50. Finding Beauty in the Broken with Baylor Knott

Welcome to episode 50.

I am thrilled that we are at episode 50 and even more thrilled to invite you into this conversation that I got to have with my friend Baylor.

Before we jump in, here's what you need to know.

Baylor Knott is a fresh voice of hope for women who find themselves struggling to trust God as they walk the pothold and dimly lit road of life.

It's just not going the way they thought it would.

Sometimes God doesn't behave the way we want him to, and when that happens, our faith can be shaken to its foundations.

In those moments, we can question God's goodness, his love for us, even his very existence.

And having walked that road and asking those same questions for years as she struggled to trust God, she was in the midst of infertility and prolonged, painful international adoption.

Baylor now uses her voice to encourage women right where they are and remind them that we, we know and follow a God who is incapable of dropping the ball in our lives.

She talks with compassion and transparency and this joyful hope that's rooted in the truth of God's word.

Baylor helps women discover that God can take our unmet expectations and our ruined plans and our shattered dreams and use those to create the kind of beauty that will last for eternity.

Baylor and her husband make their home in Birmingham, Alabama with their three kids.

She's a former middle school english teacher, and now she wrangles her kids while using the lessons God has taught her through two international adoptions, a surprise pregnancy and a lifetime of unexpected adventure.

She uses these to reach women right where they are and point them back to the truth that God is always working to take the broken and make it beautiful.

I cannot wait for you to hear Baylor story, her experiences, her insight.

If you have dealt and lived with any of those things that I just mentioned, you are going to love this conversation.

So let's jump in.

Here's my chat with Baylor Knott.

Hello, Baylor.

Welcome.

I'm so glad you're here today.

Yes, I'm glad we could make this happen.

I feel like we had it on the calendar and then there were terrible thunderstorms at your house that knocked out your power.

And so we had to reschedule and we had to wait so that my kids would be back in school because they love to interrupt me when I'm working, if they are at home.

So, yes, I'm so glad to be here with you today.

Really excited about our conversation.

Me, too.

We were talking just before we hit record about, you know, we talk a lot about hard times.

We keep it real here.

We're not like rainbows and unicorns all the time.

Real life happens and we deal with it.

For example, thunderstorms knocking out your power and working from home while your children are there, like, all the things.

So keeping it real, we talk about that.

But I just love the passion that you have for finding the beauty in the hard things.

And so I'm excited to talk about that today.

Before, you know, before we can dive into all that, you have to answer the question that everybody, everyone answers.

And I would love to know, what does breathing room look like or feel like for you?

I really like this question a lot because I think the, like, the term breathing room is something.

It's like something we throw around a lot, but maybe we don't really give as much thought to what that practically looks like in our lives.

And as I was thinking about this, I was like, for me, you know, it is structure.

It is not just being like, oh, I'll get to everything, like, whenever I get to it, and, and not structured to the point of where, like, nothing is movable, you know, and life is totally rigid.

But I feel like there is a lot of freedom to be found in routine.

Yes, because I think routine leads to habit.

And then once you have a habit, it's hard to break habit, right?

Like, if you're, if you're a nail biter, it's really hard to get yourself to stop biting your nails or if you pick your split ends like that, you know, those are hard habits to break away from.

But I think the same holds true for good habits when we cultivate good habits.

And so for me, you know, school started yesterday at the time, recording school started yesterday before my three kids who are in 2nd, third and fourth grades.

And so summer is like an all hands on deck situation.

Like we are going.

And so one of the things I was really looking forward to about the start of school is just my, my morning routine.

And that is that I get my kids on the bus, I come home, I do my Bible study, and then I go for a run, and I do that every single morning of my life.

And I love it.

And it is one of those things.

It feels like I am creating breathing room for myself and that I'm doing two things that really help take care of me.

I'm taking care of my heart and my soul and my mind by spending time in God's word and in prayer, and then I'm taking care of my physical body by going for a run.

And so for me, I feel like cultivating that habit now, for sure, it falls by the wayside during the months of summer, Thanksgiving break, spring break, Christmas break.

Yes.

And those little kind of mini seasons, things kind of fall apart a little bit.

And I can feel the result of that.

Right.

I can feel I am more stressed out.

Perhaps my temper is a little bit shorter than it would otherwise be.

And I can really kind of trace it back to.

To not getting those two things in the Bible reading and prayer and the running with the regularity that I'm able to do during the school year.

And so for me, when I think about breathing room, I really think about intentional structure and what that looks like.

And I think it looks different for everybody.

Right.

There's not like a one size fits all model for what your structure looks like, but I think it is one size fits all that.

We all need some kind of structure.

Absolutely.

And I have found myself, you know, again, while we're recording this, we've still got a few days before my teens go back to school.

And so I have been finding myself craving that routine again as well.

I mean, I do it all summer, but I have found myself finding I need to get those scheduled times back in and get back into those habits.

Right.

Because that is how the breathing room occurs even, you know, because otherwise it's.

I'm just kind of floundering.

I'll try to get it in when I can, but it's total chaos over here.

So I do think that's so important.

And we've talked before about the importance of just those intentional rhythms.

And I think the value that I love that you have found not just to have, like, the work routine, the work habits, or the house cleaning routines.

And habits, those are not as fun.

No, I don't like to work those in as well.

But the value of plugging in first thing, those routines and habits of taking care of yourself and I.

Refilling your own cup.

Yeah.

I will say, too, speaking to that, like, if you're listening and you're a mom with young kids and you're like me in the summertime, it's just harder, right?

It's just harder to do those kinds of things.

I will say that this summer, for the first time, my kids were accepting of that morning routine, the Bible reading part.

They're not old enough to where I can leave them at home and go for a run, but they would.

I would go and, like, on the mornings when I would really try to, you know, I tried to stick with it as well as I could, and they would come in and go, hey, as soon as you're done with your Bible study, can we go do fill in the blank?

We kind of, like, graduated from that, like, mom now.

Like, right now now now.

And so if you are in the mom now phase, there, the horizon is in view.

Yes.

There will.

There really will come a day when, you know, your kids start to see and value the.

The habits that you're cultivating.

And I think that's great for them, too.

Like, my greatest hope is that my kids will be like, oh, yeah, I know.

Mom was, like, always reading her Bible in the morning.

Yeah.

He was always praying in the morning.

And I think just your kids seeing you cultivate those kinds of habits and build in that idea of breathing room, especially in the day and age we live in now, where there, we, like, glorify busyness.

And, you know, the more if you have no time, then that means you must be doing it right.

You know, but that.

That's not necessarily the case.

Yeah.

Love it.

Love.

Okay.

All good things.

Everybody taking notes already.

We haven't even gotten to the meat of it, but that's all really good.

Okay, so talking about intentionality, I know you are very intentional about finding beauty in life just as you're going through all, you know, good and bad.

And even, especially, I would say, during the most difficult times when it feels hardest.

Right.

So can you share with us a little more of your story and why this has become so important to you?

Yeah, I would love to.

You know, I think.

I mean, I imagine this is true for everybody, that we all start out our lives, you know, as we're coming into adulthood, we're like, my life is going to go this way.

These are the steps that I'm going to follow.

And, you know, that might involve different things for different people, career, spouse, kids, where you want to live, you know, all those different kinds of things.

And I don't think there's anything inherently sinful or wrong with having that vision and having that plan and even that desiree for your life to play out in a certain way.

I think that the problem comes when, like, my plans bump up against God's design and what I have envisioned is not what he has.

And that is where I think most of us fall into being.

Like, life is a mess.

My life is such a mess.

Like, everywhere I look, it's just falling apart, and everything's on fire, and nothing is going the way that I thought it would go or the way that I think it should go and all of that.

And I think in those moments.

It's really hard because what we do is we start to doubt God.

We question his goodness, you know, like, God, what are you doing?

Like, if you.

If you loved me, you wouldn't allow this to happen.

Or, God, do you see me?

You know?

Yeah.

Or if the difficulty persists long enough, God, are you even real?

You know, like, have I.

Have I believed something that was a lie for all this time?

And, you know, I found myself going through that after my husband and I had been married for a few years.

We really felt like God was leading us to begin trying to grow our little family of two and the dog to include human children.

We were excited.

I mean, I just had no doubt that this was going to go off, I mean, without a hitch.

Like, it was all going to happen exactly the way I envisioned it in my mind.

And then it didn't.

And it didn't in a big way.

We knew that God had called us to pursue adoption a long time ago, way before we were even ready to have kids.

We just, both of us felt at the same time, like God was like, hey, heads up.

This is part of your story.

Gonna be the thing that that is in your life.

And we were really excited about that prospect.

But we were young when we decided we wanted to start, when we felt like God was leading us to start growing our family.

And so we're like, oh, well, like, I have biological children first.

And then when we are older and wiser, you know, then right then we will continue to grow our family through adoption.

And so after a year of trying to become parents, biologically trying and failing, we're just really struggling and wondering, like, God, you know, your Bible says that children are a blessing.

And, like, you say that it is, you know, to, for our good, to be fruitful and multiply and that children are heritage from the Lord.

And, you know, all the, all those verses that just talk about the blessing of children and God, this isn't happening.

And it was so hard.

It was really the first time in my life where I was like, God, what are you doing?

What's up here?

And then I was like, oh, I bet that we just got the order wrong that we are supposed to adopt first and then later will have biological children.

And, you know, I can say that very, like, freely now, but in the moment, it was like this hard thing that, like, the direction we thought our life was going to go and now it's going to go this other way.

And so we began praying and researching and, like, really wanting to do this the right way.

Because there's a lot of wrong ways, you know, to do things.

And we found an adoption agency that our church had partnered with for several things, and we just really loved their mission and their commitment to children being in families and into family preservation and all those kinds of things.

And so we were praying about, like, which direction to go as far as do we adopt domestically or internationally?

If internationally, which country?

And we weren't old enough to adopt from a lot of places yet because we're still in our twenties.

And a lot of other countries, their age minimum is 30, which at the time sounded very old, right?

Why should we have to wait so long?

30 is so ancient, and I'll be 40 this year.

So now I'm like, oh, man, 30 would be fantastic.

And so a lot of countries, we were just automatically, you know, disqualified for.

For that reason.

And so we kind of landed on three, three different places that we really felt like God was like, you know, this is the direction that you need to be going.

And for a few different reasons.

Two of the three did not work out.

And then the third one, our church actually did a month long prayer initiative.

As we were praying like, God, is this where we're going?

Our church did a month long prayer initiative for this particular part of the world.

And we were like, okay, we feel like this is like the green light from God.

And so we filled out all the forms and did the interviews and got the fingerprints and the background checks and the home study visits and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

All the things, everything.

If you've ever walked through an adoption or foster care process, you know, like, your home is under some serious scrutiny, your marriage, your own personal life, all of that.

So we did all of that, and we sent in our paperwork, and we were told it's going to take.

The whole thing is going to take about a year.

And we were like, okay, great.

And during that time frame, I went to my husband and I said, hey, maybe it's a good idea that we go and just go to the doctor and make sure that there's not something, you know, physically wrong in.

In my body or your body that is stopping us.

You know, do I have, like, do I have cancer that I don't know about?

You know, those, right?

Cause when.

When things aren't going according to plan, we immediately go, is it me?

Am I broken?

What have I done wrong?

I'm obviously dying right now because the plan is not happening.

Exactly.

And it was just, you know, I was like, you know what?

There's a lot of cancer in my family history.

Like, gosh, could this be, like, God, his way of, you know, showing me?

And it wasn't like I, you know, I was not ill in any kind of way, but I was like, this is smart.

This is probably just like, this is a grown up choice, right, to go to the doctor preventatively.

And so we went and through a series of several appointments, we were told that we would never be able to have biological children.

And it was devastating.

I mean, we were a few months into the adoption process at this point, and it was just like, we were so excited about what we felt like God's vision was for our family, and to have this blow dealt to us out of nowhere, it felt like.

I can't explain how heartbreaking it was.

And then our adoption process stretched from one year to two years to three years, and the whole thing ended up taking closer to four years.

And during all of that time, I was like, lord, why?

Like, what are you doing?

What are you.

What's.

What's going on here?

And God is so gracious to use this really difficult time in my life to show me that I had kind of built this false idea in my mind about who he was.

I was a really well behaved kid.

I was like that goody two shoes rule follower.

And when I became an adult, that kind of somehow manifested itself as me being like, I did what you told me to do.

God, now treat, please.

You know, like, give me the thing that I'm asking for, because I did what you said kind of thing that, like, this very, like, transactional view of God, which is not holy and definitely not biblical.

And I don't think that God could have necessarily gotten my attention in any other set of circumstances than this one because I was so broken about it.

I was so broken about it.

And God was so gracious to really slowly, because of my own stubbornness over these years, to just, like, chip away at this hard exterior that I had kind of built up around my heart because I was so hurt by what he was allowing to unfold.

Yeah.

I was working.

I was a teacher before we had kids, but I did, like, jewelry sales on the side.

If you're a teacher, you have a side gig because you don't make any money.

But I had done well enough in sales the previous year that I had qualified for this trip to Rwanda to go and meet one of our, like, artisan partner groups there.

And we were over there for a week, me and like, 16 other women who were my age, and we went to church on Sunday, and the worship pastor, you know, I was so angry with the Lord.

I was like, I just don't even want to be in this church building right now because I'm so.

Just disappointed in you, and you have let me down, and I don't see anything good about the situation that you're letting unfold in my life.

You know, at this point, we've been trying to have a biological child for about four years.

We had been in the adoption process for, I think, coming up on three at that .2 and a half.

And there was no end in sight.

And the country, the country that our son is from, he was born in Ethiopia, was actually shut down to foreign adoption during this time.

Like, as we were in process, they said, no more.

And I was just devastated.

And so I was standing in this church in Kigali, Rwanda, and the worship pastor was singing the song.

If you are of my generation, you will know this song from youth group urban church.

I will not sing it because the Lord has gifted me with other things.

It's that song.

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus.

And so we're singing the song in the past, and I'm, you know, like, standing there with my arms crossed, like, with a scrooge.

Yeah.

I am falling down in front of nothing.

That's right.

I'm mad.

I stand here with my hands on my head.

And the pastor, the worship pastor is like, let's all raise our hands and praise to God.

And I was like, I don't want to.

I don't want to.

But I also did not want to be the only westerner in the church who was like, I'm not participating.

And so I.

Right.

Even though my heart did not feel it at that exact second, I was like, all right.

And I just lifted my hands, and God used that physical posture of worship to tap a little crack in the wall that I had built around my heart.

And one of maybe two or three times in my life where I believe I have heard the voice of God.

And he said, you know, you are singing these words that you're falling down and laying your crowns at my feet, but you are not.

You are hanging onto your crowns with everything that you've got and telling me what you deserve.

And I.

It was like, oh, my gosh, God, you're right.

That's exactly what I'm doing, and I'm so sorry.

And I just confessed that sin to him right there.

And I told him.

I said, okay.

I said, I'm in.

Whatever it is, I am in.

If it is that we eventually are able to become parents through adoption, I'm in.

If you are somehow able to miraculously provide children through adoption and children biologically, I am in.

And, God, if it is Adam and me and the dog until we die or you come and get it, I'm in.

And I can't tell you the sense of freedom and relief that I felt in that exact moment.

And I, you know, I know you're expecting to hear.

And the next day, I found out that I was pregnant, or.

And the next day, right.

I got the call that we had been matched.

No, no.

That's how these stories go, right?

That's how this works.

Not one thing about my life changed, but it did.

Yes.

Not one thing about my circumstances change.

I should phrase it that way.

Not when things circumstances changed, but everything in my heart changed.

And four months later, four or five months later, we got the phone call that we had been waiting for, that we had been matched with our son, and we were going to get to be his mom and dad.

And we were, I mean, just over the moon excited.

Our son.

If you are one of my Instagram friends, you have seen him, and, you know, he is like the most precious thing walking planet earth.

Yes.

And we were just over the moon excited and calling all of our friends and family and telling everybody and just celebrating.

And one of our friends was like, what's his birthday?

And I looked back, and I was like, oh, it's this day.

And he goes, do you know what you were doing on that day?

And I was like, I have no idea.

And so I flipped back through my calendar and this blog that I kept, and my son was born the day before I had that experience with God.

Come on.

I just got chill bumps all over my body.

Baylor.

Yeah.

It to me was like, okay, he's here.

She needs to get with the program.

And that God was like, all right, you've wallowed enough.

Time.

It's time.

Come on, girl.

Yeah.

Just to me is like, you're never gonna convince me that God's not at work.

I've seen it.

I've seen it firsthand in my own life and my own children, all three of them.

I mean, I didn't even pray about having biological kids anymore, because my heart told me that God had said no.

And I had gotten to a point where I was fine with that.

And so I didn't even ask him about it anymore.

Cause I had moved on.

And so it just.

God is just.

He's up to stuff.

He's just.

He's never idle, and he doesn't need breathing room right in the way that we do.

He is.

He is always at work, and he.

You know, I think sometimes we feel like when we have that plan that we were talking about, right?

This plan for my life, and this is the way I want it to go in our minds, that's best case scenario.

Best case scenario is this thing that I've laid out, this course that I have charted, and I think God is just up in heaven, like, oh, no, no, no.

That's like, oh, that.

That's cute.

That's plan Q.

We don't need that.

Like, we're gonna go with plan a, you know, which is what I have.

Which is what is best for you.

And so I think, you know, if you find yourself right now in a season where you're like, this is messy.

This is chaotic.

This is a disaster, you know?

This is not what I wanted or had planned for my life at all.

You know, hang on.

Like, hang really, really tight, because it's.

God has not forgotten you.

He has not overlooked you.

He's not like, oh, let's just see what happens.

See how it plays out.

You know?

He is at work, and he can bring such beauty from even the most heartbreaking of circumstances, you know?

And sometimes that looks like the result you ultimately wanted, but on a delayed timetable.

And sometimes that looks like you learning more of who he is or you becoming more and more like Christ because of the hard thing that you went through.

You know, he decides he's responsible for the outcome.

Right.

Our job is to obey and to trust.

Yeah.

And his job is to handle the results.

Yeah.

And if you're a control freak like me, that sounds very scary on the surface.

Oh, I feel it.

But it's.

You know, it's actually incredibly freeing, because the.

The story that God has written in my life thus far, you know, is a far cry from what I had in mind when I was 20, you know?

But, man, is it better?

Is it better in every way?

And people have asked me, like, oh, if you could go back and change it.

Not one thing.

I would not change one single thing.

Yeah.

Not one single thing.

Oh, it's so good.

I.

The biggest piece of it for me.

Well, two things.

I'm gonna say two things.

One is that you are able to see those points along the road where at the time, obviously, it's always like this in the moment.

At the time, you aren't like, look at the beautiful ways God is working my story ever.

Like, he's doing miraculous things in my life.

And I'm so glad that it is this hard.

That's never the case.

Having so much fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is so great.

Thanks, Lord.

Yeah.

In the moment, because we are human people.

We are wanting what we want and not understanding his ways because they are above our ways, all of that.

But I love that looking back at it, the ability to say, look at how he.

Look at what he won't.

He do it.

That spirit of looking.

Because I same in all of my insanity, you know, this is the path.

I will walk the path.

The path will go as planned because I was told this is the path.

And if I will just stay on the path, this is what I will find.

We don't like, when that doesn't happen, it doesn't feel nice.

It doesn't look pretty, right?

There's no beauty in that.

It's frustration and ruined expectations.

And what about me?

And we're not looking to connect strongly with God.

I feel like in a lot of those moments.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think it's one of the things I love about the Bible is that the whole thing is basically stories like this where mankind sets out and is like, I know the way this is gonna go, and then it doesn't go that way.

And God's like, hey, here's why it's better this way, you know?

You know, I think about Joseph, right?

Joseph probably getting sold into slavery by his own brothers was not on his.

That wasn't part of his path.

It wasn't.

But then, you know, and then being thrown into prison for a crime he didn't commit, you know, doing all the, like, all of that awful stuff.

But then you get to the end of Exodus or not.

Excuse me, the end of Genesis, and he's like, hey, what you intended for evil, God meant for good.

And he actually says, God sent me here ahead of you, right?

Like, not, you sent me here.

No, God sent me here.

And so I think sometimes God, you know, will have us go through these seasons of difficulty where we don't necessarily see what's going on in the moment, but we see it when we look back.

Like, I mean, even like the disciples, right, when Jesus is crucified and then laid in the tomb they're not like, this is gonna be great.

This is amazing.

They were terrified.

They thought that everything that they had just given up the last three and a half years of their lives for was gone, you know, and.

But then, lo and behold, you know, three days later, we see what happens.

And it was only because of that hardship and because of that pain that redemption was made possible through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Yes.

You know, I think hardship breeds beauty.

If everything is always easy, then, like, all right, you know, that's right.

Like, who cares?

But if we go through something really difficult and we come out on the other side and we're able to look back and go, oh, wow, that was God.

That was God the whole time.

I think, you know, those are the kinds of things that, one, really solidify our trust in him.

But two also really help us to share God's love for people with others, because we can open the Bible and debate theology all day, every day.

But if I tell you the story of what happened in my life or you tell me the story of what happened in your life, I can't argue with that.

I can't argue with.

With what actually happened, because it did.

Right.

And that firsthand account and just the other thing I was thinking as you were talking was, you know, the beauty itself, because everybody might have come into this episode thinking they were going to hear a certain thing or, like, what.

What kind of beauty?

What are we talking about finding beauty in life?

Are we looking for roses?

Like, what does this actually look like?

We are not looking.

No, we're not looking for roses.

But to me, as I listen to your story and I think about those seasons in my life and those things that I can, after the fact, see the beauty of it.

The beauty is God's love for me, God's will for even when, like, I don't know that that's what I need or that's what's best or how it's going to unfold next, but to see God's love for me, and that's the entire Bible again.

Right?

Like, God's desire for relationship with the people he created, that's what the whole story is about.

It's trying to get that relationship back and build that love between us.

And so the frustration, I think, for me, comes when I think I know what's best for me, and that's what I want, right?

Yeah, big time.

Can I get an amen?

Right.

We all think that our ideas are good ideas, right?

And they might be right.

They very well may be, like, if I look at my own personal life, like, desiring to have children.

Nothing wrong with that, right.

You know, desiring to advance in your career at work.

That's great.

Yeah.

Desiring to be a loving and supportive wife.

That's awesome.

To be a good friend.

Like, all of those things are good.

I think where we get into trouble is when our idea of what it should look like becomes our idol, you know?

And we are hanging on to that.

Like, this is the most important part.

Right.

My idea is more important than my trust in God.

My plan is more important than my willingness to submit to God.

Right.

There's nothing wrong with coming in with a plan.

Nothing at all.

But I think the thing that I learned the most through that season is to hold loosely, is to try to just walk through life with open hands so that I can hold what God sets in them.

Because if I'm like, if I've got my fists clenched, there's not room for anything else.

There's not room for anything else.

And God, I think, is so gracious in that he allows us to choose him.

Mm hmm.

Right.

He doesn't want a bunch of, like, holy robots, right.

Programs.

And we all just do what he says all the time.

Like, he.

His desire is for us to choose him, to follow him.

I mean, that's Jesus's own first words to his disciples.

Follow me.

It's a choice.

It's a choice.

You could stay there.

You can come with me.

I want you to come with me, though.

And I think that that same call sits before all of us every day.

Follow me.

You know?

Follow me no matter what it looks like.

And I think that is hard when what it looks like to follow Jesus is a departure from what it looks like to follow our own plans.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

And I think of speaking of Jesus and him calling others to follow.

I think of him even in the garden before his crucifixion.

Me too.

I just keep coming back to it lately.

And I think probably because I'm raising teenagers right now, like, we just.

Constant prayer.

May this cup pass for me, Lord.

Oh, man, please.

May this cup pass from me.

But really, even more than that, I think, like, Lord, I hold, you know, the fisted hands.

This is what I want for them.

This is what I think they need.

And I really have been finding myself kind of like you were talking about not wanting to lift the hands and stand like that in praise and prayer, but doing it anyway.

And I find myself opening up my fists and saying, okay, here they are.

Somehow you love them more than I do.

I don't understand that either.

But I would love this thing for my kids.

But I also know that you love them and know better.

And so I'm just like, you know, my voice gets all squeaky and scared and whatever, but it's Jesus in the garden saying, I know what the plan is, Lord.

I know what you've said needs to happen.

I'm gonna go and, like, be brutally crucified for these people.

If you could.

If we could not do that, like, to hear the son of God say, if we could not do that, that would be so great, but not my will, but yours.

I think the garden of Gethsemane is perhaps the most gracious moment in all of scripture that God gave us that, because I think it shows that he is not angered by us.

Yes.

And that it is not sinful to find yourself in a difficult situation and ask God to change it.

Asking is not sinful.

You know, it's now, ultimately, we submit.

Right.

If we insist, then.

Then that crosses over into something else.

But I think, and I imagine, you know, now that I'm a parent, I imagine God's heart for his son, like, oh, you're about to do this thing, be awful, and I'm going to have to watch it, and I don't want you to do it because I know it's going to hurt.

But I also know that on the other side of it, right.

Is this flung wide door of redemption for all people.

Yes.

And so if you'll trust me, you know, if you'll trust me as your father and you'll do it, I promise it'll be worth it when we get to the other side.

And I feel like that is so much the call on and the challenge of.

For the lives of believers in Jesus.

Is God, like, holding out that hand of, like, do you trust me?

And the answer can always be yes.

It doesn't always feel like an immediate yes, for sure, but I think there is a lot of peace to be found in the reality that it can always be yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well.

And to know I get a lot of peace when I do have that moment of opening my hands and releasing things to him in that it's no longer up to me to make this thing happen.

Whatever the thing is, it's not on my shoulders.

And there is a freedom in that.

As well, especially when you realize that it never actually was.

Yeah.

Right.

You're like, oh, oops.

All of that for no reason.

Uh huh.

I do.

I hear.

I feel like I've heard a lot over the last, I don't know, decade or two, probably, of just.

I've got this.

Everybody get out of my way.

I'm doing the thing.

And I just have heard here and there that little boy, like, that's cute, or sit down.

Yeah.

Well, I think our society really glorifies that, like, can do attitude.

Absolutely.

I think it's great to be motivated.

I think it's great to pursue excellence.

I don't think that, you know, God being in control is an invitation to, like, laziness or apathy.

You know, I think it is a, like, I'm going to do the work, but I'm going to trust you to bring this, bring the victory.

I've had multiple goosebumps in this conversation, and just, like, the holy spirit is just preaching here, you know, we like to do that, though.

We like to.

We like to share the good news.

Okay.

We've spoken some to being in that difficult season and finding that beauty.

And so just.

If you've got a word for that woman who's listening right now, and she is in the.

The season where things don't look so beautiful, that is not the pretty picture I had painted in my head.

Right?

What would you want to say to her?

Read your Bible, girl.

That'll preach all day, which I know.

Sounds very, like, blase, but let me break it down.

The whole Bible is a story of people trying to go their own way and God lovingly working on their behalf anyway, right?

I love second to maybe the garden of Gethsemane.

One of my favorite moments in all of scripture is actually Genesis three, the fall of man, which I know sounds very counterintuitive, but here's what I love about it.

Not what Adam and Eve do.

I love what God does, because story, right?

The serpent slithers up.

He whispers his little lies in Eve's ear.

She takes the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When she saw that it was pleasing to the eye, desirable for food, and good for gaining knowledge, right?

Three things that she wants.

She takes the fruit, she eats it.

She gives it to her husband, who's there.

He eats it.

Their eyes are open.

Boom.

Sin has entered the world.

And then here comes God, right?

And here's where I think we see one of the huge, huge examples of God's grace.

He does not storm through the garden, right?

The Bible tells us they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

So here God comes walking, not running, not stomping.

And he, where are you?

That's what he says.

Where are you?

Right?

He leads them, knowing all the answers to all the questions he's about to ask, he leads them into this, into this conversation where, you know, we see the.

The first ever blame game, you know, Adam, what's going on?

Well, the woman that you put here with me, he gave it to me, and I ate it, you know?

And then he turns to the woman, and she says, well, the serpent.

The serpent deceived me.

And I love goddess response to this.

Like, what is this you have done?

That's what he says, like, and it's not.

I don't imagine it as, like, a thunderous, like, what have you done?

Right?

As a heartbroken, like, oh, what have you done?

Like, oh, no, no, no, no.

But what I love, my favorite part is that God addresses the serpent first and does so in the presence of Adam and Eve.

So even though they are the ones who decided to go their own way, decided to forge their own path and then created a mess, right?

God, in their presence, addresses the serpent first and says, cursed are you, because you have done.

You'll crawl on your belly.

You'll eat dust all the days of your life.

I'll put enmity between your offspring and the offspring of the woman, and you will strike his heel, but he will crush your head.

So at the very moment, that's where sin enters the world, in front of the two people who did it.

God says, it will not always be this way.

I already have a plan.

I had it before you made this mistake.

And it is a plan that is going to bring about the most beautiful redemption story in the world.

And so that God, the God of Genesis three, has not changed, right?

And the God who was working the redemption plan for all of mankind before it was even necessary, that is the God who's at work in your life.

That's what I would tell you, is that is the God who is at work in your life.

He is never idle, even when it feels like he is quiet, when it feels like he is far away, when it feels like he has forgotten you.

He is still working.

And the more time we spend in scripture, the more that reality will settle itself down into our hearts.

So I would say spend a lot of time in your Bible, and then also, I would say, look back in your life for past instances of God's faithfulness, because God models that for us all throughout scripture, too.

Over and over to Israel, he says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.

You know, I'm the God part of the Red Sea.

I'm the God who rained down the ten that was me.

And I am still working on your behalf for your good and for my glory.

And God is the same.

He's the same now as he was back then.

And the God who was able to part the Red Sea to deliver his beloved Israel, that's the God who's working in your life.

There's nothing he cannot do.

And what a comfort when everything else feels like chaos, to know that the one who actually does have power and authority over it all isn't flipping around and changing chaotically with everything else.

Our circumstances do not alter God in the way that they alter us.

Right.

And I think there is such comfort in that because it's even like something we can't really fully understand.

I've never gone through anything that hasn't changed me in some way.

Right.

You know, I don't sleep well night, and that changes me, you know?

And so.

But God's not like that.

There's nothing.

Nothing changes him.

So he promises to work all things together for your good.

He promises to make everything beautiful, and it's time.

He promises to call you by name and to redeem you.

He's going to do all of those things.

And amen.

So good.

Thank you.

Okay, last couple questions, just that I like to ask everybody.

Yeah.

Get some resources going for our ladies here.

I would love to know if you have any tools or strategies.

We've talked about the routine piece, but if there are any specific tools or strategies you have that are really helpful for managing your time or creating that breathing room in your life, what you got?

I have a couple things.

First, I put it on my calendar.

If you look in my calendar on every single day, there are three things that appear on every day, and it says bible, pray, run, pop of every single day.

So that, and that's just like my type a personality where it's like, oh, if I see it there, it's official.

I love it.

So that's just kind of like a cue for me.

I have a feeling you're going to also ask me about a book recommendation in a minute.

I mean, I.

In my book recommendation with this question.

Let's go.

The book I'm going to recommend is the tool that I would recommend for creating breathing room.

It is called 52 weeks in the word.

It's by Trulia Newbell.

It is the most fantastic resource I have ever found for reading the Bible cover to cover in the space of a year.

She does a beautiful job of breaking down the reading into really actual manageable sections.

Awesome.

And you go through, like, genesis to revelation.

Boom.

Cover to cover.

There's no, like, jumping around.

I know some will do, like, old Testament, New Testament, and a psalm.

And that is great.

That is great.

But for me, I like it.

I like it.

Linear, cover to cover.

So she breaks it up into really manageable chunks, and then each day, she has these kind of questions at the top for you to consider, and then there's a space for notes for, like, the stood out to you from that day.

I did it last year, and it changed my life.

And the other thing is that I write down my prayers, like, as though they are letters.

Like, every single word.

Write down for me, my brain, I cannot get it to turn off or slow down or shut up.

And so I have to.

If I'm physically writing pen to paper, I can.

My brain will be quiet, and it will think what I'm telling you to think.

Nice.

And so, for me, I just buy composition notebooks, like, from your office supply section.

They are not fancy.

I do get them in pretty colors because I don't like the black and white ones.

Yeah, no, I'm with you.

Got to make it pretty.

Yes.

And so I write them down, you know, date at the top, write them down.

If a verse jumped out at me for my bible reading, I will put that at the top and kind of use that to inform a little bit of how I pray on that particular day.

And then I have this record, right, this great record of all the things that I've talked to God about.

When something pops up, I'm like, wait, I prayed about that, and I can flip back through, like, oh, my goodness.

Like, look at the way that God answered this prayer.

And I think it just.

It reaffirms his faithful, you know, again, if you do find yourself right now, in a season where things feel messy and chaotic, it can be good to have, like, a physical written record of God's faithfulness in your life.

I love that.

I love that.

It is as simple as a composition notebook.

You know, right now we're in.

You know, this will air later, but as we're talking is back to school season.

They're marked way down super cheap.

Get you five for a dollar.

That's right.

So I love that it's easy and cheap and that you are able to go out.

That was one thing.

As soon as you said that, I was like, I need to know if she flips back through.

And then you were like, and then.

I flip back through.

So good.

I do need to know for the calendar piece, are you a paper or digital or both?

Paper.

Paper till I die.

Love it.

You can buy my paper calendar from my cold, dead hands.

Yeah.

But I'll ask my husband.

I'm like, hey, do you work this weekend?

And he's like, it's on our family calendar.

I'm like, I don't look at that.

I don't look at.

I look at my paper calendar.

It has to be on the paper calendar.

Yes.

I love that everybody's got their preferences and like you said, you know, slowing the mind, getting it to focus on one thing.

Yeah, I love that you know that for yourself.

That's so good.

And we've got the book recommendation, so all of the things we will link in the show notes.

I'll even put a link for the composition notebooks on Amazon.

All.

We'll just put it all in there.

I love it.

Quick and easy.

Go grab it.

And last question.

Super easy.

Where can people find you, Baylor?

Well, on Instagram, which is, I think, like social media wise, where I spend the vast majority of my time, just Baylor.

Not like Baylor likes university.

Not Knott tied in a knot, two t's, no symbols, no fancy characters, just ailernot on Instagram.

And then you can find my website, everythingbeautifulministries.com.

i've got a free email that goes out every Wednesday.

Every Wednesday.

Wednesday's word.

It's just like a quick little scripture and then some encouragement that's rooted in the truth of that particular scripture.

If you sign up, you get a free 31 day bible reading plan.

And then I also have a devotion subscription that goes out every Monday and your first month is free.

After that, it's dollar five a month.

Ironically, right now, we are in a series called cover to cover, where I am going through the entire Bible from COVID to cover, pulling one lesson from each of the 66 books of the Bible.

So it's a 66 week series.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yes.

So we're trekking right along in our 66 week series, first Kings, at the time of this recording, first Kings, where we'll be next week.

It's been amazing so far.

I've really enjoyed it.

And then I've got a devotion book out on Amazon called 30 days to thankful cultivating a grateful heart and it a devotion book that really talks a lot about gratitude.

Yeah, and I wanted to make sure we mentioned that because when this does air, we're coming close to Thanksgiving.

It's not, you know, we're in the fall season, it's coming up.

We're just still thinking about back to school.

While we record his heirs, we're going to start be thinking about thanksgiving and.

Things fantastic devotion to do during the month of November.

30 days.

November 30 days in the book.

It's quick, easy, it's got scripture for each day, a little message from me and then two to three application questions and then a place for you to pray in response to what God has shown you on that particular day.

Yeah, we're absolutely going to link that in the show notes and I'm going to be sharing about it and I have plans to go through it this November.

So good.

So definitely would recommend that get on the email list, go find Baylor and say hi.

It's just she has such a wonderful place of encouragement and staying in God's word and seeking that truth, especially going through the hard times.

It's just so much more needed even then.

So finder, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story.

I know it's nothing always easy to dive back into the deep parts of the story and I'm just thankful for you taking the time and energy that it does take to share that with us today.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

I love, I love talking about the goodness of God and how he just is always busy, always up to something.

That's what I say, he's up something.

Yes.

I love that so much.

Well, we will have to talk again soon because this was fantastic.

So everybody go find Baylor and we'll see you next time.