Ep 102 Trusting God With What You Cannot Control with Debbie Simmons

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Transcript

Hey, friend. Welcome to Mom 2 Mom Mentoring. I’m Misty Hughes. This is the place where real women come to find wisdom, encouragement, and a whole lot of Jesus woven into everyday life. Now, today I have a really amazing guest. Talk about mom mentoring. This woman, you could sit with her for a lifetime and glean from the wisdom and understanding she has about mom life, but more so about Jesus in the midst of mom life.

So before I bring her on, I want to say, if you are new here, welcome home. Come find our community of Christian moms over at mistyhughes.com and join us on the Facebook group, Christian Moms in Business and Ministry. We would love to have you. Now, about today’s conversation, I genuinely didn’t want it to end, but my guest is a woman who had to get on the boat.

[00:01:08] Debbie: We don’t live far from Galveston, Texas. We live in Houston. And so we just hop on the cruise boat regularly, And I never know where they’re going.

[00:01:18] Misty: Oh, really? So does your husband make all the arrangements and just

[00:01:21] Debbie: text back to that? No, I book it. I don’t even care. I’m just like- Oh … “Get on the, get on the boat, and give me a balcony, and let me see the water,” ’cause I don’t care where we’re going. It’s all, the Caribbean’s all the same. I don’t know where this boat’s going.”

[00:01:34] Misty: Debbie, I love that. You’re just like, “It’s just time for a break, and I’m going

[00:01:38] Debbie: on it.” Get on the boat. That’s the whole goal right now. Get on

[00:01:42] Misty: the boat. Okay, well, let’s get you on the boat.

And I thought that is the most perfectly on-brand thing I’ve ever heard from a woman whose whole message is about trusting God with the things that you can’t control. I think I need that on a T-shirt. Get on the boat. Trust where the waves are taking you.

More about that later. Debbie Simmons, Is a woman who’s walked through the kind of hard that most of us don’t even want to think about. She didn’t just survive it, but she built something beautiful from her heap of ashes. And today, we are going to talk to her about parenting a prodigal, about a mom who is choosing to stay in the game even when it costs her everything, about a simple rhythm that might change the atmosphere of your own home, , and about why, no matter where you are today, God is not mad at you.

This is a no-shame zone, just in case you haven’t caught that from a previous episode. Whether your child is wandering, whether you have wandered, or whether you are just bone tired from carrying it all, this episode- It is for you. And one more thing before I bring her in.

If today’s episode stirs something in you about your own rhythms and how you’re leading your life, I want to invite you to something very special. my Becoming cohort. it is a 12-week group coaching experience for women who are ready to stop running on empty and start living from a place of clarity and purpose.

Go to mistyhughes.com/cohort to learn more. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.

 [00:04:00] this woman has 13 children, a nonprofit she built from the ground up, an Amazon international bestselling book, which she’s offering you for free, and she travels the country speaking to executives and leaders all about legacy. But she also speaks about loving a prodigal, and the first time I listened to her speak on that topic, I couldn’t stop the tears, because she doesn’t just talk about it.

[00:04:32] Misty: She has lived it, and she has come out on the other side, not bitter, not broken, but shining. Her name is Debbie Simmons, and she goes by The Legacy Architect. She is the founder and CEO of Anchor Point, a keynote speaker, a leadership strategist, and the author of that bestselling book I was talking about, The Heart of Legacy.

Everything that Debbie teaches- Came out of real life, the hard kind. The kind where you have to figure out how to lead your home when you are truly running on empty, and the fear is escalating, and the hope is getting harder and harder to hold onto. Debbie, welcome to Mom to Mom Mentoring. I am thrilled to introduce you to our mom audience today.

[00:05:32] Debbie: my life looks like a Geraldo show, and it’s okay.

Hi. It’s good to be with you. I’m excited.

[00:05:38] Misty: Yeah. So I just have to say it again, 13 children. I thought four about did me in. I would love to start with a little peek behind your curtains. Who is Debbie Simmons when nobody’s watching? And honestly, what did those hard days look like when you were in the thick of raising your kids?

[00:06:06] Debbie: First of all, let me tell you, I’m a pretty open book, so the things that you say, I don’t really hide anything. Are there hard days? Sure, but All of us have stories, and our stories often have highs, and they often have lows. And it’s part of, it’s part of learning how to walk through the journey of life because if we’re so focused on getting to the end, we miss the journey, and the journey is really what it’s all about.

If you’re focused on getting your kids to teenagers, then you miss the little years, and if you’re focused on the little years, it’s like you’re in the teen years before you know it, and it’s it’s like learning to go on this journey. So for me when we talk about from a parenting perspective, one of my biggest desires as a kid growing up was I wanted to be a young grandma.

I, don’t know why I got this idea, And we had a family that’s son played for my dad’s football team, and she loved kids, so she adopted the coach’s kids.

And so she became my grandma, and I watched this lady. She was such a blessing, such a strong believer, but she had multiple sclerosis, and I watched her for 25 years suffer with that. the thing that I really learned from her was how in the middle of very difficult suffering of her own, that never once did I not see her smile. Not encourage me, not be super interested in what I’m going through when her life stinks in some ways.

So she taught me joy in suffering that I never knew would play such a big role in my life, but it has. I always wanna be like Nanny,” if I have to suffer, And [00:08:00] I was like, “Hey, let’s find a guy, get married, fall in love, get married, have children, and then I can be that young grandma.”

That was my goal. And I’m a to-do girl, So I went to college, found the guy, fell in love. I did get my degree. And as soon as we got married, I was like, “Let’s try and have children.” And my journey includes infertility, for years. And that really took a hit on my value as a woman and as a spouse and as a mom.

I can’t have children. It’s me that’s the issue. And I remember there were times in the, in that infertility process where I just laid on the bed and just was like, “I wish I was dead. I, don’t really feel like I have any value if I can’t have children.” And so struggled with that and w- let God work on that.

And my identity is not tied to the fact that I have children. My identity’s tied to Christ. And so when I pull it and go in the wrong direction, that’s where I get in trouble, right? And so as I went through that, though our very last chance at trying to get pregnant, we did get pregnant. And we got pregnant with twins, is what we were originally diagnosed with, and I was super excited ’cause I’m like, “It took five years.

I want four kids. We’ll do them two at a time, and this’ll be great.” And we were all excited. We told our family. at that point, I am the solo breadwinner in our family. My husband’s in graduate school, and we kinda figured out how we were gonna make our way. around 13 weeks, I found myself bleeding everywhere. I had to go to the hospital, I was sure that we were gonna miscarry, they said, “You have to go to the high-risk doctor on Monday. It looks like you’re trying to miscarry.

but you just go home and wait.” And so we went home and waited. The next Monday, we go to the high-risk doctor, we are sitting in the lobby. I looked at my husband, and I said Wouldn’t it be funny if we go in there, we think we’re gonna lose the babies, we go in there and they tell us we’re having triplets?

Wouldn’t that be funny?” he was like, “Yeah, that would be funny.” So we go into the u- ultrasound room, the tech does the ultrasound, sticks it on my stomach, immediately I see three. I was like, “Oh, there’s three.”

 so she does her measurements and is doing all this stuff, she says, “Let’s take one last picture of all of them together for you.” So she’s moving the probe around or whatever, and I see four. I’m like, “Oh, that’s four.” And I said, “Don’t look for any more.” I said, “This is already a high-risk pregnancy.

It doesn’t matter how many’s in there.” I said, “Just stop looking.” So she’s doing her measurements, she’s in shock. what we thought we could control at that moment, w- two, now has become four.

 this is one place that I learned that while I would like to control everything, there’s a lot in life that I have no control over, so the, goal became to get those babies to 30 weeks.

 at 26 weeks, I found myself standing in water, one of the baby’s sacs had ruptured. they sent me to the hospital and to stay as long as I could, still trying to get to the 30 weeks. the next morning one of the babies stuck their hand through my stitched cervix and waved to the world, “Hello, I’m coming.”

 I looked at the doctor, and I was like, “You need to stop this right now.” I said, “This is too early, let’s just push the hand back and forget that it ever happened.” she was like, “No, you have to deliver the baby.” at that point, medical technology did not exist to save my boys. a little while later Josh showed up.

 when he arrived, they put him in my arms, I held him, and I [00:12:00] rocked him until he passed into eternity. the question after that quickly became, would I be able to carry the other three? we waited, and I got sicker and sicker, the doctor eventually came back in, and she said, “You’re gonna have to deliver the other ones.”

 I had 102 fever, my blood work was a mess, they induced the other three, and the other three each arrived. as they did, they placed them in my arms, and I held them, I rocked them. And I loved them until they went to be in eternity.

 that night after all of that long day I sat there and tried to figure out, like, how do you survive this? You don’t go to the hospital ready to plan funerals. I’m, like, going how do you get through this? I don’t understand.”

 I looked and thought about all the different ways I could figure my way through this, and the only thing that I could come down to was I really just had to lean into Jesus, I had to trust Him with this. for whatever reason, I, was able to put a stake in the ground that night and go, “I’m gonna trust you.

I don’t know what this means, but I just can’t figure any other way through this.” a couple important things happened that night. God said, “I need you to give me your question of why.” I was like, “No. No, I’ve given you everything. You’ve got my boys. I want the answer to why. I want it.

Because if I have it, then I can make sense of all this, and it will give me the ability to go on.” And He was like, “No, you have to give it to me.” we wrestled for a while, and I lost, of course. and finally I was like, “Fine, I’ll give it to you.” the truth is and this is hard for some of us to hear, is that, you know- When we’re in hard things, why is the natural question that comes up for all of us, it’s a very inward question. It’s a very me question, But if God himself would have stood at my bed that day and would have told me why my boys did not get to stay here when He had given me this love for children, do you know what my next question would be for Him if He would have given me that answer?

I would have said, “Why? ‘Cause your answer is not good enough.” so the truth is, this side of heaven, there is no good answer for why that will ever satisfy us, that’s why you wanted my why. Because why keeps me stuck, I just said, “Okay, God, You can have my why, now what in the heck do I do? I don’t know how to get through this.” He said, “You need to ask me a different question.” I was like, “What?” I didn’t know. What do I do? He was like, “Ask me the question, how do I survive?” I was like, “Okay, how do I survive?”

‘Cause I ain’t figured that one out. it came down to remembering to breathe because when I breathe, I stay in my prefrontal cortex. I get out of my amygdala where all my emotions are, and I get up into the logical piece of me where I can process. So when I deep breathe, that keeps me in the present.

 He said, “Do the next best step. Do the next best step you can think of. Not the right one, the next best, because the right will cause you to freeze because you’re wondering, is this right or is, it not? But whatever the next best step is.” So I just figured out with friends and people in my [00:16:00] life or whatever, what’s the next best thing I can do?

And then in faith and obedience, I took that step. when I took that step, God met me, and He shone a light at my feet to show me the next one, right? then I took another step, and He met me, and another step, and He met me. this is how you work through difficult things or grieving and stuff like that.

 what you’re watching is my faith muscle being built, Because faith is a muscle, and we have to work it out, then I was like, “Okay, God. I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be stuck.” I wanna love again. I wanna live.

I want to have joy, I need you to show me how I can do that.” I said, “So I want you to not just teach me how to survive. I want you to show me how to thrive.” So that became my new question, because God promises that He’s a redeemer of stories. I’m like, “Let’s redeem this one. This is my story.” I said, “Take my story and show me how to thrive and how to have joy and how to live.”

 sitting in the hospital eternity became very important, because it mattered at that point, When you’re holding your kid and they’re, going to be in heaven, and you’re looking at ’em and you’re loving ’em, it means it’s just real, as I gave God the story to use He began to give me lots of opportunities to work with people who had lost children or to lead grief groups as we continued down that journey is when we got this idea that, hey, for us, if we ever wanna have children, maybe our plan A ought to be adoption.

 so we began to look and to think about adoption, that led us to adopting three times, a sibling group of five, and then a sibling group of two, and a sibling group of two. And that has been a wonderful … So I didn’t know exactly how God was gonna meet my need that, or the desire that I had for children, but this is how He did.

And the really cool part of the story is that my boys were born April 1st of 1995 And there was four boys, Zach, Josh, Nate, and Chris. then my first five children in adoption came into my home on April 1st of 2002, it was seven years to the day That God took that story and redeemed that story, so then becoming a mom of children from trauma backgrounds is all kind of fun. we moved in a basketball team overnight, and I don’t cook. The very first day, the youngest kid looks up to me and he goes, “What’s for dinner?”

 I looked at him, I’m like, “Do you ask this question every day? ‘Cause I am not prepared.” but I had gotten an organizational management master’s, so that kicked in. then God led us to do it again, and God led us to do it a third time. eventually he planted this idea of building this ministry to help families and to help girls who are struggling with choosing life for the child that they carry, and who may be pregnant and homeless, helping families who’ve adopted deal with kids from hard places and how to do all that.

So what I say is, “Hey, out of all of our pain, God will redeem that if we will give it to him.” And these are the pieces of things that have happened in my life. it allows my boys’ legacy to live on, and at the same time it allows me to live my legacy now and to be an impact player so I have one to leave later.

[00:19:40] Misty: I I’m leaning in and drinking in every word of your story. This is mom to mom mentoring, There were just so many mentoring moments in that story you’ve welcomed 13 children, all different ages, into your home over the [00:20:00] last 20-some odd years. before I get to the serious question, I gotta ask you a question.

So did you get to be a young grandma?

[00:20:09] Debbie: Yeah, I have-

I have 15 grandkids,

matter of fact, they’re coming over, five or six of them are coming over tomorrow, all under six.

[00:20:17] Misty: he surely, brought that wonderful miracle into your life.

So, I would like to talk about something that I heard you speak on. That a lot of us have experienced. or, it’s probably this fear that we often don’t talk about, and that has to do with prodigals and our children that don’t just turn away from the Lord, but make choices that maybe we don’t think are the best for their lives, you’ve had some experience with prodigals, what happens in your heart when you are walking through that with one of your children?

[00:21:01] Debbie: First of all, I want to say to everyone that’s listening, okay? It is only by the grace of God that our children get raised up and are perfect on their little salvation journeys and are wonderful, turn out to be all these wonderful things.

It is only by the grace of God. It is not by anything in particular that we do, because the best parents can still have a prodigal. so I think we need to have a lot of grace with each other to go, okay even if you’re doing everything absolutely right, there is no guarantee.

Because guess what? God gave them free will just like he gave me. the truth of the matter is we’re all prodigals. Okay? So you and I have screwed up, and we’ve been disobedient, and God still just pours out his love on us and just loves us, so, I want to use that as a baseline, here’s what I’ve learned over the years. we have a precious time while they’re under 18 and they’re in our care that we can protect them from the world. But in that timeframe, we want to let them fail as often as possible and as much as possible because we can control the parameters of which they learn by,

And the number one thing that we want to get with our kids is we want to get connection, because we want to get to the heartstrings. Because in the end, when they move out of our houses, the only thing we have left is the heartstring.

 if I have the heartstring, then whether they’re doing really good or whether they’re doing really bad, I know that they will come back to me.

 Think about it. That’s what God wants too, right? He wants our hearts, and so he’s “Come back to me. Come back to me,” and if I, give him my heart, I lean back in, right? Okay. Same type of thing. so if that’s gonna be the case, then what is it that I’m responsible for? And this is what I am responsible for as a mom. My job is to plant positive seeds every time I get the opportunity to, from when they’re little to when they grow up, and then to leave them a bridge to Jesus, to always leave an open bridge.

And so I’m not gonna force it down you. You, my kids, even my wonderers, all know about Jesus, and they all know how I feel about the things that they do. I don’t need to even say it. They just know. but “I’m going to plant positive seeds. I’m going to see how I can plant things in your life that will take root and germinate and grow over time, I’m here for the long haul.”

That’s my job. I can focus on doing that. Everything else in my journey with a prodigal I have [00:24:00] absolutely no control over. the question becomes, do I trust that God loves my children more than I do?

 a lot of times I go, “No, I don’t think you do.”

[00:24:16] Misty: If we’re honest, Yes, because- Like our actions speak louder than words. Yes. And if we are, like, striving and doing things- that’s what we’re saying. We’re saying, “I really don’t trust you here, God.” Yes.

[00:24:29] Debbie: And I’ll give you very practical examples of how it works in my life

When I step in and rescue-

My child from a difficult situation, then I am stepping in oftentimes in the place of them coming to need to depend on Jesus. So I become the savior. And what my kids need more than anything is to fall in love with Jesus, and to love themselves the way Jesus loves them, and then they wouldn’t make the choices they’re making.

 I had a daughter that was on the streets for drugs and a wayward lifestyle she was living, she would get picked up by the police, they would call me to come get her, and I had to say no.

I wanted to go get her. But I was like, “Take her to the psych ward.” I knew when she was ready, she would call me. I would follow up with her in the psych ward, and eventually she’d get released ’cause they’d get her off the drugs, she would call me to come get her, I was like, “Are you ready to go to rehab?”

 she would say, “No, I’m going back to the boyfriend,” And I’m like, “Then you don’t need me to come get you.”

Call me when you’re ready.”

 we did this for six years with her. She’s three years sober now. she’s a precious child to be with. But as a mom, it’s really hard to watch her do those things.

 the question is, do I trust that Jesus loves her more than I do?

And that He cares about her just like He cares about the flowers. that is a level of trust that I’ve had to learn. I will tell you that in my mind, my grandchildren are harder.

When I see my children making bad choices and it affects an innocent grandchild, then that is a whole nother level of learning to trust for me that I’ve had to learn. unfortunately, I’ve had a drug dealer, I’ve had a drug user, I have felonies, I have a prostitute I have, all kind of wonderful things that we’ve gotten to experience. but you know what? These are my kids.

And these are the ones that God has given me.

And the truth is if I don’t stay in the game-

Then we might lose them to the world. we’ve seen them turn around over time. Some of them are still in challenging, very challenging situations. But we get to keep planting seeds and keep loving people and trusting that God is gonna work that out.

 it’s been the journey of really learning to trust. It’s very hard. you watch your kids just make choices. as parents, we can see the end game. They don’t see the end game. We can see the train wreck coming, and I’m like, “We can avoid this. We can avoid this.

We can avoid this.” And they’re like- “It’s cool.” God wants to grow them.

[00:27:35] Misty: And when we keep intervening- we hijack what God is purposing for that situation. I know I’ve experienced this with a couple of my kids, and the Lord would always just tell me, “Just leave the light on.”

And as long as the light’s on, they know they can come back [00:28:00] home. it was about my heart posture, I’m not closing the door. I’m leaving the light on. They know love. And we always had this phrase when I was raising my kids, “We’re gonna land in love.”

when, they chose different paths I would be like, “Oh, but they know. They know we’re gonna land in love.” And so at the end of the day, they know that there is love here,

That’s their landing spot. When they’re ready to land, it’s gonna be about love. it is a journey. it’s one we never know what it’s gonna look like. And like you said, each moment each situation, we have to stop and ask the Lord- how to respond in that.

There’s not one answer for anybody. I wanna talk about something that I think will be a really good practical thing for moms to hear that are in the midst of doing all the things for all the people.

But you have this 10-minute reset. I would love to hear what this 10-minute reset is all about and how we can incorporate this into our lives.

[00:29:23] Debbie: Yeah. Okay. So I would say, first of all parenting is a lot of pressure.

And and it’s constant demands. And I remember when I had seven or so running around my house at one time, even the bathroom wasn’t safe. My girls thought it was hangout with mom time if I was in the bathtub, and I’m like, “Go away.” and they’re like we got you trapped.

We could come talk.” And I’m like, “Please.” So I think for us one thing is it’s extremely healthy, and we’ll, really talk about the shark waters real quick too. one of the things we need to know is that when we are engaging with our children and we feel we feel our body start to tighten we have entered what we l- affectionately call our shark waters.

And the way our body responds, because it’s just our vagus nerve going off, is we actually begin to see the child as a threat. It’s like really the Jaws movie, like they are going to eat me. And my body is going, “I have got to kill that.” and so our body will respond, and you’ll hear things coming out of your mouth and everything that you’re going “I don’t know where that came from, but if you don’t stop it right now…”

And you can feel yourself lose it, then the kid loses it, then you lose it, and the kid loses it. And the truth is, nobody gets out of that unharmed. Okay? And so one of the most valuable things that you and I can do is literally just begin to realize when we start feeling tension in our bodies, is to say, “Oh, that’s my shark waters.”

 When I make that kind of statement, it keeps me up in my prefrontal cortex and keeps the bottom of my brain from taking over. that’s extremely powerful because if we can name it, we can tame it. then it’s okay to let your child do something where you can take a few minutes for you so that you’ll be able to reengage.

 if I know I’m about to lose it, I can let my kids play with the video game or read a book or do something that they like to do while I go spend 10 minutes just resetting. then I’m usually able to reengage because I can breathe, I can pray, I can put a cold pack on my head, whatever it is, and then I can go back in.

 that is one way you can use a 10-minute reset. The other thing that I always like to tell us is a lot of us are very burnt out, [00:32:00] and every day we need to find 10 minutes to take care of ourselves.

Whatever that looks like, okay? And I call it a reset. But, if your husband comes home and you can have 10 minutes, or if you’re a single mom, then finding something for the kids to do, giving yourself 10 minutes to just breathe and to just relax for a little bit.

And then what I would say is one time a week, you wanna find a 30-minute timeframe. And then once a month, do some one or two-hour little thing. Because the biggest thing is in parenting is for us to be able to stay in the game, and staying in the game means we have to take care of ourselves.

 I didn’t realize for years, I abused myself to take care of my children and do all the things that I needed to do. about five or six years ago, I got an injury and my body couldn’t heal it. it had to do with the amount of stress that was in my life. It had to do with poor eating, not taking care of myself.

But stress will do us in, and we have to realize that stress comes external to us. Internally, we have stress going on in our bodies if we’re not taking care of it, and then we have emotional stress. So you have these three different ways that you’re getting stressed out, and you’re going, “No wonder I feel stressed out,” right?

you can’t control the external a lot of times. So the kids’ behavior you can’t necessarily control, but we can work on the other stuff.

 any time our shark order comes up, I always tell people, That means there’s somewhere in your history there’s something in you that God wants to

[00:33:44] Misty: heal.”

[00:33:44] Debbie: I knew that there was always work to do in me if I started getting a real strong reaction, and God says I can have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness in all situations, and I’m like, “I’m gonna kill You yeah. That does not seem to qualify for love, joy- Yeah

patience. And so all that means is- Yeah … God is showing us a spot in us-

[00:34:08] Misty: That

[00:34:09] Debbie: needs some work that He wants to heal. And here’s the deal. He’s showing it to you. You get to choose whether you lean in and heal it, okay? Because I’ll tell you, if you don’t, guess what? He’s gonna let it show up again.

I have too many kids and I have too many issues. I’m taking care of them as soon as they show up.

I just got in the habit of doing that because I want to be able to be present.” we all have our baggage we’re bringing in, and we all have our baggage to work on. We either lean in, and let him heal us, or we fight it and say “Ah, it’s not a big deal.”

 those 10 minutes are important. And then when you do get new shark waters, go do something about it, go pray and say, “Okay, God, what do you want to say to me about that?”

[00:34:55] Misty: I love that perspective.

 if we can look at these things that are triggering us, the external things, when we go crazy because our kids are being wild and everything, and that’s triggering us.

But to see those as a invitation from God to shore up some things in our own heart I truly love that. I used to tell my kids especially my girls, they often didn’t want to go on the weekends with their dad. I’d be like, “No you have to go because I need this time to regroup because it helps me be a better mom, and you want me to be a good mom. It’s not pretty when I am not a good mom, so I need you to go be with your dad.” I hated it and I cried but yet it gave me that time that you were talking about to [00:36:00] reset, Earlier, you talked about deep breathing and how God said, “Just breathe,” And I’ve realized in my older years as a mom, as a young mom, no one told me to breathe.

[00:36:17] Debbie: Yeah.

[00:36:18] Misty: And I think I I’d soak down in the bathtub and I’d breathe, but no one was saying, “Misty, just stop- and breathe,” I love that we’re never too old to learn new ways of being and new ways of incorporating healthy habits into our life. So thank you. I would love to hear if there’s one thing that you would want to leave mothers with And also, how do women connect with you, learn about what you’re doing the, ministry that you have there in Texas or even your book.

What’s the one way, the best way for women to learn more about you?

[00:37:10] Debbie: Sure. There’s bunches of ways. That’s what they tell me. So if you want to learn about the ministry that we started, it is anchorpoint.us. And you definitely can see how we help families and help them thrive. And if you’re close by and you need services, we’d love to bless you.

If you want to learn more about me, you can go to thedebbiesimmons.com, and that will tell you more of the stuff that I am doing, I do want for your listeners my book, The Heart of Legacy, that is my gift to your listeners today. they can just go to theheartoflegacy.com, and they can get the book there. all you do is pay for the shipping, the book’s free. so that’s there to bless them. It is the full version of my story, but in the center it is all about practical little things that we could do so that we could be focused, faithful, and fearless.

 as far as what I would say to your listeners the, thing that I always love listeners to know is that you know what?

When God is looking at us, he is smiling. He is not upset with us. He is not mad at us. He is wanting us to lean in. no matter where you sit today, I want you to just lean in to him and focus on just the breathing and the next best step. The next best step is the best piece because it’s action, and God can work with that, okay?

[00:38:45] Misty: Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. I’ve gleaned such wonderful insight and wisdom from you, so thanks for sharing your journey, and can’t wait to get your book.

So thank you, Debbie.

Okay. Wasn’t Debbie just wonderful? I wanna leave you today with two things I keep coming back to from our conversation. First, your job is to plant seeds and leave a bridge to Jesus. That’s it. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to force it. You don’t have to figure it all out.

Plant seeds, mama. Leave the bridge open, and dare to trust that God loves your child even more than you do, even on the days when it feels impossible to believe. And second, get your 10 minutes, not someday, today. [00:40:00] 10 minutes to breathe, to pray, to just be with the Lord before the chaos starts again. You matter.

Taking care of yourself, hey, it is not selfish. It’s how you stay in the game. Now, Debbie has that gift for you, her book, The Heart of a Legacy: Living a Focused, Faithful and Fearless Life. It’s an Amazon international bestseller, and she is giving it to you for free. You just cover the shipping. Go to theheartoflegacy.com.

I’m gonna put the link in the show notes for you. And beloved, if today’s episode was for someone you love, make sure you share it. Text it to the mama who is white-knuckling it right now. Sometimes the most powerful thing that you can do is just to say, “I heard this, and I thought of you. You are not alone.”

If this podcast has meant something to you, I would be so grateful if you took 60 seconds to leave a review. It is the single best way that you can help Mom to Mom Mentoring reach the women who need it the most. And come find me at mystahughes.com. I would love to connect with you Here’s what I know to be true after sitting with Debbie today.

When a woman is brave enough to let her story shine, the hard parts, the beautiful parts, all of it, she gives the women around her permission to do the same. And that’s exactly what Debbie did for us today. That’s exactly what you do every time you show up, you stay in the game, and you let your light be seen.

Because beloved, when you shine, you give others permission to shine too. Until next time, I’m Misty Hughes, and this is Mom to Mom Mentoring. Bye-bye, friend.

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The Heart of a Legacy: Living a Focused, Faithful And Fearless Life.

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