135: Five Things To Get Unstuck & Experience The Ministry God Has For You

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:14
Hey, welcome back to Episode 135 of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. If you’ve been tracking with us this month, you have heard some amazing stories from several pastors’ wives in smaller churches as we’ve been leading up to the Married to the Pastor Conference, which just happened last weekend. You have heard from Dawn Gibson, who tells the story of how their small church became a hub for disaster relief, racial reconciliation, and also developed a K through 12 school. This is a micro church. We’re talking about small churches doing amazing things. You also heard from Allison Marco, who talks about a story of complete renewal, as she and her husband grabbed hold of small church ministry, mindset shifts, strategies, and the support that they needed to make major changes in their church. You also heard from Cledra Gross when she talked about the church growth and comparison trap, and also from Joni Topper…

Laurie Graham 1:10
Now, this past weekend, we had our Married to the Pastor Conference, which is all about the spouses of pastors in small churches. And I wanted to give you a little sneak peek into the main stage. So you’re about to listen to the opening main stage of the conference, Married to the Pastor, but I want to let you know, if you’re not married to the pastor, this message is still for you. We’re unpacking five things that we all need to make any sort of changes in our lives. Because the reality is, most people don’t do the things that they want to do that they even know that they are God-called to do. We get stuck. We get busy, we get trapped in mindsets that aren’t even true at all. And if you want to grab a hold of what God has for you next, taking those thoughts and those dreams, and figuring out how to make simple shifts, take simple steps to actually watch them come to fruition. Then please listen in.

Laurie Graham 2:12
Here we go, jumping into the first main stage from this past weekend’s conference. All right, well, if you just are coming in, we’ve been introducing ourselves, please feel free to drop in the chat where you’re from. And we are really going to just kick into our first first main stage presentation, talking about five things you need to find real friendship, get unstuck, and feel fully alive.

Laurie Graham 2:38
Contrary to popular belief, being married to a pastor does not mean you will not have friends, that you will always be lonely and misunderstood. Or that you need to keep your guard up all the time. Being a pastor’s spouse does not mean you will need to keep everyone happy, please everyone do things that they’re not doing because they’re not doing it. Being a pastor’s spouse does not mean you don’t get to follow your own passions or have your own fulfilling relationship with God. It does not mean you need to overwork, it does not mean that you’re going to be burnt out or exhausted. And you will see other examples here and other role models here and other people here. And this is how we know that you don’t have to have no friends or feel stuck or feel smushed down or feel exhausted and burnt out.

Laurie Graham 3:32
Now, no one of us has arrived for sure. But we are learning in community. So you’re going to meet pastors’ wives here, I promise you, who have friends and since I said pastors’ wives, I just want to just overarch that we are an interdenominational organization. We absolutely support female pastors. We also support churches who don’t ordain female pastors. We are not a church. Everyone is welcome. Here we focus on what we, what we have in common that we have different. But this conference by and large 99.999% is women. Last year, we tried to have a conference that was for pastor spouses, and we had several males speaking and it just, the husbands don’t really want a conference. We’ve talked to lots of them.

So when I say pastors’ wives, if you are married to a pastor, and you have the same struggles that we’re having here, please know you, you are included. But you will meet pastors’ spouses here who have friends, you will meet pastor spouses here who are rested, who practice sabbatical, who take time off, who don’t overwork. You will meet pastors’ spouses here who have boundaries, who don’t say yes to everything and don’t feel pressured to say yes to everything and who don’t feel guilty about saying no. Right? You will see pastor spouses in here who’ve been to hell and back. Some who are going through it right now in many ways in their lives, whether family, personal, work, extended family, their nuclear family. You’ll see pastors’ spouses who’ve been through tons of stuff and have not only lived to tell about it, but are thriving on the other side. You will also meet pastors, spouses in here who’ve been broken, who have felt broken, who have felt depressed, who’ve been emotionally abused, who have suffered incredible loss and injustice, and more. We are not a glossy Jesus frosting organization. We do our best to be authentic, to be real and to create a safe place. And I hope that you feel some safety here.

Laurie Graham 5:32
There was a comment from the last conference that came through, which was so interesting. In one of the reviews or you know, like the surveys, she said, “This was a safer place. I can’t say that it felt 100% safe because of what she’s experienced.” But she said it was really a safer place. And I really love that and I think it’s genuine. And I think that’s great to say, “Okay, this is a safer place.” And through it all. I’m going to throw out Second Corinthians 4:8 here, because this verse gets scripted a lot. Do you know which one it is? Some of you probably have memorized it, you can probably even just drop it right in the chat. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are struck down, but not destroyed.” And I just want to say most of the times when we put this first, we miss the context. We miss the verses before it.

We really hang on to the fact that we are hard pressed and we are persecuted and we are struck down. And I know we do because I’ve been there. And I’ve also read all of your challenges. Those of you who shared with me, “What’s your biggest challenge being married to a pastor?” Hard-pressed, persecuted, struck down, exhausted. We hang on to that. And it is real, it is real. But I want to give you the two verses before that. Second Corinthians 4, verse 6 says this, this is before that verse, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge of the glory, God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” And I just want to bring to light that we don’t have to hang on so tightly to hard pressed and persecuted and struck down. We can absolutely say yes, this is a truth in our lives. But we can hang tighter, to the treasure that we have in jars of clay. The light that shines out of darkness and the fact that God called us to be light.

Laurie Graham 7:54
Now, if you are coming in today, with church hurt with religious trauma, and I just threw a scripture at you, and that is hitting you difficultly because people have told you to put a smile on your face and that God’s will prevails and that this is for your good. I want you to know I hear you. I’ve been there. I’m in it in many ways myself. And I do not gloss over scripture lately. But I do want to say the word of God is true. Sometimes we put it in this context that is so false. And one of the false context is that toxic positivity. Right? The Bible is full of laments, it is full of lament. And it also is full of forward motion. I almost said the word empowerment. There’s so many things like in our culture today, that feeling empowered feels like such a secular term. But God did call us to you like God did give us free will. God did give us choice. He gave us minds to understand and embrace things, even outside of scripture to understand how our psychology works, how people affect our very beings to understand what forgiveness is more than just saying, “I’m sorry, I forgive you,” right?

Laurie Graham 9:12
It’s, sometimes it’s really, really hard. Can I say, I’ve walked it too. And I also want to say, the title of this topic, “Five things that you need to find real friendship, to get unstuck and to live fully alive.” This is possible, and I’m going to give you the five things. And I’m also going to say it’s not overnight. This whole conference, people come in saying, “I want to get it all.” I don’t want you to get it. I want you to get whatever God has for you today. That’s all I want you to get. That’s how Jesus lived his life. “Father, what do you have for me today?” Jesus did not try to get it all and I don’t want you to do that. Today, we have a prayer room that’s open all day long, except for the main stages. So don’t go there. Now, there’s no one there.

But the next breakout, you may choose to go to the prayer room instead of going to a breakout, because that’s what God has for you today. I want you to get what God has for you today. Not it all. So I’m going to give you five things that we all need, not just you, we need. I should change that title. Five things we need to find real friendship, get unstuck and live fully alive. And I will also say these five things are not limited to being a pastor spouse. These are things everybody needs. I think one of the things we do that limits ourselves is we separate ourselves so much from people who aren’t pastor spouses. “You don’t get it, I am different, I’m in a different position.” And that is true. But we have more in common with other women around us than we do different. Even as a pastor spouse, we have more in common with other humans than we have not in common. So these five things, maybe they are totally for you right now. And maybe they’re also things that we can carry with us and bring to other people as well. We need these things to get unstuck.

Laurie Graham 11:15
Now before I launch into those five things. I just want to ask you right now, as you’re coming to the conference, I know some of you came in five minutes late. Some of you just came in right now. You’re seeing introductions roll by and people here from Poland and, and from the UK and all over the US and South America and in Canada. You’re seeing people introducing themselves and everything. I would just like to do a quick check-in with all of us. How are you feeling right now? And I would love for you to drop it in the chat. How are you feeling right now? What emotions are popping up for you? Are you excited? Are you skeptical? Are you sad? Do you feel alone? Even in this talk? Do you feel hopeful? How do you feel in your emotions? And if it takes a minute to come up with one, join the club. It’s very normal.

Most of us have actually not been taught to even understand our emotions. We’ve been taught to shove them down. We don’t do that here. So drop in the chat. How are you? How are you feeling? What are you experiencing right now. And I will say that whatever that is, you are not alone. Even if you feel on the outside, even if you feel hopeless, as people are dropping in, “I’m excited.” If you don’t feel like that, you are welcome here. And if you’re if you’re able to see the chat live while you’re watching right now, look through it. We see broken, we see ready, lonely, anxious, overworked, tired of the lonely, distant. These are all real. And we’re not going to tell you to shove anything down. But I would like to ask if Jesus gave you something today. And by the way, if you’re on top of the world, you have no issues right now. Praise God, go with it. Like, that’s great. You’re welcome here. There are talks all day that will feed into you. If you are ready for learning. If you are ready for growth, if you are ready to go to a next level somewhere in your life.

We’re here for you too. We’re here for all of it. But I do want to ask what would you like to receive from Jesus today? And I would also love for you to put that in the chat. “I would love to receive this.” And if that if that topic, like if you don’t expect to receive anything from Jesus, that’s totally fine too. Because we have dark times and hard times spiritually too. Maybe it’s what do you want to receive from the conference today? Or how do you want to end up after today? Somebody messaged me this morning and said, “God already showed up yesterday. We know he’s going to show up today.” Absolutely. Because he always does. Because he’s never not showed up. Because he’s not never not been present. Because he is here now. Even if, even when, even and so take that deep breath. As I walk through the five things that I truly believe every single one of us needs to find real friendships, to get unstuck and live fully alive.

Laurie Graham 11:28
And the first thing is to cultivate hope. Personally, I struggle with depression on and off in my life. I had a time when I took medication. I wasn’t going to show this. I’m just telling you this right now. Maybe somebody needs to hear this. I do not know, but I watch myself very carefully because I can get into that place. Sometimes cultivating hope. When people say, “Be hopeful,” like there’s been times in my life. I’m like, “What are you even saying?” And so if this is hitting you funny, it’s okay, just hang with me. If we don’t hope for something different or something better, we’re going to sit stuck. There’s no way around it. And why I say cultivate hope is you can’t just say, “Have hope.” It’s a cultivation. To any garden. Like, I mean, you have to cultivate things in a garden to let it grow. Sometimes, and we have no hope for something different. And I know many of us coming in have no hope for something different.

Because if I’ve heard it in your emails, “This is what it’s like to be a pastor spouse, this is what it’s like in my community,” you don’t have hope for something different. We’ve got to cultivate that hope. I’m going to give you a couple tips on how to cultivate that hope. One is to hang around people who are different, who have gone through it, who are different. If you want hope that Pastor spouses can have friends, hang out with people, Pastor, spouses who have friends, that that’s one of the ways we cultivate hope is we’re in a community of people who have hope. Does that make sense? We’ve got to cultivate hope.

And I hope you find some hope here if you need it. When we are feeling defeated when we’re saying “always,” or “never,” or “no one ever steps up to help,” so I have to do that. Can I say, “No, no, no, you don’t?” No, no, you don’t. If you don’t have hope you’re not going to believe me, though. And that’s what we got to cultivate hope. We got to see that other pastors’ spouses are living different. Other believers are living different. You are not picked on in some place where you are going to be caused to suffer for the rest of your life. You’re not. We need to cultivate hope. Your excited experience might be very, very different from somebody else’s. But we can still cultivate hope. Okay, we can cultivate it.

Laurie Graham 17:00
Next step. This is number two, for those of you taking notes. And by the way, we do recommend you keep a notebook by you. And I would actually say during today, when you keep a notebook by you, make it a prayer, make it a prayer notebook. “God, what are you speaking to me?” Maybe you don’t need to write all these five things down, but maybe what you’re going to take notes on is what God speaks to you. And it might be very different than what’s said from any state.

Laurie Graham 17:25
The second thing is embracing responsibility. Now, when I was looking at this, this title, I almost called it “take responsibility and own it.” But how harsh is that, right? Like, and it kind of makes me feel negative, like I don’t want it, I don’t want it. I don’t want to take responsibility for my own, getting unstuck, my own friendships. And I will say this, it is much easier to blame everybody around us and we are masters at it. “I’m not okay, because I’m in a crappy church.” “I’m not okay, because my husband neglects me and puts the church first.” “I’m not okay, because I have been through this, and I’m still in it.” And I want to say embrace the responsibility of who you are and how you’re living.

And I’m going to talk about this, I realize we have outside forces all the time. I’m not saying that doesn’t exist. But embracing that word embrace, it means I want it. I want to own my life. I want to have the power to be different and be better and we do in Christ. But we’ve got to embrace the responsibility, we’ve got to want it. Because it is much easier to say, “It’s not my fault, and I can’t do anything different. I am stuck.” It removes my responsibility from myself to do anything that I have no responsibility. I’m clear. I believe. I’m here because of everyone else. But I want to tell you it’s not true. And I want to give you the best example why no, it’s not true. It’s because of Jesus. Did Jesus live a fulfilled life? Did he have joy? I believe he absolutely did. Did he suffer? Absolutely. Was his success as a disciple based on other people’s responses? What?

Laurie Graham 19:14
Not once do we hear Jesus say, “I cannot do the will of my Father. Because you’re not cooperating.” Now the verse just went through my head about healing that’s not what we’re talking about. You know, whatever. So, “I cannot do the will of my Father. Because you’re not cooperating.” God did not create us like that. That gave us responsibility. God gave us authority you know who over us. I can move forward if I want to. It is darn hard. I can find friends if I want to. It is darn hard. My happiness, my joy, my sense of peace versus anxiety. I absolutely have ownership of that. I have ownership of that. Sometimes it takes longer to get there. But I can own this. And yes, we are absolutely affected by outside forces. And by the way, most of us, I will just say it right now, most of us in the room, I totally believe, have unresolved trauma in our lives.

And if anything, I’m hitting you is hitting you harshly, I want to just say, I’ve been there, I’m with you. And I do not mean anything. I’m saying as an overarching thing, like, “it’s your fault,” or “you got to do it.” But I want to say we can still embrace responsibility for who we are today. And where we move today. Trauma is near and dear to my heart, not just because of things that I’ve realized I’ve been through in my own life, and how much it’s affected me as a pastor spouse, let me just go over a few things, feeling overly responsible for everybody. denying our own needs to put others needs first, even if it is your spouse, your children or your family.

Jesus also did not do that. Feeling like I have to keep working, being so alert, when anybody walks in the room. We know what’s happening. We’re the ones who noticed that when they’re cold, or they’re angry, okay. So when I’m saying to embrace responsibility, I’m saying like, let’s own who God created us to be. And the light that he put in us, the treasure in jars of clay. But we’ve got to be able to say, I have hope and I can move forward, I can learn, I can grow. But when you catch yourself whining and blaming, and thinking that your joy is the result of other people, now today, I don’t believe that God calls us to things that we could never meet. I don’t believe that God would tell a two-year-old to go get the get the big glass jar on top of the three rung ladder. He got wouldn’t call us to experience His peace and His love and His joy if we had no ability to do it.

Laurie Graham 22:12
The third thing I want to say is the commit, these are the five things. And again, please take what God like, I’m half praying through this conversation. Because I do believe God is in our midst. I do believe God is in this conversation. I am praying through this. I say nothing that causes you to brace up and say, “I am not included in this club.” That “this is not for me,” because God is for every single one of us. And our journeys are so, so different. And I also want to say I have not arrived and I do not have all the answers. And what I taught a year ago, I might cringe at today because I know things differently now. And I understand things differently now. So I also ask for your grace in that. But I’m sharing with you what I know in my journey and where I’ve been.

And the third thing is that I’ve seen to help myself find real friendship, get unstuck, and live fully life is committing to growth, committing to growing to more understanding to learning from a lot of different people, from therapists, from counselors, from books, from podcasts, yes, even in the secular world. I actually cringe when I hear people say, “I don’t need anything but Jesus.” That is not what Jesus taught. That is not what the Bible taught. The Bible does not say, “All you need is Jesus and the word of God.” The Word of God is important. I love it. I get it. But the Bible never says, “All you need is Jesus.” It actually talks about community. God created us for connection. The Bible is not the answer to every parenting issue, every marriage issue or every church conflict issue, because God did not design it to be that. That’s not why God created, or gave his divine words in the Bible. It’s not step by step how to physically build your house structure, or even how to understand the complexity of being a human on this planet. I like to think about to committing to growth with Jesus. I read a book about getting unstuck, and I love the first third of it, and then it got a little way out there like I’m like, “Okay, this is not Jesus.”

Laurie Graham 24:26
First third, I’m telling you. I was committing to growth with Jesus, with Jesus. Please understand if your husband is your best friend, and your spouse is the person that you lean on and they are your only friend. That is also not in God’s design. Because that is an awful lot of weight for the two of you to bury to bear. We weren’t meant for that. We were meant for more. So cultivate hope, embrace responsibility, commit to growth which means seeking solutions. This is part of this, not sitting in our stuckness. There are times I sit in my stuckness. And some parts of me have to be stuck because I’m working on other parts of me. Okay? But can we commit to growth and to seeking solutions to seeking solutions?

Laurie Graham 25:23
Number four in the list if you’re walking through with us, and if you joined a little later, I talked about cultivating hope, embracing responsibility, committing to growth with Jesus, and now taking courage, take courage. It will be hard and uncomfortable. Do you know that courage takes vulnerability. A lot of people talk about, “to be vulnerable,” “to put myself out there,” that takes courage. Can I do a flip on that? And say that courage actually requires vulnerability. Now, please hear me, if you’ve been vulnerable before and gotten whacked over the head. We all have. I’m not saying stupidity. Courage does not require stupidity. Courage requires vulnerability. You guys, it’s not a risk if we’re not vulnerable. Throughout our lives, we cannot build so many walls to say, “I’m going to protect myself at all costs.” If we want to grow, you can’t do it. And many of us have been beat up enough or hurt enough or we’ve had enough things go wrong in our lives, that we have big, big walls of protection even many times from childhood. This big wall of protection, you cannot grow. If you refuse to be vulnerable, in relationships, in your church, in your life, with Jesus, in your personal discipleship. You can’t.

Courage actually requires vulnerability. And I want to tell you there is not one person in this room live or listening later. That has not been hurt and at one point built a big big wall and it is hard and it is scary. And we’re actually asking you today if you would trust us just a little bit if you got a big big wall there. If you got no hope. If you feel like my life will always be like this. If you would like to cultivate hope and be in a community of learning and grace committed to growth and taking courage, you are in the right place. Every speaker speaking today is taking courage to be in front of you. Please do not think any of us is super, super confident and has it all together. Okay, or that we’re all going to say everything right? It takes courage to reach out and try to make a new friend. I am 54. For reasons I will not talk about on this on this on this talk today. A couple years ago, lost every single local friend I had. Every single one. It takes a lot of courage to find a new place. It takes a lot of courage. I line dance now. Line dancing with a whole bunch of young and I’m telling you, I’m like this 54-year-old, you know, old person blind dancing with the majority of people are in their 20s and I have so much fun. It still now I’ve been doing it for almost a year. It’s it’s so fun. By the way, if you’ve never gone line dancing, like like real line dancing that like cupid shuffle, okay, I’m saying like real line dancing. It is fast, and it is fun, and it is hilarious. And still now when I go, I kind of pit in my stomach, like, “Should I really be doing this? Am I really here?” You know, because there’s a couple of people I’ve met and we kind of know each other by name, but I don’t have friends there. It takes courage, you guys. It takes courage.

Laurie Graham 29:04
Courage requires vulnerability. We have to be willing, not stupid, but willing to put ourselves out there and test out safe places. Cledra Gross, who will be speaking from the main stage in a few hours. She spoke this at one of our other past conferences. She talked about vulnerability tests, like you just put a little bit out there and see what people, see what people get back. Okay. But don’t shut yourself off to all of it. Okay, and the last thing I’m going to mention is pursuing connection.

Laurie Graham 29:36
So the five things are to cultivate hope. Embrace responsibility, commit to growth with Jesus, take courage, and to pursue connection. Anytime you put a talk together, I know most of you have spoken in different capacities in your churches or outside ministries and stuff. like you kind of tweak it and play with it. And, and at the beginning, my number five was to find a safe place to create a safe place. And I really had to sit with that a lot, because you can’t really just find a safe place. Okay? Because safety for us is very personal, your safe place is different from my safe place. Okay, it’s different. We have different hearts, we have different personalities, your safe place is different. Pursuing connection, though, pursuing a safe place, working toward it, developing what your safe place is. That is so huge. You have to pursue connection, no one in here who has a support system? By the way? That’s one question I asked so many people when they reach out, they have challenges. “Do you have a support system? Have you developed a support system?” That doesn’t just happen.

None of us find the perfect counselor the first time out. If you have a safe place, a safe community, a support system? I know you have fought hard for that because I have. We have to pursue it. Nobody just gets it. Nobody just gets it. But that’d be beautiful. We could just say, “Oh, God, give us a safe place.” And all of a sudden all these people surround us and root for us. My favorite thing in this season of my life just for the past couple months. So I don’t scroll a lot on Facebook or Instagram or anything at all. And I’ve been doing it more, but this is what I look for. I look for the reels about AGT and Britain’s Got Talent and the Americans got talent. You guys ever see those reels of the golden buzzers? I cry. I like literally bawl my head up for Sydney Christmas, when the whole place is like a wrapping with applause, saying, “Way to go.” And Simon Cowell who is known for being really harsh. Before that person on stage will audition. He says, “We are rooting for you.” And then you often hear the judges say, “Boy, I hope they’re good.” And the reason I cry is I just think we all should, we all should have that. Whenever we do good or bad or we’re off key or something’s, we should have people rooting for us and cheering us on and a whole like auditorium of 4,000 people cheering for us and saying, “Way to go,” and hitting the Golden Buzzer and saying that person deserves a shot. They deserve a chance. And I cannot imagine that that is not heaven.

Laurie Graham 32:43
If I could scream and clap for you right now, I don’t even have to know you. Because that is what God sees in you. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. It doesn’t even matter that you just screamed at your children this morning. It’s a matter, we are rooting for you. But you have to pursue connection. Nobody can do it for you. All these things that I’m talking about. This is the thing, the five things you need to get to find real friendship, get unstuck and live fully alive. Notice that I didn’t say you need a good husband. Notice I didn’t say you need a good church. Notice I didn’t say you need better volunteers. Notice I didn’t say you need to move to a new location. Notice I didn’t say that person needs to be out of your life, although sometimes they do. Okay. All these things are things that that God in us, with us. We can do these things. We can cultivate hope. We can embrace responsibility and say, “Wow, I can find happiness even in this crappy, awful situation.” Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Can you commit to growth with Jesus?

Laurie Graham 34:09
Can you commit to growth with Jesus? Can you seek solution? Committing to growth isn’t just, “I’ll grow if you throw something at me,” “I’ll grow if the right person comes along?” No. This is seeking solutions, seeking experts, seeking friends who’ve been there, seeking mentors, reading books, listening to podcasts, and not being scared about it. Because if you commit to growth with Jesus and you’re reading a book, like I just told you about, I was reading this book, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Well, that’s really not from God.” But I still got some really good stuff out at the beginning of it. Taking courage, you can do this, we can do this. Everything we do in life takes courage, truly, everything unless you got the big wall up and you’re not going to be affected by anything around you. And pursuing connection.

We can do these things. We can do them and they are key to finding friendship, and getting unstuck, and living fully alive. And we hope you’ll find bits and pieces of this here today, we hope you will. I can’t give you everything you need in 25 minutes, nobody can. I can’t give you what you need in one day, nobody can. But I really believe this conference, if you’re ready for it, if you’re open for it, if you’re open to God moving you, I believe it can change our trajectory. One degree. Have you heard about like a one-degree change? If you move forward, just in one degree different, and you keep moving forward, you end up at a totally different place, a totally different place. Think about driving in the car, when your alignment’s off and your steering wheel just turns a tiny little bit, you’re going to go off in that ditch, or you’re going to get back on the road that God has for you.

Laurie Graham 36:00
I’m going to invite Charmaine and Shamika to just join me on the stage. As we kind of close out a little bit. I’m going to take a little breather, Charmaine and Honeycutt, and kind of get off the stage for a minutes. And you guys can unpack this a little bit, and then I’ll join you back again. Okay.

Shineka Dixon 36:18
Sure. Wow, this was so, so good. I enjoyed just taking the notes, listening to her stories. And even just with the last portion where she talked about the one degree, I went math, I’m an engineer and my, my, I just went to angles. And I was like, “That is like, it was, you know, it was so good to be able to see just one degree makes a huge difference.” Yeah. So what did you get?

Charmaine Stulp 36:47
Yeah, absolutely. It’s, you know, the whole thing about pursuing connection, and the reality that it takes work. It takes intentionality, it takes time, which, depending on where you’re at, it can be like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that,” “I don’t have time.” “I don’t have time,” or “I don’t have energy or capacity.” And yeah, then you, you couple that with the one-degree shift.

And it can be small, it can be this incremental shift in, yeah, maybe where you hang out? Or what new, you know, somebody said something about taking harp lessons, I think is what they said. So many good things in the, in the chat or, “Yeah, trying out line dancing,” “going to a sewing class,” like finding connection somewhere and hopefully doing something that brings you life. Yeah. So hear us that there is hope. But sometimes it’s a long-term game, game. A year from now, you might be a completely different person. Just getting your mind around that.

Shineka Dixon 38:09
Just taking that one thing. And one thing I wanted to share, too, is that a lot of times when we’re looking for friendships, and we’re looking to make connections and getting unstuck, we, some of us, I’ll say, may look at other people. But this was what things we can do along with, you know, the Lord is things that we don’t need to look or depend on other people to do these things. We can begin to cultivate these things and moving these things ourselves, as we, you know, are depending on the Lord and leaning on the Lord. We can take our action.

Laurie Graham 38:50
As you consider what you just heard, what is the one takeaway for you? What is the one thing that could make a difference in your life? And in your ministry? What is one thing you’ve been holding back on or one thing you’ve been feeling called to move forward in? And yet you’ve felt a little stuck. Please take what you heard today and put it into action. We would love to hear your stories and testimonies. Jump into the creative solutions for small church Facebook community. We’d love to see you there. The link is in the show notes. And please share this podcast episode with somebody that you know, needs the encouragement that you just received. Love you times. We’ll talk to you next week. Be a light.