When Life is a Wreck

Have you ever felt like your life is simply a wreck? Like going to hell in a handbasket? Like no matter what you do, you just can't get it right. And every day you wake up, something else is busted. Oh, I've had a feeling like that every now and again in my life. Not only in my life, but also in my car. Can I talk to you about that real quick? Hi there. My name is Chrystal Hurst, and if you're new here, go on and hit that like button. Make sure you're subscribed, you know, all the things that the cool kids say, because I want to make sure you don't miss anything that I have to share with you. I'm here week in and week out sharing content that I know will bless your life, that'll change the way you think. And when you change the way you think, it changes the way you move. And I want you to move well through your life, so don't miss an episode. And you can make sure you don't miss by making sure you're subscribed on YouTube, following me on Facebook, or making sure you're subscribed to the podcast if you're listening to this. But if you're listening, you can see, and if you're seeing, you can listen. So listen, whatever way works best for you, so be it. You are getting this video because every Monday I am live inside of the Inner Circle membership that I have. This is a group of women who are here for more from Chrystal Hurst, more content, more accountability, more community, diving deeper. And they also are committed to being a part of producing the content that you see. So they are getting the first overflow and the best of all that I do. And then we pick certain things, we button it up, we make it pretty, we edit it and make it seem like I'm a decent person and that my audio is okay and that I look okay and all that. And we put it here for you. But if you want more, I want to invite you to check out the Inner Circle. I also want to make sure you do not miss your opportunity to join me in person in October of 2023. Come to Cali with me. It is the Sisters Circle Retreat, where I will be there, a bunch of other women will be there. I'm inviting some of my friends for us to get away in a beautiful spot in California to spend some time making room to hear the rhythm of our own souls and also to hear a word from God. And if you would love to join me in person, I would love to see you face to face. So go to thesistercircle.com/retreat to join me in person in October, and go to thesistercircle.com/ Inner Circle for information about how you can join the membership and then come to the retreat as a VIP, because only my Inner Circle members are going to be VIPs. Anyway, I want to jump into this today, and I'm feeling a little foolery. I'm gonna try to keep it calm. I'm gonna try to do right, y'all. I busted up my husband's car the other day. The reality is I busted up my car because my car hit his car. Why did my car hit his car? Because we normally park side by side. But he, on this particular summer hot day— because it has been hellacious out here, like surely the devil and his demons are out here having a fun fest while we are baking alive— but anyway, it's hot. So he pulled his car behind my car to make sure it could be in some shade. I came out, I got in my car, and I do what I always do. I backed it up. I backed that thing up. And when I backed my car up, I backed right into his car. His first question when I said, hey, um, I have some bad news, because he was asleep, I have some bad news. And he turned over and he looked at me. I said, nobody died, but I backed into your car and it's messed up. He just took a deep breath. He put his hand over his face. He held that breath for like a solid 10 and then was like, oh my God, as if I had killed his child. So we walked outside together, and partially because I'm feeling bad— I don't do well with self-condemnation and I could have done better and I should have, would have— I'm terrible about that— and partially because I was girding my loins to be able to respond to whatever he what he might say to me, positive, negative, mean or nice. I just was just feeling all kind of crazy ways on the inside. I was quiet. He walked outside. He didn't say much. He walked around. He looked at my car. He looked at his car. My back right is jacked. His front left is jacked. And then he said, did you not see it? And with everything that's in me, I wanted to say Well, that's a dumb question because do you think if I would have seen it I would have backed into it? But praise the Lord, hallelujah, I didn't say that. I did not say that. Y'all praise the Lord for that. However, I did say no, I didn't. I did say I'm sorry. I did say, uh, the sun was shining really bright and I have a rearview camera. But it just was solid white. It just was highly reflective. And I noticed that, but I didn't think I need to look behind me as I back up because I knew my kids were inside. I knew my husband was inside. And I thought I knew where his car was. So I backed it up. Y'all, I just got my car out the shop. I just got it out of the shop from getting the engine fixed. I also just got it out of the shop from getting a front bumper fixed because the other day I hit a pothole and knocked my front bumper out. Y'all, my car is closing in on 200,000 miles. I have no interest— do you hear me? No interest in getting another car, having a car payment, or paying interest on that. And I actually am totally happy. I'm not a car person. I don't need a lease. I don't need a new car every year. I don't like new things. I don't like change. And I like keeping my money. So I am in refusal mode at this point about getting a new car. You want to know where I was headed when I backed out of that driveway? I was headed to go to a nearby car dealership because even though I don't want a new car, even though I'm not ready for a new car, I know that I should at least start thinking about what I want so when the time comes I don't have to do all of that. You know what had happened when I got in my car? Turn on the engine to go back out of the driveway and go to the car dealership, check engine light came back on. God is trying to tell you something. But you know what? I believe that he's also a miracle-working God and he can hold all things together. What does this have to do with you? 3 things that I want to tell you. There are things in our life that we can avoid. They just don't have to happen. There are car wrecks or wrecks that just don't have to happen. There are a lot of things in life you cannot avoid. There, there are times when you'll be driving down the street, or someone you know will be driving down the street, and someone else is being reckless, someone else is drinking, someone else is texting and driving, someone else is falling asleep at the wheel, someone else slips because it's raining outside. You had nothing to do with that. You had two hands on the wheel. You were minding your own business, going where you need to go, and someone else runs into you. You cannot control that. Life be out here lifin'. But sometimes we're in wrecks we could totally avoid. You want to know why we don't avoid them? Because we're either not paying attention, or we look but we're a little blinded. And because something in our life is shining a little more, we don't take the time to pay attention to where we're going. This happens in relationships. You're blinded, so you're not paying attention to where you're going. This happens with jobs. You're blinded by the money, so you take the job you know good and well has nothing to do with your passion or your direction in life. You're blinded by desire. You spend money that you shouldn't be spending on things you don't even need. You're blinded by emotional pain because you feel some kind of way about this thing or this person. You'll avoid it even though you know you need to run to it. You'll be blinded by entertainment because you spend so much time on social media, so much time watching Netflix, so much time watching TV. So much time having a good time with your friends, going to happy hour, going to the club, doing all the things that make you feel like you have a life. You're actually not paying attention to the things that truly will give you life. You're just blinded, blinded by the fact that you think you're young and you have time, when really you don't know how much time you have at all. The key to living life well and avoiding the wrecks that you can avoid. Avoiding the collisions that you can control is making sure that you're looking and you're not blinded. So I wanted to talk to you really briefly and just give you 3 things, maybe 4. I'm a preacher's daughter, so I think in 3s all the time. And if I was really prepared on today, I'd even have some alliteration, but right now I'm just fresh off the car situation, like it's literally in my driveway right now with the tail light busted out. Praise the Lord the trunk still opens. Sidebar, y'all listen, I was in my 20s when someone rear-ended me. I had a white Mitsubishi Mirage. You need to know it took me— I drove that car around with the trunk tied down because when they, when they ran into me, the trunk opened and wouldn't close. I drove that car around with the trunk rope down, with the whole back dented in, because the front was still drivable. I drove that thing around for like 3 months, y'all, because I didn't want a car payment, because I was like, it still works. So this is who you talking to. One of the best things that you can do in your life to avoid collisions is slow down. That when you have to make decisions, sleep on it, pray about it. Don't give a quick yes unless God told you yes before you got to the question. Take your time to get to know him. Think before you respond. Before you even apply for the job, why don't you journal or write down the pros and cons about what's next in your life? Before you make that purchase. It'll be there tomorrow. Catch the sale tomorrow. Don't make impulse purchases. Don't be blinded by the speed at which life would encourage you to move. Now, I know that there are some times where we need to make quick decisions and we need to move things forward in an expeditious manner. But usually when you get to those circumstances in your life, if you can have made the decision beforehand— when you're a student of your life, you will have made decisions beforehand. My sister tells my boys, her boys, all the time, my nephews, you got to decide what kind of man you're going to be before you are tempted, before everybody else is doing it, before you need to pass a test and you're afraid that you're not going to pass, and so you are tempted to look at that other person's paper and cheat. You have to decide before things happen in your life what kind of person you're going to be, because when that moment comes, you need to be in the practice of being that person. I should have been in the practice of looking behind my car, because really, anybody could be behind my car. And if I care about all creatures great and small, do I want to run over just anything that's behind me? I mean, I can say I don't care, but the truth is nobody likes roadkill. I have two cars in my life that have been totaled. My oldest daughter totaled my first minivan. My second daughter totaled my husband's, uh, SUV that we loved that was paid off. Both of those cars were paid off and these teenage children totaled them. Both of them were avoiding roadkill. My daughter told me, I was the oldest one, I was avoiding the squirrel. Hit the squirrel! Like, hit the squirrel! The squirrel shouldn't have been playing around in the street. No way. What I said was, I conjured up the Spirit of God and I said, are you okay? Because really what I wanted to say, what in the world happened? Well, are you okay? Let me tell you what happened. In that moment, she had decided who she wanted to be. She didn't want to be the person who killed all creatures great and small. So she killed my car. You got to decide before life— life's you— who are you going to be. You have to have principles that you live your life by. The reason why it's so important that you read and study the word of God is because you can spend your life figuring out the hard way what the principles should be, or you can just follow the rule book. You can engage in relationship with someone who provided words for you to help you know before you get to circumstances in your life what you should be looking at, how you should pay attention. That's why the Bible is important. That's why going to church is important. That's why building your faith is important, because faith gives you the rules for living. Slow down. Stop living impulsively. Number 2, I want you to realize that when you slow down, what it gives you the ability to do is to see. It's to look. We have the ways we like to look, right? I have my rearview camera on my car, and slowing down would have helped me for sure, because even if I hit the car, I wouldn't have hit it as hard, right? But I had my camera that gives me a rearview mirror, basically, to see what's behind me. I couldn't see because the sun was too bright. So I should have done what we used to do, right? You put your right hand on the passenger seat and you turn around and you look. The convenience doesn't determine whether or not I look. I slow down so that if one way of seeing things doesn't work for me, I give myself an opportunity to look at it differently. Looking in life is an amazing tool because it helps you not just to see what's there to be seen, it helps you to see what you don't expect to see. Let me tell you what looking looks like. Looking looks like not just reading God's word but studying it. Looking looks like not just knowing how you feel but why you feel that way. Looking looks like the last time you had an argument with your spouse or with a friend or with a sister and getting underneath the hood to understand why is our relationship working this way. If you keep getting in debt and getting out of debt, what's going on with you? Looking says I'm going to look at the why and the undercarriage for why I keep making these decisions. It's going to take an opportunity. You're gonna have to make the time. This is why you slow down, to turn around and put the stretch into your look, make extra effort. When you get under the hood, you can see why the check engine light is on. I know the check engine light is on, and I know that the last time the check engine light is on, I could drive it around and it never did anything. I can ignore the check engine light, or I can go somewhere to see an expert to help me look under the hood if I really want to look, look. And that's the question I want to ask you: do you really want to look, look? Because it's not until you look under the hood, it's not until you actually put your hand to the side, twist your body, take a position that's not a part of your norm and look, look, that you make sure you've seen everything that has to be seen. The Bible says, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added. He says, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. Don't just take a cursory look Search with everything you've got. Look, look, go deeper. You having problems in your marriage? Go deeper. Make the effort. You're having problems in your friendships? Go deeper. Do you keep getting passed over for the job? Ask somebody, what is it that I can do to better myself? If you never have any friends, go deeper. If you can't get the weight off, go deeper. We keep living on the surface, having wrecks, because we won't slow down and because we won't look, look. We won't search, we won't seek, we won't get underneath the hood. The reason why you have to be willing to look, look is because there are lots of things that are available on the surface. Proverbs talks about wisdom calling into the streets, begging for young men to listen. They see her, they hear her, they don't look, look, they don't sit a while and dine. I need you to slow down so you can take a second look at the recurring themes of your life and then ask, what might God be wanting to show me? You're always feeling anxiety. Don't live like that without taking the time to slow down and look, look, maybe some of the wrecks that you keep experiencing are avoidable. And the third thing, you know what I had to tell myself when my first daughter totaled my car, my second daughter totaled the other car, what I had to tell myself last week when I knocked my front right bumper out, and what I had to tell myself yesterday when I ran into my husband's car? It's just a car. I need you to be able to walk away from the wrecks that you've had in life and to put your wrecks in proper perspective. When I was pregnant with my daughter at 19, this was back in the day when our church was a little smaller and we still believed in bringing things before the church. So yes, I was that 19-year-old kid who my dad told the whole church at one time. I'll never forget his words: In every life, a little rain must fall, and we are not exempt from that. I did not have to come to church that day. I was in college. He'd let me know he was going to share it with the church. I came home. I came home because I thought, my parents aren't pregnant, I am. So Being the oldest responsible kid as I am, I came and I sat on the front row next to my mom. And after church, all these people came up to me, loved on me. Um, I have a scrapbook even now of all the cards that I received of people sharing their love for me and all the letters that other women who had had babies as teenagers that they wrote me saying, It's just a season. One of my dearest friends hugged me that day and she says, I will call you later and we'll talk longer. But she said, in a year, this will not feel the same. Hang in there. It's just a season. I realize that there are some wrecks in life that even when they're repaired, are not the same. I told you my front bumper had an issue, and listen, my husband was trying his best to get it back in, so he took a mallet to it. So even now that the body shop put it back in place, I can still see the dent mark from where my husband was hammering the mallet off my bumper. And you want to know why he did that? Because the car is 12 years old, and he was like, it's fine, we don't care if it has dents. It took everything in me when he was using that mallet not to say, what are you doing? I let him do it though, cuz I don't have a car payment. The first reaction I'm sure my husband had when he saw his car was, what in the world were you doing? Did you not see my car? I said, I didn't see your car and I'm sorry. I could tell he was making the effort to self-soothe. I think I have a video about that somewhere., and I was making the effort to not respond out of shame or defensiveness. Both of us were trying to remember, these are just cars. It's just a season. We're not going to own these cars forever. This is repairable. It may do some permanent damage to the undercarriage or to the frame, but at the end of the day, can we still drive? Both of these cars? We can't. Do we have the capacity to fix these cars? We do. If we have to get new cars, we'd not like it, but could we? We could. At the end of the day, it's just a vehicle. There are so many things that you're getting bent out of shape about in your life right now that are relational, that are financial, that are spiritual, that are emotional, that are situational. And I need you to tell yourself the truth, even if this is about your body, physical. It's just a car. It's just a vehicle. This is not designed to last anyway. Try to keep the correct perspective when you do have wrecks. Try to keep the correct perspective when you do make a mistake. Try to keep a correct perspective when they have words for you or you have words for them. Try to keep a correct perspective because life is short and you're going to have wrecks. You're going to wish you had moved slower, made a better decision. You're going to wish that you had looked twice and not been with that person or not gotten married to that individual, that you hadn't spent that money, that you weren't in that debt, that you didn't come out of college with all those student loans. You will think, I wish I had looked twice. You will think, I wish I had studied the Bible more earlier in my life. You will wish that you had gotten a different degree. You will wish that you had taken better care of your physical body. You will wish that you had moved slower and taken a second look. But when you have the wreck, remember that if you're still here It's just a car. It's just a vehicle. And as long as you still have the ability to drive, you still get to choose. Drive the beat-up car, go get a new car, go get a gently used car, take an Uber for a minute. You gotta learn how to let it go, how to have the wreck and not let the wreck have you. So who am I talking to today? I'm talking to the person who feels like you just had a wreck and you are still reeling because you were moving too fast. You were blinded. You couldn't see. You didn't take a second look. And you have been railing yourself across the coals, thinking like my grandmother would say it How stupid. It's just stupid. It's stupid, man. It's stupid. Dust yourself off. You're still here. Your car still runs. You still have the ability to choose. But keep in mind, as you move forward, I want you to move slower. More thoughtfully. I want you to take the time to look, look. And the whole time, I want you to hold things loosely in your hand because you can't take any of this with you. The only thing that's designed to last is the cargo in your car— you and the people you care about that are riding with you. The only thing that's designed to last is the precious cargo of your soul. So absolutely be careful how you drive, but when life, life And when the wrecks happen, learn from them and move on. Don't be defensive. Say you're sorry to yourself. I'm so sorry, self, that I made that decision, but we learn from that and we're going to be better for it. Give yourself some grace. I should have been wearing that t-shirt today, because when you give yourself grace You know what will happen? You get back in the car and keep going. So if you needed somebody to tell you today to just keep going— fix the wreck but keep going, learn from the wreck but keep going, look and live, keep going— well, that's what you just heard. Get off the floor. Figure out what you need to do to fix it. My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and whatever you need in order to move that thing forward, I believe he can give it to you. If you don't even know what you need, I believe he can point it out to you. And what I know is that it may be a month, it may be a year, it may be a decade, but at some point in your future, this is simply a story you'll tell. A dear friend of mine has a family member who has been battling cancer. And, um, I was so happy to hear a couple of weeks ago that they've been trying all different kinds of things, that the last thing that they tried, the cancer is shrinking. And this family member saw me and said to me, do you remember what you told me? At our church, the Bible says when someone is sick, let them come to the church, let the elders pray for them. In between services, sometimes people will come and ask for prayer for difficult situations, definitely for health. She came. Normally I'm not in there, my sister's not in there, but we know her and we came and we're a part of that prayer time. After we prayed, she was crying uncontrollably, and she just said, 'I'm so scared, I'm so scared.' While they were praying for her, she said, 'Jesus, help me,' and then she just went into hysterics. 'I can't leave my son, I can't leave my family.' She was just anxious, frightened, and hysterical, and I hugged her, one, to calm her down, But I just kept whispering over and over to her, this is just the story you'll tell. We can't avoid you walking through it. It's a chapter, it has to be written, but it's just a story you'll tell. Don't be afraid. Yea, though I walk through the shadows of death, you do not have to fear. This is just a story you'll tell. So when I saw her The cancer was shrinking. She said, do you remember what you said to me? I'm building my story. He's writing my story. It's just a story I'm gonna tell. I realize that it doesn't always work out that way. I realize that sometimes the cancer does take your life like it took my mom's. I realize that sometimes you can't afford the car and it's horrible. I realize that sometimes you don't have a place to lay your head or you don't have a next job. I realize that sometimes you're in debt way longer than you wanna be. I just want you to keep that in mind, that it's just the story you'll tell, and that all roads, no matter what you're driving or when you drive, lead you to the life that your soul was always supposed to live. What you see is not all there is. Everything you see is just a vehicle. And if you believe that you're actually going somewhere, then whether the hard thing shrinks or whether it grows and causes great pain, it all leads to the door of the next thing God has been planning and preparing for you all along. So that's why You can't drive your vehicle just based on what you see. You have to have in mind where you're really going. So if you keep that in mind, then let that change how you drive today. Slow down, take a second look, and keep all the things you see in perspective. I hope that encouraged you, and I would love for you to tell me in the comments about your situation. As I was talking, what personal situation was ringing true for you? You know what? It's good for us to gather together and confess to one another. Something magical will happen when you write it down. So tell me, what's been wrecking in your life? Where do you need to slow down, take a second look? Or just realize this too shall pass. Share it if it helped you, and I'll see you next time.