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Failing Faithfully | Sarah Nichols, Episode 49

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Failing Faithfully Transcript:

Kristi Lowe:

Hey there, and welcome to the Even If Podcast. I’m your host, Kristi Lowe, and I’m so glad you’re here with us today. Before we get started, I want to remind you, if you haven’t been to evenifpodcast. com, head over there and pick up your free Spotify playlist. It’s full of praise and worship music that I listen to just about every day in my house. So go over there and check that out. Also, while you’re there, go up to the top of the page and you’ll see a tab called books. I’ve put a whole bunch of resources on there. Books that have helped me navigate hard seasons, books that have challenged my faith, and then some important works of fiction I think we all need to read. Each book has an affiliate link, so when you use those links to purchase the book, a portion of the proceeds will support the Even If podcast. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and every little bit helps. Stock up on books and support the pod. It’s a win win, right? Now, on to today’s episode. Have you ever felt God asking you to do something, but when you did it, the outcome wasn’t what you thought it would be? To the outside world, it might have even looked like you had fallen flat on your face. Or, maybe you’ve said yes to God, but you found yourself in a wilderness season, asking him if you took a wrong turn somewhere. If any of those things sound familiar to you, you’re gonna love today’s guest. With me today is Sarah Nichols. After Sarah and her husband, Brent, obeyed a nudge from the Lord, they moved to Missouri. got there, everything that could go wrong, did. And they began to question whether they’d heard the Lord correctly or not.. Today’s episode will encourage and remind you that saying yes to the Lord’s direction doesn’t guarantee success, especially in the world’s eyes. Sarah introduced me to the phrase failing faithfully, and it has challenged me to redefine my definition of success and my view of what God is doing, and I think it’s going to challenge you too. So, Without further ado, let’s dive in. It is a joy to bring to the podcast today, my sweet friend, Sarah Nichols, Sarah, and I got to know each other when we met at a. Speaking and writing conference this summer in Michigan, of all places. So it took Texas and Arizona going to Michigan to meet. But I’m so glad that we were able to connect because the first, I think it was the first morning we met down in the lobby and we were going to, it was one of those sweet little places where like everybody just kind of like worked together to get from the hotels. to the conference center. And Sarah and I ended up sharing a car to go over that way. And like first morning we start talking and she tells me, she starts talking about failing faithfully. And we haven’t known each other for 30 minutes. And I was like, girlfriend, you are my kind of people. And so I am so glad you were here today, sweet friend.

Sarah Nichols:

Thank you. I am so excited to be here. And that morning talking with you and meeting you was just so easy. So it was easy to start diving into like deeper, deeper stuff.

Kristi Lowe:

I think the Holy Spirit connects people sometimes where you don’t have to spend a lot of time on fluffy stuff and When God gives you those connections, you just don’t I don’t want I never want to like ignore that And so I think I even asked you like first rattle out of the box I was like, will you come on the podcast and talk about that? You were like, I don’t know you

Sarah Nichols:

No. And I was like, yes, I would love to. Or I, if I didn’t verbally say that to you, Kristi, I was feeling it.

Kristi Lowe:

I’m glad you did. Okay. Before we start talking about failing faithfully, which is a really cool concept, I believe tell the listeners just a little bit about yourself. Tell them a little bit more about maybe how you came to faith or, or what that looked like in your early, early days.

Sarah Nichols:

Okay. Yeah, I am married to a guy named Brent. Um, We met in high school. So we’re kind of high school sweethearts. And we have 4 kids and I’m just going to say their name because. They’re names because you might sense a theme, but we have catcher Easton Maddox and fielder. So my husband’s a huge baseball fan. And I also,

Kristi Lowe:

this. Yes.

Sarah Nichols:

yes, that’s right. You know

Kristi Lowe:

my son’s name is Cameron. We named him after a basketball gym. It’s cool. No big deal.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s fun to have themes.

Kristi Lowe:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So you have kids, baseball carry on. Sorry.

Sarah Nichols:

Yes. And so a little bit of my background for how I came to faith. And this is always a weird question for me to answer because I feel like. You either come to faith later in life or at the beginning of life. And mine is kind of a mixture of I actually grew up in church. And so the first several years of my childhood, my parents were on the worship team. They were leading small groups going on mission trips. Church was like a second home for us. And then right as I was about to enter high school, they went through an extremely messy divorce. And so they kind of walked away from the church during the rest of my childhood. And so in those years, those, those are pretty important years and forming years and everything that I had was kind of. The rug was taken out from underneath me. So it wasn’t actually until after high school, when my husband and I got engaged, that we started going to church together and that my faith kind of became my own.

Kristi Lowe:

Very cool. That’s awesome. In fact, I think that there are a lot of people who have gone to church for a long time. And haven’t ever gotten there for one reason or another. So maybe you’re just speaking into somebody else’s life who’s kind of has the same story as yours. That’s why I love this because everybody’s faith is different. Everybody comes to it in a different way. Okay. When we met and you brought up failing faithfully, you shared, obviously, I know part of this story, but I don’t know everything. But you guys ended up moving to Missouri. Now y’all are, y’all are military, so y’all had moved a lot, right?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. My husband spent 11 years active duty and he is still military reserve side. So now we’re not moving, but we spent several years moving around.

Kristi Lowe:

Gotcha. Okay. What led to, the move to Missouri?

Sarah Nichols:

Okay, so it was 2018, I believe, and we were stationed in Virginia right outside D. C. And we had wrestled for years with the decision to get out of the military, but we never felt like it was the right time, and at that point, his assignment was coming to an end, and he was either going to sign on for a few more years, and we were going to take another assignment, or he was going to get out. And so we decided we’re going to get out, and we’re going to move back home to Arizona. Where all of our family is, I’m like envisioning Christmas at my aunts and the huge get together. She has and the kids going back to the same schools. I went and then 2 months before we moved, we felt like we were supposed to go to Missouri and that’s. A really strange thing because I had never felt God calling me to a place before, but there was, there was this nudge that we just kind of let go of that. We felt like we were supposed to be in Missouri.

Kristi Lowe:

It was both of you. Okay.

Sarah Nichols:

Yes, we both felt like we were supposed to go there. And the time was drawing near where the movers were set to come. The date was on the calendar, but he had not yet found a job, but we felt like we were supposed to go here. So we packed up our family of 5 at the time and moved from Missouri moved from Virginia to Missouri with no job. No house and just a handful of paychecks we had left from the military.

Kristi Lowe:

And I’m not, I’m not, there’s no, I think I told you this that day that we met. There’s no judgment here because there are times where God just gives you a nudge and you know you’re supposed to do something and you may not understand why. But you’re, you know you’re supposed to go do something. So you guys head to Missouri and did you find a job? How long did you find a job and how long were you there?

Sarah Nichols:

We were in Missouri for a little over two years and he did eventually find a job, but before he found a job, let me just paint the picture. So we arrive in Missouri. And schools, they were a little different than the schools our kids were with were in in Virginia. In Missouri, you couldn’t just go to the school and register the kid you had to go to. I think it’s the public safety department and oh, and you can’t register kids for school without an address. So we had to rent an Airbnb. So we’re, we do this 3 day road trip from Virginia to Missouri. First thing we do when we get off the freeway because it was like on a Friday and the school was about to start for that school year on Monday. So we pull into the public department of safety, we get the kids registered for school, and then we go to the Airbnb. And I don’t feel like I’m a high maintenance person, but Kristi this Airbnb was Awful. It, I mean, there was dog hair in the fridge, the septic

Kristi Lowe:

the fridge?

Sarah Nichols:

Yes, the septic tank overflowed twice while we were there. The water heater went out and there wasn’t even normal furniture in the living room. It was patio furniture and it wasn’t like new patio furniture. The mats were really thin. And so you could feel the bars every time you sat down. It was just, it was so bad. But during that time, so we were there a few weeks and during that time, my husband started. Looking for jobs, applying for jobs, and I’ll also say, so we had no job, no house, but rest assured my husband had found our boys a baseball team. So one of our first weekends there, we’re, we’re staying in the Airbnb, we’re out at this field, and I mean we had been at the field all day Friday, all day Saturday. It’s Sunday night, my son’s team made it to the championship game, and my daughter’s growing bored, and she says, can I go? I don’t know if you’re familiar with batting cages, but they have these curtain like, they’re netted curtains. In some kind of freak accident, a kid swung one, and it latched onto her eye tooth and completely ripped it out. Root and all. And, I,

Kristi Lowe:

Oh my gosh!

Sarah Nichols:

is like our introduction. We get to the Airbnb the next weekend. My, our kids are at this tournament that happens. And it just felt like everything from there went downhill. My son broke his wrist twice. We had the 1st year alone. We had countless colds between the whole house. My daughter split her head open. No, it wasn’t. And with each new thing that would happen, I thought, did we hear God wrong? And so not only were we. We, we were dealing with this, but then you’re questioning yourself and your faith. And did I hear right? Was I listening right? Are we being punished because we heard wrong? And I had never heard God before, like tell me to go to a place. I was really confused. And then one of the worst things that happened was my husband went camping with some friends and he went to chop some wood, accidentally hit his foot, hit an artery. Thank goodness there was a paramedic at the site right next to them who made a makeshift tourniquet. And they got him into an ambulance, sent him to the hospital, got him in for surgery right away. But there were a lot of moments during that evening where we thought he might lose his leg or worse, his life. So all of that physical stuff was going on, but emotionally, I was also struggling like marriage felt harder than ever parenting felt harder than ever and I just couldn’t figure out why we were there or why this move was so hard when we I mean, that was our life. We moved around. And so,

Kristi Lowe:

God had asked you to go there.

Sarah Nichols:

yes, exactly. And so I decided that I kind of needed to process through some of this stuff and I was going to see a counselor to talk through some of it. And I don’t know why that was so hard for me. And I, I just want to say this in case someone out there struggles with this too, but I think I had known I probably needed to see a counselor and talk through stuff, but it took me a while because I felt like there was such. A cultural stigma about seeing a counselor.

Kristi Lowe:

Oh,

Sarah Nichols:

And so I finally did go see a counselor. And as I started just talking through the move, she started asking me questions about my childhood, which is normal and counseling, but then. It opened up this door of a lot of stuff that I had to walk through, through the messy divorce that I had mentioned before in my parent with my parents, that I didn’t know that I was holding on to a lot of stuff. And so it was like, I really felt like God brought us there as a way for me to work through some of that stuff. And in other ways too, but so that’s a little background of that move in Missouri.

Kristi Lowe:

Yeah. I see how that ties together now.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, and I really thought that he had called us to Missouri to do a work in others and I began to realize he was doing a work in me, like we were called there for him to do a work in me.

Kristi Lowe:

Absolutely. And he’ll go to great lengths to get you in that place where you can hear him. At some point you, this phrase, failing faithfully, came, where did that come from?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. That phrase popped into my head even before we moved to Missouri during our, our decision making to move to Missouri. Because, yeah, because so we thought we were going to Arizona and then we felt like we were supposed to do this. So we spent weeks praying through it. And usually it was through tears on my end. My husband was open either way, but I was like, we were supposed to go back home. We were supposed to plant roots. We were supposed to. We’ve done our time, we’ve moved around, and this is what I wanted. And during that time, and in times of prayer, failing faithfully had popped into my head because I thought, I don’t know if, I’m hearing God right or we’re doing the right thing, but I’m going to be faithful in whatever I feel that we’re supposed to do right now. And I also think for me, it comes from a place of, I have a tendency to really view things as right or wrong. I have a really hard time to kind of sit in the gray. And I’ve always been a rule follower, if we’re on a hiking trail, and it says no dogs, I’m like, we can’t go down there with our labradoodle. It said, and my husband would be like, no, we’re going. And so, okay. So I’m glad I’m not,

Kristi Lowe:

I’m so black and like, I have to find, there are not 50 shades of gray. There’s four,

Sarah Nichols:

yes.

Kristi Lowe:

Sorry.

Sarah Nichols:

Yes. No, I, I know. So I think it was hard for me because whether it’s in faith or it’s in marriage or it’s in parenting, I, I strongly feel like there’s a right way that I should be doing something. There’s a wrong way. You know, That I’m doing it wrong. And so feeling faithfully for me is learning, maybe the truest sense of grace is found in that tension where it, I’m not necessarily doing something right or wrong, but God’s meeting me in that and I’m becoming who he created me to be through that, that tension.

Kristi Lowe:

And I think that we put into, I think we put a lot of stock into, am I making the right decision? Is this, is this the, is this the right thing? And I think sometimes God wants to remind us that he can use all of it and he’s in. All of it. And sometimes, there aren’t, have you ever thought that maybe there aren’t necessarily, there are times where there is a right and a wrong decision,, or there are right or wrong things, but sometimes I don’t think there is a wrong decision. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m saying? Sometimes there’s not a bad choice. It’s just, God says you have freedom to choose here. I’ll, I’m gonna, I’m not, you’re okay. You’re within my will. Do whatever you need to do.

Sarah Nichols:

And I totally agree with that because we, my husband and I had several conversations after we moved to Missouri. About that same thing, like when I would say, is there, did we do, did we hear wrong and, and he helped me see that it, we didn’t choose wrong. We didn’t make the wrong thing. Either way, God would have done the work that he knew he was going to do in us and within our story or within ourselves no matter where we were, but that it definitely felt like a wilderness type of season. And so I found myself relating to the Israelites a lot then and spending a lot of time in Exodus and just thinking wow, okay, this is exactly how I’m feeling and what I was going through.

Kristi Lowe:

God called Jesus to the wilderness. He called Him to the wilderness. It wasn’t, Jesus was just like, Hey, I think I’m gonna go wander around the days, in the desert for 40 days. God called Him through a wilderness season. You think He’s not gonna call us through wilderness seasons sometimes too? He

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. And something that I thought about during that season is that I think. The, the Israelites were being rescued and as they’re being rescued they’re brought into the desert and then they can’t find any water. And then when they do, it’s bitter. And I just think that sometimes a rescue doesn’t always look the way that we think it’s going to look. And so maybe it does take us, maybe the word led to the wilderness. But maybe it’s because there’s actually an area we need to be rescued. And for me, that was partially healing pieces of my teenage heart.

Kristi Lowe:

For sure. What a gracious God we serve, that he took you where he knew you needed to go, he called you there, you, and even though it looked like a, it looked like a fail, a season of failure, probably not, I don’t, I don’t get the sense that you see it as a season of failure, or a fail, that y’all failed, what I think is that sometimes we think other people look at us and see, how, how it might appear that what we decided was wrong or was a failure on our part. And sometimes what God has called us to do isn’t necessarily going to look like what culturally is the definition, definition of success.

Sarah Nichols:

Oh, yeah. And I definitely look back now, and I don’t view it as a failure, but I can still see it as failing faithfully, because I think in those moments you said, And I’m really bad about this. I often think about what it what it’s looking like to other people. What are other people thinking? And so that definitely plays plays a part in it. You it’s easy to doubt ourselves. But and that’s hard enough, but when you feel others doubting you, too, you feel the weight of that a lot more.

Kristi Lowe:

And I think sometimes we get into these places where, you feel like God, there are probably people listening to this who understand exactly what you’re talking about. They feel like God has asked them to do something, to step out in faith. And maybe it’s not going the way they. Thought it was going to go, because I have a sneaky feeling when you left for Missouri, you weren’t like, Hey, I think he’s calling us to the wilderness. I bet, nobody thinks, Oh yeah, let’s go. I mean, you know, I’m sure in your mind, you were like, he’s called us to this and it’s got purpose and it’s got, it’s going to be a good thing. And it’s going to be, and maybe there’s somebody listening to this who really understands, like they’re, they’re looking around and going, did I hear you? Did I. Did, have I made a mistake here? And I think what we would do so well to remember is that there are times where Whatever God holds for the purpose and the season that you’re in is, sometimes we can understand it and sometimes we can’t. What, okay, so I want people to know, there came a point where you both went. Okay. Y’all were there for two years. There came a point where you went, okay, I don’t, I don’t think we’re supposed to stay here. Were you both at peace whenever you realized, cause y’all live in Arizona now. But how did that transition out and what was that like for y’all?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, we did not plan on leaving. As a matter of fact, we we were house hunting for houses, other houses in Missouri. A little side note that. When we moved to Missouri, we, we began an adoption process. And so we knew we were going to need a bigger house. And so all along, because he didn’t have a job when we first moved there and then he got a job. Oh, and by the way, it was like a 50 percent pay cut. So we found a house we could afford for that time being, but all along we knew we would be moving again to a bigger house, something that would fit our family, our future family. And of course it was we lived there during 2020. So that was a huge thing of.

Kristi Lowe:

was all going on during COVID. Okay.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, so we moved there in 2018, and so we were looking for houses during 2020. So like a lot of people, I think during that season, it was like, let’s get far away from the city and get some land. And so we were looking at properties with a couple of acres. And Chrissy, we put in, there was one offer we put in. Over asking price thinking we’re for sure going to get this and we didn’t get it and we put in several offers on other houses. And so the end of 2020 came and we were flying back home to Arizona for Christmas and it was through that visit. We decided. We’re either going to find a house in Missouri and we are going to move or we’re coming back home and when we return to Missouri from our Arizona vacation, Chris Christmas vacation, we went and looked at more houses and all of those fell through to and to to us. That was a sign. It’s time to go back to Arizona. And so we did. We moved in March of 2021 back to Arizona. And, it’s, it’s really cool now to look back and reflect on it because at the time I thought we had heard God wrong, but like I said, Missouri was where God kind of worked through some healing that I needed. It was where we found our adoption agency. And after moving back to Arizona, Missouri is actually where we got a phone call to bring home our son. So.

Kristi Lowe:

He’s adorable, y’all. I, I’m obsessed. Okay, I think my algorithm on Facebook knows I love seeing pictures of him, because I see him every time I get on. He’s so cute.

Sarah Nichols:

I feel bad because I’m totally, so I should just say, I didn’t say the ages of our kids. So we have a high schooler, a middle schooler, an elementary schooler, and our youngest little guy is one. And so you have older kids, Kristi, you know how it is, like they don’t like to be on,

Kristi Lowe:

No.

Sarah Nichols:

the,

Kristi Lowe:

was the first day of school and I had to beg my youngest child because, our oldest is in college and so she’s off, she’s off the hook but our youngest, I was like, please take a picture. Can I please take a first day of school picture? Please.

Sarah Nichols:

Did she let you? Oh, Good.

Kristi Lowe:

Yeah, he did. He did.

Sarah Nichols:

Oh, he did. Sorry.

Kristi Lowe:

Yeah. No, no, my youngest is. Oh, no, you’re fine. You’re fine. I remember you telling me about this story whenever we were at the conference and you had said to me that you had older kids. Did you have a desire to adopt before Missouri?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah this kind of, ties into that too, when I said, I’ve never felt God call us to some, I never felt him calls to a place, but we did feel called to adoption shortly before we moved to Missouri and, it’s so fun to look back on this side of it and see where God was working. But when you’re in it, You don’t it doesn’t feel that way. But before we moved to Missouri, and before we made the decision for my husband to get out of the Air Force, we felt like we wanted to, we were called to adopt. And that was something that was on our heart. So we attended an adoption meeting. We met with an agency and it was like, as soon as we felt God put it on our hearts. Right away, it was put on pause 1 because I had a health scare. Everything was fine, but it kind of went from thinking like, oh, I don’t even know if I’m going to be here for the 3 kids. We already have because, there were. Terms thrown anyways, and then right after that is when Brent decided I am going to get out of the Air Force. And so there was no point beginning the adoption process because when you go through that, you have to do home studies. It’s very long process. If you move states, you have to redo all of that. So it felt like, oh, we’re going to do this and then it was put on hold. Then we decide to move to Missouri and all of that happens. And we do find an adoption agency and, we were like home study approved 2019 and then it wasn’t until 2022 when we were already back in Arizona that we got a phone call that our son was born and it was in Missouri. And so we, it was just a cool, I think, God thing to, of course, the 1 state that our son could have, he could have been born in any of the states, but he was born in Missouri. And that was where we went back to bring him home.

Kristi Lowe:

Hmm. See, God bringin it all full circle, my friend.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah.

Kristi Lowe:

He sure does. I love it. I love that. And I love that you’re so open about the fact that there, I love that heart. I think, I think the temptation whenever we go through things like what y’all did in Missouri and when everything’s falling apart, and you’re probably looking at each other and going, what did we do? Like, why, why did it. You could have hidden it, it could have become a pride or an ego thing and I’ve loved that you were willing to say No, God, we want you to use this for whatever purposes you have and and he did he’s he’s let it work itself through you And now you’re you’ve been writing about this, right?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. you know how it is, who knows if it’ll ever be a book, but yeah, I think it’s also neat that in a time where I didn’t, a time where I felt so lost, God gave me this passion and this purpose of, Hey, I kind of want to write about this, whether or not it ever comes to be a book, I write other places about it and. And that’s been neat, too, just to be able to share that and, you know, I’m just going to share what God has taught me in hopes that maybe it will help someone else.

Kristi Lowe:

That’s awesome, sis. That is so awesome. You’re just a cool chick. You’re a

Sarah Nichols:

think you’re pretty cool, too.

Kristi Lowe:

And don’t tell anybody. Word’ll get out, okay? you know, We talk a lot about our, my name about my podcast is Even If. And I’ve started asking my guests when they come on if they have their own even if. Either a statement or a thought and it doesn’t have to be anything polished But have you ever thought about like in light of everything with failing faithfully? Have you ever thought about what yours might be?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, and I don’t know if it’s, yeah, I do. I would say, and it’s because there’s a certain verse that I kind of kept coming to during that season of feeling. Like we were in a wilderness, but it was even if we can’t see it God is doing a new thing and it comes from the verse Isaiah 43 19 Behold I am doing a new thing now. It springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert and that was a verse that I just kept coming back to and I think sometimes You know, it, you don’t want to be in the wilderness, you don’t want to be in the desert, but it’s, it’s when you’re thirsting for God, like when you have that need to thirst for Him that you really do grow and He really does do new things. So I would say, yeah, that’s my even if, even if we can’t see it, God is doing a new thing.

Kristi Lowe:

I love that girl. When you left, and since you’ve been gone now for two, no, it’s been, y’all been back now for a year and a half, or

Sarah Nichols:

I’m almost 2 and a half years.

Kristi Lowe:

Okay. Y’all been back almost two and a half years. My apologies. I math and I aren’t friends. Is there anything else you see from your time there that has meaning or, you’ve seen where God showed up or you’ve seen anything about that time that you couldn’t see when you were there?

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, and Not necessarily something that happened there, but I’m continuing to see it now that we’re in Arizona like that He’s still using that situation to teach us and I don’t I think I kind of opened up to you about this when we met but about how Recently we were like, you know what we could see ourselves moving again, and maybe Arizona isn’t going to be All right, did I, did we talk about that. No. Okay.

Kristi Lowe:

No.

Sarah Nichols:

We were going to fly out to a state that we were thinking about tentatively moving and this all just came to be. And what’s interesting is that has all fizzled out, but when we were done how I was looking at houses. I was looking at schools and I was like, I’m ready. We’re ready to leave. And I was reminded of when we moved to Missouri, it was like, moving with no job, no house. All of that almost seemed easier than the decision we were making now, even though we would have more financially been set up, would have had a house, all that. And it’s because we didn’t have God calling us there. And I heard him very clearly say, you need to be still not just in this move, but in several other things that you’re walking through in your life. That’s not necessarily something else that we learned in Missouri, but I’m learning based off of that circumstance and what we walked through there that that’s not what he wanted for us during this season.

Kristi Lowe:

Wow. He’s, he taught you, but I think that’s beautiful because you, you learned, you, you learned to hear his voice. You went when he called you to go, but you also stayed when he told you to stay. There, there is so much beauty in that.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, I feel like there’s, there’s always this, this part of me that’s I feel like I’m always being, like, I’m always. And I think it’s also important to keep in mind that The potter’s never going to be done until we’re laid in the ground. And so I know that now. But I think it can be easy to think you’re supposed to already have it figured out or you’re. In your, your faith and I, and that’s another part of failing faithfully, where I’m like, I’m going to con he is like going to continue to refine me. I’m going to continue to be undone and also be coming into whatever it was that he had. And that’s okay.

Kristi Lowe:

It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

Sarah Nichols:

Thanks, Kristi.

Kristi Lowe:

You’re welcome. It really is. I want to, I want to fail faithfully. I, I want, I want us to all be okay with, with being bold enough in our faith that we’re not always playing it safe. I want to be walking it out. I want to be living it out. I think you are. I think a lot of us are, and maybe we’re not giving ourselves enough credit for it, but we don’t, we don’t know what he’s going to do with the things he calls us to do. He can do anything he wants to. But he just calls us to keep going and keep trusting him and keep letting him make us who he wants us to be all the days of our lives.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah.

Kristi Lowe:

So y’all put a pin now on moving, no moving, staying for now being still. Okay. How you’ve moved a lot. Did you know I moved a lot as a kid? Did you know that?

Sarah Nichols:

I think we kind of vaguely talked about that.

Kristi Lowe:

We moved, I think eight cities between birth and fifth grade. And so I went to a different elementary school almost every year. There was only one elementary school I went to two years in a row. And moving, you get used to motion. And then

Sarah Nichols:

Mm hmm.

Kristi Lowe:

still, still has a different feeling to it. And sometimes it feels, there can be an awkwardness in the stillness. And, cause you start to feel those roots start to grow and you start to feel like, Whoa, am I supposed to be, am I supposed to be going somewhere? You’re in good company there. I

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah, I was just talking to a friend about that. I think when you are… You are used to something changing every couple of years. Maybe there’s this inner longing inside of us that makes us feel like we have to do that. And I think you’re right. I think sometimes sitting still is scarier, sometimes lonelier,

Kristi Lowe:

Can

Sarah Nichols:

um, Than, not always, but I think it takes, when you’re, when you’re sitting still, there’s this call to kind of lean in and that doesn’t always feel good.

Kristi Lowe:

Nope. Nope. I’ve, I’ve used the term before, itchy feet. I’ll get itchy feet if I’m anywhere too long. And or I’ll, I like to do things different every day. I don’t have a routine. I’m just, that’s just kind of the way I roll. But there have been, I’ve had to go through a couple of seasons where God just said, I just need you to be still. I need you to, I need you to sit, sit back. You just sit right here with me for a few minutes. But I love that he, I love that he meets us so intimately and he knows what we need before we ever realize what we need. And he loves us so much that he takes us to the places that either the wilderness so that you can experience healing. He takes us to the places where he knows we need to go. So that he can either heal things or prepare us for the next season of life

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s and then it’s also it can be exciting to, to know we don’t know what the future holds maybe we’re not here forever. Maybe God has something that, it’s cool up his sleeve that we’re in. And if not, that means this is the cool thing, and kind of resting in that and being okay with that

Kristi Lowe:

There is something about just, I don’t think that complacency is the right word, but just being at peace and, and not having to strive or not having to, I don’t know, I struggle with that. We’re probably getting a little off topic here on failing faithfully, but like I’m with you, like they’re like, what’s the word? Not complacency, but just.

Sarah Nichols:

contentment.

Kristi Lowe:

Yeah, contentment. I was like, the word is, I was like, peace,

Sarah Nichols:

all the

Kristi Lowe:

Peace, just that word. Yeah, just contentment, just being okay with, with where we are and where God has us and, sometimes you just have to learn how to listen to what God is telling us. And let him show us where it is, which way we need to go, what’s your yes, and what’s your next no, and those, those failing faithfully seasons, the, the wilderness, the, the places where he has to take us to get us quiet enough for him to speak are sometimes the most important things we can let him have his way in. So I think it’s beautiful, my friend, I think it’s beautiful.

Sarah Nichols:

Yeah.

Kristi Lowe:

Sarah, I’m so glad that we could just hang out a little bit today and get to just share. with people what your heart is and kind of peel back the curtain on what it looks like whenever things don’t look like on the outside with we thought they were going to or what God’s doing with something. And, and your, your topic of failing faithfully, I just think is beautiful. I think it’s gorgeous. And I’m just glad that you were willing to come on and share your heart with us today.

Sarah Nichols:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s truly been fun to chat with you.

Kristi Lowe:

Yeah, it’s been awesome. I’ll link show in our show notes ways we can connect with Sarah. That way you can find out more about her. And certainly I know that she does writing for other places. So you can keep your eyes peeled for that too, as well. Thanks for being with us guys and good Lord willing, I will see you guys next week.

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