Sometimes you just need a reminder that everyone else is trying to figure things out — just like you! That’s where Circle 31 Podcast comes in. Here you’ll be both challenged and encouraged by women who are eager to make real progress alongside each other.
Join Ellen and Kendra, your book club hosts (and friends!), as they chat with authors and other experts about topics that spark curiosity and help us grow in our faith. Think of this podcast as a book club on the go — perfect for your commute or while you work at your desk. Remember, good things happen when we grow, and there’s so much good waiting for us as we read together, learn from one another, and chat about the current book club pick. Let’s get started.
Note: Please note that the text below is an uncorrected transcript of the audio captured for this podcast. We pray the Lord uses these words to bless you as you seek Him!
Kendra LeGrand: All right, welcome to the podcast for girls who love to read and aren’t afraid to tackle the hard stuff. We're having conversations that matter. I'm your host Kendra and I'm with my friend and my co-host Ellen.
Ellen Adkins: Kendra, hi.
Kendra LeGrand: Hi. All right, and so there's a few questions I want to ask you, Ellen.
Ellen Adkins: Oh, I can't wait.
Kendra LeGrand: And for those of you listening, definitely answer as well. You can answer in your head or if you're in the car with somebody, you can answer out loud. But what are you absolutely loving this week? Like, what are you saying … like, there's something that you are just kind of obsessed with?
Ellen Adkins: Okay, I'll tell you, this is an easy one for me. Okay. All right. So it's February. Yes. I have been planting my sweet peas in the garden. It is sweet peas season. If you are in, I think we're in zone 7B here in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Kendra LeGrand: Literally, Ellen, I have no idea what that means.
Ellen Adkins: It's just like an agricultural zone that tells you when to plant things. And so now is the time to be planting your sweet peas if you live in the Charlotte area.
Kendra LeGrand: Okay, something you should know about Ellen, because I just feel like they should know this since we're becoming friends with those listening is she has so many hobbies. You're good at so much.
Ellen Adkins: Thank you, Kendra.
Kendra LeGrand: And she is, she plants her own garden.
Ellen Adkins: I do.
Kendra LeGrand: And she also, you can hire her to come over and she can kind of look at your yard and show you where to plant certain things or maybe how to like reorganize your yard.
Ellen Adkins: I install raised beds.
Kendra LeGrand: The producer, is freaking out in the best way. She might need Ellen's help.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, I installed raised beds, raised beds. Yes.
Kendra LeGrand: Jana, you feel good about that?
Jana Haley: I was wondering what this person was called. Like I was…
Ellen Adkins: It's just a garden consultant.
Jana Haley: Well, gosh darn.
Kendra LeGrand: Yeah, you need a garden consultant.
Jana Haley: Ellen.
Kendra LeGrand: Yeah, and she's right here. Yeah, in zone 7B everybody. So find the zone.
Ellen Adkins: We'll chat later.
Kendra LeGrand: And then Ellen, okay, if you could bring one thing to book club like snack wise, because you know, your neighborhood book clubs … You look at your yard and you're like bringing snacks to show the group. What snack are you bringing?
Ellen Adkins: I feel like buffalo chicken dip is a big crowd pleaser. It is. Delicious.
Kendra LeGrand: It's absolutely delicious. Yeah, I'm bringing just warm chocolate chip cookies. Do you have a good recipe? I just can say probably bake, break and bake. Break and bake.
Ellen Adkins: We love it.
Kendra LeGrand: We do love it. All right. So now we're going to get into our book talk. The reason why we're all here this week is that in part three of Relaxed, Megan, the author, goes into depth on six areas that she has struggled submitting to God. And she breaks them down practically. The six areas are grief, trials, risk, friendship, money and mistakes. And there's some really good stuff in each chapter. But I do want to really call out the word “submit” can sometimes have a negative connotation with it.
Ellen Adkins: It's touchy. It's a touchy one. It is touchy.
Kendra LeGrand: Sometimes I need to like rethink about it in like, like words like surrendering, acknowledging, like giving up, like just different words to kind of help me because sometimes I can get kind of stuck on the word submit. So I just want to call that out. And then in chapter six, Megan writes, “God moves when we talk about it.” And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about it.
And so we don't have time to talk about each of the six areas that Megan writes about. So Ellen and I both pulled out one of the areas. And so Ellen, I'm going to let you share yours first and then I'll wrap us on up.
Ellen Adkins: Okay. So as I was looking through this list, the thing that really stuck out to me was trials. Because I feel like I have a context of how to handle when like really big trials happen in life.
Kendra LeGrand: Yes, because you know, big things are going to happen. We are just wired to know.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, like, you know, death in the family or just tragic things that come into our lives, I feel like I have an idea of, okay, what does it look like to go to God with this? Because they're so big. It's like, what else would I do other than go to God with this? But I can really struggle with like seemingly small trials. So things like, okay, I'm on the third vet visit this month, and my kitchen sink is backing up and my air conditioning went out and I had to buy a whole new AC system. And those things feel so small and inconsequential. Yes, it's a big word.
Kendra LeGrand: That is, I can't even say inconsequential.
Ellen Adkins: Inconsequential. Am I saying that right? I think so. Our producer is nodding at us. So I think I got it. But no, they can feel like small things. And so it can be hard for me to know like, what does it look like to actually go to God with these things as well? Because those things do add up. And when those things are happening, I'm feeling all kinds of ways.
Kendra LeGrand: And I feel like little trials happen way more than big trials. Yeah, because little trials, those little day missteps or like misunderstandings or just like little things like that that do happen.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, well, I recently went through a season where it felt like just these things were happening all the time, nothing major, but just these little things. And I felt like that made me spiral and like doubt God's goodness more than the big trials ever did. And so yeah, I think that for me, it's definitely —
Kendra LeGrand: — because when we talked about it, you said it's this is such an easy thing for God to not let happen.
Ellen Adkins: Yes, it feels like why did this have to happen? It could have just as easily not happened.
Kendra LeGrand: Right. Okay, so with trials, what have you found to help you practically to, I don't know, walk through them in a way that is honoring?
Ellen Adkins: Honestly, this book has legitimately helped me with this.
Kendra LeGrand: Okay, so read Relaxed.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, read Relaxed. Step one. But specifically just the idea if you have been reading Relaxed, do you know that everything ends with going to God? Go to God. And it seems so simple. But for me, I've been making an intentional practice about going to God in honesty. I can be reluctant to tell God when I am feeling certain things that feel small or maybe not that important because it feels like he has so many other things to care about. Why should I? Why should I bring this to him? Or I can feel like, Oh, somebody has it worse. Or you know, how it goes. But the reality is that there's no virtue in not being honest with God because he knows everything anyways. And so I have been going to God in honesty to tell him when I'm thinking of these things in a practical way that I've been doing this.
Kendra LeGrand: Yes, which I love. I'm happy to have a share of this.
Ellen Adkins: Even more practical. I was telling Kendra, I have started on my way to work every day — I have about a 10-15 minute commute — setting that time aside to pray and just like telling God exactly what I'm thinking and like truly casting my cares and anxieties on him. And it has made such a difference and lightens my day. And I feel like I'm not carrying those trials into my day with me.
Kendra LeGrand: And Megan might have already shared this or she's gonna share this in her book, but she uses the coffee pot, like pressing the on button on her coffee pot, as a way to talk to the Lord or like reset set up her day for the trigger. It's a trigger. And so I love that you're using your time in the car. First, you're using it very wisely. I'm usually just jamming out.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, well, sometimes that's okay.
Kendra LeGrand: Yeah, true. But I like that you're using something very practical that you're doing every day to just remind you to go to God in honesty. So that's great. Okay, let me tell you about the area that I picked. Drumroll please.
Ellen Adkins: I can't wait.
Kendra LeGrand: I'm talking about friendship. Okay, because I love friends and I love people.
Ellen Adkins: You're such a good friend too.
Kendra LeGrand: Well, thank you. That's really nice. But there's two things, two big takeaways that I had. Number one, I like that she just straight out of the gate talks about how making friends as an adult is much harder than as a child. Like, remember when you would just go to school and somebody would be sitting beside you with like a cupcake and you'd be like, “I also like a cupcake.” And then you just become friends, right? Like you could just … it was pretty common. Yeah. And so I like that she calls out that making friends as adults is really hard. And she talks about one thing that you can do to make it a little easier, but it can be uncomfortable is sometimes you just need to initiate. Yeah, yeah, like I need to be the one to like text somebody or I need to be the one to invite someone out to coffee, which is fine. But sometimes you want to be initiated with, you know?
And so that was a big takeaway for me. Recently, I had this situation where I felt like I was like really trying with somebody. I couldn't figure out why we were just like missing the boat on each other. And like just like, we were just not jiving. And that's okay. Sometimes you're not supposed to be friends with everybody. And finally, I sat down with a with a good friend of mine. And she was like, “Some people are not your people. And so don't focus too much attention on that. Actually shift your focus to those people that initiate with you just as much as you initiate with them or that fill you up instead of like leaving you to question like your goodness as a friend.” And so that was very, very helpful. But it all came to a head as I was reading this chapter about friendship.
So that's the first thing. And you told me something very helpful.
Ellen Adkins: What did I tell you?
Kendra LeGrand: I'm going to get it wrong. So hopefully you get it.
Ellen Adkins: Oh, I know what friends are. Do you want me to tell you? Yeah. Okay, so some people you have are friends for a reason, friends for a season, and then friends for life. So some friends, you are friends with because there's a specific reason. Maybe your kids are in school together, there's like a reason why you're together. Some people you're friends for a season. So maybe you're walking through something very similar. Then you have those friends that are friends for life.
Kendra LeGrand: Yeah, and then you have some people that you're not supposed to be friends with.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, they're just acquaintances.
Kendra LeGrand: And that's fine. And friends of — yeah, acquaintances. That's right. Okay, so that was my first takeaway. My second takeaway was the part that Megan talked about how she like gathered women together in different seasons of life, different backgrounds, she's had a very diverse group of friends.
And I think they got together right before COVID happened, which was very timely. And it was very convicting for me because if you were to look at my Facebook, or my Instagram, you would just see a lot of friends that look like me. And it was just convicting of like, I haven't really put myself into position to have friends that are diverse, that think differently than me and all of these other things.
So that was convicting. And it's something that I want to try to get better at because we say something around here: good things happen when you grow. And I think this is an area of growth, even though growth can be hard, you know, growth can be tough. But so are we.
Ellen Adkins: So are you Kendra.
Kendra LeGrand: Thank you. And so a practical way that I'm trying to learn to submit my friendships is to pray about them, pray about the people that are supposed to be in my life, pray about the people maybe that I'm not supposed to really spend a lot of time with or like take up a lot of time. And Megan says this, she says, a dream of friendship that is submitted to God's ways takes time and patience and sacrifice from everyone involved. The good news is he has already made the greatest sacrifice to call us his friends. And so I love that no matter what, we do have an ultimate friend.
Ellen Adkins: That's so good, Kendra.
Kendra LeGrand: All right, so Ellen, as you know, at the end, we always do a Go to God activity. And so why don't you go ahead and lead us through the Go to God activity called “asking why.” It’s at the end of … do you know what chapter, what page?
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, it's on page 118, the section called “asking why.” And as I'm reading this, there might be moments where you can kind of fill in the blank and just think about it in your head, what you might fill in these blanks with.
Why is this happening to me? Has that thought ever crossed your mind? Today, we're going to go to God with our frustrations.
I invite you to make your trials personal with him. God, why is blank happening to me? Again, you can just fill in whatever you might be thinking about. How do you feel when you phrase it to him in that way? I want you to sit with the question for a little while. Don't look away. Look at him. Maybe there's nothing that's coming to your mind right now, but know that God cares for you, that he understands and he knows what's happening to you and he sees you. So take a deep breath. And even if you don't have the answer, know that you have him.
Kendra LeGrand: One of my favorite things that Megan does, and I've probably said this multiple times, but I love that she normalizes our questions to God and the fact that she has an activity of allowing us to ask why, when sometimes, especially if we've been Christians for a long time, we can be like, I should know the answer or I should just let it be. But we can actually be honest, kind of what you were talking about earlier. So some of these topics can be heavy, but that's one of the reasons this podcast was started. It was started to tackle hard issues bravely. And we hope that that's what these conversations are doing, making us a little more brave, which is growth. And we talked about that. Good things happen when you grow. And good things are happening here.
Listen, don't forget to tune in next week. Megan, the author, is back with us again to close out our last episode for our February pick, Relaxed. And for all the helpful links or for anything that you might need information about, you can find it in the show notes. Bye, everybody. Bye.