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For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Kaley Olson:
Hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my co-host, Kendra LeGrand.
Kendra LeGrand:
Oh, Kaley, it's always a treat to be sitting with you.
Kaley Olson:
It's always a LeGrand old time, isn't it?
Kendra LeGrand:
Do you know how many times I say that?
Kaley Olson:
Really?
Kendra LeGrand:
It's true, yeah. It's true. And I need to catch myself or people don't get it.
Kaley Olson:
It's so cheesy.
Kendra LeGrand:
It's a LeGrand time.
Kaley Olson:
Yes. Yes it is. Kendra, what is the best meal that you have eaten recently?
Kendra LeGrand:
Oh, that I've eaten recently?
Kaley Olson:
Yes.
Kendra LeGrand:
OK, so I would say my husband, Will … He likes to fish, and he went to Charleston and caught red fish. And so then he fried it up, and we had fish sandwiches with homemade tartar sauce and then French fries.
Kaley Olson:
That sounds wonderful. Well, I'm from Mississippi, so you can [fry] just about anything and I will eat it. And that sounds wonderful.
Kendra LeGrand:
It was great. It was a delight.
Kaley Olson:
OK, well, I'll be over at your house tonight for dinner. But I'm just kidding. If you want to invite me over, that'd be great. But today, we're going to hear from Nicki. Can you tell our listeners a sneak peek?
Kendra LeGrand:
I would love to. So Nicki Koziarz just wrote a book called Your New Now, and she talks all about how we go through different transitions in life and different seasons. And so we're going to find out what those seasons are and look at the life of Moses. And she has a gift of teaching, so I think you're going to definitely learn something from her.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, I agree. All right, friends, that's enough from us. Let's head into our conversation with Nicki.
All right, friends, we are here with our friend Nicki Koziarz. Welcome to the podcast, Nicki.
Nicki Koziarz:
Hi, Kaley. I'm so excited to be here.
Kaley Olson:
So excited you're here.
Kendra LeGrand:
Nicki, we love getting to hear from you and listen to you. And so, Nicki, you're an author, a speaker, a podcaster — you do all the things. You are a mom, and you have some fun news about your family. It's expanding a little bit, you can say. And so do you want to give a little update to our podcast listeners?
Nicki Koziarz:
I would love to. So at the time this podcast is airing, Lord willing and [with] God's favor upon this, we have been in the process of adopting three boys for the past five years.
Kaley Olson:
Wow.
Nicki Koziarz:
Three of the last years have been specifically with them, but the entire process has been the last five years, and it's been a long [walk of] obedience in the same direction.
But as of this recording, we are picking them up in a week and a half, and hopefully by the time you listen to this, they will be home, and my house will be very loud and lots of … I've heard that little boys tinkle on the floor, so I'm sure I will be dealing with all of that.
Kaley Olson:
Oh my goodness. Well, if you're a mom listening to this and you have boys at home, be sure and slide into Nicki's DMs at … What's your Instagram? @NickiKoziarz?
Nicki Koziarz:
Yeah. Give some advice.
Kaley Olson:
Slide advice to her DMs. Give her all the advice —
Nicki Koziarz:
All the advice … because I've only had girls.
Kaley Olson:
— for hygiene. I know. I have this fear one day too. I have a little boy, and I'm like … Life is just messy. It is. But it's beautiful.
Nicki Koziarz:
I know.
Kaley Olson:
Aw. But, Nicki, I'm just so excited to see God's faithfulness in your life. And even that alone … I feel like that answer to prayer is just hope for someone listening today. So if you're listening and you need a reminder that God sees you in your situation, He does. Just trust His timing.
Nicki Koziarz:
He'll be faithful.
Kaley Olson:
He will. But, Nicki, you are here because in the middle of being a mom and doing all the things and adopting three more boys into your family, you also released a book titled Your New Now, which is such an interesting title by the way. It's kind of a hidden message in the way that you say it. But before we jump into your teaching, I want to give you an opportunity to talk to our listeners about why you wrote the book.
Nicki Koziarz:
Yes. So I really think that in our Christian culture, we're pretty good about looking at our past. There are lots of resources out there to help you learn from your past, see what you need to understand about your past. I always think about the quote, “Your history is not your destiny.” All that kind of stuff. Right. And then I think we're also really good about looking to the future, and so we can be focused on our goals and our dreams, and I'm a big goals-and-dreams kind of person.
But what I think we miss, especially in the midst of seasons of transition in our lives, is the now. And so that's why the book is titled Your New Now — because where you are today actually is the most important part of your process. It's not about where you've been and where you're going. It's about where God has you right here and right now. And so I studied the life of Moses, which we're going to talk about here in a second, and I looked at some different seasons of transition that he went through, and [I hope that can] help people see the transition season that they are in through this message.
Kaley Olson:
Wow. So good. I mean, as we were talking about what we wanted Nicki to come on to talk about today, the idea of skepticism came up. Because hearing something like, “Oh, there's a purpose for you, even whenever you feel stuck …” Sometimes it sounds great, but we're just like, No, I'm skeptical of that. Or we might not say out loud, “I'm skeptical,” but in our hearts we feel like, No. I mean, I'm looking back or I'm looking forward, but today does not feel like it's full of purpose or like God is even working. So I know it's a message we all need to hear. And so I'm excited for you to dive into your teaching.
Nicki Koziarz:
Absolutely. So I think one of the things that leads to having skepticism toward God in our lives is when we arrive in a place in our spiritual life with the Lord, or even in our everyday life, where things don't look like we thought they were going to look.
And so, like I said before, I'm really big on [this:] Let's have dreams, let's have goals, let's have vision. But sometimes life doesn't pan out in the way that we thought it would. And as I was doing some research for the book Your New Now, I came across some research that tells us that in our lifetime, we each go through what are considered these big “life quakes.” And so we can go through between … I think it's like 12-15 different life quakes. And so that's the big things: getting married, getting divorced, having children, moving to a new city, those big transition seasons. But then there are these small life quakes, and I really think this is where the place of being skeptical starts to pop up the most. There are these places where you thought things were going in one direction — you thought it was going to be this way, thought this person was going to be this person in your life forever — but you arrive in this space that … They say every 12 months or so, you experience a small quake, a small transition season.
And so of all the people in the Bible that I think we could turn to in order to learn about transition seasons, specifically seasons that don't look the way that we thought they were going to look, I think there's one character in the Bible who really stands out the most, and his name is Moses. Now, most likely you have heard of Moses at some point in your walk with the Lord. During Easter you see those TV commercials for The Ten Commandments. And we kind of have this dramatic version of Moses in our heads. But one of the things that's incredibly fascinating about Moses is that, other than Jesus, there's no one else in the Scriptures who we could study from birth to death to the extent that we can Moses. There are other people we could study at their very beginning and their very end, but not to the extent that we can with Moses.
And so we don't have the capacity today to go through the entire life of Moses. But what I want you to know, if you're not super familiar with Moses, is that Moses had an assignment on his life, from God, that is one of the heaviest assignments I see in all of Scripture. And the assignment was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, to lead them to a place of freedom. They were being held captive by Pharaoh, and there were horrific things happening. And God handpicked and set apart Moses to do this assignment. And so Moses fought with God. Y'all, I have never seen someone argue so much with God in the Bible as we see with Moses. I mean, he really fought with God. He told God, “I don't want to do this. This isn't what I want in my life” (Exodus 4). And God was very patient but also very firm with him, and He led him through this process.
And so a couple years ago, my husband and I were actually sitting in marriage counseling, and nothing drastic had happened, but we were in a transition season in our life. And things were just feeling like ... You know how you could just be married to someone for 20 years, and you just wake up, and you just don't like the way they eat their cereal?
Kaley Olson:
I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer to that one yet, but give me a couple more years and I might.
Nicki Koziarz:
You could see how that could start to happen, right? And so we were sitting in the counselor's office, and he said, "I think I'm seeing that you guys are going through some big transitions in your life, and one of the things that you need to do is you need to find some common ground with each other."
Now, Chris and I have a small farm, and so that brings a lot of common ground as far as the day-to-day stuff. There's a lot that we have to do together, but some of our hobbies and things like that … We don't really have anything in common. And so my husband is a big runner, and so I decided that I was going to train for a race. Now, y'all know I don't do anything small, right? If we're going to do it, let's do it big. And so I signed up for the [Walt] Disney [World] Half Marathon because I thought, If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it big. And so Chris and I would train — he would go off and run much faster than I could, but we would go to the same park, and it kind of became something that we worked at together, and I could see how it was uniting us. We talked about running … all those things.
And so the day of the half-marathon came, and I don't know, if you're listening to this, if you've ever done a race like this, but you have to get there ridiculously early — 4 a.m., OK? You have to walk a mile from your car to the start line, which is such a situation in itself. And then you get there, and you stand in this line for hours, waiting for them to say "go." And so finally the gun goes off, and everyone starts inching their way out of the corrals, and we start to run and run and run. And I go in, and I get through mile 1, mile 2, mile 3 … then I'm getting up to mile 9. And then all of a sudden, after mile 10, I really started to feel it in my body. And so I realized … I was like, I'm dehydrated.
And so I just started drinking as much as possible, and I'm drinking, drinking, drinking. They hand you these little cups as you're running along the road. And so this was great. It gave me the energy to keep going … until I realized that I needed to go to the bathroom, but there was not time to stop and go to the bathroom if I was going to finish this race on time. Now, I've given birth to three children, and can I tell you that it's a little bit of a problematic situation when you're running, you've drank a lot of water, you have to go to the bathroom, and you sneeze, OK? It was not my finest moment, and I will spare you the details.
But I got to the end of the race, and I was so angry. I was so upset. I was so mad. I just wanted this thing to be over, to be finished. I didn't ever want to think about running ever again. And I got to the finish line, and my husband was at the end, and he was so excited to see me. And I was like, “I don't even care about a medal, anything. Just get me out of here. I want to go to the hotel and get out of these clothes right now.”
Kaley Olson:
Oh, no.
Nicki Koziarz:
And in my head, I had this big idea of what it would mean to finish this race. It was going to be this big celebration. I was going to be so happy, and I'd have this great Instagram post to post about it — but it was a disaster. And sometimes when we are in the midst of transition seasons in our life, it can look a little bit like a disaster.
We get to that finish line, and we're just like, I don't ever want to do this again. I just want to be done with this. I don't want to think about it ever again. It's over. I'm finished. And Moses actually has a moment like this in his life. And we saw Moses go through a lot of different transition seasons, from becoming developed as a child to being a prince in a palace to being a shepherd in a field to becoming separated … where God would call him and sanctify him to cultivate this amazing calling that God had given him. And then we see Moses arrive at the end of his journey. And it's actually one of the saddest parts of the story because in Exodus 17:1-7, we see that God gave Moses a command as he was leading the Israelites into the promised land and they had gotten to this place where they were really thirsty, and they needed a provision from God. And sometimes when we're in the midst of a season that feels really messy, really hard, we become so desperate for a provision from God. And I love how God provided in such a tangible way for Moses as He commanded him to take his staff (which he’d had from the very beginning of his calling), and He commanded him to strike the rock, and water would come forward. And so water comes forward, and the Israelites are so happy, and the animals are able to have everything that they need. And it looks like life is going pretty well for Moses at this point. But then just a few chapters over, we would see that God would give Moses another command in the midst of provision. And this command, when the people needed water again, was not to strike the rock — it was to speak to the rock, and water would come forward.
And Moses, at this point in Numbers 20:1-13, had experienced a lot of grief. In fact, it tells us just a few verses before this that his [sister Miriam] had died, and he was grieving, and he was sad. And I've experienced a lot of grief in my life. I've experienced a lot of loss, and I know that sometimes when I'm experiencing loss, it can really cloud my brain and it can make me feel like, I don't know what's what right now. And so I don't know what Moses' process was behind what he did, but when he got to this point, the Israelites were yelling at him. He felt all this pressure. He was experiencing grief. For whatever reason, he did not speak to the rock as God commanded him — he struck the rock.
Now, God was still faithful to provide the water, so that's grace in the midst of all this. But what that meant in that moment of disobedience for Moses was that he was not going to get to the finish line like he had thought he was. [He was] not going to be allowed to lead the Israelites into the promised land (v. 12). This man who had wrestled with God, who had fought with God, who had conquered Pharaoh, who had stood at the Red Sea … All these incredible things had happened in his life. And he got to this point [that was] kind of how I felt at that finish line.
Are you kidding me?
That was it. That's what this feels like right now.
And so this is a really sad point in Moses' process. And for some of you listening to this right now, it can feel like you're at a really sad point in your transition season where you are finished with something and it didn't end the way that you thought it would end, and it doesn't really look beautiful, and you're kind of angry, and you're really upset, and you feel lonely, and you feel lost.
All of these emotions are very real in the midst of a season like this. But Moses teaches us a really important lesson here — because there is a difference between quitting something and finishing it well, and Moses teaches us that in any season in our lives, with God, we can finish well.
OK, so here's how we see this lived out with Moses. Moses accepted the place where he was going to have to grieve this great loss, but God was so kind to allow him to experience just a glimpse of the goodness that Moses was going to miss out on. So in Deuteronomy 34 … This is the very ending of Moses' story. He went up to Mount Nebo, which is the same place where he received his assignment from God in the fiery bush [out of which God’s voice] spoke to him — what a full circle moment for him to be up there on this mountain. And God was with him, and he was alone, and he knew that the ending of his story was coming. And so God was bringing him up there, and He allowed him to look into the promised land.
And at first when I read this, I was actually talking to our friend Wendy Blight about this because I had some theological questions, and I was like, "I don't know how I feel about this … because it kind of feels like a little bit of a tease.” And so sometimes when we're in seasons of transition and change and finishing things, our perception of what God is doing can become a little bit clouded.
And so it's good to have people like Wendy Blight who I can call up, and I can say, "Hey, this feels a little bit yucky to me, that God would just let him see it [but not go into the land].”
But Wendy showed me — she was like, "Nicki, this is actually God's grace in the midst of this, that he was able to look into the promised land."
And I thought about how, in so many seasons of our lives that we go through where we know that God is calling us to the end of it, we are finished, but maybe we don't see the full outcome, the full promise of what God had planned — but we were still an important part of it. And I believe that one of the reasons why God allowed him to experience this was because Moses didn't quit. He didn't go, "OK, that's it. I messed up. I disobeyed God. It's over." He finished strong. He laid hands on Joshua, who would become the next person to step into line, to allow the people to keep moving forward into the promised land.
He continued to encourage the Israelites with God's promises, even though the Israelites were the most complaining, whining humans ever. [Laughter.] But we would probably all be the same way in the midst of all that. He encouraged them. He kept reminding them of who God was to them. And I thought, Wow, look how far Moses came from the very beginning of his story when he stood next to that bush and literally argued with God, literally told him, “I'm not doing this assignment” … to being at the very end, with God being gracious enough to say, "You disobeyed, but I'm still going to let you see it."
And sometimes when we are in a season of being finished, [there are] a couple things that we need to remember. So I don't know if you guys are super familiar with the old nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty.” Are you familiar with this? OK, so let me just read it first us to refresh our memories. It says, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty back together again." For some reason, this nursery rhyme would not leave my head for the past few months. I couldn’t figure it out. And so I was like, What is this? And then, OK, what is Humpty Dumpty? Let me ask you guys.
Kaley Olson:
Isn't he an egg?
Nicki Koziarz:
An egg. But does it say anything about him being an egg in that nursery rhyme?
Kaley Olson:
No.
Nicki Koziarz:
OK. So I went back and I did some research on where this came from because it bothered me so much. And so I actually found out that this used to be a riddle that kids would say to each other in the 1700s — so way before all this modern stuff that we have right now — and so the riddle was for them to try to guess what Humpty Dumpty was. And the kids ... [To Kaley and Kendra:] You guys both just have light bulbs going off.
Kaley Olson:
But it's like the podcast … and this is the revelation we're getting. Any follow-up questions?
Nicki Koziarz:
So the kids would say “an egg.” And that's kind of how Humpty Dumpty became an egg. The other part of this that doesn't make sense was when it says, “All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty back together again.” Now, I have horses. And so I was like, Why are they saying the horses could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again? There's this trend right now on social media where horse owners go out into the field and they play dead to see what their horses do. And I'm telling you —
Kaley Olson:
Have you have done it?
Nicki Koziarz:
I have not done it. I've sat in the field, but I haven't played dead. I've been a little scared that they will trample me. But the horses are just like, Ugh. Oh, wow, she's dead. That's it. They just walk around. You don't call horses in the midst of a crisis. And so it's a weird play on words, but the overall meaning of this nursery rhyme for us today, in this modern world, as adults looking at this, is that eggs are broken, and they are not meant to be put back together. And there are some things in our lives that are not meant to be put back together. And this feels really hard theologically because we want God to restore and bring back and renew and all those things, and God can do all those things. But just like with Moses, he was not going to go into the promised land, and that was not going to be part of it, but God's grace was still there.
So Humpty Dumpty teaches us that there are some things that are not meant to be put back together again but that God still has good things, even when life feels broken and when it feels like it is finished and it's over. There's still more that God has.
But then the second thing is this: Sometimes when we stop moving, when a movement stops moving, it can become a museum. One of the things that was really fascinating to me was that God actually took Moses' life, it says in the Scriptures, and he buried him in a place where nobody knows even to this day. And so I started doing some research on why God did that. And a lot of theologians believe it's because [the grave of] Moses would have become a museum, almost an idol to the people. [They would] say, "This was Moses. He did all these things." And God was saying, “We're finished. Moses is finished, and now it is time to go forward with Joshua, and he's going to step into this next position, and it's time for us to go.” And so there are times when we don't need to put it back together. There are times when something stops, and there are times where God is saying, "It's finished, and now it's time for you to move forward." And Moses has all of those things and more to teach us today. And so we can be encouraged in knowing that Moses experienced a lot of transition in his life, but he became a man who, even at the very end when it didn't look like what he thought it should look like, he didn't fight God. He didn't argue with God — he just finished well.
Kaley Olson:
Wow. So many takeaways.
Kendra LeGrand:
Nicki, I have a lot that I could ask you, but I know we have a time limit. But I know a lot of your book is about different seasons. And so something I want to talk about is how do you know what season you're in? Because I know you and your team have done a lot of work to help people realize what season they're in.
Kaley Olson:
Did you read my notes? Because that was literally my question.
Kendra LeGrand:
Oh my gosh. I didn't, but I feel great that that was your question too.
Kaley Olson:
Let's dive in.
Kendra LeGrand:
Sorry.
Kaley Olson:
No, that's great.
Nicki Koziarz:
Yeah. So the easiest way for you to figure out which transition season you're in … We actually have an assessment on my website, nickikoziarz.com/freebies. You can go on there, and you can take a little assessment to try to figure out which season of transition you're in based on the book. You can also, in the book, find some questions to ask and a little description of each season. And so I do encourage that as well, to read those and to see which one you seem to be fitting into.
But I will say, so far, no one has taken the quiz and gone, “That's not my season.”
Kaley Olson:
Wow.
Kendra LeGrand:
OK. Look at you.
Nicki Koziarz:
It's pretty spot-on.
Kaley Olson:
Can we have a sneak preview of what the seasons are without taking a quiz?
Nicki Koziarz:
Absolutely.
Kaley Olson:
I think that would be helpful.
Nicki Koziarz:
Absolutely. So the first one is a season of development. The second one is a season of separation. The third is the season of cultivation. And the fourth is a season of finishing.
Kaley Olson:
You know what I really like about that is that before this teaching, I think I might have assumed transition always meant transitioning to an end, but that tells me that's not necessarily true. Certain seasons of transition might be a season of growth, like, internally. And so that's very interesting to me.
OK, my question is: Looking at the life of Moses, we can see that he probably regretted the way he transitioned and made that [mistake with the water and the rock]. Have you had that experience in your life where you've looked back at a season and thought I didn't end that well or I didn't transition in that moment well, and what was that like?
Nicki Koziarz:
Wow, girl, you're making me go deep real quick here.
Kaley Olson:
OK. Yeah. Here we go.
Nicki Koziarz:
Here we go. I would say yes, and I'll be very vulnerable. And this is not something that I'm super proud of, but it probably has to do with my parenting. So in all of my girls … I became a mom at 19, which is a really hard season of your life to become a mom because you're not fully grown up yourself. And so with my oldest daughter, Taylor, we basically grew up together. And so there came a point, though, as a mom, where I realized I was not letting them transition from season to season well, and so there were some struggles that I had as a mom personally, and one of the most beneficial things that I did was I actually went to counseling just for my mothering.
I had a wonderful mom, but she had her struggles. And a lot of times — and we see this with Moses — we can take things from our childhood, and they can play out today. But one of the greatest places of development is recognizing when something isn't good and it isn't healthy, and you're not seeing the results that you want to see, and going to someone and say, "Help me understand what I'm doing wrong." And it's not even necessarily that you're doing it wrong. You just need a different perspective. And so I would say that's definitely been one area where haven't always, more than always, done it super well. But I would tell you that I think all of my girls would tell you today that I've developed a lot as a mom from those really hard places that we walked through.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah. I just think it's so interesting that even we can look at the life of Moses and see moments of his vulnerability and when he didn't transition well, and they would be embarrassing for him, but we get to learn from Moses.
I think that's so much of our story as well. Because I'm a mom, and, Kendra, you're about to enter into that mother season soon. Sometimes it's terrifying to think through like, Oh, I'm going to mess this up. But then looking at how God graciously helped Moses through that … He intentionally used Moses' mistakes to point back to God. He can do the same in our lives. And so we don't have to be afraid of the mistakes that we'll make in the transition, but even being vulnerable enough to admit that we made them can help others.
Kendra LeGrand:
It gives purpose.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah. Yeah. It gives purpose in the way that we feel — going back to your book, [Nicki] — stuck where we are and how we handle those transitions well.
Nicki Koziarz:
This was amazing. Can we sit here forever?
Kendra LeGrand:
Aw, Nicki.
Kaley Olson:
I would say we could sit here forever, but you've got three boys coming your way to get ready for too soon. I'm sure that they don't want to sit in a podcast studio. So let's wrap it up here. Thank you again for coming on the show! It's always a treat to have you on, Nicki, and I want to be sure our listeners can get their hands on your book, or maybe get one for a friend who's walking through a season of transition as well, and connect with you to hear from you more regularly. So first, grab a copy of Nicki's book Your New Now using the link in our show notes. And next, connect with Nikki on her website at nickikoziarz.com to see where she's speaking. Check out her blog, listen to her podcast, and get that freebie … the download … or it's not a download — it's a quiz.
Nicki Koziarz:
Assessment.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah. I'm going to get it right at one point! But that's on your website as well.
Kendra LeGrand:
Yeah. There's a lot of good things on Nicki's website, and we want to remind you about the ongoing opportunity we have at Proverbs 31 Ministries for you to give back to the work God is doing here through resources like this podcast or Online Bible Studies and more. We have a program that was created just pretty recently called Circle 31, and it's what we call our monthly partners. And this is a group of women and men from all over the world who each month, through their giving, make ministry possible at Proverbs 31 through our ministries. And we love them. We love all that they are and all that they mean to us. And so if you want to be a part of it, we actually have a website — circle31.org — where you can learn more about this program. So that's something that you can do if that interests you.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, guys, we equip you with free biblical resources like this podcast and additional content in the show notes all because at Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything. We'll see you next time.