Hey friend,
I want to tell you about a day I had downtown a couple weeks ago. I think this would be easier to convey through a quick video...
And in the middle of that day, this is the part I keep coming back to. I noticed a pattern.
I'm standing in a new season. Opportunities I've prayed about. Doors I asked God to open. And at the same time, I'm having a hard time letting go of the previous season. Opportunities I also prayed about, things God let me steward for almost twenty years.
Both true. Both at once.
Let that sit for a second, because I don't want you to miss what I'm saying. This isn't "I used to want the old thing and now I want the new thing." It's both. I'm grateful for what's in front of me and still reaching back for what's behind me. I'm standing where I asked God to bring me and still grieving where He brought me from.
If you've been there, or if you're there right now, I want you to know you are not doing this wrong.
Here's what I noticed downtown, and it's the whole reason I'm writing this to you.
At some point, without me even seeing it happen, my self-talk shifted. It used to sound like "I'm so grateful God has allowed me to walk in this for almost twenty years." And then slowly, quietly it became "I've been building this for twenty years. I can't just walk away. There must be a way I can make this work."
Read that again. The first sentence is gratitude. The second is self-rescue.
Somewhere in there, I had moved from His strength and provision to my strength and my lack of resources. And I didn't catch it when it happened. I caught it downtown, almost a year later, when I finally sat still long enough to notice.
That is the slow shift. It's the reason this month is called what it's called. Seasons don't usually change in one clean break. They shift slowly, and the inside of us shifts even more slowly than the outside.
We find ourselves still trying to hold on, still trying to make it work, still using our own strength to keep alive what God has already started moving us out of.
And the problem isn't the longing. The longing is honest. The longing is human. The problem is that as long as we don't see the shift, we can't fully step into what God is doing in the new season, because we're still using all our strength to stay in the old one.
Sit with the Word
Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 this week. Not once. Several times.
The phrase that has been undoing me lately is just the first one: "there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." Every purpose. That's not only the big, visible seasons. It's also the small internal ones, the releasing, the grieving, the noticing, the standing still. God appoints those too.
Ecclesiastes doesn't promise us seasons are easy. It says they are appointed. That's different. Appointed means there's a hand in it. Appointed means God is not absent from the shift, even when the shift feels like loss.
And Ecclesiastes 7:10 has been standing me up this month too. The verse where God gently warns us away from asking why the former days were better than these, and tells us it's not wisdom that's asking that question. That isn't a rebuke. That's mercy. That's Him telling us we don't have to keep measuring our present against our past. We can just be here.
This Week's Invitation
So here's what I'm asking you to do this week. One thing.
Notice your self-talk. Just notice. Don't fix it, don't fight it, don't feel bad about it. Listen.
When you find yourself thinking about your current season, the one you're actually in, what does the sentence sound like? Is it gratitude? Is it striving? Is it "God led me here"? Or is it "I have to make this work"?
You don't have to do anything with what you find this week. We'll do something with it next week. This week is just about seeing.
Because friend, seeing is the first act of faithfulness in a new season. Before the releasing, before the receiving, before the rising, there is the noticing. And God is not rushing you through it.
A Few Questions to Sit With This Week
• What season do I say I'm in? What season am I actually still living inside?
• Where has my language shifted from "God is providing" to "I have to provide"?
• What am I holding onto that I've stopped asking God about?
• If I stopped using my strength to keep it alive, what would actually happen?
Tiesha A. Andrews
With love and anticipation of everything that God has in store for you!!
P.S. You can catch up on my YouTube channel, where a video series is waiting for you.
If this series resonated with you, would you share it with another woman who needs to hear this message? Forward this email. Let's help each other stop running on fumes and operate in the strength of the Lord.
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