God is With Us: Weathering Life's Shifts with Faith

When life's currents pull us into the deep end, it's not always instinctive to reach for our spiritual lifelines. This episode is an honest confession of my own struggles with illness, where I found myself adrift and forgetting to harness the healing power of faith. A powerful reminder from a dear friend, Mary, reignited my awareness of an ever-present God even amidst the storm. You're invited on a heart-to-heart journey as we discuss the significance of community in our healing, the emotional tides that accompany disease, and the impact of mourning life's significant shifts under the shelter of divine grace. It's a revelation of how our self-reliance pales against the backdrop of God's sufficiency, and a testament to the smallness of our trials when compared to the might of Jesus.

The landscapes of life are ever-changing, and with change comes a whirlwind of emotions and decisions. I open up about the rollercoaster ride of my family's cross-country relocation, the anxiety and hope intertwined with packing up a life and dreaming of new creative horizons. We'll talk about the periwinkle pomegranate vision and an online magazine project that have provided a sanctuary for my creative spirit—a balm for the soul. Our conversation extends an invitation to a shared creative space, especially for women, where we learn that the act of creation can be as healing as the most heartfelt prayers. Join us as we affirm the guiding hand of God in every corner of our existence, from the throes of trauma to the quiet joy of crafting something new, reminding us that each step is part of a grander tapestry woven with divine threads.

You can find all our episode information at https://www.inhiscircle.com and join us on Instagram and Facebook. You can also watch our podcast episodes on YouTube - Please join our community!

Episode Transcript

Announcer (00:00):
Welcome to In His Hands podcast from women for
women.
We're here to help you findpeace in knowing you are in
God's hands.
Our goal is sharing the Word ofGod in simple conversations.
We're here to help you thriveevery day.
And now, here are your hosts.

Tiffany Windsor (00:18):
Good morning.
I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'mMary Koenig, and our topic today
is God is with us and, mary,would you pray us in?

Mary Koning (00:28):
Yes, I love this verse that we use at Christmas
time, but it's appropriate everytime of day and night, behold,
a virgin shall be with child andshall bring forth a son, and
they shall call his name inmanual, which means God with us.
Matthew 1.23.
Lord, I confess I make yousmall sometimes, I put you in a

(00:49):
box and don't invite you intoevery minute.
But, lord, you are there and wesing a song in church today
that is combining the power ofall the prayers in the room, all
the people, all the prayers andall the faith, and it was
overwhelming how big that is.
And then you are bigger still.
So, lord, we trust you, wetrust that you are with us and

(01:13):
we ask that you surprise us withyour presence today.
In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.

Tiffany Windsor (01:18):
Amen.
So the reason I picked thistopic today of God is with us is
because I forgot.
I very rarely get sick and Igot sick last week.
I thought it was food poisoning.
It turned out it was the flu.
You can still hear it in myvoice and it was very
interesting.

(01:40):
God always puts me intosituations to teach me and it
was very interesting because youknow I'm always giving advice
to others about how to movethrough certain blocks and how
to move through the negativethinking.
And I tell you I totally forgotto pray when I was not feeling

(02:01):
well, I just laid in bed, asmany people do, and I slept a
lot.
I didn't turn on worship music,I did not pray and I cannot
believe that I did that.
We're in the middle of 21 daysof prayer right now at church
and I missed three days of those21 days and it wasn't until

(02:24):
Mary at church was pushing memore to pull me out of my funk
for lack of another word.
That just doesn't even seemlike the depth of what my mind
was trying to do in messing withme that I started to listen to
God again, even though I'msitting there every day in
church and praying and takingthis beautiful prayer time, I

(02:47):
wasn't really embracing it.
It wasn't until I startedthinking about how I hadn't been
praying that I realized that Ihad forgotten that God is with
us all the time.

Mary Koning (03:02):
One observation I had was that because we were in
a community and face-to-face, Icould see it on your face and I
could see that you weren't usingyour tools and was asking do
our tools work, Are theypowerful, Are they effective?
And how much maybe deeper thefunk would have been had you not

(03:24):
shown up for the 21 days ofprayer or church and just gone
into your bed I heard this newterm and done bed-rot.
I love that.
I kind of like it.
It's comforting sometimes whenthe weather is gray and dismal
and our bodies need restsometimes, but sometimes that's

(03:46):
not the right choice for useither.
The other thought that occurredto me was that I don't seek
wise teachers unless they'vebeen through the valley of the
shadow, and I'm so sorry thatyou've gone through the valley
of the shadow, but this shows methat you know the steps to take
to get yourself moving.

(04:07):
I don't really want to takeadvice from someone who's saying
something but hasn'texperienced it.
I need wise women who havereally wrestled with these
things and tried something afterthis thing, after another thing
and really pressed in to findthe answers.
So thank you, Thank you forpushing yourself.

Tiffany Windsor (04:31):
Thank you for being there and witnessing this,
because I tend to be a loner.
One of the most importantthings to me is when I went into
illness.
When I went into disease, Irealized disease is emotional.
But I didn't know whatemotional state I was in and it

(04:51):
wasn't until I was praying oneof those mornings and the Lord
told me very clearly that I wasactually in mourning for some
changes in my life.
I'm going to be moving out ofCalifornia.
Been here my entire life.
I've been praying for moving forfour plus years, so it's not as

(05:12):
if I am leaving under duress.
I've been asking for this andwhat I didn't realize is what I
had buried through lots ofcircumstances in my life, my
mother passing back in 2015.
I don't tend to mourn long, Itend to move on and I don't feel
like I'm burying it.
But the Lord told me that I wasgoing through this because I

(05:36):
was in mourning for the loss.
I definitely realize how much Irely on steadiness.
That's my nature, is to keep mylife steady and be that anchor
and I lost all of that throughthis.
So it was a beautiful teachingmoment from the Lord and to

(05:58):
allow me to mourn, I havedefinitely had more tears over
the last week of listening toworship music and just praying
than I've had in the last fiveyears.
It was a big aha for me.

Mary Koning (06:11):
Two thoughts.
One is self-sufficient versusGod's sufficient.
And when we are facing a bigmove like this out of a state
you've spent every day of yourlife in is a big step.
There are unknowns that we haveto rely on God for I pray he
has put in enough foundationthat you know he will surprise

(06:33):
you in a good way and he willshow up.
And one thing I did during myreally long dark days was I
printed out a lot of full pagekind of posters and capital
letters.
I period have period Jesusperiod for period, this period,
and I would put them ineverything in the custody folder

(06:57):
, in the alimony issues, in theutilities folder, in the
mortgage folder, just everywhere, to remind myself that this is
not bigger than Jesus, that I'mmaking Jesus small when I make
the problem bigger.
And the second thought is I'vespent so much time in grief that

(07:18):
I need to remember the tools todo the grieving completely and
then the moving forward.
So maybe that's a whole podcastin its own.
But we do lots of differentthings to avoid grief because
it's not a fun feeling.
But, sweet sisters, we knowit's something God wants us to

(07:39):
move through and not get stuckin.
And I think the past few yearsI've just done the same A lot of
grieving, kind of childhoodtrauma and young adult trauma
and broken marriage trauma.
But the neat thing is on theother side is that there's still
some sadness, but it's just notthe deep canyon of grief it was

(08:03):
before and God is so good aboutthat.
He doesn't want to leave usthere.
He wants to move us through sowe can be wise women and hold
out a hand to other women tohelp pull through and coax and
push sometimes and just sit,just sit and grieve with.

Tiffany Windsor (08:23):
The topic.
The sermon at church today wasmind wars, and they are real.
So when I talk about justhaving a week of wrestling, I
have not had to experience.
I did go through divorce andit's been too long for me to
remember, but I'm sure thatthere was a couple years of
challenges for me but I justmoved on.

(08:44):
But now that I'm understandingmore how to rely on God when I'm
in these moments, it seems howdo I say this?
It seems so much more importantbecause I'm not just sweeping
it under the carpet.
I'm learning how to use mytrust in the Lord to help me

(09:04):
process and not sweep, so I'mgetting out the big hoover and
vacuuming rather than sweepingit under.
It was very interesting becauseI made this note today about as
you think, so you will become,and how so much originates in
our trauma and we just don'trealize the depth of trauma.

(09:26):
Again, just some ahas for metoday.
I love when pastor said whenyour thoughts get renewed, your
life gets renewed.
It's so important to set yourmind on the things above.
I definitely did not put toolsaround me to remind me every
single morning when I was wakingup and not feeling well and
every night when I was going tobed to put the tools around.

(09:47):
Do I have little post-its by mybed?
Do I have them in my bathroomto remind me to turn to the Lord
rather than to my misery?

Mary Koning (09:59):
And it's so refreshing to know that we
forget and we can be remindedand to be gentle with ourselves.
And I just want to touch onwhat childhood trauma you know.
That sounds pretty big and itcan be big depending on what
kind of childhood trauma you'vebeen through.
Mine was more along the linesthat I was left to figure so

(10:20):
much out.
I was child four of five and soparents were distracted with so
many children and then anotherlittle baby along the way, and
so I really didn't get as muchattention or explanation of how
life works or help along the waythat I needed, and I was very

(10:40):
emotional and that was thesource of a lot of my emotional
outbursts.
My parents didn't know what todo with me.
It was tears instead of words.
And so to go back and heal thatinner child has been a big
grieving process and that waspart of the divorce.
And healing my inner child andinner young adult and that old

(11:01):
way of operating, of trying tofigure everything out myself.
And I no longer need to,because I have this beautiful
community of women and the Bibleand my Lord and Savior who's
showing me, lighting every stepof my path.
Like it says in Psalms You'relight into my path and a lamp

(11:22):
unto my feet, so I know that myGod has me in his hands.
Where would you say you are inthe process now?

Tiffany Windsor (11:32):
Well, I'm still every day dealing with there is
some anxiety that comes up.
I wouldn't say I have fear, butI do have anxiety because
trying to plan multiple thingsto happen at certain times so
that I am ready when the daycomes, when we hop in the car
and drive across the country,the planning that's happening
now is downsizing even more toonly take the things with me

(11:57):
that are really important.
It was interesting when youwalked in you saw a vase that I
have that said I've had at least30 years.
That was a beautiful decoupage,hand-painted, handmade paper
gourd vase that always goes withme as I'm going through
everything once again and I lookat something and hold it and

(12:19):
does it bring me joy, and thatis one of the pieces that I
always bring with me.
It's so funny because I've neverput anything in the vase, it's
just a decorative,artistic-looking vase that
always goes with me.
So right now I'm just goingthrough the process of what's
important, what's not, what canI let go of, and the planning.
I'm still working for a couplemore weeks, so that ends up

(12:41):
taking a lot of my eight hoursof thinking time during the day.
Fortunately I don't have awhole lot to pack up, but it's a
process.
So I know I'm still grieving,I'm still sick, I still don't
have my voice back, I still havethe coughing, and so there has
to be something with speaking upabout something.

Mary Koning (13:02):
But there is still grieving going on and I love
that your beautiful reminder hasbutterflies on it and I'm
hoping.
I was hoping that once we gothrough the process of
caterpillar, then into thecocoon, which is painful and
then emerges a butterfly, is aone and done.

(13:22):
But I don't think it is.
I think we go through thisprocess often, unfortunately, or
fortunately, through all thesestages and ages, and past and
present and future and all thosethings, and so here you are in
the cocoon again, getting readyto burst forth.
I just remember when we movedso many times when I was young,

(13:47):
I would look forward, so,anticipating the move or
something different.
So that's what I hope for youthat this, all the details fall
into place and you get toanticipate your place to soar
and fly.

Tiffany Windsor (14:00):
Thank you so much.
What a beautiful blessing and,for me, what's so wonderful
about this move is that I get tospend more time on periwinkle
pomegranate vision, that,because the Lord has been
planting these ideas and becauseI've been working full time in
something completely different,I don't feel like I've been able

(14:21):
to dedicate the time that I'dlike to I envision this creative
brain space, so that I havetime to do that.
We have this online magazinethat I was trying to dream up
what are the stories that wewant to tell and what is the
visual, and I feel like this isgoing to give me the time to do

(14:45):
that, which is something I truly, truly love.
I was talking to my sistersthis morning and they were
asking me where I am also andwhat's going on, and trying to
understand where they are.
They're both in the creativeworld, the arts and crafts world
, and I was encouraging both ofthem to dream.
The Lord is putting onto myheart to spend more time in

(15:06):
creativity, with creativesupplies, with my paints, with
my pens, with all of that.
My hope with this move is thatthere's this beautiful creative
studio that I can see peoplecoming into, where we share our
creative space.
That's so important for women.

(15:26):
We talk about community and Ithink it's just so important for
women to have a space to beable to pick up these different
colors of pens and paints andbrushes, and even if you feel
like you don't have any creativebone in your body, you're just
going to let the Lord speakthrough whatever utensil is that

(15:49):
you're holding onto.
So I'm looking forward to thatto have the space to do that.

Mary Koning (15:54):
Another two thoughts on that is that it
takes time to birth a thing.
It's like a baby and you'repreparing right now and
preparing can feel slow or itcan feel hard, and then there's
labor.
So laboring to bring the babythat's the season and sometimes

(16:14):
we want to be through it or doneor not enjoy the process, but I
would just pray that you enjoythe process.
And then the other thought wasthat you're describing a somatic
therapy.
So there's talk therapy andthere's physical therapy and
then there's somatic therapy,which accesses that part of your
brain that helps you heal, andthat's been key.

(16:34):
So I just pray that bringshealing.

Tiffany Windsor (16:39):
Thank you.
And as I go back to the core ofwhat our discussion is today,
god is with us in every momentin the processing of the trauma,
in the picking up your creativesupplies and putting something
on paper, in our communications.
In our waking, in our sleeping,god is with us.

Announcer (17:03):
Amen.
Thank you for joining us fortoday's podcast.
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