S E43: Episode 43 | ADHD-Friendly Advent Day 20

Day 20 of our ADHD friendly advent study.

And if you are just finding me for the first time, no, you are not behind.

The study is designed to be low effort and high impact so we can work with the brain that God gave us, not against it, and reap as much from this season as possible.

So today is going to be a really short day.

We don't have a scripture reading for today.

I will encourage you to go and listen to the song again because the journaling prompts today are specifically related to the song.

But this should be a nice short one.

Really nice if you're a little bit behind and want to catch up or if you're just kind of overwhelmed.

We're a couple days away from Christmas, which seems.

Seems insane to say, but this one, this one is going to be nice and easy, nice and gentle, maybe even leaving some time for some listening prayer.

If you've been around, you know how I feel about listening prayer and I've talked a lot about it.

I think it's a very, very valuable tool.

I've seen just endless amounts of value in my own life as a result of listening prayer.

Listening prayers, how I ended up marrying my husband, which is a whole fun story.

But anyways, let's get right into it.

But if you're seeing my face for the very first time, my name is Rachel.

I'm an ADHD ER and a Jesus lover and I help women chaotic brains seek, find and live the abundant life that Jesus offers to us.

So if that sounds like you, you're in the right place.

Let's go.

I will be super honest with you, though.

I am dragging this morning.

It's really chilly.

I got up really early to do my quiet time before my kiddo woke up and then he ended up waking up and needing a bath and lots of attention.

And it's my last day with him today.

Or it was my last day before I dropped him off at school.

He goes to his dad's after today for a little bit and so I wanted to spend time with him.

And ever since then, then it's a combination of I'm tired, my caffeine hasn't hit me yet, and I've got a whole list of things that I need to do after this.

I've got some, some client work today that I need to get done before the holidays and it's.

I'm just, I am dragging this morning.

So if you feel the same way, drop a comment, let me know what your situation is this morning.

But it just feels like a really nice day for a slow, quiet time.

That doesn't mean it doesn't need to be as deep.

That doesn't mean we're not going to get anything from it.

But it is totally okay to adjust what you are in your relationship with God for your energy level.

Think about it.

If a friend is like, hey, let's go out, we'll go to dinner, we'll go see a movie, that'll be great.

And the day comes and your friend is like, hey, actually, I really only have the energy to, like, stay in, maybe drink some hot cocoa, maybe watch a movie.

Lowering the intensity of the interaction doesn't take away from the fact that you're spending time together and meaningful time together, intimate time together.

And so that's kind of how I like to think about it when.

When I just really don't have the energy to dig deep into scripture and to get really in depth.

God still wants to spend time with me and he still wants to spend time with you, too.

So if you are low on spoons today like I am, let's indulge in some gentle time with God together.

So step one, I would encourage you to pause this video and go listen to oh Little Town of Bethlehem, which is this week's song.

We have been doing a different or focusing on a different song each week of adventure, and this week is A Little Town of Bethlehem.

I really love the version by Vineyard Vines, but not Vineyard Vines.

That's the shoe company.

Have I been saying Vineyard Vines this entire time?

Vineyard music is my favorite version.

Shane.

And Shane has a great version.

There's like endless great versions of this song out there.

But I would encourage you to pause here, go listen to the song, and then come right back and we'll get into the journaling.

All right, now that you've listened to the song, let's go ahead and move on.

We just have.

We've got two journaling prompts today, but there's no reading, so it feels like a balanced amount of effort.

Everything is in the workbook.

There's a free workbook that I have made.

This is what it looks like.

There's a suggested schedule if structure is more your jam.

Otherwise you can just kind of go through it as you feel led as you have the energy.

The entire purpose is to match you right where you're at so you can enjoy this beautiful holiday season and celebrate Christ, which is truly the reason for the Christmas season.

So that is free.

You can download that over at the link in my profile.

I'm doing all of this for free.

So if you'd like to buy me a coffee to say thank you, you can also do that at the link in my profile.

But let's talk about the journaling prompts.

I would encourage you to break out an actual physical journal for this.

I just got this off Amazon.

It was like $12.

But I really like to write things by hand.

It does take longer, it can take more energy, but there's just something about not only writing it out that helps me concentrate a little bit better.

But I love being able to go back over the years and see what I was praying for, how God answered, to get a little bit vulnerable with you.

I so if you don't know any of my story, sorry if you've already heard this, but I am divorced and remarried.

I was married to my high school sweetheart for six years and when our son was four months old, I became a single mom overnight.

And it was a really tough marriage.

We both felt that way.

It was an even tougher divorce.

We both felt that way.

And I just remember in those days leading up to being served divorce papers, just pouring my heart out, praying that God would turn my then husband into the husband and father that God had designed him to be.

And going back and looking at those prayers has been really difficult for me because it almost felt like, okay, God, I asked you to turn this man into the person that I needed and you didn't.

But now through just some beautiful work that God has been doing over the last years, both my ex husband and I have worked on ourselves so incredibly much.

And he is now remarried, he has more kiddos of his own.

And watching him turn into an incredible father and a loving husband, I didn't realize back then that when I was praying for who I thought was my husband, I was kind of actually praying for somebody else's husband.

And it's just so beautiful to see how God has answered that prayer.

And for the longest time it felt like that prayer was unanswered.

It felt like it was a no.

And it turns out that God had something very different in mind.

That is so beautiful.

And I am remarried as well.

I've got two bonus kiddos whom I absolutely adore.

And the beauty that God has shown me in my marriage.

I didn't know marriages like mine could exist and I've talked quite a bit about that in this series.

But it's so valuable to be able to go back and see what you were thinking and feeling and praying for and how God has answered and how he has especially something that we've kind of forgotten that we asked for in the first place.

It's just miraculous.

And so that was a bit of a tangent to explain why I love hand journaling so much.

Digital journaling is also a totally valid option that is a little bit better if you don't have the energy to write things out and you can stay away from getting distracted by your screens.

But so those are some options you can journal by hand.

You can journal either in your notes app or a journaling app, or even texting a friend.

Texting yourself, Texting myself is one of the best ADHD hacks I have found to date, and I am constantly looking for new ones.

So that is an option if that feels inaccessible.

Voice memos are a great option either in your Voice Notes app or sending a voice memo to a friend end and if all of that still just feels like too much today, that's fine.

And I want to encourage you to just sit with these journaling prompts and think through them and ask God to bring things to the surface.

So without further ado, I'm going to read journaling prompt number one and give you some space to go and journal on it.

However that looks for you today.

So we are reading Song Journaling prompt number one.

I love how this song so clearly paints a picture of two very different realms.

The dark, uncertain, desperate mortal world and the celestial world standing guard over it.

Do you find it easy or difficult to think about and believe in a realm we can't see or touch yet?

How does this impact your faith?

Or do you just really not think about it?

So pause here, go journal or do whatever you are going to do and then come back.

All right, and now let's dig into Song journaling prompt number two.

And again, all of these are in the Workbook, which is free.

You can download that as a link in my profile.

Jesus is a light who came into our dark world to bring hope and peace and love.

Do you find it easy to connect with Jesus or does he feel far away or abstract?

For you and for those who feel disconnected from Christ, I highly recommend the book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland.

It changed my entire view of Jesus and made him feel so much more real.

Okay, pause, go journal and then come back.

If you would like to share your answers down in the comments below or share some of the thoughts that you've had, I would love to hear them and respond to them and chat about them in the comments.

But I'll just kind of share a bit about what came to the surface for me this morning.

So.

So personally, and maybe this is because I put a lot of thought into this, it doesn't really feel difficult for me to think about the fact that there is like a heavenly realm and things we can't see.

I've experienced quite a bit of spiritual warfare in my day and whatever you want to call it, it's difficult to describe unless you've experienced it.

And it also, I feel like makes it a bit easier for me to try and have an eternal mindset.

You know, having an eternal mindset, keeping our eyes on things above, like lifting our eyes to the hills, because that's where our help comes from.

Keeping that mindset is a lot easier when that eternal.

When eternity itself doesn't feel quite as abstract or ungraspable.

That's probably not a word but as it could.

So I have put a lot of thought and effort into kind of separating.

Okay, we have this physical world here that we can see, smell, hear, touch, taste, all of the things, but then there's also something else.

There's something else that is not just coming our way, but already exists.

And I don't know how all of it works.

I have absolutely no idea the mechanics of it.

But I think, you know, we're not meant to know and understand and fully grasp absolutely everything.

There are a lot of mysteries that we're not going to understand until we understand them and that's just fine.

But yeah, for me personally it's.

It's not too terribly difficult to grasp that there are, you know, two different realms here, one we can see and one that we can't.

So I'm very curious to hear others experiences and if you feel differently.

And as far as prompt number two, it has not always been the case that I feel pretty connected to Jesus for a very long time he was more of an abstract concept to me.

And I remember when that changed.

I think I was like 15 or 16 and it was Easter and my parents wanted to watch the Passion of the Christ which was the first R rated movie I ever saw.

And I had to sink down in my chair and cover my eyes for a good part of it.

But I remember at the end of that movie for the first time feeling this affection towards the person of Jesus and just this appreciation and this love.

And that was really the first time I had ever connected with the idea of Jesus Christ as an actual human being with whom I also have a relationship now.

It wasn't until many years later that I really built my own relationship with him.

And a couple years after that, I read the book Gentle and Lowly by Day Norland, and that just completely revolutionized and helped solidify my view of Jesus.

So if you have not read that book, it is absolutely fantastic.

I'm looking at maybe starting an online community for women with ADHD or chaotic brains who love Jesus, maybe with some sort of a book club esque element.

And that would be one of the first ones that I would want to go through because it is absolutely incredible.

And it also helped me to understand more of God's character and how we tend to view God as wrath.

First, love second, where, yes, he is loving, he is wonderful, he is good, he is kind, he is all of these things.

But underlying all of that is his wrath and his inability to tolerate sin and his anger towards sin.

And that helped me realize that that view is just.

Not only is it not correct, it's giving us a false view of what God is.

And I want to be very careful there, because God is a wrathful God.

He cannot abide sin.

But the reasons for that and how that actually plays out in his relationship with us is very different than I ever thought.

And I grew up in the church.

I grew up going to Christian school for almost my entire school career.

And I did not have a good grasp on any of this.

And the book Gentle and Lowly helped change that for me.

So.

So if you have read it, I would love to hear your thoughts on the book in the comments.

If you haven't, I would love to hear you share a bit about your view of Christ and your view of God and how that impacts your faith as far as your belief in him, your faith in him, and how your faith is lived out on a daily basis.

So definitely leave me some comments and we can have a discussion in the comments.

Um, I'm really glad that you joined me today and I would like to invite you to join me for the rest of Advents.

Uh, I will be doing a video every single day with that day's part of the suggested schedule.

Again, there's.

There's no official schedule.

It's kind of designed to do to work with your brain, so you can kind of pick and choose how you want to do it.

But I am following that suggested schedule because I am more of a structure girl.

My brain needs structure, and that's okay.

So these videos are also uploaded as podcast episodes.

My podcast is the True Grit podcast with Rachel Grit.

You can find the link to that over in my profile as well.

Everything is at the link in my profile so you can find all of the relevant links and things.

So if that's $1 that you can afford right now, that is fine.

If that is $300, you're a little bit crazy, but that is fine.

No, you're not crazy.

That's.

That's absolutely fine.

But it's a pay as you can basis because I really would like for it to be accessible to everyone.

So details for that will be over at the link in my profile.

I will be sending out emails about that very soon and I'm very excited to get that up and running because I love planning.

Planning is very important for me, but it's difficult to find resources that are developed specifically for ADHD brains, let alone with a faith lens like through the lens of faith.

So that will be coming soon.

You can also leave a comment below and I will DM you details when I have them.

So share this video with a friend if you could repost it.

That helps me so, so much and I will see you in tomorrow's video.

Bye.