact someone else's life. It was one of those moments where I couldn't help but stop and say, "Okay, God...I hear You."

In today's 10 unedited minutes, I'm sharing those unexpected encounters, why they meant so much to me, and how they reminded me that God often uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways.

Maybe you've been wondering if your own efforts matter. I hope today's episode encourages you the way this weekend encouraged me.

Thanks for spending 10 unedited minutes with me.

♥️ Marlena

Podcast Sponsor
A heartfelt thank you to Rebecca Conklin-Klieboemer for sponsoring this special 60-day series of 10 Unedited Minutes of Marlena's Time. Your generosity helps keep these conversations going and allows stories of faith, hope, and encouragement to reach listeners around the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good afternoon. Welcome to another edition of 10 Unedited Minutes with Marlena. It is Monday. We made it through the weekend, guys. Um, and it's nice out there. It was supposed to storm today, but I'm not seeing anything happening here. But let's get into it. So, today's episode is brought to you by my dear friend, Rebecca Conklin Kleibomer. Rebecca has agreed to graciously sponsor two months worth of my episodes, and she's done so because she loves me. She loves the work I'm doing here, and she believes that this work is meaningful. And we're gonna get into it today, but I kind of came to that realization this weekend too. So listen through the podcast all the way to the end, and you will hear that story as to how I came to that realization, and you're gonna like it. So, anyway, to honor Rebecca and um thank her for uh sponsoring my podcast, I have decided to take 60 days worth of my podcasts and just love Rebecca, and we would do that by spending a few minutes at the beginning of each episode um either loving on her or I would share a fond uh memory of our friendship. And I intentionally saved the last 30-ish days to read love letters, letters that Rebecca wrote back in 2017 during the month of February, which is, as we all know, the month of love. Sorry, the month of love. So I can't even get that word out today, guys. What's going on? So anyway, we are on her 11th letter, which means she wrote it on the 11th day of February, and today's letter is to a friend of hers, Karen, and it reads, Dear Karen, there was once a woman from Missouri. Seriously, how do you even begin a love letter to a poet? You're not even from Missouri, technically. I decided to write your letter today while you are hopefully still swathed on a lovely high from participating in APW. You've spent a few days surrounded by people who use the written word like rhythm gymnast, floating and whipping and spiraling colorful ribbons through our minds and hearts, and I'm sure many have positively tripped over themselves to try to express how much they love what you do. So I'm just gonna sneak this one in there and leave it on the mat. If love slipped on a skin suit, it would walk around looking a whole lot like you, cheerful and beautiful, colorful and radiating, even sometimes unshowered and pantless, with a gentleness matched only by fortitude and fierceness. I'd want to come up and jump into the lap of it, wrap myself wrap myself in the arms of it, and nuzzle my face into the neck of it. If love had a tongue, it would speak a whole lot like you do. You lavish compliments and encouragement on others, and you issue as many sharp knock that shit offs that are necessary to protect those whom you love and reorient people to their more loving selves. If love had a cause, it would be fighting for the very ideas you so admirably advocate. Love demands that we care for one another, that we honor each other's dignity, that we promote education, that we feed the hungry in body and spirit, that we do this crazy little thing called loving and honoring and teaching and nurturing women as equals. Oh, and dear government, please get your head out of your ass. Love us. I love reading what you write, from your posts to your poems and everything in between. Honest, quirky, vulnerable, celebratory, adamant, mirthful, wry, lamenting, curious, I love it all. The way you speak about your beloved children and husband never fails to propel a prayer of gratitude from my lips. Thank you, God, that Karen is their mother and his wife. Thank you for putting her, this lighthouse of love, right on this third rock. Thank you for letting our paths cross and for the privilege of knowing someone who knows how to love like this. I love you, Karen. Always Rebecca. Rebecca, I every time I read these letters, I am just in awe of the words that you use to lovingly describe your friends. And somehow, some way, they give us a little glimpse into that friendship, and it's beautiful. It's just a beautiful, beautiful glimpse. So this weekend, I was just telling somebody a little bit ago that it was uh a pretty uneventful weekend for me. I better knock on some wood for that. Um, and I I just had a little bit of time to kind of rest and relax and um regenerate a little bit. And I want to tell you this story of of how God showed me that this podcast is is something that he wants me to do.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

So Saturday, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

It was either Friday or Saturday, I can't remember. I don't remember my days very good. But anyway, I had a little bit of of time to myself, and I like to sit out in my backyard. Okay, we have a nice fire pit back there, we have a nice patio, and I have um lights uh strung up around so we can sit out there at night as well. But this happened to be right in the middle of the afternoon, and I just sat down in uh a lawn chair I have back there. It's one of those anti-gravity chairs, so you can put your feet up, you can lay back and you can relax. And so I did that. And a lot of times what I'll do is I will just go sit somewhere and just kind of relax and then um find a way to calm my mind because as somebody who's very high functioning like me, like I always have things like things I'm thinking about and what I need to be doing next or what I need to be doing tomorrow or whatever. And sometimes that just gets so overwhelming. So I have learned that I just need to take time and empty my mind. And in that time, I usually spend with I spend that time with Jesus, and I'm praying um or I'm just trying to be quiet so he can speak to me and um you know bring the Holy Spirit into me. So whatever afternoon this was, I was sitting outside and my mind was just racing a mile a minute, and I decided to just sit quietly, and I intentionally just emptied my mind. And once I got to a point where I was relaxed, I'm like, okay, God, what do you want me to know? And then I just kind of let whatever comes back to mind slowly come back to mine, and this podcast came to my mind, and I was like, okay, God, what do you what am I doing with this? Like, why do you I get that it's something you want me to do, and you led me to do it, and you're keeping me motivated. You're, you know, which that was my prayer too. Whatever you want me to do, you have to keep me motivated, you have to keep me um excited about doing it. And so he's done that so far with this podcast. So it came back to my mind, and I said, okay, if this is something you want me to do, God, you're gonna have to show me because, you know, I I'm putting this out there and it's taking off, it's doing very well, but the entrepreneur in me and the person who wants things instantly thinks that it, you know, could be doing better. I'm like, okay, God, so if this is something you want me to do, you're gonna have to give me a sign. You're gonna have to give me some kind of sign that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And in my mind, I was thinking more like, you know, make one of the videos that I put out on TikTok or one of the reels that I put out, make it go viral, you know, spread the word faster than what I think it's being spread. Well, I think God had another way of telling me this. And now that I'm verbalizing this, I think He wants me to understand that this needs to grow organically, right? I need to continue to put the work in, but it needs to grow organically. However, God sent me some signs this weekend. And at first I didn't realize it. It took me a minute, and then I was like, oh, okay. So this is this is kind of sad, but it it definitely was, you know, a message from God that said, What you're doing is great. This is exactly what I want you to do. You need to keep doing it. So um a friend of mine reached out to me and told me that they had been listening to my podcast. And oddly, it's not really odd, I know God did this on purpose, but um, she just happened to be listening to the one where I was talking about um my daughter and my granddaughter when uh uh we lost Tiana through miscarriage. And this friend had reached out to me and said, Hey, um, just want you to know that um I just I was listening to your podcast about your granddaughter um and the miscarriage, and I actually had to turn it off because I'm sitting in the hospital right now with my um family who is having a miscarriage.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

And that completely broke my heart.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Um, but I was able to respond to her and give her some guidance on, you know, kind of what we went through and um how to get through it and all of that. So I truly felt like God put that in front of her so she could reach out to me, so I could comfort, so he could comfort her through me. And um I did my best to do that. Trust me, it was hard.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I cried and cried and cried, but um, yeah. And then um something else happened.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So not only did he give me one sign, he gave me two, and the second one actually happened while I was at church, um, right before mass on Saturday, and somebody else, another friend, approached me and said, Hey, I'm just really loving your podcast. Um, you need to really keep doing that. She said, because um I just listened to one this week and uh you were talking about mental health, and they said that I she said I struggled with mental health as well. And I just want you to know that, you know, I was kind of going through something similar in your podcast when I heard that. It showed me that I'm not alone. I I so you know, I just oh man, it's it's so crazy when God sends you these messages, it's so crazy. So I don't even know what to say because I I truly I I genuinely started this podcast just as a way to to have some structure in my life um after I decided to close the dough hook. And God is using it and uh I can't even uh it's so great. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Keep using me, God. I love it. So anyway, that took up all 10 minutes. I had been dying to share that story with you guys all weekend, so I'm so glad we got um the opportunity to do it today, and I cannot wait to see where God takes this podcast. I'm so excited for it, and I'm so grateful that you guys are supporting this. Um you're listening to it, you're spreading the word for me, and um yeah, I'm I'm just I'm grateful to do his work. So anyway, I love you guys. I will see you tomorrow. Pray for me. I pray for you every single day. Bye guys.