72. Seeing Life and Purpose a Little Differently

Oh, my dear friend, you know how much I love identity and mindset work and allowing ourselves to find a perspective that truly serves us. And that's what I have to share with you today, is a perspective that may truly serve you while still understanding that it's okay if it doesn't right now. It's okay if not. Everything I share is what hits home for you right now. That's all right. And I. I think if we approach a lot of our influences that way through the radio and music and social media and TV shows and movies and friends groups, and just understand that some things we hear are going to be meant for us right now and others, well, we can leave those be. I think that perspective can give us a lot more freedom to just intentionally choose what do I want to take with me, what do I want to leave behind. And that's something that even really helps me as a mother. Whenever I receive advice, which is sometimes just freely, freely given all the time. Right. Is when I receive this advice, I just, I ask myself, like, what part of that do I really want to take and what would I like to leave behind? And you can do that when you read books, too. You may not agree with everything in a book, and you can still take what you need and leave the rest behind. And it's all good. And also a little update for you on the podcast. I am. Drumroll, please. It has been a long time in the works over here. I have removed the intro and outro music and pre recorded stuff that I had in here. Right. And it's because I am bringing a shift, a warm, welcomed shift into the podcast and the work that I'm doing. And I'm really excited to share that with you guys. It is almost ready to go. Um, and I just thought it'd be best if it was just me chatting with you until I do that. So, yes, we are changing the name of the podcast and I'm excited to share that with you. And I appreciate your patience and support and encouragement that you so graciously pour into me. It makes a big difference for me and I'm grateful for you. So let's dive into this episode. It's going to be a little bit quick for you. I know that you've got things to do and places to be and the little ones to be talking with and teenagers to have help. Right. And model, too. You've got a lot going on, my sweet friend, and I think that this perspective could serve you tremendously in a way that it's helped me tremendously. Especially this year when I found it. And that is to think about our identity and our life as we've had it unfold for us, with more purpose, with. With seeing more of the plan and seeing more of the. The intention behind what we've been given. And I just personally, personally don't believe that everything just is coincidental and on accident. There's no purpose behind it. And to believe that we're just not purposely here just seems silly to me. Um, it was recently my birthday and I learned that their scientists estimate that it's a 1 in 400 trillionth of a chance of you even being born. And how could that be just by chance? 1 in 400 trillion, like that just seems like purpose. You're here on purpose. It's you. You've been chosen, You've been selected. You have ways to contribute and serve and a gift to give freely. And I'm so excited for you to find it as you find yourself a little bit more. So that being said, with our purpose here, and we wanna find more of a plan and the intention in our life and what we experience. Earlier this year, I was talking with one of my good friends and she. I need to get her on the podcast. She'd be a hoot. Love her. And she shared with me. We were chatting and she goes, you know, I know we don't get to choose what we go through. And then she paused, and it was one of those pauses where she's really contemplating what she had just said. And it was clear that she didn't agree with what she just said. She goes, well, actually, I don't agree with that. And I said, really? How so? And she goes, I think that we do have some say in what we go through. And that really caught me off. That caught me by surprise, right? And I'm. I'm immediately thinking about the hard things that I've been through in my life. Like you're telling me I had a say in that. Cause I certainly don't recall choosing to have a pedophile in my home or to lose my dad, or to have those friendships and family members like to experience all the betrayal. Like, I, I don't. I don't recall signing myself up for that. And that's just what I'm thinking, right? And I'm listening to my dear friend and she goes, you know, I, I don't agree with that. I don't agree that we don't have any say. She's like, here's what I believe. And she said it with such confidence. And courage. And it was the type of courage and faith that I want to have. And I've been trying to find within myself and give myself permission to have. As you guys know, it felt very intimidating for me to even say God's name, let alone let you know that I have a lot of faith in him. Um, that took a lot of courage, and I'm. I'm really proud of myself for doing that. And it's still an area that I. I'm constantly doing, growing in, and I'm learning a ton. And I still wanna say proverbs instead of proverbs, so there's that too. Um, anyway, but she said with such courage and confidence and grace that she believes that before we're born, we get to talk with God. And we have a talk with God and he asks us, who do you wanna be? And we're. And I just imagine it as like, we're this spirit. Spirit that's like dancing and twirling and whirling around in front of him, like, oh, I'm so excited. I get to go to earth and I get to have this life and do these things. And we maybe have this vision. I don't know. Or maybe we know that it will be hard. Maybe we know that we'll feel devastated at times and. And broken at other times. Maybe we know that or maybe we don't. I don't know. I really don't know that part. I just imagine that we're this small, whirling around spirit, all excited to tell God who we want to be. And that's what my friend said. I imagine that we get to talk with God before we come here. And he asks us, who do you want to be? And we tell him. We tell him who we want to be. We tell him that we want to be enthusiastic and we want to be gracious and we want to be strong and we want to be courageous and bold and creative and disciplined and devoted and purposeful and productive and dynamic and confident and blessed. And we want to be all these things. And we tell him, and then he says something like, okay, my child, that's who you'll be. And when I imagine that, I mean, first of all, how cool is it that our brain can, like, imagine something like that? Something where we don't even know what that would look like, but we just. We just think. We just use our imagination, we use our creativity and think about what it would look like. And it creates these feelings because thoughts create feelings. And you don't have to go through something right now, in the moment, in order to feel it. And I think that's. I really believe that's a God given gift, that we can feel something before we've ever experienced it. We can feel what it would be like to meet the man of our dreams. Right. Maybe before. Maybe before you met your spouse and you would just feel what it would be like to hold his hand and walk through the grocery store together. I know sometimes I think about Marcus and I being 100 years old, just slowly walking through a grocery store together. And I. I feel it. I feel what that's like. And maybe before you have your baby, you imagine what it will feel like to have him on your chest for the first time and you take your mind to that place where you can just imagine it before it's happened and you feel it. That is a gift, that we have the ability to do that. And I hope that you're doing that purposefully every day, feeling the way that you want to feel before life changes and happens, before your kids say the thing or do the thing, or your spouse remembers the thing. Before any of that, you just start feeling like the wife you want to be, like the mother you want to be, like the daughter, the friend, the business owner that you want to be. You feel that way first and then you go live it. It's. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Right? So my friend goes on to say, I think we. I think we talk with God and he asks us, who do you want to be? And we tell him. And then he says, okay, my child, that's who you'll be. And after that, he. He prepares the way. And I just. I love that it has stuck with me so strongly. And when I think about my life personally and some of the really hard things that I've been through, I understand a bit more why those were so necessary for me. And as much as they hurt in the moment and as much as I didn't understand them, and sometimes I still don't. As much as some of it doesn't make sense. It's like I stop trying to figure out why it happened, and I just look at the purpose that it served in my life and who I became because it happened. Who have I become because my dad passed away when I was six years old? Yeah, I grew up a little bit faster than others, I'll say that. And I'm 29 years old. I'm an extremely devoted wife and mother of three boys. I also. I chose to dive all into marriage and motherhood earlier on, maybe because I grew up a little bit faster maybe because I lost my dad at such a young age that I just. I want this family and I want this love and I want this life as long as I can have it. Because I understand that it's not forever, it's not guaranteed. I don't know how long we get to be here. My dad passed away when he was 41 years old and I was just a 6 year old little girl. And when I think about my boys, I want to have as much time with them as possible. And I just, I don't know if I would prioritize that the same way if I had lost a family member. I don't know if I would be awakened to this idea of life being so precious and so such a miracle, this one in 400,000,000,000th of a chance of even being here. I don't think I would have woken up to that if I hadn't lost my dad. And when I look at that purpose and how it's played in my life with such significance to allow me to become who I want to be, it's not just about how it changed me. It's about how it truly prepared a path and a way for me to become who I want to be. It's undeniable. It's undeniable how amazing that is. And yes, I miss my dad and no, I don't understand everything around it. And I still see purpose. And I think that's the gift of this perspective that my friend shared with me is it's like a. It's a way for us to find a little bit more purpose in our pain and help us to see. It's not just about what happened to us, it's about who will be through it. Who, who will we become through this? And to have faith, Faith makes mindset so much easier. Faith makes healing so much easier. And it's just the faith of believing that things happen for you, life happens for you and you happen for life. And it's this beautiful way that we allow ourselves to show up and allow life to show up for us rather than just thinking it all happens to me. And my next example is when with my mom's ex husband and he was my next father figure and gosh, I loved him dearly, really did. And I still, you know, I. Going through, going through that, I see how much it helped me become who I really want to be and prioritize life in a new way and, and think about my kids in a new way too and their innocence and their purity and their wild love for life and how badly I just, I want to nurture it. I want to. I don't want to just protect it, I want to nurture it. I don't want to surround it and like bubble wrap it right where it's at. Like, I want to create a space that it just grows wildly and. And I know, I know that I am who I am today because of what I went through. Even even though it was hard and even though it didn't make sense in the moment, I think about who I must have told God. I want to be God. I want to be enthusiastic and energetic and have a love for life that others can just feel radiate off of me. And I want to be devoted and I want to be productive and purposeful and dynamic and confident and blessed. And if that's what I told him, and he said, okay, my child, that's who. That's who you'll be. I just feel emotional saying that, okay, my child, that's who you'll be. And he prepares the way. And when we. We don't know what that's going to look like, right? Because maybe if we knew what it was going to look like, we would have changed our answer. I don't know. I think I would have. I think if I knew I was gonna go through all of that, I was gonna go through a miscarriage in order to become the exact mother that I wanna be and still figure out who that is, I don't think I would have said it. I don't think I would have claimed it. I think I would have been really afraid. I think I would have felt really afraid of that. Because sometimes it just feels really hard to go through hard things. And it feels really hard to even think about the hard things that we go through and would need to go through to become who we want to be. To become as strong as you say you want to be, to be, to love life in a way that you say you want to love it. It's going to take experience. It's going to take hardship and difficulty and pain and trauma and. And challenge. It's going to take all of that for us to become that best version of ourselves. And it's okay if you don't agree with me. Right mind. This isn't a fact. This is just thought. And it's a perspective, though, that that helps me so much. And it, it brings so much enlightenment to me so that I can look at my life and trust that anything, anything that happens is happening for me. And the Real question is, who am I gonna choose to be through this? So I. I can see purpose in my miscarriage because I was totally taking motherhood for granted, and I was taking pregnancy for granted. And I can now say, like, as painful as it felt to lose that baby, I also feel so grateful that all that baby knew was love for me. And to think of a little innocent life like that. And that I got to be. I got to be that baby's mother. I got to share a mother's love with that baby one more time. Like, I just feel like the lucky one. And it's still. There's a. There's a mix to it, right? It's not just all good feelings, right? We can feel sad, and we can feel angry, and we can feel hurt, and we can feel confused and devastated. We can feel the wide range of feelings that are meant for us. They're in. They are created on purpose. We're. We're supposed to feel them, and we still learn from them. We still grow from them. We still become who we're meant to be through them. That's a really beautiful part when we allow ourselves to remember it. So I hope this perspective is something that brings a little bit more purpose, a little bit more enlightenment to you and your journey to become who it is that you want to be. And we're all on this journey. I'm right there with you. And what I just enjoy is sharing what's working really well for me with you in hopes that even just a piece of it helps. And a piece of it, if not a little bit more than that, helps you become who you want to be, too, because we're just. We're just doing the best we can alongside one another, right? That's what we're doing here. So if you'd like to get out a pen and piece of paper, if you'd like a little writing exercise to. Do you know how much I love pen to paper. Just at the top of your paper, I want you to imagine that God has asked you, who do you want to be? And before you've experienced life, before you knew what you would go through, what answer would you have given him? Who would you have told him you wanted to be? Would you tell him, silly? Caring, compassionate, graceful, generous. Who would you have told him you want to be if you had the chance? It's nice to think about, right? I'll write that down. And then I want you to write, okay, my child, that's who you will be. Write that down. And then I want you to Think about the experiences that you've had in your life, good, bad, or indifferent. And I want you to write out which ones have really shaped you into who you want to be, which ones have really given you strength, which experiences have really given you perspective, and which ones have really given you grace that you asked for and compassion for others? Which experiences have shown you mercy and which experiences have shown you joy and taught you how to be silly and how to have fun and how to be joyful and grateful? That's right. Which experiences taught you how to be grateful? Was it always the easy ones? Was it always the really fun ones? Did any of the difficult, hard ones teach you anything about who you wanted to be and how to be that person? Because when I think about my life, I've had a lot of really wonderful experiences, right? I mean, birthing babies, that's like my favorite experience of life. And my goodness, it's hard. It's so hard. And every time I birth a baby, I find more of me. I, I'm born a little bit too, and I, I, I become more. And that's a really hard experience. So, yes, I've been through the trauma that felt completely out of my control. And I've decided to have babies, and I've decided to birth them in my bedroom, knowing full well that it was gonna be really difficult and take a lot of planning and preparation and mental stability and emotional grace in order to do that. And I did it because there's just so much purpose to me. So on your paper, I just want you to explore what life experiences have prepared you and given you the purpose that you needed to become who you want to be. And you. And I hope that in doing this exercise, you're able to see how life really is happening for you. That's what, that's what I'm wishing for you today, my sweet friend. Um. I love you dearly. I'm so proud of you. I see how hard you're working, how hard you're trying, and I'm. I'm right there with you, working and trying alongside you. And this life is very much worth working and trying for. So let's just keep doing it together, one. One day, one step, one episode at a time.