Becoming a Woman of Wisdom

Sometimes you don't think that what you know matters. Sometimes you don't think that the mistakes that you make can be redeemed. Sometimes, I know I have thought that the stuff I say doesn't really have weight, that it's not changing anybody's life. And I'm not talking about from a stage or from a platform. I'm talking about, everyday life, you know, that you see somebody in the, in the grocery store that you happen to know from somewhere and you say something and it's just inconsequential and, you know, you look crazy. All you could think about is, I can't believe I saw them on today. I think for me, there are so many moments in my life where I downplay the impact of that moment. Um, and it's not always me saying something. It could be someone saying something to me that in that moment I am downplaying what they said, but then You know, years later, something comes back to mind. Little moments matter. Y'all, y'all have heard me talk about that before. Little moments matter. I was at, uh, our women's conference, Desperate for Jesus, and I had the privilege of hosting amazing speakers. This is my mother's conference that she started in the early days, and it's the 20th year, and we're kicking off a 20th year celebration, and we're gonna end it with a bang next year. As well. But at one point during the conference, I'm sitting in a panel discussion, and the people that are on the panel, um, amazing women— Carol Kent, Nicole Massey Martin, my daughter Charis, and Jackie Hill Perry. And we were talking, the question was like basically, how do you balance your life? And Jackie said, as she proceeded to make her statement, she said, and you helped me with this 3 years ago when I was on your podcast. Well, I remember her being on my podcast and I do remember vaguely talking about the season of life that she's in with young children. I do not remember what I said. I don't remember what I said, but she obviously does because she rehearsed it and repeated it on stage. We'll never know the impact, positive or negative, of the things that we've done until Time passes. You're not gonna know what your kids actually heard you say until they get to be 20 or 30 years old. And then you hear them saying it to their kids, or they tell you, I'm sorry, you were right. Time has to happen. You're not gonna realize that the investment that you made to be the person that stayed late or came in early, that exercised an amazing amount of work ethic and commitment to your job. You're not gonna realize that it matters when everybody else is doing what they wanna do. Until later for the next promotion or the third promotion down the line, somebody said, "Oh yeah, I was in that other department and I was always marked by how you showed up." You may not know. It requires the passing of time. In a negative sense, you won't know how horrible the effect of how you treated your body is gonna impact you until later. So 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds are telling 21-year-olds, This is how you need to treat your body because I can tell you it may be 20, 30, 40 years, but what you're doing to your body right now will have a payday depending on how you treat it. Time has to pass often for us to recognize the investment of our efforts, intentional or unintentional. So you invest like time has a payoff. Let me rewind. One of the things I'm doing right now with my oldest son, and I, I've forgotten, I did it with the two oldest girls. I did it with them before they graduated from high school. So I'm a little late, but as long as they my kids, it ain't too late. But, um, we are reading, um, what was called at one time The Purpose Driven Life. Now it's called What Am I On Earth Am I Here For? It is 40 days of purpose. You read a short chapter every week and then there's a focus scripture, a focus statement, and a question. So the deal is, because vitamin D is good and moving your body is good and serotonin and dopamine and all the different endorphins are elated when you go and give them something to work with. And so we're going walking. The payoff is we're going to talk about this chapter of this book when we walk. Does he want to do that with me? Heck no. Do I care? Heck no. But I am telling him the investment that you're making now and even thinking about these questions and even, even though he doesn't want to do it, he'll say, Mom, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. And I'm like, okay, well, let me ask it to you a different way. I'm being that mom. With my 21-year-old son. But I told him, I said, one day you're going to look back on this and you're going to be glad that every day you went for a walk with me. And I'll look at him and he normally doesn't have a question, but I'll say, what questions do you have for me? Because one day I won't be here and you will wish you asked. There are things that it's not until somebody's gone that you say, I wish I would've asked them. There are things about your life that you're going to think, I wish I would've thought of this earlier. So what does this mean? It means that most of us don't think about the investment that we wish we would've made until we wish we made it. You don't really think that hard until you get close to retirement and you didn't save. So before you need to think about it, you have to think ahead. You have to think ahead. You have to be smarter than you are right now because the later you needs you to be smart enough now to plan ahead. This is a theme that we see in scripture over and over and over again. Think ahead like the ants, they plan for tomorrow. Be a wise person, build your house on a rock because the storms are going to come. Noah in the Bible had to build a boat for rain he had never seen. Ruth had to leave her home for a husband she didn't know she would get. Like, you know, these men left their fishing boats to serve a God that hadn't yet risen from the dead. We always have to be thinking in advance. Oh, I have tingles down my back right now. So what does that mean you have to do? That means you have to borrow wisdom. How do you borrow wisdom? By listening to wise people. How do you listen to wise people? That means you need to check in with the people who live longer than you, i.e., your parents, i.e., Aunt So-and-So. Check in with Grandmother This or Great Uncle That. You need to borrow their wisdom. Don't need— doesn't mean you need to listen to everything they said, because they may not be wise in everything, but you need to be wise enough to have the right questions. That means you need to ask them, what do you wish you had known at my age? Or started at my age or done at my age. And here's the thing, if you are a Lone Ranger, if God just dropped you as a stork from the stork right here by yourself, you wanna know who else you can ask? You can read books. People have put wisdom that you need for later in books. Why do they do that? Because later they write the book for the person that they were, and this is the information they would've wished they'd had. History, historical fiction, read historical non-fiction, biographies. Read about people's lives. What did they do right and what did they do wrong? It'll change your life. What do you do if you want to help your kids think forward? If you want to mentor or disciple young women to help them think forward, what do you do? You read the books with them. You start a book club and you say, listen, we're going to learn about thinking forward together because maybe I don't know either. Borrowing wisdom. Psalm— uh, Proverbs says that wisdom is crying out in the streets. Like, wisdom is there, people just are not listening. They're not listening. When I got married, within the first 5 years of my marriage, I asked good girlfriend Shandria— she's been in the inner circle to teach y'all many, many times, she's a counselor— and she said— I said to her, girl, and I don't know what the thing was, but it was something You know, something though, I was like, oh my God, I'm married and I, you know, I can't get out. And I love my husband, but I was like, oh my gosh, y'all didn't tell me about this. And I literally said to her, why didn't you tell me? Dot, dot, dot. Her answer was, girl, I did. You were just too in love and you weren't listening. The problem is we're not listening. We're too busy, turned on and tuned in to what's right in front of us, and we're missing the wisdom that's available to us if we would look for it. If you seek me, you will find me when you search for me with all your heart. He who seeks will find. He who knocks, the door will be opened. It is about seeking wisdom. Now, there are seasons of life where we don't wait for the people around us to gain wisdom. You don't wait for your children to gain wisdom. You give them boundaries. You don't wait when you're managing a team for them to know what you know. You lay out the goals, the vision, the direction, and say, this is where we're going. Because maybe you see something they don't see. You don't wait for your team at church to have all the answers. We're saying, this is how we treat people. This is why training is so important. This is why being a person and living in your skin, in your season, and owning the season that you're in is so important. Because while you should still be learning, remember, you should never be the smartest person in the room. Why you need to be around people who are going somewhere, because you will have often the same successes of the people that are around you, whether they be around you physically or around you in training, around you in coaching, around you with books. You have to surround yourself with what you want to be, where you want to go. I was in college and I was told, because there was at that time a lot of affirmative action, and so when I came as a student who received a scholarship, um, I'm sure— I mean, I was a smart kid and I would have gotten a scholarship, but I think the scholarship that I got was a part of an affirmative action program. Grateful for that. And they wanted us to be successful. So we came in and then we had these, you know, success classes that we had to come in and take. And in there they would talk about, you know, it's harder to bring up your grade point at the end than to start with a strong grade point and how the classes that you take at the beginning are the easiest ones. They can be the easiest ones because once you get into your major, it gets really hard. So focus on keeping and maintaining your GPA. They talk to us about getting to class on time, go to class. We know that you can, you'll have some professors where you're like, wait a minute, he's saying exactly what's in the book. It don't matter. The layers of learning will help you be successful. Go to class, sit up front, go meet your professor. Like I, and I did all those things. Why? Because I'm an oldest child and I'm a straight A student. And because if you tell me how to make 100, I'm going to do that. Well, one of the things that they told us to do was when in the spring, when recruiters are coming to campus to interview, for people who are graduating to get jobs, go on an interview. Even though you don't need a job, go on an interview. And for your whole college career, go on interviews every spring. It will train you and give you practice in interviewing. And when you're done, you ask them, how can I improve? I'm a freshman. I'm just trying to improve my interview skills. How could I do better? Use it as an opportunity to grow. Well, they told me to do it. I went and did it. The first and only interview that I did in the spring of my freshman year, I got an internship. She said, "I know you were only coming to practice, but I really thought you were remarkable. And I think you'd be great to join our team as an intern. Would you like to do that?" Yes, sure. I mean, I was 19, y'all. They paid me. They, I had a, you know, this is before that was a thing. This is during the season where internships You, you went unpaid, y'all. I stayed— if you are familiar with Houston, there's the Galleria area, okay? The Galleria is on one side of 610. On the other side of 610, still to this day, are the apartments I lived in, y'all. I didn't live in no cheap apartments. Now, we lived cheap, me and my roommate, my friend since we were 14. She had an internship in Houston that summer too, and we shared a one-bedroom apartment. One bedroom. We put two twin beds in the room. Like we were college students. But I lived near the Galleria in Houston. That's how— that's what I was doing with my life at 19. So the summer I turned 19, I lived in Houston with the Galleria, worked from Exxon. That spring I also found out I was pregnant. So I'm in Houston living a single woman's life growing up, because when I went to the success classes, they said go try to get an interview. And I did not know that that summer when I went on that interview, I would need to grow up. I would, I would need to learn how to function by myself. It was so much bigger than practicing an interview. Listening to Wisdom set me up for my life. I, I, I learned about expense reports and I learned about team meetings and standups, and I learned about progress reports and project plans. And I, I learned about being trusted in meetings with people who were I mean, it was just amazing. It was, it was amazing. All because I listened. It's a setup for my life. So the next time I needed an internship, you know what I did? I worked at a law firm because once they heard that I had an internship at Exxon, that seemed remarkable. They didn't know that I got that because I was practicing. Y'all, all through life, we are practicing. All of us, we're all practicing. That's all we're out here doing. And eventually there is something that you get good at. And eventually there is something that you'll have to release because you can't actually get good at everything without releasing something. That's quotable. You can't actually get ahead and focused on the thing if you don't release something. So you have to learn how to listen to wisdom. You need to seek wisdom, and then you need to learn how to let go of what is not your main focus. Wisdom is calling out to tell you what to gravitate towards. Most of us though don't listen. Okay? We don't listen to go get that wisdom because it's usually inconvenient. And we don't listen to let go of that so you can get more of the thing that you're running after. We don't listen because we get into rhythms and we get into routines and we get into our everyday. So I was listening to Jackie and I was thinking she heard my wisdom that I didn't— I was just telling her what I knew. So you seek wisdom, you learn to let go of the things that keep you from getting more wisdom or putting you further along the wise path, and you look for inconvenience. Because most of the time, whatever is required for you to gain wisdom is going to require some inconvenience, some discomfort. I am all about living with peace and protecting my mental health and all of that. I really am. However, I think that there is a lie being sold by the enemy and people are gulping it down, that your mental peace in your— and peace is defined as I'm not bothered, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm unbothered, that it's not hard, that I'm not stretched, because stretching is uncomfortable. You have to know the difference between toxicity and discomfort that is delivering you towards some destiny. And I think that because we're harping on toxicity and lack of peace and protecting my mental health so much, there are so many people who are confusing that with the stretching necessary to reach destiny, to, to, to reach for wisdom, to do the thing that is not normal, to, to be unlike other people. Most people won't think ahead. Most people, to move towards what ahead looks like, won't let something go. And most people are unwilling to be uncomfortable, to gain the wisdom, to learn what to let go of, because most people will get stuck in what makes them comfortable. Most people will get stuck in what makes them feel afraid. Most people will get stuck in doing what everybody else is doing. If you are not intentionally borrowing from tomorrow what needs to be in your today— reading, connecting with other people— if you are not intentionally leading others, pouring out your wisdom, if you are not intentionally in the funnel There's something odd about how you're living and you need to look at that. If you are not intentionally looking at your life to say, what am I gonna start doing and what am I gonna stop doing? Because there's always something to stop doing if you're moving forward, then you're not living in that funnel. So what does this look like practically? This looks like with my adult children, I'm regularly having to go to the father for them because I am not in the position of dictatorship that I was before. Uh, I'm in the season of counseling and coaching, and I answer questions that they ask or invite myself into the conversation with a question. I have some thoughts about that. You know, let me know if you'd ever like to hear that because they can take it or leave it. That is uncomfortable. But operating in wisdom says, I've read enough books and talked to enough people and gone to enough seminars to know that as a parent of young adults, That is the wise way to operate so that I don't ostracize my young adults with all the things I just need to tell them how to do. So if you would just do what I'm telling you to do, life would go so much better. Mm-hmm. I have learned in my marital role, even if I think I know the answer and if I could just dictate what needs to be done, that often the best thing for me to do is ask a question. It is to watch my tone. It is not to not acknowledge who I am or the gifts God has given me, but it is also to operate in order. And that means my husband has a position of leadership and I can think whatever it is that I want to think. But if I allow myself to operate in order, then things will go better for me. That God sees what I'm doing in order. I am learning as I grow and lead a team. I am learning that uncomfortable conversations are often crucial.. And I am learning that, um, being clear is one of the best things I could ever, ever do because nice and kind and unclear is not better than uncomfortable with kindness and clarity. When you write down your top 3 goals, and my hope is that you do that somewhere, whether you use the Full Circle Planner to do that or not. I hope you use the Full Circle Planner. It's great. Can't wait for the new version to come out and be released very, very soon. But when you decide to write down the things you're focusing on, when you decide to write down your wins, when you look back at last month and your walls, when you look forward to the month to come, when you say, I'm actually looking at my life, you should always be asking yourself, where am I seeking wisdom that I need for tomorrow today? And what wisdom do I know I need tomorrow? Am I executing that today? Am I executing what I know? What am I going to stop doing? Because if XYZ didn't get done last month, and I want it to get done this month. What did I do last month that got in the way of me doing XYZ? You gotta look. That's why I always believe in writing things down. But if you can do those 3 things and ask, what wisdom do I need to borrow today? What do I need to let go of today to move further forward towards the wisdom that I have? And where do I need to learn to be uncomfortable? And just live with it for a second. Just live with it for a second. So that means today you need to find out about how you get your retirement act together. That means you go Fidelity Investments, or you go to a Schwab office, or you find a, a small box financial planner in your area and you go sit down with them and you look at your finances. It means you get on the scale every week, or at least every month so that you know where you are, or you pay attention to your clothes. It means you write down what you eat. It means you read. I know you don't like to read, but in this day and age, there are so many millions of ways for you to read, read audio. Read, literally read in a book club, read on a, on a, on a Kindle, read on your iPad, read. Quit making excuses for not being a reader. Reading is borrowing knowledge. You don't have time. You cannot figure out everything you need to figure out in life as you live. So the greatest hack for living your life well is borrowing wisdom from other people who have 50 years beyond you. That's why when you go to a business and they'll say, You know, more than 150 years of experience among the leadership team. Because if you come in the door, you're not just getting where you are today or where they are today, you're getting where they've been in their collective experience over, you know, each person having 25 or 30 years. But if it's 5 of them, it's 150 years of experience. Read, listen, take classes, never stop learning and growing. Be among other people who are doing what you're doing. So people join Toastmasters right now. We're doing a coaching cohort. I love coaching. I love coaching, even though I'm not an official coach. I love doing it because I love asking the questions. But the greatest thing that I love doing beyond putting a group of women in a small group is saying, Talk to each other because there's wisdom in the room from each other that I'm not bringing. All I did was put y'all in the same room. That's all I did. Being around like-minded people is a way to borrow knowledge. This is why the Sister Circle is so important. You're in the inner circle. I'm here feeding you. You're getting this weekly coaching for me. That's great. But what you form with the resources we're giving you is the first step in my mind for women outside of the word— and the word is always the most important thing— but outside of the word is women saying, hey, can I help you look at your life? Can I put you in a group of us who are going to do things together, challenge each other? You know, we may do some sister circle stuff together, we may do other things, but we are— I'm choosing to put myself in a group of like women. So you be the woman who, as an attorney, finds other attorneys to say, let's get together once a month and, and talk about what we're doing in problems that we're having. Let's spur each other on to greatness. Okay, I'm a pastor's wife, you're a pastor's wife. Let's bring our collective knowledge together and figure out what did you start doing, what did you stop doing, you know, how, how are you learning to live with this discomfort? And for an older woman to tell you, oh honey, you're gonna always live with that, let me tell you how, you just need to make peace with it. Over the course of the next year, one of my goals is to get even more practical and tactical and to create even more resources that women can take and use. Because what am I trying to do? I'm trying to grant wisdom in this season of my life. While I'm getting wisdom, I am also wanting to grant wisdom. How can I bottle it up and hand it out? So it's like this tea right here. This tea was born because there was a tea bag that I loved that was discontinued, but by the time it was discontinued, I had a way I like to drink the tea. I like 2 of the tea bags in my morning coffee mug. I would put 2 of the tea bags and 1, it was a hibiscus blend and 1 peppermint. So I had 3 tea bags in my cup and I loved it so much that I found a lady who would make me my own personal blend. So what did I do? I bottled it up and now I give these as gifts. It's Chrystal's tea blend. It's a little crystal-ish. Sometimes what you've learned in life, you bottle it up. Now, I don't mean that you put it in a bottle, but you figure out a way to download it. This is why so many of us, even if we never get published by a traditional publisher, we need to be like ruthless about writing down what's happening in our days and the lessons that we're learning. We need to be ruthless about getting other women around us in a group and reading together or studying the Bible together. We need to be really intentional about pouring our wisdom out to younger women. And younger women, be intentional about going to women who are beyond you in your season and saying, I need this from you. And this is not just about your home. This is not just about your family. This is not just about being a parent. This is about me in my third summer of college, working at Johnson Johnson. Yes, as an intern.. And I'll never forget, Ms. Johnson sat with me every Monday because I was her assigned intern. She was my mentor and she talked to me about how was it going and how did I feel about what I was doing and how to navigate office politics. I didn't know to ask for a mentor then, but she knew that I needed one. I'm telling you, if you are 20 or 30 or 40 or 50, you can have a mentor. You are not too late. If you are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, you should be pouring into someone because this is how this works. You're always looking ahead, looking for your Miss Johnson, and you're looking behind, who can I help bring along? And if it's not in community, like face-to-face community, that's fine. Write it down so when the Lord brings somebody to you, you can say, oh, I remember it was the summer of '92, honey. I don't even remember. Let me go and turn and tell you exactly what I was thinking. It's so that when you get into a mastermind or you get into some kind of group, or you find yourself like I was 3 years ago on a podcast with Jackie Hill Perry, and you just say whatever it is that I said, cuz I don't remember, for me to hear 3 years later, I learned something from you. The reason why the sister circle, your sister circle is important. Is because we hack time when we learn from each other. But you need to be seeking wisdom. You need to be letting go to make room for the yeses and releasing the things that are no longer a strong yes. And when you grow and as you learn, be uncomfortable. And then for those of us who know we have a little bit of wisdom, and we all have a little bit, it grows with time. Own it. Be teachable, be malleable, be open, but own it. Don't apologize for what you know. Don't go in figure eights. Don't go round and round the bed with people who are still trying to figure it out. Own it. Walk into the spaces like you've lived a little, like you've read some books, like you've taken some classes, like you've been mentored, like you've learned from a few other good leaders and Quit shrinking back. Show up to the meeting with the vision. Show up with a plan and the direction. Still be interested and inviting and, you know, democratic if you can, but walk with confidence. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Toward a future and a hope that you believe is coming. Get all the wisdom you can, and then wherever you stand, stand tall, stand firm, and stand in wisdom. So I'd love for you to tell me, where is it that you got stung with today's message? Tell me what your one takeaway is and what that looks like for you to apply it, because we don't want anything to go to waste and we want to use everything we can. To make sure that we're living full throttle. So if you need help to live in your wisdom, that's okay, but get the help you need and show up to your meeting, show up to your life, show up for your family, show up for your job, show up for your health, show up in your church, show up in your community, and digest, ingest, and grow. Stand. In your power, because we all have some, even if we need each other to exercise it full throttle. All right, y'all, that's all I got. That's all I got. That's all I got. I'll see you next time. Pass this along if it blessed you, because I believe if it blessed you, it'll bless a friend. Take care.