#21 – Navigating Life's Transitions with Grace

On this week’s episode, Mel and Dez delve into the theme of transitions and change, discussing indicators that signal a need for change, the emotions that arise during transitions, and the barriers that can hinder personal growth. The conversation emphasizes the importance of empowering beliefs and the value of embracing the journey rather than fixating on the destination. 

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Transcript

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Welcome friends to today's episode of the Road Back Podcast. We are so happy you're here. And before we start, I have to have a little moment of celebration. We are at episode 21, Yay!

And I did some research a little while ago about podcasts and I discovered some fun facts: 0:47

90 % of podcasts that are ever created do not get past three episodes. Out of the 10 % remaining, 90 % of those don't get past 20 episodes. So the fact that we are at 21 episodes means that we are officially in the top 1 % of podcasts that continue past those initial few. So I just thought, okay, a shout out to us. I am feeling really proud right now and excited. Just want to take a moment and celebrate and even say thank you to all the listeners for being here and supporting us in this journey because the feedback and the positive encouragement and things that we've gotten has definitely been a huge boost to just even keep us going and giving us insights and ideas. It's been a huge blessing. So thank you to the listeners for listening and thank you, Dez. Go us onto the next 21. Onward and upward. Yeah, I think celebrating 21 episodes is totally a thing because it is a huge, huge effort. Like it's just even a hallmark of what last year was like for us and just the process, even the months leading up to this and the reasons we said yes. it's felt like when the listeners joined it, it gave us a sense that we weren't really journeying this alone at all in this road back. And so now we have buddies and now we have fellow pilgrims on the road back. From my heart to yours, it makes such a difference that you're here. So thank you for being with us. And Mel, I'm so proud of you. You've done and learned so much. The learning curve has been quite intense for a couple of middle-aged, it's been steep for a couple of middle-aged ladies and we've been killing it. So. Go us, go us. And I just want the listeners right now, if you've done something that you're proud of, I just want this to be a moment of permission for you to celebrate; was actually thinking the other day, this story in a way connects to even the heart of so much of what we bring. I was thinking back to the way Dez and I connected. Through the course we were doing, were learning how to do this form of counseling called life consulting and we were doing practice. And I had posted in our Facebook group and said, Hey, I want to do some practice consulting sessions with people around their money and those kinds of things. I'm like, people sign up that they want to practice with me. So Dez had volunteered to be my guinea pig for one of the sessions, actually. I was like me, I need money support. Absolutely. yeah, it was crazy because I had noticed you and I'd seen you, but getting to connect with you. And then we'd had some conversations after that. And then the friendship blossomed. I had the inspiration to post in this Facebook group and put myself out there and say, hey, who wants to do some practice with me? The number of connections that were made from me following my heart in that moment, and then even us doing this podcast now, I just want to encourage the listeners again as well, if you have things stirring in your heart and you're just feeling that invitation to step out just go for it because you don't know where it is going to lead. Dez is one of my dearest friends now taking those little steps, never knowing that it would end up to us actually co-hosting a podcast together two, three years later. I mean, it is wild. So those little nudges, follow your curiosity, follow those promptings, follow those moments of inspiration. That's all free. That's not even what we're talking about today, but just some added bonus material. I'm feeling celebratory. I'm really proud of us. I think the moral of what you're saying is do it. if you feel it in your heart, just say yes, do it. Do it. You never know what's going to come. Isn't that just such a joyful part of life? There's so many things we don't know what's going to happen and there can be so much fear around the unknown, a lot of Yes. Especially when you take, just to kind of be a little cliche here, but taking the road back to yourself, when you were sharing at the beginning, I thought we've picked up a lot of friends on this path too. So the road back, have seasons where maybe journeying in a way that feels alone or on your own, because there's sometimes seasons where God takes us into places where he's the one who's leading us and he's teaching us how to... walk through the wilderness seasons with him, but we're never fully alone because Jesus is always by our side. Coming out of those wilderness places, it's like we go through transformation processes that then prepare us for the coming companions who are gonna join us on that path, on that road back to ourselves. Dez, thank you for being one of my companions on the journey. I count it a privilege. Same, right back at you babe. Been my deep pleasure and gift to my heart. So love you a lot, Mel. love you too, friend. Okay, let's dive into this week's topic, which is we're gonna talk about seasons and times of transition or pivots. When we come to forks in the road or transitions into different life stages, times when we actually need to make choices. And some of the indicators of what that looks like, how we know when it's time to pivot or change, and also some of the roadblocks, the belief systems we have to navigate in order to walk out more empowered on the other side. Without further ado, Dez, when you have recognized moments of change or a need to make choices? What are some of the indicators that come up so that you know, I'm in a season of transition or I'm in a place where I'm gonna actually have to make some powerful decisions? Right, Oh, this is so good; even as we introduce this topic, oftentimes there are situations in life that we are not choosing that just sort of happen like a diagnosis or, sudden loss of a job or, there are situations that we're not in control of. Naturally, our life will change. Naturally, transitions will happen. We'll have to pivot. Things change in life without us even choosing it. Your question is how do you feel into purposely making a change for your own life, for your own system? I'd say before I went on this heart journey of even getting more connected to myself and the road back towards being at home in my sense of myself and my agency and my autonomy, messages were a lot harder to hear. Like I would say, you know, maybe you could hit me with a truck and it would still be like, I don't know, maybe I should keep walking down the middle of the road. The messaging was quite intense, quite loud because that's what I needed in order to hear. So I even think about my breakdown and deep burnout season, my body required shut down in order for me to get the attention and the care and the emotional and the physical and the spiritual support that I definitely needed. In this current state that I'm at, because there's a connection to my heart, I have a sense of, very felt feelings of like what's working, what's not working. Sometimes it feels like I'm pushing too hard to make something work, if that makes sense. Or something will, land inside of me over and over again, and I know now to pay attention. What is that? Is that direction? Is that insight? Is that the Holy Spirit? Is that my heart? And I just tune in to those things. So there's two felt feelings that sometimes I feel like this is so much effort. Everything that has been working is just not working. This is just too much. I just want to stop. Or I start to notice how often a new thing is starting to land and what that means. I know one indicator for me that a change is coming up is I'll notice things that used to feel easy or fun or delightful, all of a sudden they start becoming hard. And you highlighted something really important, you said before you'd really gone on your heart journey and even maybe the depth of healing that you've been on. Sometimes change was, needed, but like you, I wouldn't always recognize it because I was so dissociated from my own emotions and I was so disconnected. I was going through life a little bit on autopilot, very sincere, but a lot on autopilot, very much connected to what was everybody else around me telling and expecting of me, so responding or reacting to the expectations around me, not always very in tune with my own heart. Sometimes I needed somebody to drop a cinder block into the water, the pond of my life in order for it to get my attention. I needed a big splash. I needed a really big neon sign going, ding, ding, ding, ding, needs to come. Or like you even touched on, starting to have a breakdown or hitting the wall or things had to become quite intense or drastic in order for me to sit up and pay attention. But as I've gone further and further in the journey of healing, healing my nervous system, reconnecting to my inner world, tuning into the voice of God that's always been inside of me the intuition. Now, know that I could say I'm always this sensitive, but sometimes I'd like to think it's like a feather could land on the water and just cause the smallest ripple. I'm much more likely to notice the gentle nudges, things don't need to become as drastic for me, it is that process of just learning to recognize what's my body saying? Do I feel resistance to ideas or things? That's often an indicator, things that used to feel like an invitation, now I feel a lot of resistance to, and another big one for me is if I start to feel resentful, that can be a big thing. Resentment is such a great indicator because, are we suddenly resenting a part of our life or some of our choices? And sometimes I can extend to be like, am I starting to villainize the people in this? Or sometimes some things are coming to an end, we villainize because we want to have validation that this change is the right change. We should step away. I'm done. I'm not going to re-enroll next year or I'm not going to coach again. And things don't have to be awful or other people don't have to be villains in order for us to honor, this is the right choice for me. And I love that you mentioned people pleasing or what you thought other people wanted you to do because it would conduct your life. Whereas when you return to yourself and your internal knowing, as that indicator, as that pacing for your own heart. It's less about what other people are doing or not doing. And it's like, this is for me. And it gets you back to what you know is the right thing to do. I love that you touched on that because I think what we started off saying is in the past change often came about as a reaction to circumstances in my life pushing on me so hard that I then needed to make a choice to change. Whereas now I would say, the healthier I've got and the more in tune I've got, now desire is often the thing. Rather than pain driving my decisions, now often it's the desire for something new, the invitation to something new, the excitement of a possibility that actually motivates my change. As human behavior, we're wired to avoid pain and pursue pleasure because, who wants to feel pain if we don't have to? Well, pain used to sometimes indicate to me time to move. And I think there's times where that's a very relevant thing. It was working before, like we said, and now it's not. So that pain, that discomfort, going, hmm, yeah, something's not right. But I also want to juxtapose or offer the alternative is desire can be an equally, if not even more powerful, catalyst to causing us to want to move forward. So that can be an indicator as well. I start feeling the stirring of Ooh, what about this? Possibilities, curiosity stirs. yeah. Yeah, I think that that's so true. This idea of a catalyst, sometimes the question is like, what is your life asking for? And I think even some of the clients I've worked with – something I've noticed about them trying to make the decision to change their life is that they've thought about it and felt it for so long. And it's like the moment where they actually have to sort of count the cost Mmm. if they're going to change. And usually there's a lot of fear and a lot of stories about if they do change or if they continue with this feeling inside of them over and over again. And they have balance the risk and what they're gonna do. And I think that that's a distilled way of even thinking about maybe in your own life, you've felt something over and over again, like your life asking for something. I knew I would circle things for years, the same thing. It could take me forever to do it. I just think that could feel helpful as an indicator of what it's like to make decisions or feel the nudge, the catalyst of desire, the invitation of your life, what it's asking you to do next. And some desires do stir for a while before we're ready to take the leap. I think that's the beautiful thing about God and also grace even is Jesus knows when we're gonna actually take the leap. So I think he factors that into the timing sometimes of like, I need to mention the idea of doing a podcast, Melissa, about five years before she actually does it, because it's gonna take that long before things actually come together and she takes the leap. yeah, until that feeling inside of us was like, okay, we either have to do it or not do it and live with maybe I should have done it or maybe my life is inviting me to do it. Yeah, Let's move into now some of the hardships or the challenges. What can come up for us when we approach a life change or a pivot, whether it be something that feels really major or something that's maybe on the minor scale? I do think there are some common emotions and feelings that can come up. So let's talk to some of those hardships. Dez, what have you found? What emotions, maybe even grief might come up as you go to navigate some decisions. Yes, sure for myself and even my clients, I notice that we often will make a choice for a change or a transition; we have an expectation of how it's going to feel once we do that thing. We sort of think once we've made this decision, everything's going to come together or I've listened to my heart, therefore there should not be any challenges this shouldn't be messy, this shouldn't be difficult, exhausting, scary; think often people put meanings, to the feeling. Once they've made that transition, it's like, oh God, this is harder than I thought, or this is taking me longer to get clients than I thought it was gonna be, or fill in the blank, right? Fill in the blank of what that is. And we assign meaning to that. We put too much value on the outcome being valid reason for us to make this decision in the first place. Yeah. So we want the outcome to prove to us that was the right decision. And I see people get hit, I've tripped up on this so much. what the feeling for me is, we sort of will turn on ourselves because we're saying this wasn't the right decision because fill in the blank. No one celebrated or man, I'm tired. This is harder than I thought. My body doesn't feel like She-Ra going into this thing; that was a lot to just transition through. Mmm. There's just an expectation of what we think it's gonna feel like and look like and be like. And often that is disillusioning right away in transitions. And I find that for myself too, that that's a place where we need a lot of support is we've made the decision and let's be careful to not sabotage ourselves or turn on ourselves because we've needed those outcomes to provide for us a meaning and a validation of we should have done in the first place. You're allowed to do it. That makes a lot of sense, Dez. Have you find ways that even your identity or you've seen that people's identity challenged before in decisions like that? Cause that can be something that our identity can be wrapped up in certain things. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on that as well. Melissa, are you reading my mail like my past history? One of the reasons people delay the longest is because they feel that they are this thing. They have an identity in what they're doing. And so to change is a very uncomfortable experience because then you're leaving an identity. And I think... the support I would offer even in my own heart, is I'm constantly trying to be like, you are not what you're doing. I'm gonna do a hundred things in my life. I am not those things. I'm just Dez doing a bunch of things that her life is like leading and guiding with God. I'm just moving through life. And I think that that shaking of identity really hurts people. It's very upsetting. I've been completely disillusioned. Because I'm like, who am I now if I'm not missionary Dez? Who am I now if I'm not this and losing a sense of yourself is a really painful, painful experience? What do you think about identity and stuff? What are your thoughts about that? I do agree that if our identity is very wrapped up in our roles, then needing to transition out of a role or something that we've done for a period of time, or even if we've gotten a lot of accolades or praise, you're so good at this, da da, then if the time comes where we either wanna walk away we wanna pivot to something else, it's often a real good mirror for me to hold up to myself and I'll see how much I have wrapped up my identity and what I'm doing or my performance or the accolades I receive from other people because all of a sudden, if I feel like my identity is in threat, then I realize things have been wrapped up. One of the hard things that has come up for me, I've noticed when it's time to make changes or I feel confronted with a change is how is it going to affect my relationships? Oh, yes, Mel a big one for me is how are my choices going to affect the people I love? What if the people around me don't see what I'm seeing or they aren't on the same journey? They may not have the same values for growth that I do. And so that's definitely brought challenges at times when I have a conviction that this is what I need to do moving forward, but the people around me are doing their own thing and they're fine with that. When I'm wanting to make a pivot or change, I've really come to a place where I don't need you to come on that journey with me, but I have had to navigate a lot of fear or actual times when making choices has cost me relationships in ways. And not because that's what I wanted, but because the choice to move on and the choice to grow has meant that at times I have had to release relationships – really surrender them to God and say, love these people and their choice in how they live their life really needs to be their decision. And I need to make the decisions that are either gonna be best for me or my family acknowledging that relationships can change and not all relationships will go through with you in every stage of life is something that can be very painful, but is... very much a part of us learning to be powerful and make decisions about what we need to do next. Do you have anything to add to the relationship piece, Dez? I think that that's so relatable and so true. I find that that piece also has delayed me in making certain decisions. And it's sometimes after I've made the decision, I thought, no, I didn't realize all of this would change. Again, it's like, I didn't expect, I didn't really know what to think. And I think this idea of normalizing this is a part and even a grief part of change. It's natural relationships are changing. People are changing all the time and you've changed. Even acknowledging like I'm different now. And that's just its own thing to adapt to. I think as we mature, I have come to realize that not all relationships are forever. The person who was your BFF in high school or college or beyond, being able to recognize that there very few friendships and relationships that last a lifetime. And many people come and go, and that's very, normal, it's helped me not make it be about me like, maybe I've done something wrong or maybe I should stay here in this place longer. Maybe I can't leave, maybe I can't pivot because I have to keep relationships. As I've become accustomed to, are relationships for different seasons of life and different lengths hasn't made it easier always, but it has helped create a little bit more understanding. I've had learn to quiet my inner critic, which was often like, well, you must have messed up. That kind of transitions into another point of topic that we wanted to talk about, which were some of the belief systems that we find that come up as barriers to change. For me, being afraid of rejection or if I step I'm gonna lose my friendships or I'm gonna lose this community or are the ramifications going to be? As I've learned to confront some of those fears, it doesn't make them completely go away, but it has helped me hold them more with a little bit of nuance if I've understood that. Everybody is on their own journey and you have full permission to be on the path you're on. And I don't need to force you to come with me. And I also don't need to hold myself back and not move because you might not want to choose to go on the same path that I do. I hear you speaking to some of the big barriers when you talk about fear, fear of losing friends, fear of rejection, fear of failure. And I think that that's a big barrier for most of us. It has been a very large barrier for me. I noticed that fear and shame are really bad wisdom counselors because they come up the absolute worst case scenarios, the most shameful stories when everyone hates you and everyone rejects you and you're completely, speaking naked on the stage. You know, like your worst fear nightmare of just like, oh, everyone's seen me and I'm so exposed and they're not good counselors. You shouldn't be taking your advice from fear and from shame in transitions. I... I think for me, one of the biggest barriers that I overcame and noticed is that fear and shame had their place because they wanted to keep me and my life in that box of where it's always been. This is the known life of Dez. And I'm going to keep her in that. And in there, we can navigate. The nervous system is trying to navigate threat; notice what's good, what's bad, what might come, relational threats, fill in the blank. When I realized that that was my nervous system's job is to even send messages, things might not work out if you change, if you go for this thing, if you change your life. And I realized that's what its job is, but I don't have to be afraid because the life I want is just outside that box. I actually have to leave what I've known and go into something I don't know yet. That's what I want. And so supporting my nervous system and supporting my life and noticing what the fears are saying: of course you want to try to keep me safe and hidden and small because this feels really exposing to start a podcast, right? It feels like a really big deal, but I'm going to be okay. I have the support I need. I have a lot of authentic resources that I'm going to be okay, no matter how it happens. And when I was doing missions work and working with marginalized communities, we saw this phenomenon, this idea of your nervous system, keeping you in this place, in these communities. We would often see people have exposures to change their life. Whether they were living in the streets or in the sewer holes and they were getting opportunities to change their life, but they wouldn't take them. And what we found is we had the saying, it's like, their known hell is safer than the unknown heaven. And it was like this phenomenon before any of the work I did, was like, wow, this is amazing how people, they clearly want to change their life. They do want support. But what does it take for us to go beyond what we've always known and to transcend into the next place? We actually need to normalize that uncomfortability and that stretch into the new realm is a part of growth. It is a normal part of life; means you're growing. It means you're changing, Feeling afraid and feeling like, knows how this is going to be is part of this process. What are some barriers that you can think of? Well, I touched on the fear of relationship element. I also think a big one for people, and it's been something that's tripped me up before, is the fear of the unknown or not being able to see how it will happen. We go, okay, I see this path before me. There's an opportunity here, but I can only see the first two steps. And then I can see what I want at the end. And I don't want to step out unless I know all 50 steps to get there. And that's just not the way it works. Most of the time you don't have a clearly mapped path before you, so a huge barrier can be the fear of the unknown. I don't know what it is, like you said, better the hell I know than the heaven I don't. And then sometimes just wanting to know the how; that often comes back to a feeling of a need to control everything because I don't feel safe to trust. It's like, well, if I can control every step and I can guarantee every outcome, then maybe I... maybe I will take a step, but life's not about that. And I feel like the older I've gotten, the more I have had to embrace an invitation into trust and even learning to trust myself and going, okay, I don't know beyond the first two steps, but I do know that I've had to learn to trust my heart and trust the voice of God in my heart and trust the wisdom of my body and what I'm feeling and being able to say, the how is not my responsibility. I can step out and begin to take, even if it's baby steps into the unknown, I think it's one of those things that if you can even just keep a note in your phone or a journal or something where you have taken risks before and it's panned out and it has worked, we need to be able to fall back on some of, okay, well, I did this thing and it worked out and I did this thing. Because otherwise I think like you touched on our nervous system and our brain, they're wired to keep us safe. And if we're not careful, we'll think of all the things, well, that time it didn't work and this thing didn't happen. that, so then we create our list of all the reasons why I shouldn't do it because it's too scary. And that one time I was embarrassed and that one time it didn't work out and I did fail and it was, I was so humiliated and I don't want that to happen again. Those can be very legitimate experiences that we've had, the invitation to grow and the invitation to continue to expand and step into where we're feeling that opportunity to go next requires us to confront some of those internal fears. And I just want to normalize it. This is common humanity. Everybody has a fear of failure. Everybody has had to face a fear of rejection. Most entrepreneurs I've heard have said, the imposter syndrome doesn't necessarily go away. I've just gotten better at continuing to take bold action and taking risk anyway. And I've learned to value the growth over the fear and the desire to stay in my comfort zone. Girl, yeah, that's so good. When we're thinking about barriers, I'm so glad you talked about this very human experience. I know for me and in so many people that I work with, when they start to move towards a dream or a goal or a pivot in their life, you often will hit into grief of like your system saying, but we did this once and it hurt us and it was sad; remember and so and so came and then you lost your friendship with them and a legitimate pain story. I just want everyone to know this makes sense. Of course your system and your heart and your body has memory of you, going for things and pain showing up. That's its job to remind you. yes, Be careful. Yep. And I think that there's so much compassion. I mean, obviously in the work we do is like actually sitting with those parts of our stories and really being present with the pain and transforming it so that it doesn't actually keep you stuck. Oftentimes we think that if it's gonna hurt, if it's gonna be hard, we shouldn't do it. But it's okay. Pain is gonna be a part of life, a messy, the humanity, unexpected things. This is just a part of life, period. That's not an indication that you're failing. Yes. Pain is inevitable. It is not some shameful reason that you should have not done it or you shouldn't keep moving or you shouldn't keep dreaming or you should give up. It's very human to confront so much grief from other moments of your life that you've gone through transition; but also there's a lot of support for you to keep moving forward. And I think that sometimes those invitations to move forward will naturally surface unhealed areas of our heart or our lives to give us the opportunity to reconcile with those painful experiences. And that doesn't mean that we always have the chance to maybe say if people are involved, it doesn't always mean that you're gonna be able to repair. And maybe there's times that that's not even the appropriate thing to do. But I do think moving forward and really even just that expansion into growth, which I think we have a human need to grow. We stop growing and we stop progressing. Then really you're moving into decline. We are wired to keep growing and moving forward. And I think every invitation is that invitation to healing things that have been left untouched or that need to be reconciled and also stepping into bolder and braver and new territory. I remember there was a season. This is just to confront what some of the beliefs, that I had, cause I held a lot of fear around not wanting to lose relationships. I remember there being a season where I was feeling an invitation to step into some new things and it was going to require me to re-examine some of the commitments I'd made to different people and different things that I'd had a lot of high level commitments to. I share this because it was a big kind of aha revelation for me. I remember sitting and praying about it one day and the Holy Spirit dropped this insight into my heart. There is a difference between loyalty and faithfulness. Faithfulness is a fruit of the spirit. It's one of the fruits of the spirit. If you go to Galatians and you want to read about the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Faithfulness is a fruit of the spirit, but loyalty can be based in all sorts of things. And sometimes it could be based in codependency. It could be based in fear. I'm not allowed to leave this space or this environment because da da da da da, all the reasons why I'm scared about it. And as I started to see that some of the things holding me in the place that I was, was coming from a place of loyalty, which was stemming from fear, rather than the fruit of the spirit, which the fruit of the Holy Spirit is gonna be joyful and peaceful and feeling the love and freedom around it, where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty; realized that it was what I needed to hear to start making brave decisions to move forward. I wanted to share that today because I do feel like there's people who are listening where some of the decisions you need to make and the choices to transition out or to make some powerful choices in your own life. I feel like you have been held in place because of loyalty and you have misplaced it out of a desire to be a servant and to love well and to even serve God with your life. I just feel like God wants you to know that faithfulness and loyalty aren't the same thing. And you have permission to follow him out of the place or even follow your own heart out of the place. And regardless of how other people react, it doesn't mean that you're being bad. It doesn't mean that you're actually not doing the right thing. And I think that's a theme that's going to keep coming up again and again. Because when you choose to be powerful and start making choices in your life not everybody else is going to necessarily react with excitement and joy. That can flow into other beliefs that we sometimes have, which is a high reliance on external validation. I need everybody to be happy. Or even another belief that I've found is relying on God to show me every step of the way. I felt greater safety in being obedient to God every step of the way than I did in taking initiative to be powerful in my own life. And yeah, and I'm not throwing out, and just for anybody who's freaking out and thinking I'm saying something undoctrinally sound, I'm not talking about not being obedient. I think there are times when God is very clear and I think, I know for Dez and I, our heart is to acknowledge him in all our ways. And so he has promised he's going to direct our paths. I'm talking about times where as we grow and as we mature, we have freedom to begin making powerful decisions for ourselves. And in the absence of a clear directive, I can actually start stepping out and going, this is what I feel the best decision is. That's part of growing up. I don't want my... 18 year old son to be asking me what he's allowed to eat for breakfast every morning. I mean, I'd be like, honey, is something wrong with you? You're old enough to be making some of your own decisions. I think that's a similar, a similar parallel with us and God as we grow and as we mature, we have freedom to behave as sons and daughters because we understand how the kingdom works. We understand the heart of God. And so there's a lot of freedom for us to begin stepping out. And that's something else that I just, wonder if people need to hear because I used to be so hung up on, I can't take a step forward because I haven't had enough confirmations or I need to make sure I've heard every step before I can do anything. And God's like, no, back to my green light mentality that I try to live with is the light is green until it's red, start moving forward, trust that the guidance and the direction or even the redirection will come as you learn to take agency and become powerfully autonomous in your own life. You I'm so glad you shared that because for one, I really relate to that experience of, I had surrendered all autonomy and any sense of power in my life to the fact that I was like hiding under only if Jesus, asks me to do this or I'm waiting for him to say it five more times in a different way. I just think it's so relatable; your challenge is and what you're saying is so much of this and even what you shared before is like you were checking with the fruit of the thing. What is the fruit of me not making this change? Is it depression? Is it hopelessness in my life? Is it feeling stuck? Is it me lashing out and getting resentful? What are the fruits of me living this way? If I move forward, even if it's messy, even if I don't know what's gonna happen, am I still engaging in faith and trust and hope? Do I feel power in my life? Do I feel more connected to God because I'm moving in step with what I think he's doing? I think that there's a lot to checking the fruit; the whole world and all of nature is constantly changing; Mm-hmm. giving me the permission that I'm allowed to change too. allowed to change. You're allowed to pivot. I have so many sweet people that I've mentored or known and they're in their twenties and they have so much grief because they thought they're gonna be in that ministry position their whole life. I don't know what we think. I've been there too. I thought I was gonna die here, you know? And I'm 23 and I'm like, my God, that would have been a lot of years. And so normalizing like the whole earth and all of nature is changing. I'm gonna change. What if you just gave yourself permission to have five, seven, 10 more careers in your life? Like, how would that feel? I'm gonna grow every year. I'm gonna be a little bit different every decade. It's okay for me to wanna do X this year and then Y in five years. I think the more we can normalize change and that we will change it will help make certain pivots in our life, just feel more natural and put a lot less pressure and a lot less meaning on them. Any other supportive beliefs that you would want to offer people when they're thinking about change and pivots in their life? Yeah, I love that you touched on that because we are really flowing into now some of the more supportive, empowering beliefs that we can have when we are confronted with choices and change. Something that has been a really, I would say it's been a costly lesson for me to learn. It came at such a high price that I am very hesitant to break this rule or this principle that I have now. And it's this, following your heart will often come with a price. And I say following your heart into whatever, a relationship or away from a relationship or into a career change or pursuing something, a dream, a desire, creating something. There is a cost to following your heart and there is a cost to not following your heart. And the reason why I say that this was costly lesson that I've had to learn is because I have experienced both sides of that coin. I have experienced the exhilaration and the highs and the challenges of following my heart. And sometimes it's felt like setbacks and it has cost me things at times that I was like, my goodness, this is a higher price than I thought I would have to pay. I've also experienced the cost of not following my heart. You were just talking about fruit a minute ago, Dez. The pain and regret of not following something that I actually knew in my gut or in my heart was the right thing to do. And then the opportunity passed me by, or I found myself down a path or a road that I actually wouldn't have chosen, but for whatever reason, I found that I was somebody who was very scared of making powerful decisions. So sometimes I just kind of let the... tides carry me where they would. And so my indecision actually was a decision because I didn't know how to be powerful and show up. And because of the pain of some of the regret or the consequences of not following something, I'm not just talking about was it a sinful decision versus a [non-sinful.] This isn't about good or bad or right or wrong. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm not like, do I go rob the store or not? This isn't a criminal activity or something that you would consider morally wrong, ethically wrong. It wasn't any of those. was simple decisions and sometimes big decisions that really required me to tune into what was going on in my inner world. And because I was very afraid of making those decisions for a long time, sometimes they were made by default. And sometimes I purposely made choices that I knew were going against my heart. It was a form of self abandonment or running over myself. Often it was very driven by fear. And the pain of those decisions is a different type of pain to the pain of choosing to go after your own growth. I would liken it to like the pain of going to the gym and you're building your muscles and you're lifting weights and you're cardio and your muscles are sore and you're tired and you feel pain. I can think of times when I've had a really good workout and the next day I'm thinking, what did I do? I could barely walk. I can't even lift that thing up. But that pain I know is, it's like a good pain. It's coming from the choice to grow. It's coming from the choice to get stronger. And so I know that on the other side, the fruit, is going to be a stronger, healthier Melissa. The pain of avoiding my heart or running away from the things that I know I'm being invited into has a different sting to it because especially when opportunities have passed me by or things that I wish I had jumped on and then I didn't, that's the sting of regret has like a bummer, what could have happened had I had the bravery to take that step, had I had the bravery to say no or to say yes, what could have happened in my life? I think that God is such a God of redemption that he has a way of weaving beauty out of ashes or into situations where we think, man, I really missed it there. And there still is a lesson and there can be consequences to it. I'm not trying to be a downer here because you actually said, what's an empowering belief? You know, what's a supportive belief? I would say following your heart and learning to lean into the wisdom of your body and your wisdom of your intuition. Because to have noticed now and again, it's as I've become more sensitive. So you don't need the cinder block to kind of drop on my head before you get my attention. As I've learned to be more sensitive, if an opportunity or something happens and crosses my path, it's easier for me now to tune into my body and go, okay, am I feeling an opening in my heart at the thought of this? Is there excitement, even if I'm scared and it feels a little bit like, ooh, is it gonna work out? I'll notice my heart, I'll want to lean in. Even on a micro level, I'll feel myself leaning in or my heart opening or I'll feel excitement or enthusiasm bubbling up inside of me. And those are often physical indicators that, there's something on this, or I'll just find myself thinking about it again and again and again. It won't leave me alone. It's like it keeps tapping me on the shoulder. And so those supportive beliefs that I can listen, I can trust the voice of my heart. I can trust that, acknowledging God, he's not gonna misdirect me. He's not gonna lead me astray. Those are some things. I would just say this one too, but not falling into the trap of if it's right, there will be no hiccups. If it's right, it will be smooth sailing. It'll be the shortest distance between two points. I'm gonna get there quickly. Nobody will have an issue with it. I won't run into any conflicts or any struggles. That is naive. That is very naive. And if I can move past that and go, if I am continually tuning in and I've got some people that I trust that are speaking into my life and I know that I'm taking the next right step, I can trust that there's grace for my decisions. I don't have to figure out the how in advance. I can trust that where resolution or things need to be resolved, things need to be ironed out, roadblocks come, I will have the ability and the grace and the wisdom to navigate those as they come up. Dez, tell me about some of the empowering beliefs that have supported you in your decision-making. I'd love to hear them. Yeah, well, I have a hallmark or a pillar of belief that my life isn't really about the destination. I have a strong belief that the gift is in the journey. Because of this belief, it helps me dismantle the power of how the outcomes are as an indicator of whether or not I should have been doing it. When it gets messy, it's not showing me, Dez, you screwed up, you failed. It's just saying, this is a part of traversing life, being a pilgrim of life, is that there's gonna be sore feet. You're gonna trip and fall. You're gonna get lost sometimes. This belief helps me creates that safe environment to keep going, to be right where I'm at. And also when the next change appears and the next transition presents itself, I'll be like, I can trust, just like I've trusted. I've journeyed to this point in my life thus far. And there's been God, there's of course there's been pain. There's been things I didn't expect, but there's been goodness, there's been love. There's been peace, there's been redemption. And this is a beautiful supportive belief to help you keep moving. One last belief I was thinking and I think you alluded to it earlier, we don't always have to have all the clarity before you step. I sometimes feel even working with clients, like it's this need to know how it's gonna turn out or the next four steps. When really you're just like, well, what's the next right thing? And most of the time people know one thing. We often do know one thing, but we get blocked because we think we should know many things. I just want to encourage people, clarity comes as you're already in the flow of it. That can be really supportive for people to believe in their hearts, to make these decisions and just do the next right thing one after the other. I agree. And I think what you're highlighting there is falling in love with the process, falling in love with the journey. I used to give mental assent to that of like, yeah, I'll fall in love with the journey. Yeah, it sounds good. But I can truly say that as I've gone on in life, I have really learned to love the journey so much more, just even the day in and day out. I think as I've healed more and become more present, it's helped me really see the gold in the moments, the treasures in the day by day moments, rather than, just living for the highlight reel, because we see other people's Instagram profiles and their highlight reels. And we think, my life needs to be full of all these highlight reels in order to be valid, or I need to be reaching the thing. Like you said, they want to know all the steps to the destination. They just want to be at the destination already; yet there's so much beauty in the path along the way and I don't know that it necessarily naturally to me. Maybe it did when I was a kid and I lost it somewhere along the way, but in the hustle culture we live in, sometimes it's just go, go, go, rush, rush, rush and slowing down and I mean, and this is so cliche, but like taking time to smell the roses or pause and savor the steps. I can't agree with you more. I think there's a real beauty in enjoying and embracing the process, I actually wrote it down when you were talking, because I didn't want to forget it, of falling in love with the process. It means I get to mine the gold that's in today for me, rather than going, I'll be happy when, fill in the blank of success metric reached, you know. I remember being a young mom and thinking, I just can't wait till the kids can go to the bathroom by themselves, till they can shower by themselves. I can't wait till they go to school. I can't wait till they can swim. We often anticipate everything's going to be better, but this belief that this journey and being right where you're at and the journey is the gift, it helps you settle into your life. It helps you really extract, the goodness that taste and see that the Lord is good, moments of your right now season, because I guarantee you they will change. My life is changing all the time. My parenting is still changing. And now because I've growing this belief more and more, I'm like really sinking in to every season of parenting, every season of my body, of getting older, of my marriage, of my friendships, of everything. Like you said, smell the roses, really delight in what's happening. I think that as we wrap this up transitions are a part of life. They're as natural as the seasons, as day and night. uh Everything about being on planet Earth is about change. And so if you can really start to think like, this is so natural and normal and what's ahead and how do I stay connected to my heart and... really having the pillar of in this life, I will have pain. Is it gonna be the pain of regret or is it gonna be the pain of growth? There we go. You boiled it down. growth. Yep. Discomfort is part of the process. Yep. And it's a necessary part of the process, but it's beautiful. So hear us championing you today. For those of you on the threshold of choices, some of them are big and some of them are like, what color am I gonna paint my living room? And they are... relevant, whether they are big or small, but just hear us encouraging you. We are linking arms with you on our own road back as you walk your own path. And we're here to cheer for you, as always. We want to see you win in life. That's our heart for you. And friends, we just wanted to announce we're going to be taking a two week pause on the podcast. And so you will see us again on February 18th with new episodes. If you have some things you would love to hear us talk about, find us on Instagram, send us a message. Yeah. Our Instagram handle is @ the dot road dot back dot podcast. Or if you listen to the podcast, there's an option for you to send a message directly on the podcast itself. You can actually click send message and we will get – we do listen to what the listeners say and we are really interested in creating content that speaks to your heart. Your feedback makes a difference. So thank you for being here, friends. We'll see you on the 18th of February as, we come back with a fresh season three. Go us, go 21 episodes. If you could rate and review our podcast, share it with friends and family, if it speaks to you. That's a great way to get the message out because we really do want to bring a message of hope and life to people who are on their own journeys of reconnecting with themselves. Love you guys. Bye.