a message from our hearts.

Well hello everyone and welcome back to our channel. Welcome back to the channel everybody. Sorry, I must ask you a question. How are you doing? Like how are you really doing? Tori never knows what's going to happen. We press record and then she winds me up and she says go. Go have fun. Go. Have we even said hello? Encourage them? I just said hello. Okay. Number one, this video has a stay tuned for that. I'm giving that whole update on my therapy journey and I think this one will mean a lot to some of you who maybe you don't think you need like a big healing moment but maybe there's some things that you can fine tune and tweak. I had that recently. So more on that. But as you guys know from our last mindset video, I took a trip to Colorado for my men's group and I typically try to come back with one big takeaway because this is like hardcore. Like we're going from like 6 a.m until like 11 or 12. Yeah like 11 p.m 12 a.m and then we it's just deep teaching, deep teaching everywhere. And so at the end they want you to give an assessment on how you're currently doing with your faith, with your family, and with your work and all these ideas that we're kind of learning. And I went through like the seven different principles that we're believing and I gave myself terrible ratings. Wait what's the seven different principles? Basically how are you integrating your family into your work life or how well are you doing inviting people into your home to love on them and serve. There's things like that where you go through them and I can give you guys more info on that if you want. It's just one of those things where it's a lot to talk about. But the moral of this video is a little different because as I was going through and rating myself between zero and ten, I realized either I suck at life or life has been sucking the life out of me. And I really looked at it and I saw like a three and a two and an eight because it's like are you have you know you expanding your family doing that let's go we're not pregnant right now. But um but yeah I basically had to I had to sit down with myself and like give myself an honest assessment. Like Chad are you doing this poorly? And that gut feeling that instinct maybe the holy spirit was like no you're doing great. And I thought maybe that you all need to hear that for where you're at in life. And so I went back through I'm fighting these tears right now by the way. I went back through the questions and I answered based on where I currently am in life with with our current life stage. Only been married five years. We have two under two. We just moved. We're trying to you know manage our own business and online and renovate a house. Yeah so it's just I looked at those questions through the purview of our situation and I gave myself so much more favorable scores. Not like the every kid gets a trophy type feel but just to be honest with where you're at in your life stage. And then that took me even further to basically say how do I find contentment where I am? Because if you're anything like me you all are constantly living for the next season of your life. Oh I can't well I can't wait to our kid talks. Oh well I can't whenever they start walking then I'll really enjoy parenthood. Or oh whenever they can start feeding themselves. Or whenever they can start dressing themselves. Oh whenever my wife and I get that that promotion. Or oh when we get the bigger house or the nicer car. Or we can actually take a vacation without working during it. There's a lot of things that I end up living for where I end up experiencing discontent where I am right now. And I think it's because I'm being way too hard on where I am and where we are right now. And so I don't know who needs to hear this. I don't know who this video is for. But I really just felt it deep in my heart to take a deep breath to say hey you're doing great. Could we be somewhere else? Yeah. But right now you're not there. And you need to give yourself grace that if you're expecting this idealized version of life. But yet you're in a version of life that doesn't equate to that. The math is never going to math. And what I mean by that is that Tori and I have a huge huge life goal of being very hospitable. We literally there's a book right up there. I don't know if you can read the title. It's unreasonable hospitality. We're Can we be hospitable with 202? A little bit. Yeah. But do we have people coming and going and staying and crashing? Not as much as what we would like. Are we hosting at dinner time? Yeah. And so if I'm gauging how well we're doing in life by this idealized version of life we're always going to be down on ourselves because we're going to not think we're doing well. But if you look at our life through the lens of where we currently are the life stage we're in we're actually doing great hosting people. We're doing great being hospitable and that extends to every area of our life. And so that was just something I was really feeling at the core of my heart is to take a deep breath breathe out the stress the worries of today and the fears of tomorrow and just like exist and be content where you are. And so that was my big kind of soapbox moment that I had. That's so good. Well I mean there's a reason why there's so many scriptures about there is a season and a place and a time. And I think where the enemy comes to like steal our joy and steal our contentment is through comparison. I think it's just so easy to like look at their life or look at what they're doing and be like, oh why can't we host like them? Or why can't we be doing business like them? And it just takes our eyes off of what God is doing in the here and now. It takes your gaze off of the blessings that he has put in your hands to steward in this season. It doesn't allow you to lean into him and ask him those questions and be grateful because the only question you're asking him is why are we not where they're at. Instead of Lord, thank you for everything that you are doing and thank you even for the things that we don't see. Thank you for the things that you're doing inside of us in this like trying season because we know that it will produce something that you can use through us if we are willing. If we like look at our lives as vessels to be like, okay God we might be in a pressing like what is the fruit right? Like what's coming out when we're being pressed? And I was literally just talking to our friend Carly about this the other day when it comes to leading a life of leadership means leading a life of reflection. And so just like what you were just saying it's like we can't lead if we're not first reflecting on the way in which we are living, the way we're responding, the way we're making decisions, the way we're pointing people to places, right? And like we as Christians our first goal always is to lead people to Jesus, right? Like I think it's so easy to think about leadership is like how to you know win in life and like get the new best thing or next thing etc. And it's like no like our purpose our mission is to lead people into the presence of God. And so a lot of times I can tell you that I've been led into the presence of God in times that are more trying than when everything's going great. And I'm like oh everything is great, I'm good. And it's just kind of easier to coast but when you are in seasons where you're like man God this is tough like sleep deprivation is tough like trying to manage renovation is tough like there's a lot of things on our plate right now and I'm coming to the end of myself but it's at the end of myself where I find your strength. And I know that it's not me like I know that I don't necessarily have capacity but he has blessed me with these things that maybe are outside of my capacity because I'm supposed to lean on him because I'm not supposed to carry it along we're not supposed to carry it along. Yeah yeah I'm going to update you guys on why this is so important but I'm also going to update you on my therapy journey and Tori's going to go grab Noah because he's awake. So Noah has joined the party. I'm going to give you guys my therapy update journey and then we'll get back to the video on why having that mindset of you're doing okay is super important and honestly I think this is just a great way to start because a lot of the reason why Tori and I want to be healed and walk is healed people is because of our children. Yeah. Our children will inherit our bad habits they'll watch them they'll see them and so if they watch us grow through what we go through then they'll develop that type of habit. I want to introduce you to BetterHelp the sponsor of this video who makes starting getting therapy super easy and my my big takeaway for this update was about being addicted to this thing being addicted to phones and so basically I was talking with my therapist and I'm like kind of like they're perceiving some things they're like well why do you keep your phone on you so much and obviously I don't want to respond to that but we dug in super deep into it and long story short I have been using my phone as a way to just kind of numb out so whenever things are getting stressful or not sleeping well I'm not able to take care of myself physically we have a lot of workload or schedules get moved I shift to just numbing out on my phone where I can just scroll endlessly and get little dopamine hits but then they started asking a little deeper questions and so we dug a little deeper and what we came to well and the reason why I wasn't able to just kind of buck this addiction this phone addiction this social media addiction is because the reason for me having my phone on me was actually far deeper than just habitually scrolling we came to this conclusion that the reason why I keep my phone on me a lot is because I like to keep myself fully available in case someone needs me in case she needs me in case they need me they need whatever because there are times in my life when I needed help and whenever I did call for help no one was there and it's a hard thing to have to figure out things on your own sometimes and so what what I thought would just simple be setting screen times or limits all that stuff didn't help fix the issue with what I was struggling with because the issue is actually much deeper but the benefit of working with the therapist is is we went back to those moments where I was struggling and we prayed and like where was God in that moment and we kind of relived it and got the got to you know experience that moment through like a holy lens a healed lens versus just me feeling lack or me feeling fear and that was like super redemptive for me and I think that that's been one of the biggest unexpected things from working with a therapist is I thought it was just gonna be this thing well like oh your dad did this whatever but it even touches on unexpected things just like phone addictions or just small mental health check-ins that can lead to something deeper to create a change and so I've just really been enjoying this process now don't get me wrong you dig deep you absolutely dig deep and you have some uncomfortable conversations but they're necessary because I want to continue to grow I want to continue to navigate life where my kids don't have to go to therapy because of me so I'll share with you guys how to get started with BetterHelp. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who is trained to listen and give you helpful unbiased advice so you go to their website you answer a few questions BetterHelp will match you with a professional who has years of experience helping people with struggles just like mine and just like yours and something that is really special about the platform is you can specify that you'd like to work with someone who shares your faith which is like a big deal breaker for me so you guys can do that and as you all heard me share I got to go back to a moment and re-experience it based on where God was in that experience and I love that BetterHelp has access to faith-based therapists who can speak into those areas that you and I may be struggling with and you can do it all from your phone or your computer you can do a phone call video chat or you can just message with your therapist it's whatever you feel most comfortable with it's the easiest possible way to start talking to a therapist right now let BetterHelp connect you to a therapist who can support you all from the comfort of your own home visit betterhelp.com slash mastersfam10 and enjoy a special discount in your first month I'm truly already seeing a difference in myself and I know that I still have a lot to do but I'm genuinely excited about it as I know life will be so much sweeter when I live like a healed person versus a wounded person so definitely go check out betterhelp.com slash mastersfam10 to get started okay so we will see how much longer we can chat it up before this little one wants to play and Mike also wakes up but I feel like it's really important to just kind of share with you guys why we feel like this is so important right like obviously we don't want to get caught on a phone addiction we don't want to not be content in the now but like how do we practically do that and I feel like these are the things that I'm thinking first and foremost we have to acknowledge that we're living inside of God's timing like he is sovereign and two we also have to acknowledge that his mercies are new every single morning and so every day that you wake up if you can wake up with a sense of gratitude that you have mercies that are new for today like you have not been graced for two seasons ahead of you you have been graced for today and God wants to meet you where you're at today he wants to encourage you today he wants to surround you today he wants to strengthen you today and that's why it says do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will have its own worries and so if we can focus in on what God is trying to do in the present I think it will help us fix our eyes on him and not fix our eyes on everything that we want to change in our life or everything that we're worried about for the future right like you can have vision for the future without having without living in like worry for the future if that makes sense yeah it does and I think that a lot of it for me is what good does grumbling and complaining offer and I feel like I'm the chief of this of our home and at my men's group there was a quote that was dropped and I don't know if you're ready for this but it really hit me in the chest is that it said your outer voice will become your kids inner voice I was like oh so that's what we're talking about right now so all the the death that I've been speaking because I'm frustrated about where we are is going to become their inner voice as they begin their lives they may develop hearts that that are bent towards complaining and being chronically unhappy with where they are and so a lot of the reason why I want to do this not only just for us I want to do this for our kids because we don't just parent to our kids we parent through our kids to our grandkids and our great grandkids so there's a lot more at stake than am I complaining or or not it's not just as simple as that there's something far deeper happening and honestly I like who I am better whenever I am in good spirits and so another thing in this is that like like goodness compounds into more goodness and it creates more goodness and more goodness and more goodness but it's the same for the other side of the spectrum which is where whenever bad things are happening or keeping things hidden or whenever we complain about one thing it'll lead us to complain about more and it'll lead us into a mindset where we will just go down these negative top tracks and spiral out of control but again you go back to the other side it can happen in the same in this light and so learning to embrace where you are that doesn't mean you have to stay there that just means that you're not gonna be chronically unhappy where you are and you're gonna learn to find contentment where you are as you grow in different seasons where I don't want to look back I don't want our kids to be just say for example like eight nine ten eleven twelve whatever and I don't want to be like man I really missed it in the early phases because I was always wishing for the next season I was always so grumpy I was always just just I was like anxious because I was stressed out with everything that was going on and I just wanted to live in this life versus living where I currently am and we all start in different places there's places there's so many things Tori and I have that other people are praying for that we're mistreating as burdens and there's things that maybe you have going on in your life that you're allowing to become a burden that other people will consider a blessing well that's literally it's been the enemy's trick for as long as can be is if he can turn your blessings into burdens then he wins and like we always say you have to get competitive with the enemy and not let him win and just it is just as easy to go down a gratitude spiral as it is a negative spiral because when I start pointing out my blessings when I start speaking out all of the things that I'm grateful for I'm like wow there is literally so much to be grateful for why am I sitting here complaining why am I sitting here lacking joy or grumbling and and so I encourage you today like if that has been something that start listing out all of your blessings start listing out get out your journal and write down all the ways God has come through for you because he is the same God yesterday today and tomorrow and so he's not going to just stop being there for you right and I think one thing that I want to try practicing is whenever I say one negative thing I need to say two positive things because it's going to force me to sit down and say okay well I need to counter this and it'll develop habits that lead to good habits and more good habits and more good habits versus allowing just one little kind of off-handed comment just lead me down a path that'll lead me to spiraling and experiencing that discontentment with where I'm at yeah and so and if you are a parent like your children I was reading this in the professional the other day and I just can't stop thinking about it it said that your children will breathe the same spiritual air that you breathe in and out and so we have to live as examples we have to live what we preach we can't just say it we can't just talk about it we actually have to live it so yeah agree is that it agree I think that we have to go yes and love on our little blessings and meet up with Chad's family I think it's a prime example that with us we could get frustrated because we really only get to do our work during nap times it's easy for us to be like oh well of course this is happening we don't able to get everything done or we can say oh wow we prayed to have these children what a blessing they are from the Lord and to our household and I don't want them to to experience our bitterness it just won't lead to anywhere good and so right now we're having to practice just gratitude I'm so thankful that we have a baby here sitting with us and now we do need to pay attention to them yes but yeah I'll wrap up we love you guys and say we'll see you next video if you're looking to get started with BetterHelp go to betterhelp.com slash mastersfam10 I'm really enjoying my experience and so I want to give you guys that but yeah we'll see you in the next video