Ep 56 | A Mom Finding God in the Middle Minutes of this Good and Hard Life

Masses, meet Mary Beth. I’m biased because she’s been my best friend since we made up a secret handshake in 2nd grade, but this conversation was so good. Wife to Hunter and mom to 3 adorables, we covered so many things in this conversation.

We talk about the goodness of God in the face of not-good things, making space for Him in the middle minutes and the uniqueness of how we walk in our faith.

@realstoriesoflifewithGod
chelseaeubank.com/podcast

Transcript

Chelsea: Our faith journey is a story unique to each individual and is constantly being written. No two people are identical, no two days are alike, but God is the same. This is the real stories of Life with God podcast, a place for honest conversations about life and faith. I'm your host, Chelsea Eubank and I'm really glad you're here. Let's jump into today's episode.

Chelsea: I say we jump right in. I mean, it's hard to introduce your longest standing best friend, so I'm just going to say that and I'm going to let you tell us about yourself.

Mary Beth: Okay. I'm Mary Beth Styles. I am from Augusta and went to school with Chelsea since the second grade, even my best friend since the second grade. And I don't even know the math on we. I'm married to Hunter, we met at Mercer and we have three kids. Harley is five, Tucker is three and Olivia is four and a half months and we live outside of Athens and Watkinsville.

Chelsea: Okay, my first question for you is what currently stirs your love for?

Mary Beth: Um, I feel like this is a super cheesy mom answer, but just like, being around my kids stirs my heart for God and just shows me how kind he's been to me and just how kind he is to my family. And watching my kids grow, just being their mom is like, the best.

Chelsea: Has it always been like that for you or did you grow into that the more kids you have?

Mary Beth: Feel like I grew into it. I definitely had one of my biggest motherhood breakdowns the day you met Charlie. I had never changed a diaper until I had him. I'd never really babysat. I have no cousins, no nieces or nephews, so I just was never around kids. And then I had Charlie and I was just like, what in the world? What do I do with this child? I remember when the nurses left the room after delivery and everything was settled down. I remember thinking like, wait, you're leaving him with us? My husband has three older brothers and has tons of cousins and grew up with kids, so he really took the lead for the first couple of weeks with Charlie, I just didn't know what to do. I would ask Hunter, I'd be like, do I feed him now? Why is he like, what do I do? So it definitely is something I've grown into. Motherhood definitely shows how selfish you are and can be, but the more kids you have, I feel like the more confidence you have and it's just so fun. My boys are really close in age and they're wild and just full of so much personality and so active and they just make me laugh so hard every day.

Chelsea: I do glean that from you. You enjoy your kids and that's it's a really very obvious thing and it's a very impactful thing to the people around you. So I would for sure say stick to that because definitely you encourage a lot of people with that, especially me. My next question is, is there anything that currently stifles your love for the Lord?

Mary Beth: Yeah. So on the same kind of subject, I think just the busyness of motherhood takes away from my time with the Lord, but also the margin to notice Him as much as I notice Him. We are so busy and there's always something to be done. There's always a mess to clean up or someone to discipline or someone to be with. It's really easy to put the Lord on the back burner. I don't know if I read it somewhere or heard it somewhere. Probably a podcast because I feel like all I do is listen to podcasts when I have a moment. But anyway, the person whoever said it said, if Satan can't make you sin, he will make you busy. And that definitely rung true. My life and my motherhood, I have to be super intentional with doing Bible studies and getting in the Word, and I'm not really someone that just is going to open up the Bible and start reading. I really need to have a plan, but it sounds bad to say, but I really have to make myself like, okay, you have 10 minutes in the carpool line. You could sit here and enjoy the silence or scroll your phone or listen to a podcast, but you really need to be intentional and do your Bible study today. So that's something that I feel like is just kind of getting in the way of my relationship with the Lord.

Chelsea: And it's sneaky because you're like the things that come up, that interrupt are necessary things, right. And maybe that's a cop out. I'm not sure I'm flushing it out myself as I'm saying it, but the things that come up might be I'm open in the mail as I'm kind of reading my Bible and then I notice bills to be paid, so I put my Bible down and I go pay it. Am I really going to get back to that? I don't know. That might be a weird example, but it sounds like you're trying to find the moments that you're already doing where you could replace or insert the word scripture or prayer or something.

Mary Beth: And maybe.

Chelsea: That'S a word then, too. It doesn't have to be some big leap. It doesn't have to be some jarring habit shift to do this. It might just be find the pockets of time, find the middle minutes and interject him there as much as you can.

Mary Beth: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I rebel against the Christianes terminology and stuff. I can't stand the phrase quiet time being in the car and praying out loud with my kids on the way to school and intentionally playing worship music in the morning. That gets me excited and pumped up for the day and gets them excited too, but they don't even know what they're singing, but one day they will. Just like finding those little moments that you can put God in. And that sounds terrible in your day, but just intentionally talk about Him or focus on Him when there's a rainbow or when the sky is really pretty or if we see an ambulance going down the road, a quick prayer for that person, but do it out loud so your kids can see you. But also, that's a connection point for you and the Lord.

Chelsea: Yeah, I love it. And maybe, too, there's a lot of freedom there, too, because it's your relationship with Him and it's your life with Him, and so how it looks for you could be different than how it looks for someone else, and that's more than okay. Yeah, but it feels harder and more discouraging to compare, even if you don't realize you're doing it to hear what other people are doing and then feel guilty that it doesn't look like the way you're doing it. But I feel like there is a lot of trust and maturity to say, but you know what? This is where I'm meeting Him and I'm meeting Him, and that's the point. I'm orienting myself to Him, and that's the point. Not the method necessarily, but the fact that I'm doing it at all is more the point. And so there's a lot of freedom maybe for us to encourage other people in how they're experiencing Him, but also not to feel guilty or less than when it looks different than the way we're doing it.

Mary Beth: Yeah. And I think that you and I are a really good example of that. The Best of Friends for, I don't know, 20 plus years. You're my matron of honor, and you're a journaler, and you're a writer, and you're such a deep thinker. I'm not. I've tried to start a journal about 100 times, and I'm just not that person. I am black and white, and the Bible says that I just kind of take it for what it is. And that is so cool. And I don't know, and maybe something's wrong with that.

Chelsea: I don't think so.

Mary Beth: But you have such this beautiful way with words and what you say in a 500 word paragraph. I'm just, like, can say it in three words.

Chelsea: Right.

Mary Beth: And I think how you experience the Lord and how you study Him is probably so different from what I do. But I think the Lord is creative, and I think he appreciates that, that he made us so differently and made us to worship and experience Him in different ways.

Chelsea: Yes, because I heard someone say one time, they were like, I think we forget that God ministers to us and he cares about us, and he provides and he loves us and he cares for us, but we also can minister to his heart by worshipping Him and adoring Him and loving Him. And so if we all did it the same way. I want to go out on an imaginative limb and say that God might be bored.

Mary Beth: Yeah.

Chelsea: How cool is it that he gets to receive that love from you differently than he receives it from me?

Mary Beth: Yeah, for sure.

Chelsea: Okay. My next fill in the blank is the truth that God is blank means a lot to you because blank.

Mary Beth: Okay, I've been thinking about this for a while. The truth that God is good no matter what what was the last part of the question?

Chelsea: Means a lot to you because means.

Mary Beth: A lot to me because no matter what, I know that he is working everything for my good. I'm not even sure if that made sense.

Chelsea: Yeah. Okay. The truth that God is good no matter what means a lot to you because you can trust that he's doing something good in anything.

Mary Beth: Maybe. Yes.

Chelsea: Okay.

Mary Beth: You have such a better way with words than me. But I guess to expand on that, for the past couple of years, I've just kind of been thinking through God's goodness. And I don't know if it was the time in which I was growing up or growing up in the Bible Belt or what it was, but I just had this image of God as like this kind of grumpy. Grandpa, but that kind of had a magic wand and would make things happen to you based on your actions and if you were good or you were bad. So if something bad happened to you, you must deserve it because you did something. And it really wasn't until recently that I just had studied Him, and he is a good God no matter what. So because the fall of humanity, bad things are going to happen all of the time, but in God's goodness, he can make them for your good. He can turn things around. He can show you Himself through those things. So a couple of years ago, I had a miscarriage, and it was really through that that I realized I hadn't done something bad for that to happen. It happened because we live in a fallen world. But I knew that God could make something beautiful out of that. Because in his character, he can't do mean things to you. He can't be negative, he can't be unkind. Those aren't the qualities of God. But things happen, and he can keep you things through them. He can show you his love. He has a beautiful plan that we in our finite nature can't see. And I'm not even sure if any of this makes sense, but that's just something I've really wrestled with the past couple of years. I just remember growing up, like, when Katrina happened to New Orleans, it was kind of like, well, you know, people down there gamble, so this hurts them to teach them that their ways were and, like, that's not actually how God works. That's pretty terrible theology. So I think just the truth that God is good no matter what has just been really powerful to me the past couple of years because bad things are going to happen. But he is so kind that we get to draw closer to him in those times and he gets to reveal to us.

Chelsea: We could just stop right there. I don't think I need to say anything. You need me to say anything. I don't even know if I have anything other than trusting his nature when what you see doesn't really make sense, I feel like is a huge deepening of your faith.

Mary Beth: Yeah. I think that's something that we have to learn over and over in our lives. Yes. I can't say that I've learned that yet by any means. But I think just like you have to train for a marathon, those hardships are training us and training us in righteousness. Yeah.

Chelsea: Especially like just experiencing firsthand you being able to say that I went through something very hard and the thing that I want and hope for is God to be God, not for my way to be happening.

Mary Beth: Yeah. I want to put a caveat in that and be like it's easy for me to say that now because we did have our third child and he's imperfect and healthy. I don't know that I could be so confident in that if we were still waiting. But I hope I could be. I hope that my faith would be even stronger.

Chelsea: Maybe saying what you said earlier that we're never going to fully arrive there and so knowing that it's a daily choice is maybe the thing to remember, too. You're never going to be like, oh, I believe that he's good now I don't have to try. That is never going to happen as much as we would love for that to happen. Because I think I can relate to that tension. Like I would love to get to a place where this wasn't hard, where hard things didn't feel so uncomfortable. I'm like that is just not reality. And so what you said about maybe just growing in it and practicing it and choosing it, maybe that's what we have to remember, not the fact. I don't know.

Mary Beth: Yeah. And you can almost bring it full circle back to motherhood. It's never going to be easy. It's hard is the hardest thing I personally think I will ever do. But that doesn't mean that there's not good in it. Not learning and growing and getting better. Right. When I think, oh, I've got it figured out, like my kids learn how to do something else right.

Chelsea: Which I'm starting to wonder if we almost have to uproot that competency idol or that comfort idol. Because I think that dependency is the goal is his point. I want you to walk as closely with me as possible and a lot of times it being easy, you don't do it right. So if he's almost shifting a perspective and saying in this hard thing, going back to all your answers, really like all your responses in this thing in life, whether it's great or hard or impossible, failing or disappointing, no matter what it is, god wants that thing to draw me closer to Himself. He wants to give me himself.

Mary Beth: How kind is that?

Chelsea: Yeah. Because he's the best thing we could ever desire or receive. I don't think we would depend and desire and need him and want him if we did not have the things in our life that felt really challenging and we want them to be over. Like you just said, I don't think it'll ever not be hard. I don't want to constantly be looking ahead and saying, I will feel better when X, Y and Z. This will be easier when X, Y and Z because if I'm always looking not where my feet are and saying I'll be okay when I get to that point, I think I'm always going to be looking. I'm never going to be where my feet are. I'm never going to find God where my feet are. If I'm always saying I'm depending on my own strength and my own strength is going to feel better when I'm not in this season of life anymore or when this circumstance is not happening anymore. Yeah, man.

Mary Beth: My other answer for that fill in the blank.

Chelsea: Oh, yeah, give it to me.

Mary Beth: Something about. Just like how God is the same as he was back when he parted the Red Sea. That to this. How kind is it that the same God who did that, who provided the manna, who I don't know, healed the bleeding woman, wants to have a relationship with us and want these things that are going to happen in the world because we live in a fallen world. To bring us closer to him individually. He wants what things are hard in your life to bring you to Him. He wants Chelsea and he wants me and he wants my kids wild.

Chelsea: Yeah. And I also wonder if it's worth making the distinction that calling something good, it's almost like you need to redefine the word good because what the world or what my flesh would say is good is no pain and no inconvenience and no self denial and no take up your cross. That's what I'm tempted to think it's good. How can I say that something that's hard or painful or suffering can even be good and you almost have to flip it on its head and say, I'm not saying it's good because it's pleasant or easy. I'm saying it's good because it's doing something because like your initial answer to the fill in the blank because God is good no matter what. And I don't see everything that he sees. And so I'm not saying it's good in some really light, like FRU FRU flowery, you got to call it good even if you're in pain. I'm like, I can be in pain, but be in pain close to God. That's the good that I get to be close to God when I'm doing it, when I'm going through it. Maybe I'm rambling, but that's what I'm trying to say. The good in it is that I get God. No matter how I'm feeling about anything or no matter what is happening to me, I get God. Right.

Mary Beth: Right. You are worth being pruned and refined because he wants that relationship.

Chelsea: Yes. There we go. Oh, that stuff is good. That is good. My last question is what is something you're looking forward to?

Mary Beth: We are leaving for the beach on Thursday. Nice. Yes. We're going with two couples and the kids, and I'm excited. It'll be good. It's just fun to get out of the routine.

Chelsea: Yeah, I like it. Sounds great.