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
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.
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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.
Tiffany Windsor:Good morning. I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'm Mary Koenig, and our topic today is God is with us and, mary, would you pray us in?
Mary Koning:Yes, I love this verse that we use at Christmas time, but it's appropriate every time of day and night, behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name in manual, which means God with us. Matthew 1.23. Lord, I confess I make you small sometimes, I put you in a box and don't invite you into every minute. But, lord, you are there and we sing a song in church today that is combining the power of all the prayers in the room, all the people, all the prayers and all the faith, and it was overwhelming how big that is. And then you are bigger still. So, lord, we trust you, we trust that you are with us and we ask that you surprise us with your presence today. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.
Tiffany Windsor:Amen. So the reason I picked this topic today of God is with us is because I forgot. I very rarely get sick and I got sick last week. I thought it was food poisoning. It turned out it was the flu. You can still hear it in my voice and it was very interesting.
Tiffany Windsor:God always puts me into situations to teach me and it was very interesting because you know I'm always giving advice to others about how to move through certain blocks and how to move through the negative thinking.
Tiffany Windsor:And I tell you I totally forgot to pray when I was not feeling well, I just laid in bed, as many 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 days of prayer right now at church and I missed three days of those 21 days and it wasn't until Mary at church was pushing me more to pull me out of my funk for lack of another word. That just doesn't even seem like the depth of what my mind was trying to do in messing with me that I started to listen to God again, even though I'm sitting there every day in church and praying and taking this beautiful prayer time, I wasn't really embracing it. It wasn't until I started thinking about how I hadn't been praying that I realized that I had forgotten that God is with us all the time.
Mary Koning:One observation I had was that because we were in a community and face-to-face, I could see it on your face and I could see that you weren't using your tools and was asking do our tools work, Are they powerful, Are they effective? And how much maybe deeper the funk would have been had you not shown up for the 21 days of prayer or church and just gone into your bed I heard this new term and done bed-rot. I love that. I kind of like it. It's comforting sometimes when the weather is gray and dismal and our bodies need rest sometimes, but sometimes that's not the right choice for us either. The other thought that occurred to me was that I don't seek wise teachers unless they've been through the valley of the shadow, and I'm so sorry that you've gone through the valley of the shadow, but this shows me that you know the steps to take to get yourself moving.
Mary Koning:I don't really want to take advice from someone who's saying something but hasn't experienced it. I need wise women who have really wrestled with these things and tried something after this thing, after another thing and really pressed in to find the answers. So thank you, Thank you for pushing yourself.
Tiffany Windsor:Thank you for being there and witnessing this, because I tend to be a loner. One of the most important things to me is when I went into illness. When I went into disease, I realized disease is emotional. But I didn't know what emotional state I was in and it wasn't until I was praying one of those mornings and the Lord told me very clearly that I was actually in mourning for some changes in my life. I'm going to be moving out of California. Been here my entire life.
Tiffany Windsor:I've been praying for moving for four plus years, so it's not as if I am leaving under duress. I've been asking for this and what I didn't realize is what I had buried through lots of circumstances in my life, my mother passing back in 2015. I don't tend to mourn long, I tend to move on and I don't feel like I'm burying it. But the Lord told me that I was going through this because I was in mourning for the loss. I definitely realize how much I rely on steadiness. That's my nature, is to keep my life steady and be that anchor and I lost all of that through this. So it was a beautiful teaching moment from the Lord and to allow me to mourn, I have definitely had more tears over the last week of listening to worship music and just praying than I've had in the last five years. It was a big aha for me.
Mary Koning:Two thoughts. One is self-sufficient versus God's sufficient. And when we are facing a big move like this out of a state you've spent every day of your life in is a big step. There are unknowns that we have to rely on God for I pray he has put in enough foundation that you know he will surprise you in a good way and he will show up. And one thing I did during my really long dark days was I printed out a lot of full page kind of posters and capital letters. I period have period Jesus period for period, this period, and I would put them in everything in the custody folder, in the alimony issues, in the utilities folder, in the mortgage folder, just everywhere, to remind myself that this is not bigger than Jesus, that I'm making Jesus small when I make the problem bigger.
Mary Koning:And the second thought is I've spent so much time in grief that I need to remember the tools to do the grieving completely and then the moving forward. So maybe that's a whole podcast in its own. But we do lots of different things to avoid grief because it's not a fun feeling. But, sweet sisters, we know it's something God wants us to move through and not get stuck in. And I think the past few years I've just done the same A lot of grieving, kind of childhood trauma and young adult trauma and broken marriage trauma. But the neat thing is on the other side is that there's still some sadness, but it's just not the deep canyon of grief it was before and God is so good about that. He doesn't want to leave us there. He wants to move us through so we can be wise women and hold out a hand to other women to help pull through and coax and push sometimes and just sit, just sit and grieve with.
Tiffany Windsor:The topic. The sermon at church today was mind wars, and they are real. So when I talk about just having a week of wrestling, I have not had to experience. I did go through divorce and it's been too long for me to remember, but I'm sure that there was a couple years of challenges for me but I just moved on.
Tiffany Windsor:But now that I'm understanding more how to rely on God when I'm in these moments, it seems how do I say this? It seems so much more important because I'm not just sweeping it under the carpet. I'm learning how to use my trust in the Lord to help me process and not sweep, so I'm getting out the big hoover and vacuuming rather than sweeping it under. It was very interesting because I made this note today about as you think, so you will become, and how so much originates in our trauma and we just don't realize the depth of trauma.
Tiffany Windsor:Again, just some ahas for me today. I love when pastor said when your thoughts get renewed, your life gets renewed. It's so important to set your mind on the things above. I definitely did not put tools around me to remind me every single morning when I was waking up and not feeling well and every night when I was going to bed to put the tools around. Do I have little post-its by my bed? Do I have them in my bathroom to remind me to turn to the Lord rather than to my misery?
Mary Koning:And it's so refreshing to know that we forget and we can be reminded and to be gentle with ourselves. And I just want to touch on what childhood trauma you know. That sounds pretty big and it can be big depending on what kind of childhood trauma you've been through. Mine was more along the lines that I was left to figure so much out. I was child four of five and so parents were distracted with so many children and then another little baby along the way, and so I really didn't get as much attention or explanation of how life works or help along the way that I needed, and I was very emotional and that was the source of a lot of my emotional outbursts. My parents didn't know what to do with me. It was tears instead of words.
Mary Koning:And so to go back and heal that inner child has been a big grieving process and that was part of the divorce. And healing my inner child and inner young adult and that old way of operating, of trying to figure everything out myself. And I no longer need to, because I have this beautiful community of women and the Bible and my Lord and Savior who's showing me, lighting every step of my path. Like it says in Psalms You're light into my path and a lamp unto my feet, so I know that my God has me in his hands. Where would you say you are in the process now?
Tiffany Windsor:Well, I'm still every day dealing with there is some anxiety that comes up. I wouldn't say I have fear, but I do have anxiety because trying to plan multiple things to happen at certain times so that I am ready when the day comes, when we hop in the car and drive across the country, the planning that's happening now is downsizing even more to only take the things with me that are really important. It was interesting when you walked in you saw a vase that I have that said I've had at least 30 years. That was a beautiful decoupage, hand-painted, handmade paper gourd vase that always goes with me as I'm going through everything once again and I look at something and hold it and does it bring me joy, and that is one of the pieces that I always bring with me.
Tiffany Windsor:It's so funny because I've never put anything in the vase, it's just a decorative, artistic-looking vase that always goes with me. So right now I'm just going through the process of what's important, what's not, what can I let go of, and the planning. I'm still working for a couple more weeks, so that ends up taking a lot of my eight hours of thinking time during the day. Fortunately I don't have a whole 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 have the coughing, and so there has to be something with speaking up about something.
Mary Koning:But there is still grieving going on and I love that your beautiful reminder has butterflies on it and I'm hoping. I was hoping that once we go through the process of caterpillar, then into the cocoon, which is painful and then emerges a butterfly, is a one and done. But I don't think it is. I think we go through this process often, unfortunately, or fortunately, through all these stages and ages, and past and present and future and all those things, and so here you are in the cocoon again, getting ready to burst forth. I just remember when we moved so many times when I was young, I would look forward, so, anticipating the move or something different. So that's what I hope for you that this, all the details fall into place and you get to anticipate your place to soar and fly.
Tiffany Windsor:Thank you so much. What a beautiful blessing and, for me, what's so wonderful about this move is that I get to spend more time on periwinkle pomegranate vision, that, because the Lord has been planting these ideas and because I've been working full time in something completely different, I don't feel like I've been able to dedicate the time that I'd like to I envision this creative brain space, so that I have time to do that. We have this online magazine that I was trying to dream up what are the stories that we want to tell and what is the visual, and I feel like this is going to give me the time to do that, which is something I truly, truly love. I was talking to my sisters this morning and they were asking me where I am also and what's going on, and trying to understand where they are. They're both in the creative world, the arts and crafts world, and I was encouraging both of them to dream.
Tiffany Windsor:The Lord is putting onto my heart to spend more time in creativity, with creative supplies, with my paints, with my pens, with all of that. My hope with this move is that there's this beautiful creative studio that I can see people coming into, where we share our creative space. That's so important for women. We talk about community and I think it's just so important for women to have a space to be able to pick up these different colors of pens and paints and brushes, and even if you feel like you don't have any creative bone in your body, you're just going to let the Lord speak through whatever utensil is that you're holding onto. So I'm looking forward to that to have the space to do that.
Mary Koning:Another two thoughts on that is that it takes time to birth a thing. It's like a baby and you're preparing right now and preparing can feel slow or it can feel hard, and then there's labor. So laboring to bring the baby that's the season and sometimes we want to be through it or done or not enjoy the process, but I would just pray that you enjoy the process. And then the other thought was that you're describing a somatic therapy. So there's talk therapy and there's physical therapy and then there's somatic therapy, which accesses that part of your brain that helps you heal, and that's been key. So I just pray that brings healing.
Tiffany Windsor:Thank you. And as I go back to the core of what our discussion is today, god is with us in every moment in the processing of the trauma, in the picking up your creative supplies and putting something on paper, in our communications. In our waking, in our sleeping, god is with us.
Announcer: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 inhishands. Thank you and, dear friends, have a blessed day.
