Okay, ladies. I don't know where this is gonna go today because I was up until 1AM preparing for today's episode. And here's my big opener. Are you ready? It's kinda weird, but I'm just gonna say it.

And it is, I miss my old life. I love my life now, but I really do miss my old life. And I know how that sounds. I have this platform, and I have amazing community both online and in person, and I'm grateful. I really am.

And if you've been following along in this series, you've been tracking what has happened to me in becoming Christy Faith in the second part of my life, having this really big job. But sometimes I lie in bed, and I grieve the woman that I used to be. The one before I received the calling of being Christy Faith. The one who didn't belong to anybody but her family, the one who could just have an opinion without thousands of people weighing in on whether I was right or wrong. And sometimes I regret that one night where I hit that red post button on a video on Tik Tok that I barely even remember making.

And the next day, I woke up to a completely different life. It literally was overnight. And I know a lot of people, like, they'll have a video pop and a lot for a lot of people that happens in the beginning, but this was different because God was truly moving in not just my life, but everyone around me in their lives in what was to be this Christi faith calling. I went from being a stay at home mom that had plenty of free time to working more than full time hours immediately. And I have made a lot of mistakes.

I have fumbled my way through this, but I will say that I have tried to be obedient to this calling. But I do need to be real too. That obedience doesn't always make a person happier. Success doesn't make a person happier. Sometimes it just makes life harder and more complicated.

And being this gal that you know when you listen to my podcast and all of the things, and I love all of that, I also really want you to know just as my parasocial friend that it's cost us. It's cost our family and not just a little bit. Here's what no one talks about. When God transforms you into something new, the old version of yourself kinda has to die, and that death, even though it's a necessary death, and in my case, it's a good death, it still requires grief. And I didn't give myself that permission.

I'll get into that a little bit later. But I'm so curious, and let me know in the comments, have you been in this position too? I remember being in this position once before when I first started having kids, and I had four kids, five and under, where you know that you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing, but you're still mourning what it cost you. If you've ever felt guilty for grieving a life that had to end so a new one could begin, that's what the show is about. I'm Christy Faith, author of Homeschool Rising, your host of this show, the Christy Faith Show podcast, and you're still very much figuring it out with you, homeschool mom of four kids.

I'm an educational expert with over twenty years of experience, and I make this podcast so we can talk about big transformative ideas. This is episode 96, part five of my behind the screen series. And today, we're gonna be talking about a different kind of grief, one that kinda makes me uncomfortable to talk about because I almost don't categorize it as real grief. I'm even uncomfortable using that word grief. But my therapist would say, no.

That is the right word, Christy, and you do need to feel this because you had a whole life that died before this. So in honoring her and that, and also myself and my growth journey, we are gonna use that word, and it is all about what happened the before and after becoming Christy Faith. It was a really hard transition, and it happened very fast. And I wanna be clear here. I am not ungrateful.

I need you to hear that. This episode is not about ingratitude, but this is kind of a huge piece of my life, the last four years trying to figure out how to do this, who I am. I have to navigate my entire world completely differently than I did before. And it's been a learning curve, and I've made a lot of mistakes. So no.

Again, this is not ingratitude, but it's something worth talking about because I think everybody has seasons where they have to say goodbye to an old self and hello to a new self, and it's a big transition. And figuring out how to navigate it is something worth talking about. Sometimes the thing that you're called to costs you the life that you actually wanted. And I know that sounds confusing because it's not supposed to feel like a loss. It's supposed to feel like a blessing.

Right? When something great happens to you, like you start having a family, the ideas I wanna hold today are what if it's both? What if you can be exactly where you're supposed to be right now and still grieve what you left behind? I don't think we talk about this because it sounds ungrateful or dramatic or like a first world problem. But you know what?

Here's what I learned. Grief doesn't care if your situation looks good on paper. Grief shows up when something dies, even when what died needed to die, and even if that new thing is better. This happens a lot with moms when they begin homeschooling, and I tell moms this all of the time. Your friendship landscape will change.

You will have friends that will not be able to handle your decision to homeschool. So be prepared for it. It's kinda like a storming phase. And I always reassure moms, don't worry, your friends are on the other side. You just gotta wait.

So if you're in a season of transition, becoming someone new, outgrowing old versions of yourself, watching relationships shift because you're not who you used to be, this episode is for you. Maybe your kids are growing up and they're suddenly not needing you in the same way. Or you have a marriage that has shifted, maybe a friendship that ended, or a faith that deconstructed and had to be rebuilt. Or maybe, like me, something happened to you that you didn't ask for. A calling, a redirection, a door that opened and just wouldn't close, and you felt shoved through the door.

These are all rebirths, and rebirths are beautiful, but they require a death that comes first. The old life that you can't go back to, the friendships that couldn't survive the new you, the more mature you, the strange loneliness of being in a room full of people who only know the after version. Now that one was really weird for me. If you've been there or you're there now, let's have an existential crisis together today and see where this goes. But don't worry, I do have a plan.

Let's go. Alright. Before I take you into this story, I need to tell you about something because if you're in a season right now where everything feels like it costs too much, time, energy, money, this might help you. Six years ago, our family of six was paying $2,000 a month for health insurance. $2,000.

And we still had co pays and hoops to jump through every single time we went to the doctor. But then we switched to health sharing, and now we're on Summit HealthShare. We save over $1,000 a month. That's $12,000 a year back into our budget. And we've never gotten a denial, not once in six years.

No surprises at all. We choose our own doctors, even holistic. Yes. You heard that right. Yeah.

I know you're like, wait. Wait. Wait. What, Christy? Yes.

Even holistic. We get free prescriptions, free labs, we have no in network, out of network nonsense. So if you are paying for health insurance in any capacity, give yourself the next three minutes. Go to summithealthshare.com and use their savings calculator. It takes hardly any time at all, and you will be able to see how much you can save.

And then when you're blown away by that number, which everyone is, you're gonna give them a call and you'll be delighted to hear that real people answer the phone. I saw on social media last week that a person said they spent an hour on the phone with me even though they knew that we weren't ready to commit. What a high compliment for a company, especially nowadays when it's always AI bots answering phones. So, yes, they are super nice. Bring all of your questions, all of your concerns.

I know what they are already. They tell me they get them every single day about preexisting conditions and certain prescription medications, all of it. Bring it to them, and they'll let you know if it's a fit or not. But your family deserves better, and you're probably overpaying. They believe that your family deserves affordable health care, and this is how you get it.

Okay. So let's talk about the topic of the show, and it's kind of the story of becoming Christy Faith and what it has cost us and what this kinda has been like. Because it's a huge elephant in the room that most people who are in my inner circles, they help me deal with this every single day. I had to go to therapy in the beginning because I didn't know how to deal with the life that I all of a sudden had. So we're gonna start with me taking you back to an October four years ago.

It must be four years ago now. Not five, I don't think. I think it's four years ago. I was on TikTok, and I got really annoyed. Actually, I was pissed.

I kept seeing bad advice floating around homeschool land, stuff that contradicted seventy years of research on child development, people spreading false beliefs about learning disabilities, ignoring the science of reading, and the ones giving a lot of this advice were not qualified to be giving it. And I really got frustrated when these people were going viral and no shade to them. I mean, good for them on that. But just because someone posts stuff on the internet doesn't mean they're an expert in their field. And that's when I realized something that got under my skin.

So not only that bad advising, but I also noticed on social media that a lot of people in the homeschool space spend a lot of time playing defense. Okay. So here's what I mean by that. Like, lot of people are like, oh, no. No.

They get defensive. Don't worry. My kid is being socialized. We go to co op. We're in this club.

We're in sports. We're in that. Or or they'll defend themselves by, oh, no. No. No.

We're giving our kids a good education. We give them tests. We make sure they're on par with the state standards. I felt like people spent a lot of time not only explaining themselves, but also explaining and justifying how we're just like them, which really didn't make sense to me. But I felt it too.

I did and I do really honestly often feel backed up against a wall where I'm forced to have to defend myself. But I actually stopped defending myself, which I'll get to in just a second here. But I remember thinking, wait, why are we the ones defending ourselves? Statistically, the public school system should be defending itself. The psychological damage, the emotional toll, the horrible academic outcomes.

If anyone should be explaining their choices, it's the parents who put their kids in that system, not us. And we have so much data that proves that homeschooling is a healthy choice for families. So why are we the ones constantly playing defense? Who's gonna play offense? Who's gonna start taking shots back?

Well, unfortunately, one day, was talking to Scott about this frustration, ranting probably. And he looks at me and he says, you. You, Christy. You're the one that's gonna do it. And I was like, oh, no.

But he was really sweet. He goes, no, really. You need to be playing offense, and I'd love to see them try to go up against you, which oh my goodness. He is such a sweet husband. He's always rooting me on.

He is my biggest cheerleader. By the way, we just had our twenty sixth wedding anniversary. Yay. We still need to go out to dinner. We had a co op party that day, so we'll go out to dinner this weekend.

Okay. So the time, there weren't really a lot of homeschoolers on TikTok. There was just a handful of us. Really cool ladies, actually. Of course, there were always a lot of homeschoolers on Instagram and on Facebook.

I wasn't on those platforms much at the time, but TikTok was really cool back then because it was the wild west, and it is where they honored thought leaders. They don't anymore. Now it's kind of home shopping network where every third video is someone trying to sell you something, but it wasn't always like that. Back then, people earned their viral videos. If they were presenting a really great idea in a really cool new way, it popped.

So going back to that day where I hit the red post button, I made this dumb voice over video. It was something silly like, you know, claiming that we can give our kids a better education in the public school in half the time. It was snarky, it was direct, and it was taking a shot. And I had fun making it, actually. And I was like, I don't know.

How bad could this be? I'm just gonna hit the red post button, and I did. And that's when everything changed. Like I said before, I woke up to a totally viral video, not knowing what to do with my life. All of a sudden, like, a voice from heaven saying, this is your new calling.

This is what you are doing for the second half of your professional life. Yeah. So that video did blow up, and then videos kept blowing up, and blowing up, and blowing up after after after after. So it wasn't just one. And so when this was happening, of course, we had lots of family conversations.

I brought this to some of my closest friends. I remember sitting with Jesse. Our girls were in gymnastics at the time. If you guys know me, you know that Jesse is one of my closest friends. And I showed her some of these videos that were popping, and she goes, Christy, you were made for this.

And I kind of was like, God's really speaking to me, and I I don't know. This is gonna this is gonna change everything. And we just kinda had a deep conversation about it while we were watching our girl. It was like a balcony, and we were watching our girls do their gymnastics class down below. But my point is, and why I'm saying this, is everyone around me really was unanimous with what I felt like God's impression was on my heart for this calling.

So it was just confirmation after confirmation. Things like you were made for this, or you're supposed to be doing this, or this is so clear that this is God's plan for your next chapter, Christy. And I felt it too. This strange, ominous, just knowing. Not knowing how to do it, how to get there, what was next, but this knowing that this was where I was supposed to be, and this is what I was supposed to be doing.

And let me just be clear on, like, as I look back now four years later, that impression that I got was this. Okay? We had already ran and we had sold our previous company, which was the educational learning center and consulting firm. We were kinda out of that business. And I was a stay at home mom.

We had moved to Colorado. We were involved in co ops and all of the things, just living our best life. And I thought my career, like, my professional career was over. And I was actually asking God, like, what's next for me? How can you use my talents?

And I was open to quite a few things at the time. Of course, I've always been passionate about homeschooling. But when this happened, it was very, very clear from the Lord that he's like, hey, Christy, just so you know, that whole past career that you had, all that teaching, all that training, all that advising of parents, all those thousands of IEPs that you read, all those administrator meetings, meetings with child psychologists, helping kids with their diagnosis, all of that, that was actually preparing you for what I have for you next. That was what I was experiencing in that moment, and I'm standing there like, oh crap, this feels big. Because my vision of the next chapter was like, you know, a little volunteering at the church here and there.

What ministries was I going to be a part of? I knew that I God had gifted me with teaching. So Lord, how are you gonna use that? Am I gonna lead a women's bible study maybe? Not this.

I was kinda happy in the current chapter that I was in and curious about how God was gonna use me, but I didn't have this in mind. See, a lot of people, they want to be a content creator or even an author. They write a book and they get a agent and the agent shops the book around and the transcript around and and they try to get a book deal. That is not how anything happened for me. A publisher came to me nine months in.

I didn't even have a book at the time. And so things just started to hit and go well, and I was asked to be on big podcasts, and I was offered a book deal, and my videos just keep going viral. Okay. So that's not what I wanna talk about today. But what I do wanna talk about and the reason why I mentioned, like, the success after success after success, meaning the doors just keep opening, and I just keep I felt like I was just being pushed through more open doors.

But what I really wanna talk about is what happens in your personal friend landscape when things start to go really well in your life. So we're gonna take a little left turn here, but don't worry. I'll bring it all full circle. Because here's something that nobody talks about when it comes to success. Right?

So everyone talks about finding out who your real friends are. Right? During hard times, who comes around you and who helps you? Who's there for you when you're struggling and when you need help? But I actually disagree that that's when you find your real friends.

And this makes me sad, but it really is true. Prove me wrong. Because I think people find out who their real friends are when their life starts going really well. Because that green monster is a beast. You see, sympathy lets them feel good about themselves.

They get to be the helper, the supporter, the strong one. But jealousy, that's a mirror, and not everyone wants to look. I lost friendships I thought would last forever, and not because of some big falling out. Things just kinda faded with some people. They just pulled away.

They stopped reaching out. And I could surmise till for hours and hours as to why that happened, but I'd also be lying if I said that I didn't think some of it didn't come from envy. Because some people need you to stay where you are. They need you to stay small, and not because they're bad people necessarily. They might struggle with something, but because your growth makes them uncomfortable with their own life.

And when you change and when you grow and when you become someone they didn't expect, they don't know what to do with you anymore. And so experiencing success in that way can be really lonely, and it was for me. And I think there is an element of it where it always is somewhat lonely, especially for someone like me because I have such a unique voice in my space, and I'm not here to please anybody. I'm here to please one person. And a lot of people don't know what to do with me, and they're uncomfortable with that because I'm not gonna fit in any box.

So I am a bit of a lone ranger, but that's kind of the point. That's why I came here. And some people get that, and some people don't. And you just have to kinda let the chips fall and in a way, sit back and observe your life and the people around you and their behaviors. And I don't wanna say read the tea leaves, but in a little bit of a way, of just figure things out and figure out how to navigate forward.

You see, I'm never gonna play along with the patriarchy. I challenge authoritarian parenting, and I call out toxic culty cultures. And I think in a way I scare some people. Do I scare you? I hope not, but I am gonna call out some stuff.

And I do think that scares some people because I'm battle tested, and I'll see it. And the other thing about becoming Christi Faith, and this was a massive challenge, I spent a lot of hours in therapy trying to navigate this next thing I'm about to talk about, and that was making new friends. Whenever I met new people, like at a church or something like that, they eventually would find my socials. And then they would almost always binge. Sometimes they told me they would binge.

Sometimes I would hear that someone was binging my stuff, or sometimes they would just come and say, Christy, I just binged all your stuff. And let's be honest, I got some opinions about government schooling that make some people who haven't thought through those things pretty uncomfortable. And there was a time where I almost became a hermit. I just only felt safe around my family and Scott and our little bubble. And something that saved me was my before people.

So if you're looking for nuggets of wisdom in my rambling today, this is gonna be one of them is something that really really saved me was my true blue before people. People that had been friends with me for many, many years. I'm talking I had one friend Katie who I reached out to. We were bridesmaids in each other's wedding. And I called her up out of the blue and I said, this happened to me, girl.

And I'm lonely. And she was just there for me. I wanna cry. And then I remember one time we went to Texas and Melissa, I hope you're listening because you just Voxer to me this past week and updated me on all your cutie pie babies that you're having. And I remember I was just in a crisis moment.

I was a little bit new to all this. I had traveled to Texas for something I can't remember. And I just sat in her living room, and I was just I don't know if maybe I was needy or what, but I just said, this happened to me. And you know who I am and you know my character, and this is so hard. And I'm trying to figure out how to handle the trolls and navigate this new space and making new friends and figuring out that they're backstabbers and out all this kind of stuff.

And I found so much comfort in people who knew the before Christy because that is still me. That is still my character. That's still who I am. And then I have kind of this new job and this new persona, but it I don't really, it's still me, but it's like definitely a public version and it was just very, very weird to navigate. And so if anyone is struggling with this and you have some before people, even if you haven't talked to them in a couple of years, I encourage you to reach out to them because they were really my anchor during that time when I was just in very wild waters.

And I've had to learn that not everyone can come with you when you have this major life change. Some relationships do have an expiration date. I think that's normal for everybody even when you don't have a rebirth in your life. Some friends are just there for seasons, and that's not a failure. That is just life.

But I do think there can be events that, like, speed along the attrition of relationships, and having a rebirth is one of those times. Okay. So there I was being called into something that I didn't ask for, knowing my life would never be the same, and I had no idea what it was about to cost me. Stay with me after the break. We will get in a little bit deeper with all of this.

Please listen to the sponsors. They make this show free to you. See you on the other side. As a homeschool mom who values a family together approach and leans towards the classical and Charlotte Mason styles, I often struggle to bring my educational vision to life with my kids' diverse ages and learning needs. With all our interests and super packed schedule, bridging that gap between the dreamy homeschool I want and reality, I gotta be honest.

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Visit ctcmath.com to start your free trial today or click the link in the show notes. Okay. So welcome back. We're gonna get into some of the weird stuff. Okay.

So can I tell you something that's still a little bit strange to talk about? And that is like parasocial relationships. I had never had those before, and now I have a lot of them. You listening right now, if you're not in Thrive and you don't know me, this is a parasocial relationship. And my effort is to get that as close as possible, but it's still we don't know each other in person.

Right? So before all this, I was a stay at home mom. And I'd occasionally wonder, and we all wonder this, like, are people talking about me? And we know that gossip happens, but it's kind of not all the time that you hear about it or that it hurts you or that it bothers you. But what's crazy about making content on social media is you don't wonder anymore.

You know, and it is all up in your face. It's in your comments every day, people that you've never even met. Everyone has strong opinions about who I am, what I believe, what I said, how I'm raising my kids, you name it. And here's the part that messes with your head. People have really strong opinions, and they feel like they know you.

And in a way, they do, but they know the pieces of me that I put on social media, which is really, really challenging because I talked about in a previous episode of this series that we're really locked in by the rules of the algorithms where like, how can we really show our true selves in fifteen or thirty seconds? It's one of the reasons why I'm doing this series, why I started the podcast, is because I wanted more than that. So my hope is that social media is how you find out about me, but the podcast is where we start to learn and grow together. But I had to have a crash course in handling trolls and mean people on the Internet. I remember one time I was filming something, and my daughter wanted to be in the video.

And if you know us, we don't show our daughter's faces yet on social media. But she wanted to be in the video, and so what we did is she sat on my lap and her face was going in the other direction while I filmed the video. And she was thrilled. She was so excited to be in a social media video. And I crack up to this day because a commenter came on to that video, and I was talking about something educational philosophy or pedagogy or something like that.

And this person, I forget the exact comment because I didn't save it, and there something along the lines of, this is what they said, horrible mother filming content when your daughter needs you. And that one was something. That was like, wow. This says a lot more about you than it does about me. Like, talk about not knowing anything about anybody and making a highly judgmental comment about a video that was probably only thirty seconds long.

Not knowing at all. And then there was another time I filmed a video. And if you guys know that I'm not against wine and every once in a while, I'll enjoy a glass of wine. Although I will say perimenopause is kicking my butt, so I'm drinking less and less glasses of wine with dinner. I was filming and I had a glass of wine in my hand when I was filming.

And I think if I recall correctly, it was kind of part of the trend and I thought it was funny. But a commenter implied that I had a drinking problem. They said something like, you can't even put your wine down to film a video. It was just something like that. And, that one was funny because my sister, and she never does this, she got so mad that she went in and defended me in the comment section.

Normally, she doesn't do that. But anyway, that was really sweet of her. And I will say it's not just my sister. Something that warms my heart to no end is that when I'm attacked on social media that my tribe comes after and starts telling people the truth. It means so much to me.

Those of you who know my heart come in and defend me when I'm attacked. It's very sweet. But here's what I had to learn. Okay? Here's that second big nugget that when you're experiencing a rebirth that I've had to learn the hard way, and I hope that maybe this comes alongside with your thinking.

And I learned this because as I told you, I had to seek therapy almost immediately. And here's what it is, that unless someone knows me, my heart, my calling, my inner talents, my weaknesses, someone who loves me unconditionally, and I feel like they know all the parts of me, the good, bad, the ugly, the real, the raw, unless they are in that very small circle, they don't get a seat at my table. And I advise this for homeschooling parents too. I do a talk at conferences about how to handle critics and naysayers, and this is something I say in that talk. Be very careful who gets a seat at your table.

And I gotta tell you, it is so freeing because now someone can accuse me of anything online, and I don't lose a wink of sleep. I just think, oh, poor them. They're gonna take a fifteen second video and extrapolate an entire character flaw from that. How sad for them. That's their problem, not mine.

They must be a really unhappy person. And I'm not complaining about trolls. I'm the one that put myself out there. It's part of the game. But what I am responsible for is figuring out how I'm going to be able to handle it.

And if I want this job to be sustainable, it's my responsibility to figure out how to emotionally and psychologically handle all of that criticism. Okay. Quick pause before we keep going. Stay with me here because this is the part of the show where if you listen to my show, you know what to do right now, and please go ahead and do it. But it is our sponsors who make this show possible.

They are the reason why it is free to you, and that is exactly how I want it. I love it. I love that you get to talk about big ideas and get academic advising and parenting help all for free. But here's the thing. The way that shows like this actually grow, it's not magic.

It's you, the listener. Those algorithm robots count everything. Every follow, every comment, every share, every save. That's how whatever platform you're listening on right now decides whether this show is worth getting in front of the eyeballs of other moms. And I know there are moms out there who need to hear about the things that we talk about on this show.

So if today's episode is hitting home at all, or if you're just appreciating what a hot mess I am, if you're getting anything out of today, here's how you can help another mom find us. Follow, subscribe, turn on notifications, give us all the five stars if you think I've earned it. Leave a comment. Tell me your story. Ask a question.

Encourage another mom in the comments. Anything. Any type of engagement. We need all of it. It also gives me lots of warm fuzzies, not just for you helping me, but also when I see you helping other moms in the comments.

So if someone just came to mind while you were listening, send this to her. It would mean the world to me. Okay. So moving on to the next topic of today, and that is the massive grief I felt of missing my old life, which really makes me uncomfortable even using that word grief. So I remember being on a Zoom call back when things were a little bit new for me, and I had the privilege of being on a Zoom call with women much more famous than me.

I don't even consider myself famous, but people who are household names. And I remember like, this is my chance. I gotta ask this question because this is something that I'm really struggling with. And I asked the question to the group. I said, hey.

Do any of you miss your old life? I remember one woman stopped and she paused. And what was interesting is she was in the middle of doing something on the Zoom call, but she stopped and she paused. And she looked into the camera, you know, it was a Zoom call, and she said, every single day. And I just looked back and I said, thank you.

That one moment meant so much to me. I'm even getting emotional right now because I had never heard anyone say it out loud. I never gave myself permission to feel those feels because everyone talks about how blessed they are, and I don't wanna be ungrateful. This is amazing. Some people dream of getting a book deal or having, you know, 50,000 followers on social media, not almost a half a million followers on social media like we have now.

I'm so incredibly grateful, But I also do really miss my old life. The quiet one, the anonymous one. The one where I know that if someone is getting to know me, it's because they just wanna get to know me. It's not because of who I am or what they can get, or are they a social climber? All those things pop through my mind now, and it's and I don't like it.

I missed my life when my biggest decision of the day was what type of meat I was gonna defrost for dinner. Not which sponsor I was going to partner with or which conference I was gonna speak at or how to handle the latest controversy. I miss the simplicity. And what's crazy is I don't think back then I would have called my life simple, but I would call it simple now. And I think maybe it's just volume of decisions that need to be made on a day to day basis.

You know, I work full time and I'm also a mother and a wife and a homeschool mom. So it's just a lot a lot. And I miss a more simple life. And before now, I was really careful about who I shared that with because I didn't wanna sound ungrateful, but I think it's important that I talk about it with you guys now. And I think it's okay for me to say that I grieve my own life.

And I love this new life, but I grieve my old one too. And I know this is God's calling, and I know that he's got me, and he's gonna help me figure all this out. And you know what I want you to hear about the life that I live right now is that I also had to grieve being the homeschool mom that I wanted to be and dreamt of being. Because I am a full time working homeschool mom now, and I would love nothing more than to be cutting out flowers out of construction paper and making medieval castles out of sugar cubes. Okay.

Maybe that's an exaggeration because I'm not artsy. But there is that version of, like, the ideal homeschool that I wanted to build for my kids that did have to die. And what's really hard for me to take is that I worry that my kids lost something too because their mom changed. And at least in that first year when I was just tossed by the storm, I do feel like they lost a fully present mom. It was hard.

And I remember that being the first year in particular. I was drowning. I was trying to figure out this job that I never applied for. I was learning as I went. I was making mistakes.

I was recovering, making more mistakes, learning how to write a book, which is a lot different than writing a master's thesis, by the way. I knew how to write academically, but I didn't know actually know how to write in my voice. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. And my kids are right there watching all of it. And I don't know if they'll look back and feel like they missed out.

I I hope not. I pray not. I hope they'll see a mom who was obedient to a calling even when it was hard, but I'd be lying if I said that I don't carry some guilt and regret about it. And, ugh, this isn't in my script right now. Ugh, but I'm gonna say it because I was feeling it this morning, feeling some resentment about it.

Because the truth is is I didn't really choose this. I didn't pursue this. I was called into it. And when God calls you, you go. But just because God calls you into something, it doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy and it's not gonna cost something too.

And it costs me time. It costs me presence. It costs me the simple joy of being a mom sometimes. And I'm still learning how to hold both things, the calling and the new life and the grief and the obedience and the feelings of loss and really struggling with resentment sometimes towards God about it, just being real. But also with all of that, knowing that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, it's super weird.

Right? I really need to know if anyone else experiences this or if this show is just totally nuts. Okay. But when we come back, I'm gonna tell you what finally shifted, how I went from resenting this calling a little bit, and I still have little pieces of it, not like I was before, to something that looks a lot more like peace. Don't go anywhere.

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Kids love it and parent educators love it, and it works. Visit Lovevery dot com slash Christy Faith today and use code Christy 10 to get 10% off your purchase of the reading skill set by Lovevery. That's lovevery.com/christyfaith. Okay. After all of that, where am I now?

Well, I'm still kicking and screaming some days. Like this week, for example, I had a lot of responsibilities with the kids and co op, and it's the holidays right now. And so in order to stay on schedule with filming this podcast, I was up until 01:30AM preparing for this episode today, and I woke up kinda grumpy about it. I'm happy now. Happy I'm that I'm here with you now though.

And later on, we're gonna go make gingerbread houses at my sister's house. But point is, I'm here. I'm where I'm supposed to be, and I still grieve parts of my old life. But here is what I finally figured out. And honestly, it might just be the most important thing that I say in today's show.

Is it even though I was called to this, my identity can't be in this. And that's really hard for someone like me who is a high achiever, because I can so easily get very aggressive with content creation, writing book after book after book, doing all of the things that I see other people doing to become these big famous speakers, authors, all of those things. And with that, God created me as a human that loves momentum. I love growth. I love building things.

I love connecting with people. He gave me some pretty special talents. He made me extremely unique. He made you unique too. There's no one like you, and there's no one like me either, and I thank him for that.

For example, I work circles around people. I'm not bragging. It's just true. That's not something to brag about, actually. But it makes it easy to give my entire life away to this work.

But achievement and success is empty. But more than being empty, they are false gods. Landing a book deal, and I know this sounds weird. It's a lot of people's lifelong dream to have a published book, and maybe you have to experience it to believe it, but it's empty. Strangers on the Internet agreeing with me saying, you go girl.

Although I love it and I appreciate you, and please always comment on those videos, it's still empty. Going viral, empty. Speaking in front of thousands of people, I don't really get anything from that. I don't need the ego stroke. I'm good in my pajamas, on the couch, doing a puzzle with my kids.

And in becoming Christi Faith, here is what's not empty in this calling, it's you. God has me and he gave me all these talents so that I can do this show and show up how I do. And I do it for you because I'm part of his story of helping families and helping moms believe in themselves that they can and do it really, really well. They can take back the hearts and minds of their kids. And that lights me up because that is where God has me.

And I do it for him and I do it for you. And if at any point I start doing it for me, that's when everything will fall as it should. I love you, mama, and I want God to use your talents. I want God to use my talents. I wanna help you become the homeschool mom that you want to be and give your kids the best education possible.

And that's what this podcast is about. We are the growth mindset girly place. And let me tell you, it means so much the comments that you've been making and the encouragement that you've been giving me regarding this series that I'm doing right now. Because make no mistake, I have gotten emails and long messages of their own church hurt stories or all sorts of things, and that is such an encouragement to me. And so thank you.

Thank you for giving me a half hour every week, sometimes more because I'm a rambler. And thank you for understanding that in order for me to keep doing this, I need to be a healthy Christy Faith. So and I know this isn't the last episode of the series. Next week, I'm so excited about the topic of that, and that is the hardest part of my job. This isn't it, by the way.

But if you think of me or whenever you pop on my podcast, if you would just say a little prayer for me, I would appreciate that so much if you're a woman of faith. That God would use me how he wants me to be used. That's all I want. Because I don't know about you, but I'm too old and tired to be working out of my own might, and I have too much at stake. And I think that a lot of us, and we all do this, we often misplace what makes us feel important.

They strive to be important in their careers, in their sports, whatever. Achievement is so important to people. So important that people will lie, cheat, and steal, or be mean to others just to reach a goal. And then what? What type of person did you become along the way?

So we're leading up to the quote of the week because it is just mind blowing. It's about how achievement is idolatry, and that's what I have to be really careful of in becoming Christy Faith, is not focusing on likes, shares, comments, all of the things that the outside world considers successful achievements in being the thought leader that I I guess I am. Because that is a fast track to being miserable. And those of us who are parenting in that way, man, we're gonna be doing damage to our kids if we focus too much on achievement. I got sad the other night because I met a couple whose teenage son told them that his one life goal was to be a thought leader, like a version of an influencer.

And I thought to myself, because that is what I am considered, they don't know this. They didn't know me at all. But the thought that came to my mind is, oh, man, he's playing with fire. We spend so much time focusing on that end goal that we miss life along the way. And I know this all too well because I'm a recovering perfectionist myself, but I have had to learn to order my loves.

Achievement can't be my goal. Success can't be my goal. It can't be the goal for any of us. It has to be alignment with what God has for us. Okay.

Let's get into the quote of the week. Here it is. And this one might take a minute to land, and I wanna talk about it after because it is worth it. It's from Augustine, one of the most important thinkers in church history, and this is what he wrote in City of God. Virtue is nothing but rightly ordered love.

Okay. So what does that even mean? Well, we throw around the word virtue a lot, especially in classical education circles. Like, it means being a good person or doing the right thing or having strong morals. But Augustine believed virtue was simpler than that, but also harder.

He believed virtue is having your loves in the right order, and that's it. It's not about what you do, it's about what you love, and whether you love things in their proper place. God first, then family, then everything else. And when we get those things out of order, when we love achievement more than our kids, or approval more than God, or the platform more than the calling, that's not just a mistake. Augustine would call it a sin.

He'd call it disordered love. So virtue isn't about trying harder to be good. It's about getting your loves back to where they should be in their proper place. And honestly, I think that's what this episode has been about. In becoming Christi Faith, I got thrown around and tossed around, and I had to reorder my loves.

I had to put God in the center. Not Christi Faith, not a book, not a platform, not followers, not what people think of me, God. And when I do that, everything falls into its right place. Now not perfectly. I'm still working on it.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty resentful, but God's not asking for me to be perfect. And I can come to him and say, I'm pretty mad at you right now. He can handle it because I have that foundation that he loves me, and I can trust him, and he is good. And that won't shift when the algorithm changes. It won't shift when the criticism gets loud or when I get canceled because my identity isn't in my achievement.

It's in him. If you love this Augustine quote, I've put it on a beautiful note card for you totally for free. You can stick it on your coffee pot, on your bathroom mirror, or on your car dashboard, somewhere where you'll see it on the hard days when you need the reminder. The link is in the show notes for that, so make sure to grab it. And if you're liking this show and you're liking the ideas that we're talking about, and you're a person that thinks a lot about parenting and education and you love exploring what your kids need academically, psychologically, emotionally, you know where you're gonna find your people?

Thrive Homeschool Community. It's the community that I created because it's what I wished I had back when I first started homeschooling. It's where you get guidance from real qualified experts. You get real support. You're gonna find moms who get it, and you're gonna get the training that you need to actually become the homeschool mom that your kids deserve.

Thrive's doors aren't always open. So if you're interested, you gotta get on the wait list. That is the only way to guarantee your spot when we open our doors again. Next week is the final episode of this behind the screen series, and I'm gonna be talking about my why. So today was more about the calling piece, but next week is gonna be why I do what I do, why I've built what I built, and how I am executing the calling that God has on my life.

The deep reasons, the ones that keep me going when I feel like quitting, and the heart behind everything that I do. And maybe I'll uncover why I find it the hardest thing that I do too. So that'll be fun. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. Also, I wanna hear from you.

What landed for you today? What are you wrestling with? Are you a recovering perfectionist too? Do you struggle with ordering your loves? Drop in the comments or send me a DM.

We read every single one. And if you have wisdom to share, please share it. We want all of it. Someone listening needs to hear your story. You are safe here.

We are not here to judge. We're here because we need each other. Thank you, and I'll see you next week. Bye, Har.