In His Circle
Welcome to In His Circle, a podcast born from heartfelt "driveway chats" between two friends, now dedicated to empowering women through faith. Together, we'll explore the joy and tranquility of being in God's hands, while fostering a loving circle of friends who support each other on their spiritual journeys. Tune in as we navigate the essence of walking in faith, and invite you to join our circle, finding comfort and guidance in the divine embrace. Join host Tiffany Windsor and her special guests for conversations about how to grow and thrive in God's circle. Want to connect with us? Learn more at http://www.inhiscircle.com
In His Circle
New Beginnings: Honoring Your Divine Appointment Any Day of the Week
Have you ever woken up on a Wednesday with the fire to start something new, only to brush it off because it wasn't a Monday or January 1st? Tiffany Windsor and Mary Koenig challenge this mindset head-on, sharing how any day can mark the beginning of a life-changing journey. In our heartfelt discussion, we shed light on our own transformations, from embarking on 21 days of prayer to launching our Periwinkle Pomegranate e-zine, proving that divine appointments aren't tied to a calendar date.
Embracing a fresh start is often clouded by the comfort of old habits and the daunting shadow of visibility. Yet, it's in these moments of stepping out that we find our true potential. Join us as we open up about our personal battles with comfort zones, the fear of judgment, and the power of community in fostering bravery. Whether you've faced similar struggles recently or decades ago, we're here to affirm that it's never too late to leap into the unknown and honor those divine appointments that can redefine our lives.
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Welcome to In His Hands podcast from women for women. We're here to help you find peace in knowing you are in God's hands. Our goal is sharing the Word of God in simple conversations. We're here to help you thrive every day. And now, here are your hosts.
Speaker 2:Good morning. I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'm Mary Koenig. Mary, today I would like to talk about new beginnings. We have certainly experienced a lot of new beginnings over the past couple of years, and today we want to talk about how new beginnings can come to you at any time.
Speaker 3:I like the idea of starting on a Wednesday versus a Monday, or starting on possibly even January 2nd rather than January 1st. That soft start feels a little less intimidating, less expectations, and that has worked for me, as long as I make sure I begin.
Speaker 2:It's funny because the structure in me says, oh, I need to follow the rules, and so if the rules are saying that our new year starts on a certain day, which would be January 1st and I love how you have encouraged me to get beyond that structured thinking a lot has changed for me, too, as I started doing 21 days of prayer, or when we started working on our 40 days of prayer through Draw the Circle, or our 365 days of drawing creativity, we were able to start it at any time that we chose to, and so new beginnings happen every day.
Speaker 3:And I like the title of our journal as Fresh Start. That just means every day we're given as a fresh start. If we didn't start yesterday to not spend too terribly much time lamenting or grieving that, but using that feeling to motivate and launch the next day, to prepare for the next day, because we aren't assured of all our days, the Lord has counted them and holds them in His hand and if we don't use today well to achieve what he wants us to achieve, then maybe that divine appointment wasn't kept and I'm not okay with that anymore. I need to keep my divine appointments because I don't know what's in store there.
Speaker 2:When we talk about divine appointments and timing. I think I've talked about this before. I am of the nature of I actually really like to be invisible and the Lord has been pushing and pushing and pushing me to step out of that, certainly with this podcast. When we started a new beginning within His hands, based on prayer and listening for the guidance to start. January 1st, we launched the first issue of our periwinkle pomegranate easing, that pushed me out of my comfort zone and wanting to be invisible because it was drawing me back into the creative world, which is where I spent my whole life, with my mom's background in the creative world and then with my time spent in her world of the craft television show that I did. I was also the editor of a magazine and it was a beautiful time of creativity. When I decided to close the door on all of that, I closed the door on so much and the Lord has been trying to pull me out of that for years and years and years.
Speaker 2:I tell you it can feel so scary when you put yourself back on the line and visible in front of people. There are thoughts of judgment and I know I've canceled Mary on that so much. It's like, don't worry about it. And yet there are times when it comes up to me where I will say to myself well, I wonder what other people will think of this. Thankfully, through my prayers, I'm able to get over that, but I just wanted to share with you. It's not always easy to welcome new beginnings, because we want to be so comfortable in our safe place which may not have served us well that it can be so scary to step back out and start something new.
Speaker 3:And, as you're talking, I'm wondering how much time we've spent operating in that old manner. My marriage was over 20 years, so I spent over 20 years operating in an old manner where making a fresh start was not a safe thing to do. There was going to be consequences, and not always good ones. So that trained me to not dream or try to become something new, and some of you haven't spent that long in that brain space, which is good, because that way it doesn't become a habit. I think being brave takes some community to feel courage with, to be encouraged and to hear other people's successes and even failures, just so we know that we're not alone. And when we feel like we have to do something alone, that maybe stops me from making a different choice, but having this community has made me bold.
Speaker 2:Can we go back to the discussion that you and I started having about the 365 days of drawing book when we first started on our first day. This was all about new beginnings because we decided to do it at the first of the year to start this, and the very first exercise is where you can read the instructions on the page. You can draw a shape, the author gives you an example of an apple, and the apple is drawn with just a regular pencil. And so what did I do? I drew a pomegranate, did my little sketch and it was like, oh my gosh, this feels really good accomplishing this. So that's on day one.
Speaker 3:And then Mary comes in and we started talking about day one and, mary, I'm going to hand this over to you to talk about day one, which was so funny because I don't know if I would have made a choice like that had it not been for my exit experience and your sage advice to give me permission to do something different. So in my recovery group, the counselor who leads it had talked about borrowed shame and no-transcript, and in our family units someone will have some shame and guilt and they might not know what to do with it, so they dump it in the middle of the family. It can be family of origin, like you are the child and your parents do it, or your siblings do it, or it can be in a marriage where your spouse dumps it. Somebody has to pick it up, and I was always the picker-upper.
Speaker 3:So I had so much borrowed shame and guilt from my family of origin and from my marriage that when I learned this that it's not mine and I need to give it up it's just this glorious shape of release and it's kind of a blob shape of a person. What it looks like, translated on paper from what it felt like, which is the gong of my heart, a pure tone of truth, and that truth released all of that old shame and guilt and I wanted to remember that on this first day of the year to not pick up someone else's shame and guilt, and that was the beginning of my journey to freedom. So my new beginning and that happened, you know, not on the first day of the week, even on a Wednesday. It was just the beginning of my new understanding of who I am in Christ.
Speaker 2:Here's what I love about our partnership in all of these creations we are making. I read the instructions on day one, page one, and I followed the specific guidelines and you took a look at that page and you said, oh, that's too much writing on that page. And I chuckled when you said that and you did your own thing.
Speaker 3:That's what independent, wise women do.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do, and I don't always follow the rules. I am known to push myself and help other women saying wait, we don't have to follow the rules, and I just loved that example as we started our new beginnings in our new journey and 365 days of drawing. I definitely want to commit to a lot more creativity this year and to have a space to do that, because I had made choices in the past years to downsize really small, so I gave away all of my creative supplies and it's going to be interesting to see how I find the new space for my creativity and how we can all gather together in creativity. It was a wonderful way for me to start the year. I love the new beginnings.
Speaker 3:New beginnings, and that is a true path of healing. Talk therapy can get us so far. Exercise is very important, and also accessing those areas of our brain that only pencil or pen to paper and drawing something can access. Those are really wonderful tools to help you move beyond, into where the Lord wants you to go, into the Promised Land. So I'd like to pray us out In the beginning of our journal. It says welcome to your fresh start. Just start Start anywhere with anything. This is your year to get to know yourself better, to dream, to grieve, to celebrate. This is your year to celebrate the woman you are and to envision the wise woman you are becoming. You're not on this journey alone. We are praying you into your beautiful future circle, sister. In Jesus' name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1:Amen. Thank you for joining us for today's podcast. For more information, go to InHisHandsCommunitycom. Sign up for our newsletter and social media. We love your feedback. Please leave reviews, comments and subscribe to this podcast to help us get the word out about In His Hands. Thank you and dear friends, have a blessed day.
