Dealing with the Unexpected

Have you ever felt like as soon as you think you have things together in your life, something changes? Like as soon as you figure out your rhythm, as soon as you figure out your weight, as soon as you figure out your kids, as soon as you figure out your money, something goes wrong. Listen, if that's you, you're not the only one. We're going to talk about that today. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst. If you're new here, welcome into my space. Listen, y'all, they let me out to play too much. I'm glad you're here, and I want to make sure whether you're watching me on YouTube or Facebook that you are following me, subscribed, whatever the thing is you're supposed to do, what all the cool kids say, like, subscribe, follow, all that, and that you are on my email list because all the good stuff goes to the people on my email list first. You can join my email list simply by going to chrystalevanshurst.com, and right below my picture, you'll see a spot to put your first name and your email address. I'd love to chat with you more than I do here on YouTube, Facebook, or if you're listening on the podcast, make sure you're subscribed over there too. I want to make sure that you also know everything I do here, the majority of the time, is given first to my Inner Circle membership. They get all the fun, they get all the foolery, they get the stumbles, they get the BTS, and then we button it up and make sure I look mostly decent or sound mostly decent You know, they, they can't keep me from singing though. Yes, they can't keep me from singing, but we try to make sure that I'm mostly put together for you. So make sure that you've checked out the Inner Circle. You can do that by going to thesistercircle.com/innercircle. This is brought to you by the Inner Circle. I want to talk to you about recalibration, and this is why I hate having to figure stuff out in my life again. I hate when I think I have my kitchen down and meal planning down, or when my kids I've got them down and I understand them, and then all of a sudden I don't. Or my husband, we were doing all right, and then we look at each other in the face sometimes and we're like, who are you? And we have to recalibrate, get to know one another again. Listen, recalibration is a part of life. It, it, it, if life stayed the same and you never had to recalibrate, you'd be so bored. But that doesn't mean that you're not frustrated when things shift and you have to make adjustments. So what I wanted to talk to you a little bit about today is what recalibration is. And how you can navigate seasons where you need to do that in order to move forward in a healthy way. So let's talk about recalibration, shall we? Let me jump into my conversation from my chat with the Inner Circle. So recalibration means you have to slow down. When I'm riding my bike, and if I have my bike on, um, uh, you know, it's a gear situation, so my bike has gears. If I switch gears because I need to put more energy and effort into a situation. Sometimes when I'm switching gears, it takes a moment for the chain to catch. So for a minute, I'm kind of spinning because it's not really caught, and I'm playing with the gears to get the chain to catch. And then the chain catches, and I find a rhythm. So what often— what I will say to girls on the team when they join, there's a lot, and there's a— it's a very, very small team for the amount of stuff that we do. People are always so shocked at how much we're able to do with the number of people that we have. But I can only pay who I can pay, right? So, um, but I always tell people, I know it's feeling like you're a little loose right now. I know it's feeling like you're new and you're learning all the things and it's a lot. I know. But don't worry, in a minute the chain will catch. When you are shifting gears in your life, when your children are getting older and they are changing, when you and your spouse are growing— so you're still good for each other, but you're— you have to get used to the new version of your spouse, or he has to get used to the new version of you. When you've discovered things that have changed in your life and you had one group of friends and they're, they're your friends, but you developed a new group of friends, or you're trying to figure out how to navigate responsibility. When you are looking at your finances and you're like, okay, I've gotta— I've been getting into a rut of spending money and not paying attention, and I need to get back to reviewing my budget, or I need to get back to saving the amount of money. There are moments in life where it just— things just feel off. That is a part of the gear shifting in your life. That is a part of living. If your gears aren't shifting You're not alive. Something should be shifting in your life even when you're older. And let's just say you're 80 years old, don't get out much, but you've got one or two women that come to see you. Their gears are shifting, which means you're shifting because you get to respond in discipleship and mentoring and speaking into their life based on their needs. The reason why motherhood is so hard is because your children are growing, and every time they shift gears, you have to recalibrate. Sometimes our recalibration is internal. What we want is different. Sometimes what we want is external, and how we need to be is different in order to meet the expectation of our situation. No matter what shifts are happening in your life, even if you don't have to stretch— we're not trying to— we're not talking about growing and building and creating something new and taking risk. We're not talking about that. I'm talking about there's a gear shifting in your life. Something is shifting and you have to readjust. And in the middle, there is this period where your chain hasn't caught and you just feel like, "I just don't know what I'm doing." You know, you have your first teenager and you're trying to figure out how to navigate that. "I don't know what I'm doing." You start a new job, you're like, "Oh my gosh, am I ever gonna get this? I know I'm competent, but this is a new job. I don't know what I'm doing." I mean, we all have this moment where we just feel a little lost. That is an opportunity and it's an invitation to recalibrate. But the only way you can recalibrate carefully is if you slow down. When my bike needs to shift gears and I change the gears and then I'm waiting on the chain to catch, while I'm waiting on the chain to catch, I'm not moving that fast because if I do move too fast, the chain might catch in a negative way and lock in. I can't move too slow because then I'll fall off the bike. I've gotta stay in motion. I just have to slow down. While I'm doing that. Recalibration means slow. So how do you slow down? My family went for a walk. I showed y'all that a few weeks ago. We went to the local lake and I just went for a walk, left all of our phones in the car. One of the things that I've been saying is I really want my boys— they do a lot of things together. They're, they're great boys and they get along pretty good, but I want them to foster memories more than what they do at home that I make them do or that they have to do, and video games. We went for a walk and there was a playground. My boys are too big for playgrounds, but you better believe they sure did play on it. Recalibrating relationship for them looked like the space without interruption to do something different. And I didn't have to be that creative. I didn't have to really come up with it. I just had to create the space for it. You may not always have the best discussion with your husband or your spouse, your dating, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, your fiancé, when you plan it. But if you plan regular time to slow down, to think, go sit on a park bench together, go on a long drive, magical things happen when you create the space. My husband loves to drive. He's not a talker, but he loves to drive. And we— this is what we do. Our best conversations and best decisions are made when we're driving. That's recalibration for us. This is for free. If you're married, sex recalibrates. I know some of y'all like that. Some of y'all hate that. It does. You know what sex does for a man? It slows his brain down. You know, when some of the best time to talk to your husband about the things that you need? After sex or the morning after, because now he can breathe, he can function, he can think. Um, and I'm not saying you should be a Delilah. I'm saying that you should be knowledgeable and you should know what slows your brain down. You want to know what else slows men down, whether that be husbands or sons? Food. Feed them. It's very simple. What slows your children down is time. Just be present, be in the room, be available. What will slow everyone down is life upon life upon life upon life. But let's not talk about everyone else, let's talk about you. What slows your brain down? For me, writing slows my date brain down. That's why I journal, and I'm horrible at journaling in this season, but all of a sudden all of life's problems become so much clearer when I write them down, when I get my thoughts out of my head and write them down. What slows your brain down? What helps you calibrate? What helps you turn everything over? To see it clearly. So I know that your life is busy, and I know that you have a million things going on, and I know that you're stressed, and I know that you're barely here this morning with me. I understand that. But what I'm saying to you is, in order to see clearly what the changes are that you need to make— because life is demanding change. When you're going up a hill on a bike, the terrain demands change. The terrain tells you, you need to shift gears if you're going to keep moving. You can't keep this pace on this hill. The terrain is telling you, you need to make a change. Your body will tell you, you need to make a change. You can't eat that no more because your blood pressure. You can't do this anymore because you need more sleep. You can't do this anymore, or you should do this. You should recalibrate because you're looking at a change. My sister has her goal weight, and within 5 to 10 pounds, she has been that weight. She, she had one moment where she gained a bunch of weight, and then she lost it. And for the rest of her life, she's been in these 5 to 10 pounds. That is her point. She starts getting near to that 10 pounds, she recalibrates. She just— and she hasn't been outside of it her whole life. So I need you to think about what is the terrain of your life and where is the shifting of the gears necessary, and how can you then continue pedaling but at a different pace so that you can recalibrate and the chain catches for the new terrain that you have. Calibration, recalibration is where you slow down enough, and slowing down can look like a weekend, it can look like an evening, it can look like a month, it can look like a year. Recalibration requires that you slow down enough so that you can flip over all the things that are causing you problems, see them clearly, identify them, group them into like areas so that you can really see what you're working with. And then you decide which of those areas you're gonna start with. Once you identify what you're looking for, as Kat Lee has taught us many times, your reticular activation system now knows what you need. So, you know, the world talks about the law of attraction. I mean, Oprah has talked about this. A lot of very wealthy people talk about it. It's very new agey, um, apart from God. But I just, again, I just think everything in the world is just a carbon copy of what God has already given us. I do believe in the law of attraction, but I don't believe that it's just, you know, woo woo. I believe that it's prayer. I believe that you slow down and you think. I believe that the spirit of God works in you. And I believe that when you allow God to, when you give space for your God-given DNA-embedded creativity, ideation, spirit-led Spirit-led, God-planning, God-sized plan. When you create the room for that, then God shows you, the Spirit of God shows you, your God-given intuition shows you what you're looking for. And then as soon as you identify it, you can see it. It's not even that you attract it, it's that what you need is already there. It's that now you attract it, you see it. Think about Abraham in the bush with Isaac. The ram was in the bush the whole time, but he didn't see it until he raised the knife. He had to slow it down. God said, go to the mountain, I want you to give me your son. Are you serious? Recalibration. But we're going to climb this mountain, and I don't know how this is going to work out, God, but I believe that you told me I'm going to have a father, have a great nation. This is my only son. I don't know how you're going to do it, but I believe I'm going to come back down the mountain with this boy. He said that me and the boy will return in the morning. He goes up there not wanting to sacrifice his son, and when he raises the knife, then the ram appears. That's the law of attraction, that you are moving forward in the direction of your need, looking for what you need, in motion to do what you can. Had he not decided in advance that God was going to provide a substitute for that sacrifice of his son He wouldn't have been aware when the ram showed up. Recalibration means you see what you need. You see what you need. Recalibration looks like early mornings. Recalibration looks like late evenings. Recalibration means quiet time for your small children so that you have room to think from 2 to 4. Recalibration means take longer on the drive, take the long way home. Recalibration means going to the altar after church, and when church is over You stay at the altar. Recalibration means getting counseling. It means getting therapy. Recalibration looks like journaling. Recalibration looks like hard conversations with your spouse, writing letters to your spouse. Recalibration looks like family meeting. We need to talk about things that have been getting out of hand. The dishes have not been done every night. I don't even remember what the chore chart said. Somebody tore the chore chart down, but we're going to sit here and have a family meeting and have another one. Family meeting. Kids are home for the summer. Kids are gone for the summer. This looks like you setting goals, pausing to get away, whether that be for an early morning at a coffee shop or with your family, friend. It looks like paying attention to your life. The reason why the Inner Circle exists is because, of course, people want more. But the reason why it really exists is because most of this stuff, y'all, we know, we've heard before. But sometimes you just need someone in your ear reminding you to do it. Sometimes we need external influence. So my hope is that what we do in the Inner Circle is that you receive external influence to remind you of what you already know, to possibly teach you something you didn't, but that all of it shines light on a problem that you already have, on a path that you're already on, on a, uh, in a process that you're already moving forward, that you're already on the bike, that you need to shift gears, and you just need somebody in your ear saying, don't stop, don't stop, just keep pedaling, just keep pedaling, go down to level 3, that's okay, hold that for a minute, but know when you turn the corner, it's going to be downhill, so you're going to want to go up to level 6 and slow that thing all the way down. You need somebody in your ear helping you know what shifts to make, but you don't make the shifts without slowing down to recalibrate. Recalibration for me has looked like time where I'm away from the Inner Circle. Recalibration for me has looked like, um, me being offline on YouTube. And let me tell you, Being in between gears is uncomfortable. I like releasing content every week. I love that. I hate not doing it, but I'm not going to be able to continue to do it well if I don't pause to assess if I'm doing it well to begin with. Recalibrating matters. We lost Tina Turner, unbelievably so. And if you look at the third post back, third or fourth post back on her Instagram, she talks about Uh, this was from March 9th of this year. She talks about how she could have saved herself a lot of pain and heartache by just paying attention to her blood pressure, taking her blood pressure medication, and doing whatever it took to make sure her numbers were good. And in that, she says, you want to read more of my story, you can go to this other site. So I went to the site, read the story, did not know she'd been on dialysis, did not know that she'd had a kidney transplant. She didn't know all that. But she said, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure in my 30s. She's thin. She said, and I just kept going. But kidney disease doesn't hurt. It doesn't cause you pain. They just fade away. She said, I wished I had paid better attention to my body. I wish I had taken the pill. That was daily therapy for me, keeping my blood pressure low. The only way that you're going to know what needs to be adjusted if you're taking your blood pressure— there are things in your life that you're not going to know if they're bad or good if you don't actually measure them, pay attention to them. And there are many things in your life, my friend, that will be silent killers for you. If you don't look at your life, turn everything over, try to put it together the best way you can, and pause to recalibrate if necessary. I don't want you to be a casualty simply of the fact that you didn't pay attention to the terrain and that you were still pedaling in the wrong gear in the right season. And because you never adjusted, you never enjoyed the season. Flourished in the season, grew in the season, because you were fighting the ride the whole time. Fighting your gear is unnecessary. Just switch gears. How do you do that? You make space to recalibrate. Recalibration looks like what's working, what's not working. The reason why I've built in a weekly check-in into the planner is because I really believe that that's the biggest problem that we have. We recalibrate, but we just do it too far and in between, and then we've wasted time. I really believe that when you slow down to pay attention and say, what's working, what's not, what do I like, what do I not like, what's hurting, what's helping, what brings me joy, what's making me cry, what do I want more of or less of, what, what— I only have this one life, how do I want to use it? When you slow down, that helps you to see what's happening in the terrain of your life and gives you the, the bandwidth to make changes. So if you're feeling like the terrain is rough, it's okay. It probably is. Slow down and recalibrate. Change something in the rhythm with which you live your life so you can see and hear clearly. And here's what I know about God: he's just waiting for people who want to hear him. They would just slow down. I have all the answers in the world. What you need to know in order to recalibrate is to notice when the terrain is changing. Your children are getting older. You're getting tired of your job. Your health is shifting, for the better or for worse. Your marriage is having certain challenges. You have been at this church for 20 years, and all of a sudden you feel like what you need is no longer here. It doesn't mean you have to leave. Maybe it means what you've been doing, you need to change your ministry or how you volunteer. You know, when is it time to go? When is it time to move? When you notice the terrain changing, the way that you'll know what you need to do is to make the space to recalibrate. Play around with the gears. Shift up, shift down. Does that work? Does this work? I'm not sure. Until the chain catches. When the chain catches in your life, you'll know what you need to do for the next leg of the road. Not forever, not for 20 years, for the next leg. When you let someone else run alongside you, coach you, encourage you, yell at you, then you're not making those changes by yourself. This is what the Inner Circle is— us cheering each other on and us deciding that the race that they're running, or that the path that we are moving along— when you make time to recalibrate, you've decided to stay on the path, or maybe take a new one. But the key is you're deciding You're not falling into it. You're not unnecessarily struggling with it. You're not curious or anxious about it. You've just decided, this is my path. This is my gear. This is the way. I want to encourage you for the little things in your life. Recalibrate your meal plan, your menu, by choosing to try new things. That's recalibrating. The day you say, I'm sick of eating this for breakfast, that's recalibrating. That's not stretching and that's not striving. You're actually not changing your path that much. You're just making tweaks to strengthen and bolster you down or bolster you up. Recalibrating says, I'm worth noticing that this path is different than it was last year or last month. It's worth me noticing that I may be able to ride easier. It's noticing whether or not there's a ram in the bush so that I don't bring down the knife unnecessarily, but being able to see what already exists.