Ep 99: The Calling Shifts The Purpose Holds For Christian Moms

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Transcript

On fire for Jesus. Have you ever used those words? Have you experienced, felt the fire of God in your bones? Jeremiah puts it this way, but if I say, I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name, his word is in my heart. Like a fire. A fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in.

Indeed. I cannot.

Girl, I have felt this way. Back in the nineties, my heart was awakened to the love of God. I experienced what it meant to be truly, deeply. Loved by God, not just as a concept, not just as a Sunday morning truth. It was a reality that went all the way down to the places and spaces that I had worked so hard to keep hidden.

And when that kind of love gets inside of you, you cannot keep quiet about it. I wanted to. Go shout it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Now I am a natural connector, a builder, someone who comes alive, creating, developing, bringing people together. The thought of pouring energy into something for the kingdom.

It wasn’t ambition, it was overflow. My heart was so full, it needed somewhere to go. And then one day in the middle of my practicing being still, which if you know me, you know, it has been a lifelong journey a scripture came to my heart, but God wasn’t directing it at me.

He was asking me to consider this passage about my children. What will it profit you if you gain the world, but lose the souls of your children?

That question changed the whole direction of my life.

Hey friend. Welcome to Mom to Mom Mentoring. I am Misty Hughes and I am so glad you are here today. This is episode 99, 1 away from 100. There it is. I just said it and I want to remind you if you haven’t subscribed yet, now is the time because episode 100 is going to be something worth showing up for my handsome hubby.

Craig is joining me on the podcast for the very first time. First man ever on Mom to Mom mentoring. And we are going to talk about connection, the kind that holds a marriage together, the kind that holds a woman together, the kind that seems like a mystery when you try to understand it. Beloved, you do not want to miss it.

So hit follow or subscribe. So the episode will come straight to you now, a little about me. I am a life coach, a ministry founder, and a mom who has lived in the messy and the beautiful, and the sometimes barely holding it together reality that I know many of you are walking through right now. Years ago, in the midst of my own single mom journey, I founded a nonprofit called The Single Mom kc, which was simply a safe place for single mother families to come in the midst of their weariness, their confusion, the chaos of [00:04:00] life, and find a cup of cold water.

For their souls. Fast forward, now I coach moms who are in the messy middle, searching and longing for more of the Lord to fan and to flame their own passion and calling for the Lord and Mama. That is simply. What this podcast is all about and why I created it because I believe something deeply. You do not need more information.

You need a mentor, someone that’s a few steps ahead, willing to be honest, who will point you back to the only anchor. That never moves the word of God and the identity that he has given you. So whether you’re driving carpool, folding laundry, or finally getting five minutes of quiet, even if it is locked in the bathroom.

Welcome. I am so honored that you are here If last week. A foundation today is a testimony that will give you the tools to build on that foundation. I know that no two stories are the same, and God is writing your story, empowering you to build on the foundation of Christ in you. Christ the solid rock on which you stand.

Last week we talked about the difference between purpose and calling, and today I want to show you what it actually looked like in my life when the assignment or calling shifted over and over and over again and what God was weaving through all of that, that I didn’t see until later. Here’s the deal. I am going to be pretty transparent with you today.

Some of what I’m gonna share, I haven’t said it in this way before, but I believe that what God has walked me through is not just for me, and if my story can give you hope for the season that you are in right now, it is worth telling.

Now if you miss last week, here’s the anchor. Purpose is your why. glorifying God, receiving the love of God, being loved by him, and loving others with the love that he loves you with. That never changes. Calling is how the specific evolving path and role you take to fulfill that purpose works out and it shifts all the time.

That distinction matters because so many of you have been exhausting yourself trying to discover and perform something that was never yours to chase in the first place. Now, if you’d like to go back and get the full understanding of what purpose and calling are I encourage you to go back and listen to episode 98. I will make sure to put the link for episode 98 in the show notes.

Today, I want to walk you through what that actually looks like over a lifetime, because the calling does shift more than once, sometimes dramatically, and every single time. If you stay faithful, God is doing something that you cannot see.

So back in the mid nineties, our community was in what I would call a revival, and in the middle of that revival, something cracked open in me. I [00:08:00] had a real awakening to what it meant. To be loved by God, not religiously, not performatively, but truly and completely known and loved by him. Up to then I would say I had a good.

Perspective of who God was as master. I served him well. I was the dutiful daughter that did what my father asked me to do, and I truly loved him. I am wired. Deeply wired to build, to create, to connect people, to develop something out of nothing and watch it come alive.

So when that love got a hold of me, I wanted to pour it into everything. I was ready. I was on fire. Let me add it. The stirring I described last week, that yearning for something more. This is where it came from. It wasn’t restlessness, it wasn’t even ambition. It was a heart that had been filled up and needed somewhere to pour, and God heard that he saw it and he answered just not in the way I expected.

That scripture that I shared, What will it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose the souls of your children? That was his answer to my fire. It wasn’t a no, it was a redirect. Misty, start here. Pour it here. The mountain that you’re supposed to tell it on is your own kitchen table.

And I wanna be really honest with you about something because I think this is where you might. Feel unseen. That redirect was not easy for me. It was painfully hard at times. I am not someone who was wired to stay quietly in the background. I do come alive when I’m building something, when I’m creating and connecting.

Being asked. To pour all of that energy into four kids in the ordinary every day, unglamorous, unseen rhythms of daily life when I had a heart full of fire and no visible platform for it that cost something real, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, but I stayed. Not perfectly, not without complaint, but I stayed and then God did something that I didn’t see coming.

He showed me the math. Four kids, if each of them one day poured into four people and each of those poured into four. The exponential reach of simple faithfulness in my home was staggering more than I could manufacture on a stage More. Any platform I could ever have built. It didn’t bring me peace in the quiet, settled sense of the word, but it brought me something better.

Vision, hope, the wild, exciting breath, catching awareness that God’s ways. Are so incredibly above my own meager ways. His plans are so much greater than anything I could ever strategize that [00:12:00] my job wasn’t to figure it out. My job was to be faithful to what was right in front of me. Isaiah 55 says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways.

My ways declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth. So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. That was a passage I was learning to live out.

And then. In the late nineties, the bottom fell out. My husband left and everything that we had been building as a family, the life I thought we were living the future, I thought we were moving toward it shattered. I wanna say something really carefully here. Because I know that there are women listening who are in their own version of that kind of loss right now.

What followed was not a season of brave triumphant single motherhood. For a while, we were all just trying to keep from falling off of a cliff. My kids and I, we were figuring out who we were now, what had happened to our family? Where do we go from here? We were all pretty darn messed up, honestly. Just trying to hold on.

The fire I’d had the vision, the overflow, it dissipated for a while. I had to find my own footing again, and that took time. But here’s the thing about God. He doesn’t wait for your life to be stable before he speaks. Sometimes he gives you the next part of the vision right in the middle of the wreckage because that’s when you need it.

The most, and you may not even be aware that that’s what he’s doing.

It was that way for me because somewhere in that season, around the years 2000, the kids were roughly four to 15. I heard someone talk about giving it 20 years. The idea that transformation doesn’t happen overnight, that some of the most significant work God does in a life and in a family is slow. And almost invisible while it’s happening.

That settled something in me, not resigned. Settled. It was a long journey and I was determined to be faithful for the long haul. I made a decision in that season that I didn’t fully understand at the time. I was going to stop looking for the assignment out there somewhere, and I was going to be faithful to the room that God had put me in.

Homeschool co-op. I help establish the teenagers. I was discipling at church, the children’s ministry. I eventually became involved in, these were the rooms that God put me in, not because I had formal qualifications, but because I had a heart for the next generation. And someone saw that.

And opened a door.

None of what I did looked like a big ministry. None of it came with a title or a platform. It just looked like faithfulness season after season in the room that God put me in. I wanna [00:16:00] offer you an image that has meant a lot to me over the years. Isaiah 61 3 talks about the planting of the Lord, Oaks of righteousness, not flowers that bloom and quickly fade oaks slow, deep rooted, immovable, built over decades.

And giving off abundant seeds that feed others and plant new growth. It says they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. I wasn’t building a ministry out there. I was planting. Oaks right in my own home, in my own community, in the rooms that God kept putting me in.

And oaks take time. You just have to trust the master gardener.

Now I wanna tell you something about that long season because I think it’s one of the most important things I could say to you on this episode. You who are right in the middle of the hard, the slow, the unsexy assignment that God has you in right now.

There were times more than I would like to admit when I couldn’t see evidence that I was doing anything good, that my faithfulness even mattered. My kids were struggling, our family was in recovery. We often wondered what tomorrow would would bring. I would come to God not in a quiet, peaceful prayer, but in desperate, frustrated.

Honesty. God, this isn’t working. I am losing it here. My kids are out of control. I don’t see you in any of this. I need you to show me that you are working Anne God. Is truly the author of Faithfulness. He always answered, not in big, dramatic, unmistakable ways, most often, and small quiet ones, ways that I almost missed.

I remember one day hearing my youngest son Jacob. My little boy playing with his toy cars on the floor and he was singing just quietly to himself. He wasn’t performing on a stage for anyone. he was just singing quietly a worship song.

I paused in that moment and I knew it was God speaking. I’m here, I’m working. I’m writing my word on their heart. Keep going, my beloved friend. If you are in a season where you cannot see the evidence, ask him to show you, then watch for the small things. The moments so ordinary, you’d miss them if you weren’t looking because that is often exactly where he shows up.

20 years later, each of my four kids moved into adulthood. Not without their own struggles and not without the hard seasons we faced along the way, because that’s just the reality of [00:20:00] being human in a broken world, but with something underneath them. An understanding of what it means to be in right relationship with others.

A capacity for contentment, a desire to contribute to something beyond themselves. They launched and I wanna say something here that I’d like to invite you to put your listening ears on and really lean in to hear, because I know it’s something that some of you raising kids might be terrified of.

A few of my kids have stepped away from the faith. They’re on their own journey and I want to honor their story. It’s theirs to tell, not mine. What I will say. Is this, we have good relationships. We enjoy each other. We love to be together. They know I love Jesus with my whole heart, and I know that God loves them deeply.

I am not the Lord of the harvest. I never was. Verse Corinthians three, Paul tells us I planted the seed. Apollo watered it, but God is the one who makes it grow. So neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow. My job was to plant, to water, to be faithful.

And I did that. Oh, totally imperfectly, desperately, sometimes, barely holding on, but I was faithful. The harvest it belongs to him.

and beloved. This is not resignation. This is the most freeing truth I think I have ever stood on. It gives me the ability to love my children, to love others freely and fully without worrying about the outcome. Now, if you are lying awake tonight. Wondering if your faithfulness will matter, if your kids will choose Jesus.

 If what you are pouring into the unseen ordinary days matters at all. I want to say to you directly. Plant the seeds, water, and what’s in front of you. Trust the gardener. He makes things grow in ways and on timelines so far above what you could plan that your only job is to stay faithful

And keep your eyes open for those small signs that he is already at work.

Everything I just walked you through, the striving, the redirect, the long faithfulness, the slow becoming. That is the journey that the becoming cohort is built around. Beloved, we are not about a quick fix, not a five-step formula. It is a genuine 12-week experience of discovering who God made you to be and learning to live from that place rather than running from it or trying to manage it.

And if these last two episodes have been stirring something in you, if you recognize yourself in the yearning, in the exhaustion, in that desperate prayer God. Show me how you’re [00:24:00] working. I want to invite you to take the next step. The becoming cohort begins on May 5th. It is intentionally small, only 11 women, because real transformation happens in real community, not a crowd.

We will spend 12 weeks together working through my rhythm of life framework, learning to rest, restore, to reconnect with. Who God says you are, and to move from survival mode to spirit led living. The link is in the show notes. It’s misty hughes.com/cohort.

If something in you is saying yes, don’t wait. Spots are limited and we begin on May 5th. I would love to walk this season with you,

the assignment I was given in the mid nineties. Pour into your children. Let your platform be the room that I place you in. It looked like nothing I thought I was on fire for. It was much harder than I expected. It took longer than I ever planned but the thread underneath it never changed. Be loved by God. Love him and love others with that same love. Season after season, room, after room assignment after assignment. That was the purpose. It never changed and everything that came after. Single mom KC lead her ministries, the Rhythm of Life Framework.

This podcast, the women who sit across from me in coaching and mentoring, none of it was something I planned for or built or strategized. He brought it to me as I stayed faithful in the room I was in. He just kept opening the next door. The calling. It shifts. It’s supposed to because seasons change. But the one who called you before you were born has not changed his mind about you.

Not once, beloved, plant the oaks. Trust the gardener. Watch what he does. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. Until the day of Jesus Christ, he began it. He will complete it. Your job to stay faithful in the room you’re in to today. Next week, episode 100, Craig is joining me and we are going to talk about connection.

I can’t wait. Make sure you’ve subscribed. I’m Misty Hughes. This is mom to mom mentoring. Now go shine, beloved, because when you shine, you give permission for others to shine too.

Key Scripture

• Jeremiah 20:9 — His word like fire shut up in my bones
• Isaiah 55:8–9 — My thoughts are not your thoughts
• Isaiah 61:3 — Oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord
• 1 Corinthians 3:6–7 — I planted, Apollos watered, God made it grow
• Philippians 1:6 — He who began a good work will complete it

Free Resource

Grab the Rhythms of Renewal Mini-Guide — a free workbook walking you through rest, restoration, and relationship, with a Discovery Bible Study through Matthew 11:28–30.

Download free at https://mistyhughes.myflodesk.com/discoverrhythms

Ready for More?

The BECOMING Cohort begins May 5th — a 12-week small-group coaching experience for the Christian mom who is ready to stop striving and start becoming. Only 11 spots. mistyhughes.com/cohort