Today, we're diving into Day 12 of our ADHD-friendly Advent study, where we're focusing on the profound message of Luke 1:67-80. This scripture reminds us of God’s tender mercy and the promise of new beginnings through Jesus—our guiding light in the darkness. As I share my journey of navigating life's challenges, from single motherhood to finding a supportive partner, I emphasize that even in our toughest seasons, there is hope and beauty waiting to be revealed. We explore the importance of quiet time to reflect and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, making space for peace amidst chaos. Join me as we engage with scripture, journal our thoughts, and uncover the abundant life that God has promised each of us, no matter where we are in our journey.

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Day 12 of our ADHD friendly advent study.

Let's go ahead and dive right in.

But if my face is new to you, my name is Rachel, I'm an ADHD and a Jesus lover and I help women with chaotic brains seek, find and live the abundant life Jesus offers us.

So this study is designed to be low effort and high impact.

It's designed to work with the brain God gave you, you, not against it.

And if you don't have the free workbook yet, you can download that at the link in my profile.

Okay, we're going to listen to this week's song, which is oh come all ye faithful.

I personally really love the Shane and Shane Vers version.

So go listen to that and then come back and we're going to read some scripture together, talk through a journaling prompt and I will send you on your way.

One thing that I really like to do when I'm starting my quiet time is to take some time to settle, have just a little bit of peace and quiet as much as is reasonable.

I totally get that sometimes we have tiny humans screaming at us or there's a billion things that need our immediate attention, but even just carving out a couple minutes to be intentionally as quiet as is reasonable for us to to just experience a little bit of peace and to invite the Holy Spirit into our time together, that is really beneficial.

I included the prayer that I use to kick off my quiet time in the workbook, which again is free and is downloadable over at the link in my profile.

So definitely make sure you grab that.

So we're going to take some time here to settle.

So close your eyes, take some deep breaths.

I really like taking four, seven, eight breaths, which is breathing in through your nose for four, holding for seven and then out through your mouth for eight.

I like to do two or three of those when I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

That is a really fantastic tool that is also research backed.

But take some time.

Quiet your heart, invite the Lord into your quiet time, and then we'll read some scripture together.

And by the way, if you're more of an audio gal than a video gal, these are all uploaded as podcast episodes.

My podcast is called the True Grit Podcast with Rachel Grit and that is also at the link in my profile.

There's a whole playlist with all of the videos for this study to make it nice and easy to get caught up, but you are never behind.

This is designed to just be what you need when you need it.

Take what you need and leave the rest.

So starting with verse 67 here and his Father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.

And he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our Father Abraham to grant us, that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the Prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance and to Israel.

And that concludes chapter one.

We have been working through chapter one of Luke for the last two weeks and here we have finished it up.

So we are going to move into a time of journaling.

I have a journaling prompt here that I'm going to read, and then from there what I'm going to do is have you go do some journaling time, whether that's putting pen to paper, which is what I recommend.

You can also type if that's more accessible for you today.

You can record a voice memo.

If talking things out helps you.

You can even just, if that's all you have the spoons for today, sit it and kind of think through a response.

But the idea behind the prompt is to help you kind of process what you just read and connect it to your own, your own life and your own experience.

So I highly recommend doing it.

Don't skip it.

And with that, we are on Scripture Journaling prompt number five.

What line of Zachariah's Song of Praise stands out to you the most?

What does it tell you about God?

And how does that relate to what you're walking through in life right now?

So so pause this video, go grab your journal or however you're going to Complete the journaling exercise and come back here when you're ready to move on.

Okay.

Did you actually do it?

If not, pause here, go do it and then come back.

Otherwise, let's go ahead and move forward.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and read my response here.

Because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

I'm still waiting for the sunrise.

Dawn is here.

There's a light beginning to appear, but there is still quite a bit of darkness and uncertainty.

And as for what this passage shows me about God, the comment about, you know, the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

This shows God's love of redemption.

He loves taking a story of wretchedness and hopelessness and turning it for his glory into something beautiful.

I've shared a lot about my story throughout this Advent series, so.

So if you are interested in that, you can go get caught up on the videos or if you've been here for the entire time.

Thanks for joining me and sticking with me, but I've been in a really difficult season for about four and a half years now.

I suddenly became a single mom when My son was 4 months old.

And that led to a period of about two years where I was doing the single mom thing.

I was living in my own apartment, I was supporting myself, I was dealing with multiple legal battles.

Not just the divorce.

There was also some other stuff that happened, um, that was connected, but that was not actually part of the divorce.

And the way that God brought me through that and connected me with my husband who had gone through his own brutal divorce.

Um, he was served divorce papers just a couple weeks after receiving a brain cancer diagnosis.

And that was that.

Then went on to get brain cancer treatment while going through a divorce and dealing with just a whole bunch of really difficult things.

Um, and it's been a really long season.

Uh, in the past year we have dealt with job loss and it has been just an extended season of uncertainty.

And God has been really clear that this season is coming to an end, but it's not done yet.

And the grace that God showed us and the mercy that God showed us in bringing us to each other.

I genuinely did not know that marriages like ours could exist.

I did not think that it was possible for two people to be continually putting in effort, working on themselves, working on the relationship, seeking the Lord wholeheartedly.

I honestly thought that Christ centered marriages were a myth perpetuated by Christian culture to get young women married.

Like I am being so honest when I say that.

And so while There has been so much uncertainty and there is still so much darkness going on.

Taking a look at things from a different angle and going, wow, two years ago things were so different.

Well, I guess at this point it would be about three years ago, because we've.

We've somehow been married for two years already.

That's insane.

But I actually yesterday was going through texts with a friend of mine from the time period where I met my husband because I was looking for something that I thought maybe I had texted her.

I was looking for the name of a company that I had that I had visited on a business trip.

And I ended up finding all of these text messages about meeting my husband.

I think the first text that I sent to her about him was, so the Google guy's name is Cam.

He has a brain tumor, but so far I like him.

And then just thinking back through the mindset that I was in at that point in my life, I loved being single.

Being a single mom was the hardest thing that I have ever done.

But being able to come and go as I pleased and make my own decisions for the first time in my life, I was living alone for the first time in my life.

And it just.

It was such a rich time, but it was also such a dark time.

And I was getting to a point when I met my husband where I was just weary.

There was a lot of really beautiful stuff in my life that was the.

The most colorful and full social time in my life.

And there was good, but I was also so weary.

I was so tired of doing things alone.

I was so tired of raising my child alone.

I was so tired of fighting the battles that I needed to fight alone.

And the timing of God bringing us together was nothing short of a miracle.

We have push each other closer to the Lord in ways that are so beautiful.

And as someone who has been in the place where I just wanted someone, God was gracious and not letting me settle for that regularly.

Every single time I started dating somebody, I would pray, okay, God, if this person is not someone you have for me, take them out of my life.

Just remove them from my life.

And every single time, within a month, they were gone.

And so being willing to lay that down and wait for someone who chased the Lord wholeheartedly, just like I had been doing and still continue to do it, is absolutely worth every single second that I spent not having someone by my side.

So consider this my little psa.

If you are someone who is still waiting for a relationship or you are in a relationship where that isn't the dynamic, the other person is not pursuing God.

And maybe you are the one who is not pursuing God.

Waiting for.

For a relationship where that is the case and working on yourself in the meantime so that you are healed emotionally and thriving spiritually.

Waiting for that is.

I could cry talking about it.

Even last night, my husband and I, as we were going to sleep, we were just kind of chatting about, like, oh, remember when we were dating?

And like this and that.

And I love going back to that headspace of being so tired of being alone and how meeting Cam was just a breath of fresh air.

But at the same time, we were both so hesitant to trust each other because we had been so deeply hurt by not just, you know, our previous spouses, but by other people.

We'd both been burned in dating experiences and just treated poorly.

And so we were so hesitant to trust each other, but we both felt God's leading.

And we're both so excited to, you know, be together.

And because we're just best friends, first and foremost, we are the best of friends.

And we enjoy spending time together so much.

And so the creation of that new bond and how exciting and new it is, but also being so tentative because we both had kids involved that we so desperately wanted to protect.

And that was our top priority, was protecting our children first and foremost, and then protecting our own hearts and seeking the Lord above all.

And just the beauty of that time, I love thinking back to that because that's such a clear reminder of God's providing in the wilderness.

And even though there was still so much darkness in that time, just the brilliant light of a new relationship, quite literally made in heaven.

Like how our stories line up and how our hearts line up and how just God has brought us together.

Truly.

I'm like, I. I joke that if I believed in soulmates, we would be soul mates.

But that is such a good reminder for times like what we are still in there is so much good.

We are so grateful for so many things, and there is so much to be grateful for.

I'm looking out at my backyard right now that's covered in snow.

And just the fact that I don't have to worry about a warm place to sleep tonight is something I can't put even into words.

And so two things can be true at the same time.

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

Things can be really, really hard.

And things can also be really, really good.

And God is present even in the hard.

And when he is Lord of our lives, there is purpose.

And whatever pain we are experiencing.

Because we know Scripture tells us that trials help guide us, trials help grow us.

And when we are free, following our Father through the fire, none of it will ever be in vain.

Even when we don't have all the answers, even when we don't get to see the why or the how or the end result in this lifetime, we can know that he has everything planned out for our good.

And that even when things don't look like they're looking up, things do look like they're looking up for us.

Right now.

We're still not out of the woods yet, but things are looking up.

But even when that hasn't been the case, he has still been there and he has still been good, and he has still been working everything for our good.

And the sense of purpose and the sense of joy that can be present even in the darkest of times, it's completely indescribable.

And it has saved my life.

I had gotten to a point right before my husband and I met, where I was having some really dark thoughts.

And the way that before my husband and I even met, God just brought the right people and the right circumstances and the right environment around me to bolster me and to see me through while I was still waiting for that deep partnership that I craved so desperately.

He is just so good.

He is so incredibly good.

And so whatever you're walking through right now, however dark the night is for you right now we can look for the sunrise because just like it says here in the end of Luke 1, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

And we know that the sunrise that he's talking about in scripture here is Jesus.

And we don't have to wait for Christ anymore.

He is here.

He is here with us.

And the only thing standing in between him and us is our own pride and being able and willing to lay that down, which is an ongoing process.

Following Christ is not a one time deal where you pray a prayer and then you're suddenly changed and everything is transformed.

We are saved by faith.

But then sanctification is a completely different story.

And if you have questions about that, if you want to hear more of my story, if you want to share parts of your own story or you have questions or things you want to wrestle with or talk through, I am always available.

You can comment below.

You can DM me or you can email me.

Email me is the easiest way.

My email is rachelachelgrit.com but I am here as a resource for you.

I am an open book and I am here to help guide you through whatever you are dealing with.

Like I said at the beginning of the video, my goal is to help women seek, find and live the abundant life that Jesus offers.

And like I said, the only thing standing in between us and our Savior is ourselves.

And laying that down is a process.

But it is so incredibly worth it.

So thank you for joining me today.

I am really grateful for the time that you spent with me today.

Make sure that you follow so that you see the rest of these videos.

Go subscribe to the podcast I upload most of my videos as podcast episodes, but there are also longer, more polished videos.

This I like to keep this platform very, you know, raw and authentic.

My podcast is still very authentic, but it is a little bit more, you know, edited, not scripted.

I don't do scripts.

My brain just does not work well that way and I end up sounding like a robot.

But that is a little bit more polished if that is your jam.

But share this with a friend who needs to hear it.

I would love to have you join us for the rest of the study.

Make sure you go grab your workbook.

Again, that is free.

If you'd like to buy me a coffee to say thank you, that option is also available to you.

All of that can be found at the link over in my profile and I will see you in tomorrow's video.

Bye.