Glory & Grit : Season 2, Episode 1 - Still Walking: Taking the Next Most Needful Step
Show Notes:
Summary
Season 2 begins not after everything has been resolved, but right in the middle of the life we are actually living.
In this episode, Stephanie reflects on health uncertainty, unfinished responsibilities, good intentions, and the pressure created by the complete picture we carry in our minds. An ordinary evening spent straightening her cluttered podcast studio becomes a reminder that progress does not have to mean completing the whole plan.
Drawing from Luke 10:38–42 and Mosiah 4:27, Stephanie explores the difference between worth and stewardship, why we should invite God into our ordinary responsibilities, and how to discern whether the next faithful step is rest, action, or making the task smaller.
You may not be running or moving as quickly as you expected—but you are still walking.
Key Topics
Continuing when life still feels unresolved
Measuring ourselves by what remains unfinished
The difference between worth and stewardship
Inviting God into ordinary responsibilities
Why dreading can feel heavier than doing
Takeaways
Still walking does not mean everything has been resolved.
An unfinished checklist does not change your worth or God’s love for you.
Inviting God into ordinary responsibilities does not remove your agency—it helps you act with greater clarity and strength.
Sometimes the next faithful step is rest. Sometimes it is beginning. Sometimes it is making the task smaller.
Movement can reveal the next part of the path before the entire plan becomes clear.
A smaller, useful step is not a failed version of the whole plan. It is a win.
Transcript:
Stephanie (00:04)
You can't always eat the whole pie. Sometimes you just need to take a slice.
We can build such a picture in our mind about how something should look and what step how the steps to get to it should look that if we can't accomplish the whole thing, then we just don't start at all, right? Or we begin, but because we can't finish the entire picture we had in our minds, we decide that that wasn't enough. But maybe walking with God
isn't always about completing the whole picture.
Maybe sometimes it means that we're asking him, what is the most needful right now? Taking the next step that we have strength for, and then allowing that to count as a win.
Hi friend, welcome back to Glory and Grit, where faith meets real life. I'm your host, Stephanie Doss Ladner, and I'm really glad you are here. And welcome into season two.
All right.
before we go anywhere else, I want to thank those of you who walked with me through season one.
I appreciate it. And welcome to season two. So during season one, though, we talked about trusting God when life didn't go as planned. We talked about disappointment, waiting, trauma, forgiveness, rebuilding, new beginnings, and those places where faith has to become more than just something you simply.
say we have, right? Then during our July Scripture First Mapping Series, we slowed down.
And look more closely at a few familiar passages of the scriptures. And I love doing that. I love digging deep into the scriptures and finding out context and meanings of words and what the culture was back in that time frame. And really feasting as we were talking about today on the word of.
God. And I hope that you enjoyed sitting down with me and walking through those scriptures with me. And that if you aren't already doing that, that maybe it sparked a little something to help you also to deep dive deep into the scriptures like that. But now here we are, season two. Woohoo!
Now, when I first started thinking about the opening episode for season two, I thought it might be about learning to walk with God again.
But as I sat with that idea, I realized something. I never completely stopped walking. Some days I walk confidently. Some days I walk limpid. Some days I even question where I was going.
And some days God had to carry me much farther than I realized. But I'm still here. I'm still walking. And maybe you are too.
I
Would love to begin this season by telling you that everything has settled into place.
The pain is gone, my energy is returned, all the boxes are unpacked.
I feel completely prepared for the new leadership responsibilities I have. The season one care packages are finished and mailed. And season two is all prepared, finished, and ready to go.
I would love to tell you that. But that wouldn't be true. It absolutely would not be true. The truth is that I'm beginning this season still carrying several things all at once. I'm still in pain. I still have not had my surgery. I am still tired. I still don't know what's going on about my health.
I don't know what's going on with my cat's health. I'm stressed about that. I've got new leadership responsibilities. I haven't had my executive meetings. The boxes are still unpacked. And the list can go on and on and on, right? I would love to tell you that those things are set, ready to go, and everything is perfect.
But I can't. And there are even small little aggravations that are taking bites out of whatever energy that remains.
But that would be a lie. I can't tell you that. But what I can tell you is that threaded through that same life, there's also been lots of joy. I've been having fun with the deep dive scripture verse mapping for the summer episodes.
And I find genuine joy in doing that and discovering all those new bits of information. I'm still rebuilding season two, even while I'm occasionally wondering whether I have enough in me to do it. I'm answering guest emails. I'm prepared a lot of pre-interviews. I'm continuing for a little while longer to have work.
I'm still leading, I'm still serving.
I'm even still unpacking boxes. Might be one a week, but I'm doing it.
I even went to Zumba while living with this nerve pain.
And as I look at all of that together, I realize something.
Sometimes still walking doesn't feel faithful or courageous. Sometimes it just feels like being tired while you're continuing to do the next thing.
As I started looking more honestly at everything I was carrying, I noticed that I wasn't measuring whether I was still walking by the things I was doing. I was measuring by everything I hadn't finished.
I hadn't held my first Toastmasters executive meeting.
Season one guest packages are still unfinished. My flowers are dying. Even my planner has turned into something that records all of my good intentions without checking off enough of those little boxes. And let me tell you, I love a good checklist, okay? I love to check those boxes.
I want my planner to be decorative, but I also want it to be functional. I want to I want to plan what needs to be done and then actually work on the plan. I want a scripture study every day. I want to reach out and contact people who weren't at church that day. I want to finish stuff that I've started and I want to stop.
I want to spend a little less time with mindless scrolling. I think we all know that one. And I want more balance, you know? I want my daily reactions to reflect the faith, the relationships, the responsibilities, and the purposes that genuinely matter to me. And underneath all of that was a deeper disappointment.
God has blessed me with so many abilities. I can learn, I can create, I can sew and craft, make handmade cards that I can share with people to hopefully brighten their day. I can do this podcast by sharing stories and encouraging people.
I can serve my family and my home and the people that God places in my life. and I began asking myself, what am I actually doing with all those abilities God gave me?
Am I being intentional with them? Or am I merely having good intentions?
And I want to be clear here, very clear, because
distinction matters. this wasn't a question of whether I'm worthy of God's love. I'm a daughter of God. So I know I'm already worthy of his love.
Using my gifts more faithfully doesn't mean that I earn more of God's love. A completed checklist doesn't make me more worthy of his love, just like an unfinished checklist doesn't make me less worthy of it.
His love for me is already settled. Okay.
This wasn't a worth struggle. It's a stewardship struggle.
It was the question. God has blessed me with abilities, opportunities, and people to love. Am I being intentional with what he's placed in my hands?
And I don't think I'm the only person who's wrestled with this. Maybe you also have an image in your mind of a more disciplined version of you. Or you that use, you know, she uses her planner. She completes what she starts. She takes care of her body. She studies scriptures consistently. She keeps up with the house.
She checks on people.
She doesn't procrastinate and she certainly doesn't spend forty-five minutes scrolling through something she doesn't even care about. Okay.
Bless her little heart. and maybe you look at that version of yourself and then you look at the version sitting here today and the distance between the two becomes discouraging.
you may not believe you have earned God's love, but you still feel disappointed because you you you know you aren't living as intentionally as you want to live.
As I continue to think about this, I realize something else. We've prayed about my health. Health concerns feel important enough to go to God, right? It feels important to bring those things to God. They feel like they're serious enough. But
I hadn't really prayed about unpacking the house. I hadn't asked him about Toastmaster's leadership. I hadn't particularly sought his direction about my frustrations and other things. I
just continue to move along trying to manage those things for myself. I think part of me saw those things as small things and that those are things that I should be able to hand them on my own. I know how to schedule a meeting. I know how to unpack a box. I know how to use a planner. I know what healthier food choices look like.
God has already given me agency. He's given me the knowledge and the faculties to act for myself.
So asking him for help with those things almost felt like I was admitting that I was undisciplined or that I was failing. Maybe it even felt like I was kind of bothering God with something he'd already equipped me to do. Which is crazy, really, because
I also believe that if something is important to me, then it's important to God. So that thinking doesn't make much sense. And yet, here we are.
We invite God into the valley, but quietly assume that we're supposed to manage the ordinary road ourselves, right? We pray when we receive diagnosis, we pray when our relationships are in trouble, we pray when the loss is too heavy for us to carry.
But maybe we don't pray about the planner or the meeting or the box that's been sitting in the corner for months, the phone calls we keep postponing, or even the daily chores that aren't dramatic but are slowly shaping our lives. We bring God our emergencies while treating our ordinary resistance as if it's something that we should be able to conquer alone.
But inviting God into the ordinary doesn't mean asking Him to do the work for us.
I'm not asking God to come unpack the boxes. I'm not asking him to schedule my executive meeting, and I'm certainly not asking him to drag me onto the walking pad, even though that would help me get home more often. Agency still requires action. And there's a difference between asking God to do something for me and then inviting God to help me act for myself.
I can ask him for strength, for willingness, for clarity, for inspiration, for help confronting the resistance, discouragement, or the shame that keeps getting between what I know and what I actually do.
I can ask him to help me understand what is most needful right now. Is it rest or is it action? Or is it one smaller step than the one I originally planned?
That question matters to me because I don't want this episode to become a speech about pushing harder, being more productive, and forcing ourselves to finish everything. That's not the message. That's not what I'm saying here. In Mosiah 4 27, King Benjamin teaches that and see that all these things are done in wisdom and order.
For it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. I love that scripture. We are not required to run faster than we have strength for. The body and the mind genuinely need to rest at times. Rest.
Isn't automatically laziness, okay? Sometimes caring for the body that God gave us is the most faithful thing that we can do. And
If I'm honest, since returning home, if you're new to the podcast, we serve a mission for two years in Africa and just got home in January. so you know, if I'm if I'm honest here, and I try to be, since we've returned home, I sometimes ignore the moments when my body genuinely
needed a little TLC, tender love and care. And I know what it is to live with pain, poor sleep, health uncertainties, and certainly exhaustion.
There are days when rest isn't avoidance. Rest is needful.
But there are times when not yet, or this isn't the right time, become a very respectable looking hiding place. Sometimes we aren't able to do a thing, right? We're dreading the beginning of the thing.
And rest and avoidance may look almost identical from the outside. That means I need to pause. I need to pause long enough to do an honest self-assessment.
not a shame-filled interrogation, but an honest physical, mental, and spiritual check-in. Right? What is my body genuinely telling me? What is my mind capable of right now?
Am I truly unable to do this? Or am I dreading beginning? have I asked God what is most needful?
What is the one faithful step I can take without ignoring what my body needs? And sometimes the answer will be rest. And sometimes it'll be get up and begin. And even sometimes it'll be, hey, maybe make the task smaller.
Okay. While we were in Ghana, Marty created this saying that became one of our favorite things to say when we don't want to do something. Dreading is worse than doing.
I'm gonna just drop that right there for a second and let it sit with your spirit.
Dreading is worse than doing. Mike Bumper. And unfortunately, he was often right. He was right quite a few times. So sometimes the task itself is not nearly.
as heavy as the energy that we spend circling it, postponing it, and feeling guilty about not doing it. Which brings me to my studio.
Now my studio has become a bit messy, quite messy. we brought a painting in and it's over in the corner and it hasn't been put up. We bought this tall lingup to help with the lighting, and when we took our trip, we bought things back and dropped them in here, and there's recording equ equipment everywhere. There
My big camera we sat in here and the bags and then the ring light carrying bag and the box that all came in. It's been sitting in the corner for months now. The bookcase is messy and you know it's it's just some things needed to be done in here. Plus, I wanted to rearrange the room.
for season two, you know, new season, wanted to have a new look, right? And it just has not happened. No. Season two, right?
And because I had this larger picture in mind of how I wanted to finish the studio and how it should look, then straightening up the room started to look like a whole bigger project that I wanted to take on, right? Or that I had the energy to even take on.
I didn't only see a few things that needed to be put away. I saw the entire season two studio transformation in my mind. So
Kept postponing it because in my mind I had steps that needed to happen to make that happen. And really, the part of the room that was messy wasn't the part that you see here on camera. Clearly. so no one watching the podcast would ever know. I sit
in this spot right here and this only frames what I want you to see, right? The microphone, the lights in the back, and you know, a couple of things on that little shelf right there. The visible part still looks fine, but I knew it was there.
So one night I was on my way to bed and I was on my way to the bedroom and I walked into the studio with yet one more thing I was gonna drop in here, put on the pile of mess, and that was my grand plan to just come in here and make the pile worse and then just walk away, right? But instead
I started moving things to their proper places, right? So the one item that I brought in, I thought, you know what, I might as well put this where it belongs. Since I'm just bringing it in here, I can put it where it belongs, and then there'll be one less thing to worry about, right? One less messy item in the room. And then while I was doing that, I saw another item. I thought, actually that could go in the same place.
And then I saw this and I thought, well that can actually go right here. This can do that. And before you know it, I was bringing in foldable cubes to hold the guest packages, care package supplies. I emptied the bottom cabinet of the bookshelf so I could store them there. I put the ring light.
Put the ring light bag in the box that had been sitting out for months. I put that away. I put the large camera in its bag away. And then I straighten up things on the bookshelves and put them back into the storage cubes. I move the new lamp. I set up Marty's little side table. You know, the one so that he uses when he comes in here and we eat together in here or he brings his laptop to to confer things with me. And you know, so one thing led to another and
Movement created more movement. And in about 15 or 20 minutes, partly because I had to keep walking back and forth to go get those folding cubes, the studio looked and felt so much better. It was cleaner, it's calmer.
It's more organized and I felt better being in it. I feel better being in it right now. I still hadn't completed the full rearranging and decorating image that I had imagined in my mind for season two. So that whole picture is not finished. But the most pressing part
has been taken care of. The room now feels more peaceful and more workable again.
What I had built into this large project in my mind took only about 15 or 20 minutes to improve, right? So Marty was, you know, he was right. But don't tell them I said that. Dreading really is worse than doing. and so this whole experience taught me something that I needed.
Even if I can't complete the whole picture that's in my mind, I can still do what is most important right now. I don't have to let the unfinished portion convince me that the part I completed doesn't count. I didn't complete the entire studio project, but I did enough to meet the pressing need.
and the rest can be done slowly, bit by bit, or it can all just be done later in the season. And that is okay.
Gonna let the part that remains undone turn what I accomplished into a failure. Okay, sometimes you just need to move.
It might not be planned. It might not be written in the planner. You might simply put one thing back where it belongs and that one movement can show you what to do next.
That experiment made me think about the story of Martha and Mary in Luke chapter 10. Martha welcomed Jesus into her home, but she got distracted by everything that needed to be done. And so Jesus said, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.
But one thing is needful. Now I don't want to flatten that story into a simple message that
That says that activity is bad or that responsibility doesn't matter because Martha was serving and there were real things that needed her attention. But Jesus recognized that she was careful and troubled about many things. So her attention was being pulled in several directions at once. I'm sure we can relate, right?
And he redirected her toward what was most needful. So I wonder how often I stand in the middle of everything that needs doing, mentally carrying the whole pie, when God may only be asking me to notice the next slice. Not my entire house. Maybe just one box.
Not the complete transformation of every healthy habit at once, but maybe just one better choice.
Maybe not every person I think I should check on. Maybe the one person whose name keeps coming to mind. Not every not the entire project I pictured. Maybe just one useful thing I can do with what strength I have today.
the next step might not arrive as a beautiful plan with perfectly arranged matching boxes in my planner. And I do love a good planner with a checklist, but sometimes I may need to pray, pay attention.
Or simply begin moving. Then, as I move, the next part of the path might become clearer.
And that is how I arrived at the pie. Plus I was thinking about a key lime pie from Publix. But never mind. You can't always eat the whole pie.
Sometimes you just need to take a slice. We build up this great idea in our minds of what the finished task should look like and all the steps that are needed to bring that picture to life.
We might tell ourselves that we're planning, but sometimes all that planning becomes is another way of waiting for the right time, the right energy, the right motivation, or the right circumstances for everything to fall into place. And some things
won't begin falling in place until we prayerfully take action. that action might not follow the pretty plan.
We might take one good unplanned step that places us on a different path toward completing what is most useful or needful at that moment. and we need to be willing to take that as a win. Okay? A smaller, useful step.
It's not a failed version of the whole plan. It's a win score.
sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is rest. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is stop circling the task and begin. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is make the task smaller until it fits the strength that we have for today.
None of those automatically represents failure. Remember.
Mosiah doesn't say that we must always run. It says that we should not run faster than we have strength. Walking more slowly does not mean we've stopped. And maybe that's the part of what it means to still be walking with God.
it isn't only continuing to function while carrying everything by ourselves. It's inviting him into the life we're actually living. Even the parts we think should be too small to bother him with, right?
It is asking him what's most needful. It's listening honestly to our bodies and our minds. It's recognizing when we need grace and rest. It's recognizing when dreading is keeping us stuck.
This is where I want us to begin season two. Not after everything is resolved. Not once we've become perfectly disciplined versions of ourselves. Not once our house is finished, our body feels great, the planners are full of check marks, and the path ahead is completely clear. We're beginning right here in the life we're actually living. Throughout the season,
We'll be talking about identity, rebuilding, endurance, surrender, waiting, purpose, and God's faithfulness in the middle of difficult and unexpected seasons.
We hear stories from people who have had to keep walking when the path looked very different from what they expected. And I hope we'll learn together that God is not only present in the dramatic valleys, He's present on the ordinary road, He's present in the waiting.
He's present in the rebuilding when we rest, when we begin again. He's present in that one small step that no one else will ever see. Sunday's episodes will begin the conversation.
And then we will have companion pages, which were introduced during the summer, will give you a place to sit with the central questions and consider how it meets you in your own life. And may I say, those companion pages are not the same thing as the reflection guides. And the companion pages are
for the summer were quite beautiful. They're really cool, I have to say.
and then the keep walking email will be offering.
Is one small way to carry the conversation into the next week. Also, the Keep Walking will be an email that will go out every Monday, but you have to go to the website and click on the subscription.
to the email and no it's not this long newsletter email with 50 000 things and homework and take a a trip to the promised land and come back it's not it's just a really quick brief email offering you a bit of encouragement for the week based on whatever the topic is and
a grid activity that you can do through the week. Again, they're just to be little encouraging notes, not even really email, but little notes of encouragement throughout the week. And so I hope you will go to the website Glory and Grid Podcast dot com. And if you scroll down towards the bottom, you will see the subscription block.
don't forget to click that you are subscribing to that. Alright now
it's not an entire pie's worth of homework, right? It's just one little slice. Although I would love a public's pie, the whole pie. But I will eat it slice by slice.
So my friend, what is the whole pie you've been staring at?
What if you postpone because you can't complete the entire picture that you created in your mind?
Maybe you don't need to finish it today.
Make an honest assessment of your body, your mind, and your capacity.
Then ask God, what is the next most needful step I can take with you?
Maybe the answer will be rest. Maybe it will be one phone call, one box, one better choice.
Maybe you simply need to begin moving and trust that the next part of the path will become clearer as you go.
Take the step you have strength for. Even if it's smaller, less organized, or more ordinary than the plan you imagined, right?
a smaller useful step is not a failed version of a whole plan. It's a when if you're listening to the podcast, I'm holding up my football gold arms. It's a when you might not be running. You might not be moving as quickly as you expected.
And you might even need to stop and rest before you take another step. But you are still walking.
And throughout this season, we're gonna keep learning what it means to walk with God through the life that we're actually living,
not the perfectly arranged version we thought we would have, right? So let's keep walking together.
thank you for spending this time with me on Glory and Grit. I'm your host, Stephanie.
Until next time, my friend, keep looking for God's glory in the middle of your grit. Bye now.
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