Mrs. PIE

When It's Time to Put the Load Down

• Shelley Jeffcoat • Season 4 • Episode 128

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During times of exhaustion, we need a spiritual reset to regain clarity and continue our journey. This morning's devotional explores the path to personal renewal through practical, actionable steps.

• Psalm 51:10 teaches us to seek both a clean heart and a renewed right spirit
• Self-awareness is the first step to reset - being conscious of our thoughts, actions and responses
• Performing a self-check helps us observe where we're spending time, money, and energy
• Setting a timeline with quarterly goals rather than annual resolutions creates achievable change
• Putting down our burdens temporarily helps us see around the corner to our next steps
• Working harder doesn't guarantee promotion - sometimes we need to reset our approach
• Unexpected setbacks like job loss might actually be redirection to our true calling
• A reset begins with purifying our motives and examining what's in our hearts

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Speaker 1:

no-transcript. Good morning everybody. It's Thursday and I'd like to say something real quick for those of y'all who don't watch, but you listen. I'm officially entering the bun stage of my hair journey, so I'm excited. I personally needed a reset. I used to have long hair and I'm just going back in that direction, despite my many fails and attempt over the years. I just I need to change y'all. So I'm excited because I'm not going through any chops, I'm not frustrated. It's all good, but I'm in my bun phase. So that's what's going on. So good morning and happy Thursday y'all.

Speaker 1:

So we're in May. I'm so grateful that we made it to another day. I'm trying to follow up with the comments section. Good morning, dr Tracy. Yes, listen, please, y'all encourage me to keep going. Don't come for me and tell me I can't do it. Tell me I can. Okay, please support me in my hair journey. Hair journey, you're my hair journey, all right.

Speaker 1:

So we're continuing our theme this month. So we're in the month of May, y'all, and I'm just going to grab my notes really quickly. But so far we've talked about we're in week two. Obviously. First of all, we talked about our theme being keep showing up. So last week we talked about. You know I'm tired, but I'm still here, and it really was more of an encouragement for those you know who might feel a sense of exhaustion, whether it's physically or spiritually or mentally, emotionally. By the way, we all go through this, you hear me, we all go through some sense of being tired or, some of us, emotionally exhausted. There are folks who you know again, I'm on the LinkedIn streets good morning LinkedIn, good morning Facebook. Shout out to YouTube, hey, parade deck TV, all of the things. And so we all go through these, these, these times in our lives. But this week we're talking about when you need a reset. So I have a scripture that we're going to lean into.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to do a quick prayer and then I want to share three things with you guys. That's working for me, that I think might be good for y'all. Okay, all of us, we all need this, so we all need a reset. So first of all, lord, I just thank you for giving us the opportunity to come before you again. I thank you for this platform, I thank you for every person under my voice who is in a season where this might be an encouragement for them to go through a reset, and I thank you for the teaching. I thank you for your guidance. I thank you, holy Spirit, that you'll pour out your favor and give us everything that we need. Lord, god, in this day, I especially pray for those who are going through job losses or financial losses or setbacks in any way. If they're feeling any sense of disappointment, that this, too will be an encouragement that they can also do a reset, disappointment, that this too will be an encouragement that they can also do a reset, that it is not over, and I thank you for that, lord. Amen, right, sometimes we just got to be reminded that this is not, it's just a reset, it's not actually over.

Speaker 1:

All right, so I'm going to grab the scripture. Actually is a short one, and it's Psalm 51, verse 10. And then, like I said, I'm going to share three things that work for me and I believe it's going to work for you as well. So, psalm 51, y'all, this is the Psalm that I go to when I'm going into, like when I need a full-on reset before I do fasting, anything like that. I really I lean on and I pray through Psalm 51 in its entirety, but I'm just pulling one verse out, verse 10. Obviously, this is the A Shelley version, the ESV version, and it says create in me a clean heart so that's one, oh God, and renew a right spirit in me, so that's two. So we need to have a clean heart and then we also have to have a renewed right spirit. A right spirit is a right spirit If you think, but you can't enjoy any of those fruits of the spirit, meaning none of those things can be echoed through your life, the way you live, the way you talk, the way you work. You're not able to do that if you don't have a clean heart. If you come to the Lord and your heart is impure, if you're jealous, if there's envy, all those things you can't match. Envy and jealousy and bitterness, and then hope and peace and joy. They don't live in the same space. So it's really important that we start with a clean heart and then a renewed, a right spirit. So here are three things, y'all, that I'm going to share with you, that I'm working through, and I'm in that phase right now. I feel like I need to reset.

Speaker 1:

I had this incredible favor on me yesterday that I went into our office. There was a huge event that was going on, two big events that was going on site, one that I wasn't invited to and one where I was. It was kind of open area, but part of my, my job, is to show up. So, um, so the one where I, you know, typically I show up, um, I showed up, but I showed up in the company of someone that most people had no idea that I would know. So I had a different level of favor that fell on me yesterday and, um, but I had a clean. I have a clean heart. I'm not in it to win it. You know what I mean. I'm not. You know I'm not doing any of those things.

Speaker 1:

So, with a clean heart, the Lord put me in a position yesterday that gave me favor that many, if not most, people that I work with would be shock it and shook it, and some of them were visibly. And then there was another meeting I went to that I wasn't invited to. I just popped in to say hi to some friends and I felt like there was so much love given to me just by showing up. It was uncomfortable, y'all, because, for those of y'all who truly know me, I just sit in a little room in my house and read myself. For the most part I'm a loner, but I had to do a reset when I came home yesterday. Two things First, I had to reset the way that I'm asking God for some things. Listen, I asked God to give me his divine favor. Listen, I asked God to give me his divine favor.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and again, we started out the beginning of 5-5, may 5th, and I told y'all, like I'm a triple grace girl, so I knew I was under grace has shifted for me, and I'm speaking this so that I believe that this has happened for y'all as well. Some of us are missing it, but it actually is happening. So there was a different level, a different portion of favor that fell on me days ago and it showed up yesterday. But when I came home is when I started to be more aware, self-aware, about what was happening. When I went into the office, my confidence level kind of you know where it normally is. But there was a still a thing in my heart that you know. Every now and then I just I feel like I'm so, I'm the fish out of water. I I marched to the beat of my own drums. Like I said, I'm not in any real groups or clicks, but I have a lot of impact and influence because of the grace God gave me. He always, he just he just works things out like that. I'm a very hard worker, right.

Speaker 1:

But when I left, when I got in my car, even after having experienced those two extremes of favor on my life, when I got in the car y'all, I was spiritually exhausted. I had to take a beat. I had to stop and think about what just happened to me and I think, a lot of us y'all. We have to reset our minds because we're missing the way that God is showing up. And really easily I could have ignored the favor that was on me, or really easily I could have taken credit for myself and built up my ego, which is what a lot of people do. Girl, I'm all that right, so we take credit. But it's really his grace of my life mindset to just start thanking God and being grateful for the opportunity to serve and to show up. Thank you for your hand of favor that was on me, thank you for putting me in rooms where people don't even want me and you still got me there, right. I mean just incredible ways.

Speaker 1:

So, part of my reset I had to reframe and reset my thinking. Thank you, god, because some of the jobs that you know listen listen to me when I'm saying this Some of the some of my friends who are losing their jobs are upset about jobs they didn't want. They wanted a way out and sometimes your way out doesn't look like you want it to, okay. But you've got the opportunity now to reset and maybe this is your pivot into your real calling, into something that's going to make you happy. And you know something else Maybe this is your real assignment that you're shifting into. So you got, but you won't understand that if you're still in that same position of being upset, like yesterday. I was overwhelmed and I had to get a reset. So here are the three things that I did yesterday and the things that kind of do this in general.

Speaker 1:

All right, the first one is self-awareness. I touched on that a little bit. So what's self-awareness? It's being conscious of your actions and your thoughts. You got to be aware of how you're responding.

Speaker 1:

Romans 5, 3 to 4. I'm going to see if I can drop this in here, because we talked about this, I believe, two days ago in prayer. We talked about character, and what I love about this is it talks about in Romans 3, I'm going to drop it in here the link is probably going to migrate because it's a lot of text. But Romans 3, I'm sorry, romans 5, verses 3 to 4, talks about rejoicing in our sufferings. Suffering and then breaks it down into suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character, character produces hope, and so I want to reference this point.

Speaker 1:

You have to be self-aware. You have to have an awareness of your own self, of the way you show up, of your thoughts and your actions. If you're going to reset, we're going to start with being self-aware. We have to be introspective. We have to think about so introspect.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things that I did when I got home yesterday, when I got in my car, I didn't even wait till I got home. I started to be more conscious of my actions and my thoughts and my deeds. I was aware that the Lord had put me into these spaces and I was aware of how I was responding in these spaces. I was aware that I wasn't responding with ego. I wasn't ego tripping, I was just grateful, okay. And not only was I grateful, I wanted to share with this, this kind of favor with other people. So I was taking the time to make sure that other people got to meet this other individual because I wanted to share and also good for that person. So I wanted to share in that level of gratitude, and you know what I mean that for me, when I got home I realized, ah, that I'm aware of my actions.

Speaker 1:

I want you to be aware of your actions, be self-aware of how you're responding to people right now. Right, your kids, your spouse, your friends, people you don't like. You know all the things right, but you have to be self-aware. There are so many people who lack self-awareness. If you're a leader, if you're a manager, you're a supervisor on your job and you have poor leadership skills, you have to be self-aware. You can't coach your team to be a better team. If you're a terrible manager, you got to be self-aware. You're not there yet. Don't give coaching tips if you're not winning in that Right. So just being self-aware. So reset starts with being self-aware, all right.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is a self-check. Back in the back in my day, in the 80s and 90s, we used to say this lovely, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. You remember that. So the second thing that we have to do is a self-check. Meaning this one is more being in tune and being observant. So now, I'm not saying that you need to go ask your friends what they think about you. This is not a branding exercise, but I just want you to go into a little bit of a quiet mode and be observant of what's happening around you. What's the people that you have in your circle, the people closest to you? You have in your circle, the people closest to you. I want you to do a self-check on where you're spending your time, where you're spending your money, where you're spending your energy, the thoughts that's coming to you. What are you more focused on On Monday?

Speaker 1:

I was thinking about the fact that we truly spend the majority of our lives working. We work five days a week. So if you work five days a week and you only get two days of rest, what are you doing with those two days of rest? How much work are you doing on those? Just all those things? So it's time for us to do a self-check, because there might be things that we're doing during those five days a week. Are you disconnecting when you're done with work, or are you bringing work home because you think that's going to help you climb the ladder? I'm telling you, working harder does not a promotion make. Many people in the corporate field can tell you that there are many of us who work around the clock and not a promotion in sight. Okay, so it's not about working harder.

Speaker 1:

What can you do to reset, to work smarter? Right, what are? How are you spending your time? Our kids are growing up. How are you spending your time with your kids? What are you doing on the weekends? To just to, to, to reset your own environments, your home, you know, pouring back into yourself. So the second point, again to reset, is you got to do a self-check. You got to check what's going on, be observant of what you're doing, how you're spending your time, your coins, all of the things. Okay, that's the second part.

Speaker 1:

Now the third part is we've got to set a timeline. So I love this idea. This is something we do in business anyway, and so I'm just going to float it out. Maybe we do a timeline where we just focus on small changes and we do it within a quarter. So in business, I run my reporting, I do a quarter over quarter and then I do year over year, right? So maybe every quarter we pull back and then we reassess where we are. What are some of the things that we want to achieve in the quarter versus? You know how people come out at the beginning of the year and they have all the resolutions, and it's May and they already quit. So why don't we do a reset and then say, you know, for the rest of this quarter? So this is Q2, this is the second quarter and this quarter is over in June. That means that it gives us the rest of the month of May and the month of June to do a reset. So we pull back right.

Speaker 1:

We start with our self-awareness being aware of our thoughts, our actions, being conscious of what we're saying, what we're doing. The second thing is we do a self-check. We're observant about how we're spending our time, checking our circles, checking our finance, being more aware how we're using the time that we have right. And then the last thing is we set a timeline so that, okay, it is beginning of May and I want to reset the way I eat, I'm going to budget better, I'm not going to spend any money on travel right now. My reset is going to be my finance. If your reset is an emotional one, then are there tools and resources that I need to investigate. There's a lot of free things, there's apps, there's all kinds of things that we have access to because of technology. So what do you need to do in order to make this a reset?

Speaker 1:

So I don't want to come on here and tell you guys and puff you up and say, oh, we need a reset, girl, and we're going to renew our minds, and then in June or July, we're in the same place. We're not doing that right. We need to be able to move the ball forward. We need to see these incremental changes in our lives, but we have to hold each other accountable. So I started off by jokingly talking about my hair journey, because I want you guys. That's a part of something that's on my radar for the year. That was one of my targets. My goals for this year is to grow my hair. Let my hair grow. So hold me accountable. That was the purpose of it. Hold me accountable for that. We're doing life together, so that's what I wanted to share this morning. Like I said, I think it's such a great, a great time for us to do a reset.

Speaker 1:

Now, listen, it's never too late for you to do a reset. You're not in the hole as much as you think it's not as bad as you think, but you won't know that if you don't come up for breath. You understand, like if you were up under the situation. It's like you're carrying a load. You ever see like an image of like someone who's like literally carrying a load, like baskets on baskets on baskets, just towering and struggling, and they're carrying the load right and you won't. They can't see where they're going because all of these and they're carrying the load right and you won't. They can't see where they're going because all of these baskets they're carrying in front of them. They can't see because they can't see around the things, that the obstacles, right, they can't see around the baskets that they're carrying. And yet if you just put those back, put the load down for a minute, then you'll be able to peek around the corner to see oh, that's where I'm supposed to go.

Speaker 1:

If you don't put the low down for a moment that's what we talk about reset If you don't put the low down for a moment, you're not going to see around the corner, you're not going to see, you're not going to be observant about what's the step you got to take the phone calls. You make the emails you send the people you respond to, the people you block. You know what I'm saying. The conversations you have, you're not going to see around that corner if you're just constantly carrying that weight. So what I'm saying is we need to put the weight down. If it's just for today, just put the weight down.

Speaker 1:

Put it down for one moment, okay, and then, and then, please let the Lord start showing you. He'll reveal to you. He'll reveal first of all that that prayer point of Lord, you know I want a clean heart. I mean it means that my motives, my thoughts, my everything comes from our heart. Right, my actions, my thoughts, my motives, you can't have, you keep, you'll struggle. If you don't do it with a clean heart, you will. The things that you're trying to go and I know that I'm stammering, I'm stammering because I'm trying not to say the thing, to say the thing, but I'm going to be obedient and say the thing. But you're not going to get to where you're trying to go to with the heart you got. If you have an envious heart, a bitter heart, if you have a judgmental heart, if that's where you are, if you're not grateful and light and pure right now, you're going to struggle carrying that load. You got to put it down. Put the load down for a moment so that you can be observant and see what's around the corner. That's what I want to say. Please don't hate me, y'all. I'm just telling you as it is, but we're doing life together, right? None of us have this entirely figured out, but this is still an amazing journey. We still are very blessed. I'm still grateful that we have this phone line. Again, we have resources that you can call into, whether you're in the US or the UK. You can call in for free and we'll pray alongside you. Right? It's private, no one's talking about you, okay, but it's available as another resource and I hope that this really lifted you.

Speaker 1:

I know Mother's Day is coming up here soon. Many of us do not have our mothers anymore or past, and so I do want to say a quick, a special shout out to those moms, to moms, godmothers, stepmothers, moms who are not moms by blood, but you're moms by service, if you know what I'm saying. Like you're helping to raise the kids around you. I definitely want to just take a pause. I have to honor my mother. She was an amazing mom. She was a minister, a Methodist minister and a teacher and as I get older, I start to realize the influence and impact that she had in her community and she helped a lot of families. She was a philanthropist and she was great. So I'm honoring my mom, I honor the women in my circle, all of those moms who are also aunties and moms to my daughter.

Speaker 1:

So, honoring all the moms under my voice and for those of you who are grieving right now, this is not a time to do the Facebook post where you put up the glamour shots. Y'all voice. And for those of you who are grieving right now, this is not a time to do the Facebook post where you put up the glamor shots. Y'all. Don't do the glamor shot. Take a moment and just thank God for your mother. You can do it privately, but make it real from a clean heart. Right, just be grateful.

Speaker 1:

None of us are perfect, including our mothers. Okay, none of us. We didn't get a handbook when we had kids. A lot of us had to figure it out. Some of us did, some of us don't. And if you are a mom, or maybe you had a rocky relationship with your mother and you've been blessed to be a mom, then you create the relationship that you were missing out on. I wish I had a different relationship with my mom, but you know, what the Lord did for me is he gave me that relationship through my daughter. So there's always a way to heal, right, there's always a way to heal.

Speaker 1:

So, if your mom has passed on, just take a minute and just thank God in your heart. Like I said, everything doesn't have to be a glamour shot on Facebook. Don't make it performative. Just take a minute and just thank God for the mom that he assigned to you. Thank you, laura, because we're here right, and if they moved on, we thank God for the lives that they had and we ask God to show us how to even be better mom and honor. We honor that parent. So I know I'm saying a lot, but you know it has to be said honor all the moms in my life.

Speaker 1:

Lord, we thank you for all of us. We all stand in need of a fresh anointing, a reset today. We thank you for that. You know, every time I come here, lord, god, I'm reminded of your grace, of your favor and just all the ways that you're moving through our lives. I thank you, lord, for every person under the sound of my voice who's waiting for a word. But maybe today, lord God, that you're telling them to just put the load down for a minute so that you can show them the next step.

Speaker 1:

I thank you, lord, for giving us your grace in this season and for blessing us. I thank you for all the moms and mother figures under the sound of my voice. I thank you that you'll extend their days and bless them in every area, whether it's financial or physical or spiritual. I ask our God for a clean heart and ask that you pierce our own hearts and show us our hearts, help us to be self-aware and conscious of our actions, our thoughts and our deeds. Lord, I thank you that the doors that some might close because of jealousy or envy, or overlook or oversight or anything like that, that you break it over, open for us because you favor us. So I thank you for giving us favor, that, even when we're not in certain rooms, that you make it so that our names are being echoed. Thank you, lord God, for that favor.

Speaker 1:

I thank you that you bless every business owner under my voice, as they are in the middle of their quarter, lord God, that you'll give them favor in every deal and every contract and that you'll bring more business their way and help them to close these deals and have great customers and have a joy in the service that they're providing. That they don't forget the love of the assignment For those who have to do a reset in their job and their job search, so that you'll, even as they put the load down just for today, with the job search that you'll show them, lord God, the direction that you want them to go. And just by being observant, lord God, that we'll see clearly what it is our true next steps are. And we're receiving all of that. We're believing that you're going to send, that you're going to send those specific directions. You're going to align us to the right people for the right jobs in the right place at the right time. And it's happening today. And I thank you, lord God, that you're encouraging all of us and all of these things we ask in your son, jesus name. We bless you, we thank you, lord and amen.

Speaker 1:

All right, y'all, we did it. We did it again. It's another Thursday. I hope you have an amazing day ahead. Don't forget we have the prayer phone line. I hope to see you on that call If you can't make it one o'clock, seven o'clock. I already have about seven requests that came in, so we'll take your, we'll take your prayers there. So I love you.