When I have a question, the first thing I want is an answer. Sometimes answers are fairly easy to come by – How do you make pizza? What should I wear today? Who can drive to piano practice?
But so often, the questions we have in life that give us trouble are the ones that aren’t so linear. In my experience, these usually have to do with things like faith, vocation, and relationships.
Today I want to tell you a story of a time in our life when not only did our questions not have answers, they actually seemed to birth more questions.
The story today is a personal one about a time in our lives when my husband John made a vocational transition. He was kind to let me share it with you and I’m glad because it fits in nicely with our theme for February where we’re talking about discerning our next right thing in relationships. And I’m also sharing it simply because I have a feeling you’ll find some of your own story here, too.
Links + Resources From This Episode:
- What Now? by Ann Patchett
- Episode 14: Know What You Want
- Grace Discipleship|| John Freeman
- A Million Little Ways: Uncover The Art You Were Made To Live by Emily P. Freeman
- The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God by Dallas Willard
- Find me on Instagram @emilypfreeman
- Get the monthly letter! emilypfreeman.com/letter
I really needed to hear this, Emily. Thanks for sharing the personal story about you and John! And thanks for encouraging me to follow the arrows God has in front of me right now.
I so enjoy your Tuesday posts. I began reading your book Simply Tuesday about a year ago. I have taken my Tuesdays to myself recently as a sort of battle cry to the “noise” in my life. I take the day OFF. I am a home educating Mom, so my day off looks a bit different. But I show grace to myself in the morning. I still teach the day of school. But then, I take all of my needs first. I feed myself, before the dogs. Ha ha! I wear super comfy clothing. NO chores are done by me on Tuesday except feeding any animal that must be fed. (we have a zoo around here) Then after school and afternoon lessons. I take a nap. For however long I want. There are no thoughts of dinner. Dinner on Tuesdays is fend for yourself 🙂 I take to bed early surrounded by books that I have been dying to crack into and my Simply Tuesday coloring book. And I keep it just that. Simply Tuesday. I have appreciated these recent posts of creating whitespace. On Taking a little time on purpose! I am Simply…doing that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences! I appreciate you!
Tracy, what a great idea!!
Hi Emily,
I regularly listen to your podcast in the gym or while I am walking around my neighbourhood escaping the computer for a few minutes and always find it so life-giving. I especially enjoyed this episode, when you said about the ‘disconnect between the pace of his (John’s) life and the state of his soul’, I had to stop and make notes in my phone. In fact this comment led me to write a blog post all about trying to move too fast for your soul to keep up. Wanted to give you credit – and have linked to your podcast in my email to readers. Thanks so much for your work and words. I really appreciate them (and you!) Elli
So this afternoon I was listening to this podcast (for the first time) and you mentioned a turning point for your husband and how it was a way for him to start looking in a different direction. Unbeknownst to me, we had a day this year that has turned our life around. I looked at the date that you published this podcast and that was THE day. On February 13, 2018, we had a garage fire. It left us blindsided in a lot of ways and then things started coming to light how we need to makes some changes. Now, here we are 4 months later and we possibly are embarking on a new journey for our family that I never would have imagined 6 months ago!! But I don’t think we would have even thought to do this had it not been for the fire. I love the prayer at the end and I wrote it down so I can pray it in the next few weeks as we patiently wait for the next steps in our journey.
Hi Emily! This podcast has been so so helpful to me and my husband, we have listened to it together and separately over 5 times and trying to figure out how to begin that soul connect process with my husband. Would you mind sharing the “retreat” you mentioned in this episode that your husband went to? Or ones you would highly recommend for someone in a similar situation
Thank you so much.
Hi Larissa! Sorry that was unclear 🙂 It was actually not a typical retreat — it was easier to call it that in the podcast. He attended Larry Crabb’s School of Spiritual Direction with New Way Ministries. I ended up attending a year later as well – it was wonderful. http://www.newwayministries.org/ssd.php
I have been listening to your podcasts for a month or two now. I started at the beginning and I finally hit this one…but I don’t think it was by accident. I just wanted to say thank you for this episode, I needed it in this season of my life. I was a full time teacher and part time Children’s Director for my church for about 3 years. In those 3 years I also got married. I started to experience burnout in ministry and that led to health problems. I quit teaching. And a few months later my Pastor decided that it would be best if I stepped down from ministry because of the health problems. I experienced grief and confusion as to what God wanted me to do next. This episode made me realize that God isn’t going to give me a step by step plan…I just need to follow his arrows for the next step. Thank you!!