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"Examen"-ing 2023-Where Did God Show Up & Meet You This Year?
69 Plays11 months ago
Wendy and Chris take an opportunity to reflect on 2023 as it draws to a close. As a loose framework for this conversation, they discuss and employ the spiritual practice of the examen. At its essence, the examen involves looking back over a day, a year, or other period of time reflectively and prayerfully reflection looking signs of God’s presence. It can serve as a source of gratitude and comfort, as well as a means of further discerning his direction for us as we look to tomorrow--or in this case, a new year.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Surviving Saturday'
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Surviving Saturday, a podcast about holding on to hope in the midst of life's difficulties, disappointments, and dark seasons.
Easter Saturday and Life's Challenges
00:00:12
Speaker
Times like that remind us of the agony and despair the followers of Jesus felt on the Saturday of Easter weekend, in between the Friday on which he was crucified and the Sunday on which he rose from the dead.
00:00:23
Speaker
That someday forever changed the way that humans can relate to God. But what does it look like to be honest about the very real pain we experience in the in-between? To fervently cling to hope in the God who promised us his peace and his presence at times when he feels distant or even cruel.
Meet the Hosts: Wendy and Chris Osborne
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm Wendy Osborne, a licensed counselor in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm her husband, Chris, a marriage mediator, conflict resolution coach, and trauma-informed story work coach.
00:00:51
Speaker
Join us each episode for authentic conversations about how life not turning out as we'd expected has created the contextual soil for the growth of a tenacious hope in the resurrection and in a God who is still making all things new.
New Year's Reflections and Resolutions
00:01:07
Speaker
Hey there folks and welcome to another episode of the Surviving Saturday Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Chris. And I'm Wendy and it's New Year's Day.
00:01:19
Speaker
That it is. New Year's Day, which I think has the distinct unique feature on the calendar of Boyd, is it prompt reflection. For some reason we love when the calendar changes from one year to another. It feels like a fresh start. We make New Year's resolutions. People like to do a lot of things.
00:01:41
Speaker
I feel this overwhelming urge to plan and organize and try to start the new year off right.
The Practice of Examine
00:01:48
Speaker
But there's another practice that we're going to talk about that maybe has a little bit more ancient roots. What would that be, Wendy?
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, so I stink at New Year's resolutions because I don't ever stick with them very long. And so today what we're doing is we are considering an ancient church practice called the examine that Saint Ignatius of Loyola believes he
00:02:15
Speaker
excuse me got straight from God and it's just a way of reviewing the day or in this case the year to see maybe where you saw God at work. Okay and so it's sort of a reflective practice and I don't think it's inconsistent with or incompatible with
00:02:33
Speaker
making plans maybe for the coming year of the future, but it's sort of, it's a good process of reflecting, looking back on how you saw God work. I'd like to actually probably try to do it more on a daily or weekly basis, instead of just sort of ending a day or week feeling just the weight of what I didn't do or didn't get born, but rather, wait, can I pause and be grateful for, hey, I wait, this was amazing, or this was really good, or this was impactful.
Finding God in Daily Life
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think it builds the noticing of God and a lot of Christians also use it then to see maybe where God could be directing them. There's one thing I read where a guy likens it to rummaging through a junk drawer and you know certain things are supposed to be in there and so you keep looking and he said doing the exam and for him is like rummaging through a drawer
00:03:29
Speaker
in the context of your day, knowing that God's gotta have been in there somewhere. Oh, I like that. And I like it too, because it fits with the sort of spiritual practice, but also just mental health practice of gratitude, which scientists have been studying and actually showing the benefits of when you actually take time to reflect and be grateful for things.
Gratitude and Mental Health
00:03:51
Speaker
you actually are altering your brain chemistry. And especially if you do it with some regularity, one exercise that my business partner I used to tell people about is think of three new things you're thankful for each day and write them down, end of the day.
00:04:06
Speaker
The key is you have to think of three new things. So it's real easy to do, you know, like days one through three or my family, my friends that I have resources or a meal or whatever. But when you when you're not allowed to repeat, then you have to start getting a little bit more creative and really hunt harder to find the good rummaging. Yes. And if you've had a junky, terrible day in particular, it's a little harder as well. But you know, you are helping your brain chemistry by that practice. So the exam and it sounds like is
00:04:37
Speaker
making that something regular.
Emotional Winter and Personal Growth
00:04:38
Speaker
And I like the focus in particular on where you've seen God. So I would say, Wendy, why don't you start, share a little bit about kind of what this year has been like for you and say running back maybe year, maybe until last spring, kind of what were you thinking, reflecting on where were you and then how did you see God show up kind of through the year.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I was thinking about this earlier and back last winter, really, I think between January and March or April, I had some people that I love deeply.
00:05:20
Speaker
who were going through some really hard situations from rejection to depression to self-doubt and my heart was just broken as I was walking with them. And so as I contemplated the season of the year
00:05:41
Speaker
I just realized that winter felt very dark and very icy for me. And I realized as the calendar got to March and April that I hadn't even gotten mums for our porch.
00:05:56
Speaker
Or I guess at that point, maybe I wasn't gonna get mom's. I'm not a great gardener. I think maybe those red flowers, whatever they are that we sometimes get and put on the front porch. Oh, Chrysanthemums? No, those are mom's. Oh, they are? Okay. We're clearly not here for gardening advice. Duraniums? Duraniums. And these would take us into the summer. And so I wasn't putting up the spring door hanger and I wasn't getting flowers. And I finally realized,
00:06:25
Speaker
I was stuck in hiding and in the dark and I was feeling sadness for these friends and I was also just wondering really where God was in the midst of all of it.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah. I can relate to that a little bit, especially probably last spring, January, February, March, I was making some significant decisions vocationally and trying to figure out what direction I'm going. I'd been through a season of thinking I might be going a certain direction and then having some doors that I thought were opening kind of close up. And it really kind of made me sort of want to, you know,
00:07:06
Speaker
hibernate a little bit as well and sort of just shut down. I think I was behind you in the sense that I wasn't even aware that I was sort of getting buried and something might be coming to life or growing, but I was still sort of just
00:07:20
Speaker
I think I was in a phase where I was still having dirt thrown on top of the, on top of the seed is more what it felt like to me. Yeah. So I didn't have any, I remember you mentioning at one point in time during that sharing something with me about, Hey, you know, winter, there's a lot going on in winter. I remember you saying, um, that, that winter actually is not as dead as we perceive it to be because there's a lot of under the surface stuff going on to prepare for what happens in the spring and amazes us.
00:07:47
Speaker
Right, right. The stuff in the spring doesn't bloom out of nowhere. There's been a lot of stuff going on, a lot of activity deep down under the cold earth that is planning for the fruit that we will receive in the spring and in the summer.
00:08:07
Speaker
Um, and so I think I realized, um, and I was reading a book called wintering by Catherine May, but I realized I wasn't ready to push roots through the hard earth.
Childhood Creativity vs. Adult Life
00:08:23
Speaker
I really just wanted to stay hidden. I wanted to hibernate. I wanted to stay small and I didn't really want to poke my head out, which I think for me was another way of saying, I didn't really want to hope.
00:08:36
Speaker
That God was doing anything so I was afraid of being disappointed Yeah, and I think if I look back to that point I was still The earth was still getting plowed up for me and and sort of rocks were getting moved around and I as I think about it now in my body I sort of feel the scratching of a rake like you know like hey we're gonna we're gonna awaken some things and try to loosen some soil in some areas, but I
00:09:03
Speaker
like I started saying, oh, it's going to be shaped this way. It's going to be shaped that way. And that wasn't true. The, the, the rate kept coming. The shovel sort of kept coming and the digging kept coming. And I feel like I hit that point of
00:09:14
Speaker
wanting to hibernate and just hide maybe later, you know, of like, okay, this has been enough, you know, and it's kind of dark and cocoon-y here, maybe I should stay here. It kind of came a little bit later for me. So what would you say, how did God meet you in sort of, you named this, reluctance to bloom and to grow, how did God meet you in that and invite you to maybe something different?
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think one of the things that happened, you know, a couple of months into this journey, I was at the beach with some friends and we were talking about places that we just felt free to be us as little kids.
00:10:03
Speaker
And one of mine, probably my primary one, was my front yard when I was little. Up until about fourth grade, we lived way out in the country, and our front yard was kept fully wooded.
00:10:22
Speaker
and so I would go in there under the pine trees and I would take all the fallen straw and I would scoop it into little borders and boundaries to make houses and then I would use the roots of the trees and it became like my playhouse and I was out there for hours and hours most days and this was in the southern part of Georgia so it didn't get all that cold
00:10:51
Speaker
But I remember just feeling so much freedom and just enjoying my own creativity and feeling a delight in my imagination. And so as we were talking about this, I realized how much of that I had put on a shelf.
00:11:09
Speaker
And in my adult life, I had wanted other people to pave the way or to tell me maybe what my calling should look like or where I should focus my efforts. And I think I had put my imagination largely on hold. Hmm. Okay. And what did that feel like to have somebody name that? Um, so, you know, I,
00:11:39
Speaker
It made sense to me and I felt the riskiness of what if I poke my head out of the darkness of winter and envision some life that maybe I could help create in the spring and it's not received well or it doesn't go the way that I wish or I look foolish.
00:12:05
Speaker
or why does somebody thinks I'm a weed and chops me, basically? Yeah, yeah, what if it's not appreciated or valued? Yeah. And so, as I was with these women, we were talking about, you know, Jesus and the time he spent in the dark.
Parallels with Jesus's Resurrection
00:12:25
Speaker
And I'm really drawn to the Jesus that stepped out of the tomb and wondering what it was like
00:12:36
Speaker
to be the witness of the stone being rolled away and and being one of the disciples also on the road to Emmaus whom he joined and seeing the scars with which he still emerged and seeing what what he was back to do and I think I I was drawn to that
00:13:04
Speaker
same kind of coming out of the dark. There was something that I, it just deeply resonated with me of coming out into the dawn.
00:13:16
Speaker
Now, that's reminding me there was a later, another experience like that you went to. I remember you coming back and saying those words were powerful, like that Jesus said to, I forget who it was, Talitha Kuhn, like daughter come out, similar theme there.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yes, I have a friend who has tattooed that on her hand. And I think that's going to be my next tattoo. But it's Jesus when he raised a little girl from the dead in scripture and it's little girl rise. And so, yes, that was super meaningful for me because as I was talking to these friends at the beach, I realized
00:14:03
Speaker
that I have been hearing from Jesus myself. I think for a long time, maybe most of my life, I've looked for other people to translate what maybe he was really saying and doing, at least to affirm and assure me that I was hearing him rightly. And so I started noticing that he was showing up for me personally.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, and so I think that and having friend's name, we see your giftedness here or we see your glory there, invited me to look straight in his face and to be courageous enough to listen and believe that he was speaking straight to me.
00:14:58
Speaker
So on that note, that reminds me, this is something you shared with me. She doesn't necessarily know I was going to do this, guys, but one person who got to encounter you kind of in a group setting repeatedly and see you engaging stories and doing more of your own kind of healing work, this is what they had to say about you, surprising you with that.
00:15:18
Speaker
Wendy, your presence, your fluidity and gifting with language, your intuition, the depth and kindness of your face, and I love that he emphasized that. Create a kind of atmosphere. There's a feel to it, and I love this phrasing, like if the feeling of home and the anticipation of adventure had a love child.
00:15:37
Speaker
In some ways, it's the atmosphere of a natural leader, a queen. Of course, there's always permission to lay down the scepter, kind of a big deal, but be wary of misplacing or forgetting it. How does it feel to hear somebody else whom you respect and appreciate just to describe you in that way?
00:15:53
Speaker
That was an incredible gift to me this year. Just his words. I have had such a war with my own face and being a lifelong product of the South and just being a woman who has believed there's a singular definition of beauty
00:16:14
Speaker
And oftentimes spent more time critiquing and judging my face than allowing it to engage the world and bring life and hope and kindness to other people. And so when he named that, I could just feel my whole body exhale and relax.
00:16:35
Speaker
I love it. So how would you say, kind of in summary, and then we'll talk about me, come back to me a little bit, but how would you say God has met you in the course of this year and particularly recently, you know, in answering some of these questions or meeting you in this wrestling?
Community, Love, and Understanding
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah, I know that he has spoken clearly through the mouths and the hands of trusted women who have held me when I've cried, who have wiped away tears that took 40 years to be able to come out of my body.
00:17:18
Speaker
women who have spoken in both to my struggles and to my glory and have cheered me on into the arms of Jesus and he has created a shift in my heart where after begging for it for over
00:17:43
Speaker
Five decades. I feel like I can intuit his great love for me. Like I feel a safety in his presence and I see a kindness on his face.
00:17:59
Speaker
That i have wanted my whole life and i think it's come through women not just modeling that for me but engaging me that way yes yeah with strength and solidity and kindness and courage.
00:18:16
Speaker
Well, I love how you're describing the experience of Jesus that's real and tangible and how it is coming. It's mediated through community, through people being the body of Christ. Yes. And that's the one thing I know we've been learning, like reading Kurt Thompson and kind of how he talks about the neurobiology of
00:18:39
Speaker
healing and grief and how we get rid of shame. A common theme that's in the stuff he writes about and we've been learning about is the inner interpersonal, how literally people convey God's love in a tangible way.
00:18:58
Speaker
Well, and you know, it can't be missed that he came to earth in a body. Yes. Like it didn't have to be that way, but there are so many ways that we receive from other bodies, both judgment and blessing. Yes. And you, I mean, just watching the chosen, um, in awe of the way that his body participated in the redemption of humanity.
00:19:28
Speaker
We're going to have to have a whole episode at some point in time talking about the chosen, how powerful it is to see a depiction of Jesus that is so embodied, it's so human. I see the disciples as way more human than ever did. They've got dimension more than I've ever picked up on. They're far more like us.
00:19:48
Speaker
That's a good segue, I think, to me.
Identity and Career Transitions
00:19:51
Speaker
Yes, where have you sensed God in your own life in this past year? Yeah, I would say it's similar in that there's been a lot of individual wrestling and wrestling with him and trying to get close to him to, can I hear from you on who I am, who I'm supposed to be? I think one of the things I've been wrestling with, especially over the last year or two, is
00:20:17
Speaker
you know the the loss of identity in a sense that comes with our kids being adults yeah and out of the house most of the time yeah you know they they come back and visit they do um but but nobody's looking to me on a daily weekly basis hey dad do this yes and i'm not trying to usher them through life and it hit me at some point probably in the last year of
00:20:41
Speaker
That's a big piece of who I am and was and how I ordered my days, how I ordered my time. And that's gone. And then in changing up what I'm doing vocationally and I stopped ordering my days and my time around legal clients and their needs.
00:21:00
Speaker
then there's this, well, who the heck am I? Yeah, a lot has changed in your world. Right. Um, so there's that sort of, I'd call it, you know, it sounds trite, but existential crisis of a sense. If, if nobody needs me as a lawyer and I don't want them to necessarily, um, and nobody needs me as a dad in that sense, they, they, you know, it's a different role now that I can play for adults, adult kids, but who am I and what do I want my days and time to be about? So that's going on.
00:21:29
Speaker
And a lot of changes were made over the course of this year. And some of it is not so much, not even as compared to like letting go of one trapeze.
00:21:39
Speaker
and you have that hang time in the middle before you grab the other, but in my case, it's felt like, well, wait a minute, there's a few different trapezes. I'm not sure which one I'm gonna end up on, but I still gotta let go of the old. So I felt this sort of free fall, but it's drawn me, I think, towards God, number one, to say, well, can we have this conversation and not just assume, and can we look at story and where I've been and where I've had opportunities, but where is next? And for next to feel not certain, but for him to say,
00:22:09
Speaker
be okay with that. And like, no, I want resolution. So that's one piece of it. The other piece I think what that led me to is to do some deeper healing on some aspects of my own story, some of the trauma from my family background.
00:22:23
Speaker
and to understand at a better level where that shows up and how it trips me up and how it actually relates to this, why I can't just... I've never been when this person says, I know I'm supposed to do this. I will seize it. I will make 10 goals or steps and I will go for it. I have these limitations. I have these ways that I sabotage myself or I doubt myself or let myself get paralyzed.
00:22:46
Speaker
And so it's kind of related to some story stuff.
Solitude and Healing
00:22:50
Speaker
So I ended up, one of the high points I would say was a men's group that Dan Allender led that I got to go and spend a week in May just with these other men who were there for the same purpose to just kind of probe your story, do deeper healing.
00:23:06
Speaker
And that I think was transformative. You talked about meeting God in the faces of other people. And I had been doing some training with the Allender Center and the Narrative Focus Trauma Care and the same thing happened where I got, like you described, people who sat with my story and honored it and plumbed the depths of it, like really nobody had ever done before. But it was this multiplicity of people that was powerful. It wasn't just one facilitator.
00:23:36
Speaker
although the facilitators i think i had were were fantastic but there's something about other and in my case it was mostly men although and i guess in one other group setting it was women also speaking to these pain points in my story in my life and speaking with such kindness um a i think it was important just for me to get to have the floor
00:23:56
Speaker
and like to not because of my story for me to have the spotlight and not not because I took it for myself by being special and let me put on show these were people who said we don't want that piece of you we understand why you felt like you need to be clever smart special all that and
00:24:14
Speaker
We want to bless and honor that, but you don't need to be that with us. Like we just see you and we see this pain and we see this doubt and this hurting and we want to sit with where it came from and we want to give you the grace and kindness of God. And they really gave it to me by their words, by their engagement and by their faces. Like one of my memories from this year is just the faces of really men in one setting and women another just smiling at me.
00:24:43
Speaker
and they've just seen me just fall apart. Either it's rage, like, wait, this is what happened and I actually got to let loose, this made me feel this way, or deep grief. So the faces of other people, and at the same time, in that same week in particular, there's an invitation of solitude as well. Like I had time, in fact Dan gave me my instructions, every day you have to spend 30 minutes
00:25:09
Speaker
doing some active, get out, walk, hike, something. But also it's been 30 minutes doing nothing. Don't read. Don't feel like you have to listen to something. Don't feel like you have to do anything. Just sit and see what does the heart of God have for you? And it took somebody actually saying, this is your job.
00:25:25
Speaker
everything's cut off, this is what you have to do. How often do we just sit and listen to God? Oh, me never. I mean, not never, but rarely. I almost always have music going. I realize too, I always have music. If I don't have music on, I have music in my head. I always have a soundtrack sort of going. I now can recognize and sort of, hey, can I stop that? You know, just to be where I am. But I felt in that week with those other men in particular,
00:25:53
Speaker
Everybody's there doing healing work and we had multiple invitations to dive into a place of real hurt or of pain or grief in my case.
00:26:06
Speaker
It was powerful that God just showed up there and said, I really want this freedom for
Embracing Vulnerability
00:26:12
Speaker
you. I want you to experience this. It wasn't this, oh, you know, tear your clothing and put sackcloth and ashes on. It wasn't a thing to do. It wasn't a task. And it wasn't a guaranteed formula to do this and XYZ will result. It was an invitation to just, hey, here's what's swirling in your heart already.
00:26:32
Speaker
here's an invitation to see all that you do to keep it at bay and let's let's let that stuff go and let's let's actually go there yeah and to have people willing to go with you in those places makes it a lot less scary yeah because they're kind of like hey we'll hold you we'll be there too and that's the other thing that happened is listening to other men in particular well the men and women
00:26:57
Speaker
tell their stories of pain and hurt and heartache and to be part of the companion of all the witnesses who were bringing kindness to them and being able to say, hey, did you realize this about your story? And they're like, nobody's ever pointed that out. I had no idea, but it now
00:27:16
Speaker
makes so much sense. Well, and I think when you have those experiences when you're undone with the pain and also with the goodness that evil tried to take out in your life through those experiences, you end up in a position which Jesus can really bring comfort to.
00:27:41
Speaker
And in her book, Dusk Night Dawn, Ann Lamott talks about a speaker that she heard, I think he was a comedian, but he said, whenever you meet me, the first part you're gonna meet is my bodyguard. That's a great way to put that. It's a great part that basically this protector part is gonna keep you from getting too close while I feel out.
00:28:06
Speaker
if it's safe to let you in any further. And that insulates us at the same time from Jesus being able to bring comfort into those painful, cold, and dark places. Yes, it makes me think of what Larry Crabbe described as sort of like almost like the inner tube.
00:28:28
Speaker
we're all wearing sort of the style of relating, is this inner tube. It's like you're only gonna get so close. I'm gonna keep you at a distance. And for me it's by, oh I'm super smart, I'm charming, I'm funny, whatever. Those are all things that I have adapted in order to, I love that body card, are you safe? Let me see what I'm gonna get from you and that'll determine what I'm gonna bring and let myself see.
00:28:53
Speaker
And that's what was powerful about each of these settings that I was in, and each of these groups that I got to be part of, where people said, we actually, we love that you have that. They didn't shame me for having that. There wasn't like, you got your bodyguard, you're bad. It was like, of course you developed that particular style of relating that particular bodyguard. Of course you did, because look how you were set up to do it. Look how you got trained to be exactly that.
00:29:23
Speaker
what might happen if you let go of that and let us see the real you? And then they're there saying, we actually like that guy. We actually like that real you that's underneath the sort of things that might keep people at a distance, the desperation to perform or to manage what you think of me. And they held the unvarnished
00:29:46
Speaker
realist me and we're like we like that we're good with and there's something transformative
Community Support and Fellowship
00:29:51
Speaker
about that it like it gives you the freedom I don't have to perform and it was powerful too because part of mine has been sometimes you know I'm a caregiver I'm a listener I
00:30:03
Speaker
I will be there for you. I know how to take care of people in a way. And that, you know, the invitation was great. That might be a great gift and you can use that. You can use, you know, that's good, but you can't always be in that mode because you will empty yourself. And there's, and where's it coming from? Is it this need to get people to like you because you do that and say, Hey, look here, I'm special. Here I am again.
00:30:27
Speaker
or is it coming from a place of just knowing that you're being held? Right, more of a conduit. Yes, yeah, I think that's what I felt and experienced particularly the one week away and then some follow-up training that that's built on that. That's an invitation even deeper into how did those parts of me get formed that want to be the bodyguard, the manager, the sort of
00:30:52
Speaker
I'm gonna control life and manage it and figure it out. And so for me, I'm ending this year, I feel like I've been invited closer to the heart of God. And I feel a more direct connection as well. And it finally invited me to sort of come out of, it's been sort of a lonely couple of years, partly due to changing churches and vocational changes and things like that.
00:31:19
Speaker
and finally get into the place of, here's a taste of fellowship. Here's a taste of being seen, held, and known. I've stayed in touch with some guys from that one week getaway where we're still in touch because we have that sort of connection of the exterior manager bodyguard stuff has been stripped away. Like, yeah, we said like,
00:31:42
Speaker
bless those guys, but send them elsewhere and we come in, we, we, we talk about the real and it's not that the fun part about that is it's not been all this heavy and always process your trauma all the time. There's been moments of levity, lots of humor. Yes. And that's the real heart of God, right? Like he's a comforter and he is
00:32:05
Speaker
He's a devourer of evil, but he's also incredibly playful and tender. Yes, yes. It's reminded me of one of the facilitators I got to work with. We had to bless each other, kind of like you got that blessing from Trapper. And I remember dubbing him the mirthful maker of mischief for the mending of hearts because there's
00:32:28
Speaker
There's a, it's mischief. He gets kind of in your business and stirs things up, but with a mirth, with a joy. And that's again, back to the chosen, but the character, the guy playing Jesus, there is this mirth. There's also this heavy and this, you can see when he's drained, when he is like pulling out, but there's a playfulness that I keep encountering as the heart of God. In fact,
00:32:53
Speaker
The bookend, I guess, the other end of my year was another conference. I went to a national conference of men gathered, you know, talking about sort of healing and trauma recovery and stuff like
God's Invitation to Adventure
00:33:03
Speaker
that. And the final message was, what if we heard the invitation from God
00:33:10
Speaker
to join him in his work as a dad, sort of saying, hey son, let's go see what adventure we have today. And that's poo, to a deep place in my heart, because that's one of the main things I was missing from the cast of my family, my dad's absence growing up. I didn't have that from a dad. I had other men who tried and filled that to some degree.
00:33:28
Speaker
experiencing God in that way, not as I have this task for you or you must do this or because you're so grateful for me, do this. No, it's like, Hey son, what do we get to do today? Where can we have some fun? Um, as we take people to their hearts and as they get to know my heart. Um, and so that's where I'm sort of pivoting into 2024 and then with, okay,
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen God work. I've seen him weave adventures together that I didn't even expect and give me, both through people and also alone, these moments of joy and delight. And I'm now at the point where I'm like, I'm sort of like, I'm ready for spring. In fact, I'm probably going to be resentful of January. But I want to see the spring that comes out of this.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yes. So thanks for doing this with me. It's helpful to look back and to then go into the new year anticipating that we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living. So thanks. And we're glad we'll have good folks like you to be part of it with us. Happy new year. Happy new year.
Closing and Resources
00:34:36
Speaker
The Surviving Saturday podcast is brought to you by Nurture Counseling PLLC, a counseling teaching and training center based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We help families flourish one story at a time. Nurture Counseling provides counseling, counseling intensive for couples, conflict resolution coaching, story work groups, seminars, workshops, and retreats to provide a safe and welcoming context for exploring the agonizing experiences of pain, brokenness, and evil that disrupt our lives.
00:35:03
Speaker
and that God often uses to nurture deeper trust and intimacy with Him and with each other. You can find us online at www.nurturecounseling.net