Listen to Faith: Journeying Beyond Fear and Debt

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Hey friends. Welcome to another episode of Been There, learned that This is Dana Byers. I am your podcast host. I'm a certified life coach, and I work with ambitious Christian working women. I'm really thrilled to share a little bit more with you about my life today because I want to talk specifically about the secret to staying the course. Listen up if you're ready to learn a little bit from my life, some experiences that might help you in yours. So I'll start out by giving you a little bit of context. And 2006, my husband Chris and I were debt-free except for our mortgage. We had really pursued local adoption, international adoption. We had tried for a couple of years to adopt a child with no progress, much to my disappointment. And we had also agreed not to go into debt in order to adopt a child.

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So the caveat to our vision of no added debt felt completely impossible to me, to be really honest with you, even though we were really thriving on a very tight budget, we had a very small amount of savings. But I was struggling to imagine how God could provide money for us to adopt. And I remember doubting things sometimes more than I want to admit. And I remember thinking, how could God made it have so clear to me back in 1995 when I was in high school, before I even met my husband, that adoption would be a part of my life. Yet he had not yet provided me a clear financial path to be able to do what I thought was to completely obey him. I couldn't imagine how I could obey him without knowing how we were going to pay for an adoption. But my concerns really seemed almost unnecessary eventually because the adoption paths that we had pursued had come to a complete stop.

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In fact, we had had no progress for nearly a year. And if I'm being completely honest, there were some days where I was really depressed because I felt so confident that God had called us to adopt. I really wanted to stay the course, but I couldn't see a plan for carrying that out or how to obey that. I didn't really see opportunities yet. So there was one evening when Chris and I were both sensing God was really leading us to give part of our savings to a special opportunity in our local church, and we were very excited about it. We wrote that check with a lot of enthusiasm, and it was the biggest gift that we had given up to that point in our lives. And so the thrill of trusting God with that money and with that gift energized us even more in a fresh way.

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But it was also a little bit heartbreaking to me because I knew if that money was going somewhere other than an adoption, I was just confused about what could be happening to allow us to a child. What was God doing? So my confusion only increased when two short weeks later, just two weeks after we gave that biggest gift that we had given to date, the opportunity to adopt came. And when I think about that, I think back about Gideon. Have you ever read the story of Gideon in scripture? It's where God actually removed some of his resources. In Gideon's case soldiers. God removed some of Gideon's resources before sending him into battle. And I really think that's a little bit like what happened in our lives. God was about to do a lot in our lives with much less, much less resources, specifically much less money than we thought we were going to need for the adoption.

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And so Chris and I, we reassessed our finances to determine exactly how much cash we could contribute to an adoption without going into debt, without going into debt. And it was an amount that felt really extremely small to me in comparison to the expenses that lay ahead of us. And I was afraid that one of two things was going to happen. One, I thought we would either not have enough money to complete the adoption process, or two, I was also a little bit worried that we would somehow go back on our promise to each other to not go into debt for the adoption. And that's why I'm talking about this story when I talk about staying the course, because this was a moment, probably a low point in the story where I really thought, okay, God, we heard you. We see you at work. We just don't really see any way forward.

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And so each of those two outcomes I was afraid of either not having enough money or going into debt. Each of those outcomes would've been devastating to Chris and me personally for different reasons. And it's really powerful to me to this day, many, many years later to be able to tell you that neither of those worst outcomes, neither of those fears came to pass at all. We just dipped our toes in the water of international adoption. We had a combination of boldness and trepidation and fear. Some days Chris was a little more bold and energized about it. And other days I was, and we just took turns trying to emotionally support each other through that process. And faith without being foolish, just also really trying to be realistic and saying, God, here's where we're at. We think you're in this, but we just don't see you working yet.

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And I'll be really frank with you. There was a big temptation to keep very quiet while we were walking through the adoption process. There's something about sharing in boldness what you think God is going to do that can make us feel like we're actually silly, for lack of a better term. I was really tempted to just not tell anyone and then maybe tell them if we were able to adopt just with excitement what had happened after the, but instead, I chose to start a little blog and I began sharing with our loved ones, our acquaintances, and even some strangers about adoption. I was just talking broadly about the general adoption process. I was opening up our lives to readers about the ups and downs of the adoption process, the delays we were experiencing, and the heartache of not being with our daughter on her first birthday after we had received her referral many months before.

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So as I started sharing online in that blog, I invited people not only into the process of our journey, but also to help us to pay, to bring our daughter home to complete the adoption. So this was essentially kind of like crowdsource funding before we'd ever really heard of such a thing. We invited people into that journey, and over the course of time, we developed a list of about 60 individuals and families who partnered with Chris and me to complete all of the administrative and financial requirements to complete our adoption. And because this miracle, I consider it a miracle, we didn't see how this was going to happen, but because this miracle of a debt-free adoption occurred, we were able to focus completely on helping our daughter integrate into her new life in America while she was grieving all that she had lost. But it doesn't stop there.

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That was just the tip of the iceberg. And only six months later, Chris and I really since God speaking to us again, he invited our family, the four of us. We have a biological son who's older than our daughter. We felt like God invited the four of us into what would be our biggest adventure yet, and this new journey would not have been available to us had we had any type of debt. If we had had the opportunity, I think we wouldn't have been able to afford it or we wouldn't have been able to take the risk to go. And I also believe this journey would not have come our way had we not completed the adoption. I just really feel like God was lovingly inviting us to stay the course with him one step at a time to complete the adoption of our daughter, and then to step into through each bit of obedience, to let them be building blocks that would prepare us for more opportunities.

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And I think the beauty of that is knowing God and who he is. We could have said no to any or all of those invitations. I don't think that would have impacted my salvation or anything at all. I think I could have said no, but I also would never have known what we had missed out on if we hadn't have said yes. And if you are on a journey right now and you're struggling to say the course, I want you to know that there will be delays. There will be moments where you have no idea how God's going to provide, and yet you can still have peace in those moments. You see sometimes the delays in our daughter's adoption and even the occasional shame that I personally felt about inviting people to help us pay for the adoption at that time and the consistent questioning that we had.

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There were plenty of well-meaning, but Ill-informed people who were questioning why we would adopt a child that was exhausting at times. But the decision to say the course is something I am so thankful we did. I have such deep gratitude for that experience. It was really the best training ground for what lay ahead for our family. So why am I telling you this story? Well, I think that most of us have convictions that we want to live out, but we are afraid to live those out because the path ahead feels uncertain. We might feel exhausted before we even take that first step. And frankly, we might feel really silly when people find out what it is that we are believing in faith for God to do. It's going to take you time, energy, and frankly a lot of guts to live out a plan that you really want to do to follow God into the unknown.

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And so often, we can let our fear of other people's judgments, our fear about the circumstances or even our own disbelief, dictate how we live our lives. And I think Chris and I could have just applied for a loan to pay for that adoption quickly. I know plenty of people who've done that. I don't judge that at all. That just wasn't the plan we felt was best for us. So we chose to invite others to share in our journey and to be part of our family's story, we would've really regretted not carrying out that plan 100%. And I know you might not be planning to adopt a child internationally, but I just want to say to you, I believe you can live out your dream the way you want to. You can choose the path less traveled. You don't have to take the easy route as long as you are willing to play the long game and to stand your ground, you will really need to have what it takes to stay the course.

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You see, if you want to live a life of freedom, it's going to require authentic energy for you to stay the course. I think you can live out your unique calling in life with an authentic, spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional approach to the energy that you have. I see women that I've coached doubt their capacity for the energy to obey God, to do what he's called them to do. Sometimes it makes sense they feel that way. I've coached women who feel like their child isn't behaving or developing the way she wants them to, or a project that she's working on at work is taking a lot longer than anyone anticipated it would. I've coached women who have friendships that go sour and women who feel overwhelmed by their lack of intentionality or clarity in life. And I have seen women give up, and I'll be really honest with you.

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There have been times I've given up on things, and I think giving up looks different for different women. Some women quit their dream jobs in a moment of frustration. Sometimes women surrender to always weighing more weight than is healthy for them because they're struggling with not having accountability, support, and encouragement, and they give up. Sometimes women stay in a relationship, but they stop trying and hoping. So they're still in the relationship, but they're not really present. And I think it's most heartbreaking when I see women decide that they're incapable of staying the course. Or when I see women decide that they don't deserve something, if she lets her lack of mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional energy keep her from acting on what God's called her to do and keeping her in a place of spinning her wheels, I know that that's heartbreaking because she's essentially moving towards the fate of burnout.

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I speak about burnout not lightly, but from significant experience. And personally, I found that the best way to live out a unique dream, to stay the course to live out God's calling without hustle or burnout is to get help. Some of you right now are thinking of a dream that you have and you're struggling to stay the course. You believe God called you to something at some point, but now you're not sure how he can provide. You're not sure how you can go on, and I want to give you permission to ask for help. Asking for help can look like a variety of things. You might need to let a friend close to you or your leader at work or your spouse. You might need to let them know that you're struggling. You might need to ask people in your small group to really come around you and pray for you and support you in this season.

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You might need to see a counselor, and you might need to do what I did when I experienced burnout for the last time in 2017, and that was to hire a coach. I am a coach and I believe so strongly, first and foremost in God and his capacity to turn around any scenario. But I also believe strongly in the experience of coaching and through my training leading women through the experience of knowing themselves better, connecting to God in new and fresh ways, and identifying authentic ways. They're able to shift their energy, they're able to shift their perspective. They're able to find the capacity to move forward in the calling that God has given them without burning out and with new joy and purpose and confidence in their lives. So if that is something you're interested in sharing in, I would love to coach you. You've heard a little bit more of my story just now. If you'd like to

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Know more, email me at dana@danabuyerscoaching.com. If you're interested in coaching, go right to Dana by coaching.com. Click on Let's Work Together and we can get started. I'll see you guys on the next episode.