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
Reclaiming Our Voices: Releasing Life Stories That No Longer Serve Us | Ep 16
Have you ever felt ensnared by the silent struggles within, particularly after life's seismic shifts like divorce?
Join host Tiffany Windsor and her guest Mary Koenig as they discuss reclaiming your voice. This intimate conversation begins with a prayer from 1 John 4:9, inviting you into a space where vulnerability meets the strength of faith. Share the winding paths of personal experiences, from Mary's journey of emerging from the shadows to Tiffany's confrontation with depression at her career's zenith.
This episode is not just a dialogue but a beacon of hope, as we discuss the liberating transition of placing our stories into God's hands and the profound changes that follow.
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Welcome to In His Circle, 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 is your host.
Tiffany Windsor:Good morning. I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'm Mary Koning and Mary, will you please start us off?
Mary Koning:Lord, we just pray this morning 1 John 4: 9. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him. So, Lord, I ask that we live through you today, and that requires me to get out of my own way, and maybe some of our other circle sisters. So we ask you to show us how. In Jesus' name, amen.
Tiffany Windsor:Thank you so much. Today I'm feeling really bold in my conversation. This is going to be interesting to see what comes out of my mouth Because as we're growing our community, we're reaching out to friends, other women that we know, and gathering in community and talking, and definitely what I am seeing is that one of the hiccups that happens to women is getting stuck in their life story. Because I went through divorce so many years ago and I was so young and I know I had to have a life story then that I was stuck in for some amount of time that I've forgotten about. I want to be kind and forgiving to the women around me, but it's not serving them well to be stuck in their life story. So can we talk about that today?
Mary Koning:Let's talk about it. I know that for me it was a lot of ruminating over just stuck stuck in a rut is all I can say, and I called it my long valley of the shadow of death, and it lasted probably four years. I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel and I didn't know how to get out, so I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and kept going to my recovery group and praying and trying to get through it, one foot in front of the other.
Tiffany Windsor:So what comes to mind for me is that we, as women, want to be heard and, of course, in a lot of times in relationship, we feel that we are not heard by our spouse when that relationship breaks. So you've made the decision, as a Christian woman, that you are going to move into divorce. How are women heard? Because when I hear women speaking their life stories over and over and over again, I want to help move them and shift them through these phases, and so I think first we need to identify what the phases are, help give tools, but what can we do to help women who have this really deep desire to continue to talk about their life story, but there's this stuckness that is not allowing them to take the next steps in their growth. Enlighten me more on this, Mary, and help me understand this more.
Mary Koning:I think that keeping going or continuing to go to recovery group, even though I didn't feel any forward motion, helped me find my voice. But it wasn't just that. The last year I was in recovery which started, it was 22, 23. The leadership started to use right brain activities so drawings and other activities to process our emotions and that broke loose some damn. That broke through for me to understand all the previous years of recovery group and helped me find my voice. And then a dear friend reached out and said hey, why don't you use your voice in a podcast? And I said that sounds awful and scary. And yet here we are, so finding my voice, especially in a marriage, that my voice was silenced for 20 odd years. To be able to try and find my voice again and use it, and then use it in this format, is only God. I mean, there's no way to explain this other than here's what God can do when I follow him instead of making my own choices for myself.
Tiffany Windsor:So, as I'm listening to you and thinking a little bit about my path over the past years, because I've had several successful careers, I was in real estate development for a while. My mother is in the arts and crafts business and she started a television show that ran for 16 years. I was the producer and host for six years. I hit my 40s, I was 44, top of my career, top of what I thought was what I wanted, and I just remember sitting down one day, not even being close to the Lord at that point, and I said, god, is this all there is? I had the creative expression that I wanted, I had a comfortable life, I had my own home, and yet there was so much that was missing, and so I walked away from all of it at that point, didn't realize that it was the Lord helping me at that point, saying you need to walk away from all of this to find me because you're so wrapped up in what you believe is success in this world that it was tough. It was a full year. I did go into depression, didn't seek any sort of counseling or any help. I did start reading the Bible. So at that point I was seeking help. I just didn't realize that's what it was, that that would be what I understand it to be today.
Tiffany Windsor:What I want to encourage women to understand is, once you get unstuck from your thinking, your humanness, and you turn that thought to, god is present and God is here to help me in this moment, in this situation. It takes such a burden off of you and that is my main tool right now. Because you'll ask me well, how do you do this or how do you do that? The simplicity of my answer is I turn to God. I don't have to worry about the planning because that's in God's hands.
Tiffany Windsor:When everything is taken from you, when you walk away from life that way and you say God, I'm turning myself over to you, and I know not everyone can do it to the extreme. That I did where I sat in a guest house on a 10 acre ranch and there was really not people around me and I really isolated myself and it was a really tough situation because I separated from my family at that point because I had been in a family business. When you strip all of that down, then you truly understand how you turn to the Lord. And again, I didn't understand it in that moment, but in retrospect. That's when the shift in my life happened.
Mary Koning:You said so many good things there. The two I caught and held onto were you put it in his hands and that you practiced, you practiced it, you practice turning everything over, and that it wasn't immediate. There was a process and we're trying to circle back and I thought it was interesting. You were telling me back to me. I'm asking you how do you do this? And isn't that what we're trying to create here too? How do we do it? How is it done?
Mary Koning:And I came across some information about oh, why do I keep making decisions that are self-defeating and keep me down low? It's because I know what that outcome is. I know that outcome is failure and that feels comfortable. That sounds so depressing and defeated that I would choose a failure outcome over an unexpected outcome, just to maintain control instead of letting God control everything and see what he has. It's this relationship with God that you know I'm kind of modeling after my ex, who is unhealthy for me, and having to relearn that I can trust God. And how do we learn to trust God? Community, the Bible, other warrior, women's stories and successes.
Tiffany Windsor:As we talk about women sharing their life story, I would love to see women not get caught up in the loop of repeating the life story. So, mary, I definitely want to build with you some sort of tools for women. We've talked about these guidebooks because there is a pattern to this and so much of this is deprogramming what has been programmed into them through relationships, through childhood, through parents. I totally understand that they're not going to be able to heal overnight, but there have to be tools that we can offer that help them understand how to build their strength back up. Because once you can shift your thinking in that moment, one of the women that I talked to recently, where she was really explaining what was going on behind closed doors and I was just so sad of how she was led to believe that she was far less than what she is capable of and who she is as God's child, and how easy we can be manipulated with those words and those patterns and the fear of the programming that happens and again, this was from a spouse that she still hasn't been able to stand up to that yet and to see the trauma that she's going through that I know that you and a lot of women that you have been with over the past years on your healing paths totally understand what she's going through and it breaks my heart.
Tiffany Windsor:Here's the thing she hasn't been reaching out to us, and you know me. I'm the mediator. I am the one who wants to always step in and help. I know my help is not always the right thing. I have to learn how to navigate that. They will make their own changes when the time is right. I'm just going to try and plant seeds, so help me here. I'm going to toss it over to you because I don't think I have any other words to say.
Mary Koning:I like what you said about behind closed doors, because it's hidden in the darkness and the Lord wants us to bring it into the light. And this friend reminds me so much of myself that I kept the unhealthy things in the marriage hidden and wouldn't invite people into the home, wouldn't go to other people's homes, because I couldn't handle having witnesses to the excess bad behavior of me and I also didn't have a solution. So what God has done over the years is to open up the doors, bring in the light, has done over the years is to open up the doors, bring in the light. And when the light shines on the dark places, then healing can begin. And so, instead of telling myself the same broken story, I had to be willing to be authentic and vulnerable with safe people and not fear judgment from them.
Mary Koning:And one thing you have down really well is your audience of one that you know you're here just to please the Lord and you know and you're comfortable with people around you being not 100% happy with you and that's because they're not who you're here to please.
Tiffany Windsor:Right, because all I can do is speak the truth.
Tiffany Windsor:I listen to the Lord and I'm trying to speak the truth in that moment. A lot of people do not want to hear it and I'm okay with that because I know the Lord loves me. I don't need love from everybody else. Please read our e-zine. Please listen to all of our past podcasts, because there are so many pearls of wisdom that I truly believe that you can take away and apply to whatever situation you are in in your life, in walking with the Lord. This community our hope is that it feels some sort of gap, that you're feeling that you're not getting from other groups, that you're not getting from other, probably very wounded women around you, because you need to align yourself with strong women, because you will get stuck in the life story of yourself and the other women's life stories and you do not have to be stuck there. There are very strong women who have been through this, who are ready to share their stories and life successes with you and how they turn to the Lord to be able to keep walking through their life.
Mary Koning:And that's such a good visual, because other women aren't meant to be your rescue ring, your floaty thing, your lifesaver.
Mary Koning:Lifesaver, that is thrown out to you. They're meant to be the one swimming beside you encouraging you, and I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to women wanting them to be my lifesaver and thank you God, they just would refuse because that's not their role and that's not their job. And that was really painful at the time because I didn't know how to find my lifesaver, which is God and in the word. And even though I filled up journals and journals and journals with the word of God, I'm so forgetful and I think God is trying to tell me, to tell you, that his mercies are new every morning. We can't survive, you know, even a whole day without remembering he's here for us and with us. And a dear friend said we need not worry, god is for us. So if it feels impossible or there's no way through, god needs the width of an angel, which is really tiny, and I've really tested him on that many times and he has come through the width of an angel wing.
Tiffany Windsor:So I'm looking at the bookmarks that we made for our e-zine and I see just blasting at me is fearless. Be fearless, because the manipulation that goes on in this outside world is all about fear, and so that can trickle down if we allow it to trickles into our lives and when we are in dysfunction in relationship, what stops us so much is fear. And so, dear friends, our wonderful sisters in Christ, I encourage you to be fearless and speak up. One of the things you may need to do because I see that on another one of the bookmarks is be still and know that I am God, because there's going to be so much running through your head, because that is how you have survived in the past. So if you take that moment to be still and be with God, you are going to feel that fear being lifted so that you can be fearless, so that you can speak your truth. That's what I want to leave you with today and, mary, I will let you close this out.
Mary Koning:All right. The Lord tells us to fear not 365 times in the Bible, and you can guess why One for every day Isaiah 41, 13,. For I, the Lord, your God, hold your right hand. It is I who say fear not, I am the one who helps you. So fear not, dear ones circle sisters, the Lord is with you.
Announcer:Thank you for joining us for today's podcast. For more information, go to InHisCirclecom. 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 Circle. Thank you and dear friends, have a blessed day.
