Surrendering Certainty: How Do We Trust in God and Not Our Plans [Podcast Transcript]

Title: Surrendering Certainty: How Do We Trust in God and Not Our Plans

Podcast Date: June 10, 2025

Listen Here: 

Watch Here: 

https://youtu.be/TZ2IsuyV0rU 

Description

Heather interviews author and speaker, Abby McDonald about her new book, "Surrendering Certainty: Hearing God Today By Letting Go of Tomorrow."  Abby and Heather talk about how we can hear and receive direction from God even if we're not sure how things will work out. They talk about the challenge of wanting to know the future and Abby reminds listeners that we were never intended to carry that kind of knowledge. They also discuss why it's so hard to hear the voice of the Lord when we have thousands of other voices shouting at us from every direction. If you've ever felt overwhelmed with fear about making a decision or if you doubt, second-guess, and question whether or not that's God's voice you are hearing--this episode is for you.

Grab a copy of Surrendering Certainty here. (Amazon affiliate link)

Learn more about Abby McDonald here: https://www.abbymcdonald.org

The 40-Day Journey starts soon! Sign up here to join us: www.improvebodyimage.com/40-day-challenge

Heather's Books: https://www.improvebodyimage.com/books-for-christian-women-body-image

Learn more about the ministry, Heather, and this show: https://wwwimprovebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:00]:

Abby McDonald, welcome to the Compared To Who? podcast.

Abby McDonald [00:00:03]:

Thank you, Heather. I'm glad to be here.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:05]:

I am so excited to talk to you about this new book of yours.

Abby McDonald [00:00:11]:

I'm excited too.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:12]:

It has my brain going a thousand different directions. So let me just apologize to viewers and listeners in advance because, like, I just wanna go all the places all at once with this concept, but you wrote a book on surrendering certainty.

Abby McDonald [00:00:30]:

Yes. Like, woah.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:32]:

What's the title? Right? Because so, like, I'm doing this whole like, I'm I'm exploring this whole concept around, like, it's easy for us to have big faith. Like, you know, we're going to heaven forever. We're spend I mean, we're gonna spend eternity with Jesus forever. I've got big faith that a god I never saw sent Jesus to the earth. Like, I've got big faith for all of that. And when it comes to, like, can I show up at a women's meeting wearing the wrong thing? Like, oh, I'm pretty insecure around that. Right? Like, it's so there's so many things in this life

Abby McDonald [00:01:11]:

Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:12]:

Right, where we're trying to follow a formula, almost like our faith formula. Right? Like and and and really faith isn't Right? We're on a sanctification journey, but we've made it so like, okay. I got the God and Jesus answers. Check. Check. Now eternity is secure. Now what can I do here on earth where I can check, check, and then this outcome will happen? And we're just surprised that. It's kinda what you're saying in your new book.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:36]:

So tell me

Abby McDonald [00:01:37]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:38]:

What inspired this for you, my friends?

Abby McDonald [00:01:41]:

Absolutely, Heather. Well, what inspired this book was conversations that just kept coming up with friends and community, family members. And the question that I kept hearing over and over is, how do I know that this is God's voice? This this nudge that I'm feeling, this prompting, this burning that I feel in my soul, how do I know that this is God that is leading me toward whatever it is, x, y, z? Or if it's just my own desire, my own voice or imagination. And I knew that struggle because I have lived that struggle. I have been that person, like you said, who wants the formula. You know? God, just tell me what to do. Give me a black and white sign with bells and whistles on it, and I will be good. You know? Right.

Abby McDonald [00:02:35]:

But God does not work that way. Sometimes he gives us those those big signs, and I have had those moments in my life. But more often than not, what I'm finding is it's those gentle nudges, and it's more in hindsight that I see his mercy and his leading. And it's after I take that step of faith, and I trust what I already know of his character. And so I thought, you know what? There's something here. There's something that needs to be explored, and we need to dig in and go deep. And so the book explores three truths from John 10 that Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, and they are my sheep hear my voice. They will come and go and find pasture, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Abby McDonald [00:03:31]:

And I invite the readers to make those truths her foundation rather than this longing for security and something that honestly will never bring us the security that we long for. Yeah. So that that's it in a nutshell, and that's, like, a pleasant grace.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:54]:

Yeah. So good. So so I was raised in a Christian home. I went to Christian school too. I went to Christian college, Christian graduate school. And when I was 24 years old, I felt like God was calling me out of graduate school into my first job running a congressional campaign. Okay. And so I knew God had opened that door for me.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:20]:

I knew God, like, this was my passion was I was gonna I wanted to run a campaign. And so I moved sight unseen to Abilene, Texas from Virginia. I mean, grew up East Coast girl. I know you're on the East Coast, like, grew up there, like but I'm going to Abilene, Texas. I'm gonna run this campaign. And then the way it was supposed to work was we were supposed to win the election, and then he was gonna go back to Washington. And then I was gonna be his chief of staff, and I was going to have this escalating political career from there. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:51]:

And we lost the race. We lost the election. And it was a crisis of faith for me as a 24 year old, because I was like, how did God call me into a position and we not win, especially the other side, like straight up cheated. They called all the senior citizens and they told them a lie about what my candidate was going to do. Like they straight up cheated. They lied. Like evil one was kind of how I felt.

Abby McDonald [00:05:20]:

Right. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:21]:

And then I spent eleven months of my life in Abilene, Texas, which is like a growing and thriving place now. Twenty years ago, twenty five years ago, it was not quite the same. Right. And I I really struggled. I was like, God, how could you do this to

Abby McDonald [00:05:39]:

me? Right.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:40]:

Like like, because God told me to take that next step, I kind of had a theology that believed like the whole rest of the way was gonna be paved in the way I expected it to be paved.

Abby McDonald [00:05:53]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:54]:

And so that's just like kind of my story of wrestling with certainty. Yeah. And I feel like this is common for every woman.

Abby McDonald [00:06:01]:

Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:02]:

Right? Like we expect that, okay. God's showing me this next step, but maybe it's, I mean, maybe it's like the person to marry. Mhmm. Right? Like, I married him and then, like, god, like, how how did we end up here? Why, like, why is our marriage feeling or, you know, like, I took this, I moved to this place. Right? Like, what so what what kind of things what kind of things are you speaking to in that realm, Abby?

Abby McDonald [00:06:29]:

Yeah, Heather. Well, I'm glad you asked because that is one of the things that I talk about in the book is a lot of times we take those steps of faith, and we're we are certain it's God. You know? We know because I think on some level, we we know when God is asking us to do something. We may try to reason our way out of it. But when we walk with him long enough, we know when he's asking us to do something. And I've taken those big steps of faith too where I'm like, you know, god, this doesn't look anything like I thought it would, and what is even happening? And it's so funny that you tell that story because I did almost the exact same thing, and the circumstances were very different. I was not running for political office. But, I moved here, actually, sight unseen.

Abby McDonald [00:07:16]:

I had never been to Cumberland, Maryland, never, visited, never, didn't know anything about it. And my husband applied for this job here, and it was a good opportunity. It was an increase in pay. We would be closer to our family, which, at the time, when he applied for the job, we lived in Utah, which was over 2,000 miles away from any family. We have no family there. But we were thriving. We we went to a great church. We're really plugged into our community.

Abby McDonald [00:07:55]:

We had a two year old son, and things were going well. But when you're raising a family, you want them to be close to their grandparents. You want them to have that relationship. And this opportunity became available, and we prayed, and we felt sure that God was leading us toward this. Right? And so, honestly, the first time I saw this town, and I say this with every bit of love, but we were driving over this overpass on Highway 68 or Interstate 68 and driving over Cumberland. And this is not the best view, I'll just go ahead and say, up to that that you can have of this town. But I thought, oh my god. What have I done? Mhmm.

Abby McDonald [00:08:48]:

And I I just was like, what what am I doing that I don't, you know, I can't move here. Well, we had already made the commitment to move here, so we did. But when we got here, I had the hardest time finding friends, finding community. We tried to find a church for years, tried different churches, and and nothing felt like it was a good fit. And I went through a season of loneliness and depression, and I honestly thought we had made the made the big biggest mistake of our lives moving here. I can look back now, and I can see all the ways that God was moving through that. Like I said before, sometimes it's in hindsight that we see his mercy. But God used that season to really draw me in deeper, and make me rely on him as my source of sustenance and my identity more than all these other things.

Abby McDonald [00:09:56]:

You know, being active in the church, which that's great. I'm not saying don't be active in the church, but, community. He wanted me to go deeper with him in that season. And when I came out of it on the other side, I was stronger. I my faith had grown in ways that I never anticipated. And so, yeah, I I think that sometimes when we take those big steps, we we do have certain expectations of ways that it's gonna play out, and that's normal. But we have to hold those expectations loosely, and we have to let God work in ways that we didn't necessarily anticipate.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:47]:

Yeah. Well, it seems to me like we're just really quick, or I'm just really quick. I'll personalize it to be like, okay. You know, God help me make the decision. And then it's like, okay. Check. He helped me make the decision. And then immediately, I take my faith from, like, faith in God to, like, no.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:12]:

I had faith in the plan. Yeah. Exactly. Like like, you know, okay. No. God, you gave me the plan, and now I have faith as trusting in the plan. Right? I mean, I guess it's almost like the Israelites, like they cross the Red Sea and then immediately the plan doesn't look like they thought it was gonna look and they lose their faith in God because the plan is not what they expected. Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:37]:

Yeah. I mean, oh, it's such this is such a tricky area for us. Hearing the shepherd's voice. Right? Like, you say something in the book about telling the difference between, I think, fear and discernment. And we can talk about that a little bit.

Abby McDonald [00:11:57]:

Yeah. Absolutely. And so, this obviously is something that I've that I've wrestled with. Everything in the book are is things that I've wrestled with before, and it's something that I just kept hearing come up in in conversations. But I think a lot of times when we reason our way out of something that God has called us to do, we tell ourselves, I'm using discernment. You know? I I'm that I'm being wise, and I I'm using spiritual discernment where really it's just fear. It it's fear of the unknown. It's fear of looking foolish, fear of what people are gonna think.

Abby McDonald [00:12:42]:

Am I gonna be successful at whatever it is and whatever success looks like or we think that it is. And so one of the things that I talk about is, I grew up in a Baptist church, very fundamental, beliefs, very conservative. And so when I grew up, I thought, you know what? Why do I need to go to a Baptist church? I'm gonna try other denominations. I'm gonna go to Assembly of God or I'm gonna go to Pentecostal. And what I found was that they their they practice things that were very different than what I grew up in, the churches I grew up on. There were altar calls in the service. There were people laying hands on each other. There were people speaking in tongues and all these things that I had never been exposed to before.

Abby McDonald [00:13:44]:

And a lot of times, my natural response when I saw these things was fear because I did not understand it. Mhmm. I didn't understand what was happening. And then, sometimes I was like, that that person is just, you know, trying to draw attention to themselves. And I'm just being completely honest. And, yes, sometimes that is the case. I'll just be blunt there. But I I think that the fact that something makes us uncomfortable does not mean that it's untrue.

Abby McDonald [00:14:23]:

Mhmm. And I think that a lot of times, we believe that because we're uncomfortable that it we need to run the other direction or it's not of God or it is untrue. And that is absolutely not the case. Yeah. And as I have been more open to that discomfort and what god can do in those moments. I have found that there is so much there that is just good, and it's filled with joy. And it causes me to do things that I did not think I was capable of doing. And in the book, one of those moments and this was back several years ago, actually, eight years ago when my daughter was just a baby.

Abby McDonald [00:15:27]:

But I came forward during one of those altar call moments, and it wasn't the first time I had con gone forward during one of those, but this was a moment where there the woman stood up there, and I felt like she was just talking directly to me. I mean, everything that she said, I felt like that that's me. That's me. Mhmm. That's me. And, of course, you know, I tried to reason my way out of it as we often do, and I I was actually operating, the media that day. I was I was too

Heather Creekmore [00:16:03]:

You gotta get exposed not

Abby McDonald [00:16:04]:

to go forward. I was getting the slides, and so I was like, do I go forward, or is this person sitting next to me gonna be okay? Are they gonna be capable of doing it? Well, we weren't really doing any slides or anything at that moment anyway because this service was unlike anything I'd ever seen, and it really just turned into a house of prayer. That's what it was. It was the epitome of where Jesus says my house will be a house of prayer. And so I went forward, and there was all these other people standing there that who had already gone forward, and I felt really exposed. I I felt kind of foolish and awkward standing there because the person who had made the altar call was blocked by all these people who were already standing there. And I was like, do I go back to my seat? Do I keep standing there? And I just closed my eyes, and I'm just praying as much as I can because my mind is going a million different directions. And then I open my eyes just a little bit, and I see this hand reaching through the people toward me, and she pulled me in.

Abby McDonald [00:17:25]:

And she just started praying over me and naming fears and burdens that I had been carrying for so long that I had not told anybody about. And that was just a pivotal moment for me because I I thought, you know what? All these times that I have sat in my seat and questioned and made judgments. And God used that moment to release me from this depression and this anxiety that I had been carrying around for so long. And I'm not saying that everything was just hunky dory and just rainbows and butterflies after that, but I definitely felt a weight that had been lifted after that. And so, yeah, that's that's one of the stories that I tell and the the fear versus discernment chapter and just, you know, be open. Be open to what God can do when we just let him break down those walls.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:35]:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you said a couple, like, really important things that I think totally apply to this audience. Mhmm. Because we talk about this. So I do a I have got a forty day body image workbook, and I take women on a forty day journey through that workbook. And, this comes up all the time. Just this reality that, for those of us living in The United States

Abby McDonald [00:18:55]:

Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:55]:

We most of us have the ability to make sure their lie our lives are always comfortable.

Abby McDonald [00:18:59]:

Yeah. Right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:02]:

So any discomfort, it's it's like, how do I make it go away?

Abby McDonald [00:19:06]:

Right. Right. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:07]:

Oh, I've got a earache. I'm gonna go eat some drops. You know? Like like, oh, my bunions flaring up. I'm gonna get a brace. Like like physical or whatever, you know? Like, oh, there's this creak in our door. Like, oh, we're gonna get some w d four. Like, we've got a way to fix every discomfort. And so being uncomfortable is a really strange sensation, I think, for many of us.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:36]:

Mhmm. And for women with, like, eating disorder history, body image issues, like, a lot of us learned, like, the way to fix those uncomfortable feelings is you fix your body. Because if you just look different, then you don't feel uncomfortable anymore. Like, everything around you can be chaos, but, you know, if you could just lose a couple pounds, then you feel good and you won't have this discomfort feeling anymore. And and I think the reality of, like you said, like, it's it's discomfort, but a lot of times it's fear. Right? Like, naming that fear. Okay. I'm uncomfortable in this group.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:13]:

Okay. That's one way to say it. But is the reality that, no. I'm actually afraid. Like, the people in this group, because they don't look like me, they might reject me. Right? Or because they, you know, have better degrees than I do or better jobs than I do or better kids than I do or whatever, or maybe they're all married and I'm single. Like like, we we have these fears, and I think it's so important to name those as fears.

Abby McDonald [00:20:40]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:41]:

Right? And then Mhmm. And be like, oh, it's the fear that's making me uncomfortable, and that's a completely different scenario. Right? Because, yeah. Yeah. I I I I love I love that. I love thinking about, fear versus discernment, and I think we've all done that too. Right? Like, oh, yeah. I'm not gonna do that.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:04]:

I'm sure it's the Lord telling me not to do that.

Abby McDonald [00:21:07]:

Right. Right. Well and another thing, Heather, is that fear is a natural emotion that God created us to fill. And so my point in the book is not to say, don't fear, you know, because that's just unrealistic. Right. But let your fear propel you toward Jesus instead of away from him. And come to him with that fear and just be honest. If you're afraid, then tell him about it.

Abby McDonald [00:21:34]:

He is more than capable of handling those big emotions. Right. And that's one of the things that I love about the Psalms is David was just completely honest before the Lord, and he just let it all out. Right. And I found that so encouraging when reading those. And it's a good reminder to me that I don't have to hide and I don't have to run away when I'm afraid, but I can just be honest with him. And a lot of times, that can help me to shift my perspective and say, okay. God is in this.

Abby McDonald [00:22:08]:

You know? God is here, and he's leading me. And it may not look the way I think it needs to look, but he's still with me. Right. And he's not gonna forsake me in this.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:20]:

Yeah. That's good. I mean, God is big enough for us to say, hey. I'm afraid here. Like, this scares me because Yeah. You're right. David said it. Like, hey.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:28]:

My enemies are all around me. God. Remember me? Hello? Yeah. Over here. I'm like, this is not looking good. Right? So I yeah. I love that reminder too. So as I was saying about this concept of surrendering certainty and, you know, just the I'm I'm flipping here to, flipping here because I think you worded it well and I can't find it right now.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:52]:

So I'm just gonna keep talking. The oh, is it? Oh, okay. I I remember now. The danger of too many opinions. Oh. Oh. So this one was like nail on the head because so thinking about my audience again. Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:17]:

Right? Like, all the time, it's like, oh, actually, I just got an email the other day. Like, Heather, like, your opinion is this. And then I Googled it, and I got 27 other opinions. Like, how do I know that you're right? And I'm like, you don't you can't know that I'm right. Like, you just need to read your Bible. Like, God's right. It's not that I'm right versus them. It's like, just read what God has to say.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:39]:

Like, where where do you go with that in the book?

Abby McDonald [00:23:43]:

Yeah. Yeah. Well and I feel like this is so prevalent in our day and age, like you said. I mean, we have never had access to more information and more gurus on every topic under the sun. And the problem is that, like you said, that we have we run into conflicting opinions. And one person tells us to do one thing, and another person tells us to do something completely different. And so one of the analogies that I talk about is, years ago, I saw this Pandora, commercial, and it was right around Mother's Day. And it was these kids were placed in this big room.

Abby McDonald [00:24:29]:

It looked like a warehouse or something, and they were blindfolded. And then their mothers were put on the other side of the room. And there were probably about eight kids in this video, and they spun them around a few times, and then they released them out to go and find their mothers on the other side of the paper. Yeah. I

Heather Creekmore [00:24:51]:

remember this now. Yeah.

Abby McDonald [00:24:53]:

Every single one of these kids found their mother without sight, without seeing them. They used their sense of touch, perhaps their sense of smell, the way their mother's belly felt, you know, their hair or whatever. And it was just so touching. And as I thought about that commercial, I thought, you know, if those kids were in a room where there were thousands of people shouting, would they have been able to find their mom? Now they weren't using their sense of sound to find their mother, but I think probably not. They probably wouldn't have been able to find them because it would have been too chaotic. There would have been too much distraction. And I think a lot of times, we feel like we're gonna be able to connect with God and hear from God on a personal level when we have thousands of other voices screaming for our attention and speaking into our lives. And not only that, but we go to those other voices first before we go to our living god.

Abby McDonald [00:26:12]:

And I have been guilty of this. Mhmm. I mean, like I said, it's never been easier for us to just jump online and Google search or whatever. But what I have found, the more I walk with God, the more I have found that when I go to him first, before I go to anyone else, I am able to hear his voice better. I'm able to discern his leading more over the voices of the world. And I'm not saying don't ever go to anybody else or seek other wisdom. Sure. We need those people in our lives to speak wisdom and to speak life into us.

Abby McDonald [00:26:52]:

But I'm not necessarily gonna go to those other people first. Right. I'm gonna go to god first. And we see this example repeated in scripture. I mean, David, who I was talking about earlier, one thing I noticed about him as I was studying for this book is whenever he was going into battle and he was about to encounter this huge army where they were outnumbered or whatever, he would always go to the Lord first, and he would say, should I battle whoever it was? And God would give him the okay, and he would say, yes. You you're gonna be successful. You're gonna conquer this other country against other people. And he was.

Abby McDonald [00:27:40]:

And he every time he did that, he was successful. And so I think that we just we have to be very intentional, and we have to be aware of the fact that these other voices have on us because we have never lived during a time where we have been exposed to more information, like I said, but we are more prone to anxiety and depression than ever before. And we see this in our kids. Mhmm. We see this in just the people around us, and that that should say something. You know? Like, more information is not always a good thing.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:23]:

No. No. It's not. And and, also, I mean, just to kind of blend in the concept of the title of your book, right, the surrendering certainty concept.

Abby McDonald [00:28:32]:

Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:33]:

It becomes harder to not believe that there is certainty. Mhmm. Yeah. Because so just thinking about, like, the realm of women I work with. Right? Like, all of the diets

Abby McDonald [00:28:51]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:52]:

Through the decades have promised us a certain outcome. Right? So in 1995, when I wasn't eating avocados and was only eating plain bagels and fat free frozen yogurt because fat would make you fat. Like, the certainty I was offered was if you eat this way, you will have this kind of body. And then in 2015, the exact opposite, right? The certainty was just whatever you do eat only fat. And I'm trying to figure out how to make a fat bomb in my kitchen with coconut oil and nuts and all kinds of other kind of growth things to eat only fat because I couldn't get enough fat in in one day. Right. And it's like the, but the certainty again, like all of these promises of culture, be it around diet or health, right? Like if you eat exactly this way, you'll never get a disease. No, I'm sorry.

Heather Creekmore [00:29:42]:

I talk to women all the time that ate exactly that way, and they still ended up with the disease. Right? Like, there there's

Abby McDonald [00:29:49]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:29:50]:

There's this promise that this equals this outcome. And I think, you know, as you were talking, I was just thinking about the reality of, like, now artificial intelligence. Right? We don't even get to Google search anymore. We just get an AI answer. And I'm doing a series. I just did a series through the month of May. So last month on the show, I did a series where it was me versus chat GPT, where I would answer a question in chat GPT, and then I see what chat GPT answered.

Abby McDonald [00:30:17]:

Oh, wow.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:17]:

It was eerie. Chat GPT does a pretty dang good job, and it actually like affirms you. And it's like, I'm sorry you're feeling this way. Thank you for being so vulnerable with me. Would you like any additional resource? I mean, it's like super personal, but but to your point, right, like, we have the God of the universe accessible to us through prayer.

Abby McDonald [00:30:37]:

Yeah. And

Heather Creekmore [00:30:37]:

yet it's so easy just type in into chat.

Abby McDonald [00:30:40]:

It's so

Heather Creekmore [00:30:41]:

easy just type into Google, you know? And I mean, I'm so guilty of that too. Like, kid has an issue. Oh, why is my kid struggling with that? Like, and here's the 17 things to do. Okay. Let's work through the list instead of, like, okay, Lord, help me. I don't know how to help this. Yeah. So that's that's that's good stuff.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:59]:

Well, Abby, what message would you just like to encourage women with today? Like, what's what's the takeaway? I think they should all go get your new book, Surrendering Certainty, hearing God today by letting go of tomorrow. I mean, we got a whole listenership of women who would not call themselves control freaks necessarily, but we're a smidge controlling. So let it surrendering certainty and letting go of tomorrow is really hard. Encourage us with something as we close

Abby McDonald [00:31:25]:

together. Yes. Absolutely. Well, one of the things I talk about, Heather, and what I would encourage listeners with today is that when we try to run outside of the knowledge that God gives us for today, his, whatever he tells us today, we take on a yoke that we were never intended to carry. But we live in finite bodies. I yes. We our spirit will live eternally, but our bodies and our minds are finite. But God is infinite.

Abby McDonald [00:32:03]:

So he can carry all that knowledge. He can carry the future, but we can't. And when we try to run outside of today, in this moment, then we get ahead of ourselves, and we cannot enjoy that peace that God wants to give us. And so I want to invite listeners to trade that heavy yoke for his yoke because he tells us in Matthew that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Now that doesn't mean our lives are gonna be easy and light, but his peace for today and what he gives us for today is what we need. And it is easy, and it is light, and he is with us in it. And so I that's the encouragement that I would give listeners, and just know that he is for you, and he wants you to flourish.

Heather Creekmore [00:32:59]:

That is so good. Because if I could actually wake up in the morning and just think about, okay. What what does god have for me today? What what is my challenge for today? Like, what what do I need what needs to happen today? If I could actually stay focused on today like, my husband and I had a joking conversation yesterday where I accused him of worrying ahead, and he was like, but you worry ahead all the time. I'm like, yeah. And that's how I can spot someone else worrying ahead. No. But but it's so true. We just steal so much of our joy and peace and rest.

Heather Creekmore [00:33:31]:

Yeah. We're going ahead and forgetting that he is good. He will lead us. And my body, my spirit can only hold what he gives me for today. So that's that's a good word, Abby. Abby, tell everyone where they can connect with you. I know this book, Surrendering Certainty, is available everywhere. Books Christian books are sold.

Heather Creekmore [00:33:50]:

Probably everywhere books are sold too. Where can they connect with you?

Abby McDonald [00:33:54]:

If they head on over to abbymcdonald.org, they can sign up for email updates and get a five day free challenge called five days to unstuck. And it's addressing common, areas where we get stuck in our mindsets and areas where we can't seem to find breakthrough. And so that's the free gift that you can get when you sign up.

Heather Creekmore [00:34:20]:

Love it. Sounds super helpful. Abby McDonald, thanks so much for being on the podcast today.

Abby McDonald [00:34:25]:

Thank you, Heather.

Heather Creekmore [00:34:26]:

And thank you for watching or listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye.