EP 157 They Didn't Have a Plan. They Just Said Yes.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode: 

• Free Training - How to Stop Feeling Powerless & Become the Expert in Your Own Life
• The Mission Driven Mom Academy

Over the last month, I've been sharing stories from some of the women inside MDM Academy.

These are not women who had more figured out than you do. 

They didn't start with extra money, extra time, or some kind of unshakeable certainty. They started exactly where a lot of us are, with a feeling they couldn't quite name, a family they were trying to show up for, and a quiet little voice in the back of their head whispering, is this really it for me?

They just said yes to the next small step in front of them.

Today's episode is all three of their stories woven together, because I think together they say something none of them could say alone.

You're going to hear from Karen, who felt called to serve orphaned teenagers in Mexico, talked herself out of it for years, and then one day got an email from her husband with the subject line: it's time to go. She sold her house. Sold her stuff. Moved her whole family to the jungle. And she is building something I believe is going to change a lot of lives.

Then you'll hear from Lindsay, our head mentor inside MDM, who came to this work feeling completely lost, despite having accomplished every goal she had ever set for herself. A mom of five who had done everything right and still felt like she was floundering. What she found here changed not just her own life, but the way she leads her family, her homeschool, and her church.

And then there's Brenda. A community builder who has spent decades watching what happens when women stop trying to do it all alone. She has brought her kids across the country, started schools, coached founders, and will tell you with the most joyful, completely matter-of-fact energy that together, there is nothing we cannot do.

These are your people, friend.

AI Generated Transcript

Introduction

Welcome to today's podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, and I wanna tell you something before we get into today's podcast. Over the last month, we shared several interviews with some of our MDM Academy members. Inspiring stories about the impact that doing this work has had on their lives and their families and the world around them.

The women you're about to hear from are not extraordinary in the way we usually mean that word. They did not start with more money or more time or more resources or more certainty than you have right now. They started exactly where you are, with a pull towards something they could not quite name, a family they were trying to show up for, and a quiet voice in the back of their minds.

Is this it? Is this what's here for me? And they said yes to that next small thing, and then the next one, and then the one after that. And today I'm bringing you the highlights of these three conversations stitched together into one episode because I think together they tell a story that none of them could tell alone.

You're gonna hear from Karen, who felt called to serve orphaned teenagers in Mexico, dismissed the idea for years, and then one day got an email from her husband with the subject line, "It's time to go." She sold her house, sold her stuff, moved her family to the jungle, and is now building something that I believe is going to change a lot of lives.

Then you're gonna hear from Lindsay, our head mentor inside MDM Academy, who came to this work feeling like she was floundering. A mother of five who had accomplished every goal she had set for herself and still felt lost. What she found here changed not just her own life, but the way she leads her family, her homeschool community, and in her church.

And then you're going to hear from Brenda, a community builder who has spent decades watching what happens when women stop trying to do it alone. She's dragged her kids across the country, started schools, coached founders, and will tell you in the most joyful matter-of-fact way that together there's nothing we cannot do.

These are your people, my friend. I'm excited for you to listen.

Part One: Karen — "It's Time to Go"

Karen

And then that was the last I heard of him. I did hear that he did end up at one of the centers. But it was more and more kids like this that would contact me. I'd find out what they were doing, and I just thought if we could be in Mexico, like we could do something for them. Like from out here, I feel like we can...

I mean, we did some fundraisers to try to find things that the orphanage needed. But what they — I felt they needed most was to be heard, to have these opportunities to pursue the interests they had, and to make an impact for good. They really, like all the ones I met, really wanted to just make the world better.

They wanted to break these cycles. They didn't wanna be the same kind of people that their parents were. Oftentimes they were in these orphanages because their parents were in addictions, and they couldn't take care of them. They wanted something better and different. But often when they would go back out into the world, that's what they knew.

They didn't really know how to do things in a different way, so they would go back to these patterns. And I thought, in my heart, I thought if we could just live in Mexico. But whenever I would bring it up to my family, they were like, "Well, that's impossible. You know, my husband's job is in the United States, and he likes it, and he can't work remotely. He's a therapist, so that's a hands-on thing, and we have a life here." And so it just seemed like an impossible thing, but it would come into my mind every once in a while. We could do so much more if we could provide something there, because obviously we can't bring them to us — as much as I would like that.

I did look into adoption a few times, and that was really difficult for Mexico. And it wasn't gonna make the impact for all of the kids that I want to make. And so I think that drive home, that prayer, that sincere prayer just started something. I can't even explain exactly what it was, but because it was so sincere, something happened that just made the ball start rolling in a direction where this would be possible.

As I was looking into options of what to do, I thought maybe we could go sometimes in the summer. That's what we started doing — creating different programs, figuring out ways to help these kids. And every once in a while I would say, "But if we lived in Mexico," and they're like, "Oh, here you go again." And so I kinda just stopped at that.

And then one day out of nowhere — this was a huge surprise to me — my husband sends me this email and the subject line said, "It's time to go." And so I started reading it and he said, "I've been praying about this, and if this is something that means this much to you and that you really wanna try, then we should just go and try it as a family. Let's just all go and see what we can do."

And so that was a huge miracle, 'cause that was so unexpected. And so he decided to take that leap, and we just sold our home and sold our stuff and we went to a couple internships first. So we did an internship in one orphanage in Tijuana, another one in that same orphanage that we often visited, and then we moved — which is where we bought land. So we had bought the land a year earlier after deciding to do this, planning to move out there.

Audrey

All right, incredible stuff. What Karen just described — that moment of offering herself to God with no plan, no guarantee, and no roadmap — that is not a rare thing. I've watched it happen over and over again in the lives of women who have done this work. But here's what I want you to notice. It didn't start with mission.

It started with Karen working on herself, reading, learning, asking harder questions, sitting with the discomfort of a calling she wasn't sure she was ready for. The mission was the fruit of the inner work, not the starting point. And that's exactly what you're gonna hear from Lindsay next. Lindsay came to The Mission Driven Mom not because she had a vision for her community or a project she wanted to launch.

She came because she was floundering. She had everything she had set out to accomplish — she had accomplished it — and she still didn't know who she was or where she was going next. And what happened, what the work of learning to think differently did to her relationships, her courage, and her ability to lead — I think it's actually really gonna resonate with you.

So I'm excited for you to listen to this next part.

Part Two: Lindsay — From Floundering to Found

Lindsay

But I did feel — I did feel like I was floundering a little bit. And you've talked about this before, and I resonate with it, that you get lost a little bit in the motherhood. It's consuming. It's often thankless, although everybody appreciates the mother — they don't always say it. But I just remembered just floundering, I think would be the word. Just not knowing what to do, where to spend my time, and feeling a little lost, and maybe even a little bit depressed. I just didn't know, okay, where do I go from here?

And joining the MDM community, going through Level One — you're putting yourself together. You're making your physical needs a priority. You're making your mental needs a priority. You're studying, you're learning. That intellectual stimulation really is meaningful and gives life a lot of meaning, as you're learning, as you're making friends and discussing things, and putting your spiritual house in order. And then one of my favorite parts of Level One is just the self-discovery. So learning what am I good at? What are my natural strengths? And how can I develop them?

I remember when we were learning about the drama triangle, and that was such a paradigm shift for me — just to have the words for it. That creator is the opposite of victim. And I didn't necessarily think that I was a victim. I didn't think that I was steeped in this victim mentality, but I was in the middle of some big drama at the time, and it was so helpful to see the different roles that were being played, and the roles I was playing in the drama cycle, and to know what to do to change that. So that was a big deal, and I'm still learning, still working on it. There's still multiple ways — subtle ways — that we show up in this victim orientation every day.

And so I'm super excited. I've been diving deep into different ways of being a victim, and it's been fun to just get more depth to this understanding of the drama cycle, and how to be a creator.

I think for me, it's been a journey of getting my heart and my mind to talk to each other. Our heart — that's where our values are. That's where we feel things. That's where we have desire and motivation. And then in our mind is the logic and the reason and all those things that we associate with the intellectual life. And I've always been very much in my mind, very intellectual. That's how I approached the world. Give me a book so I can know what to do.

Through the academy, I'm learning — and I'm still learning — how to tap more into the heart, how to tap more into my values. Like, I know what my values are. How to pay attention to those feelings. How do we know we're in drama? It starts with a feeling. How do we relate with people? It starts with the heart, right? And for me, it's that communication between the heart and mind that is just a better way to approach life — with both of them being active instead of just the one.

We get to know ourselves on a deeper level in Level One. And so understanding my unique strengths, and also the strengths of others, because we're not the same. And I think sometimes in the past I had thought my way is the best way, and expected everybody to be like me. And so now I have this greater appreciation that actually, I really appreciate when people are not like me — because they bring balance to me. They fill in the gaps for me.

And so I really love that we have these different unique strengths, and also this idea that we can see these strengths. I think I had seen some of my strengths as weaknesses. Or I just hadn't understood them. Why am I this way? Why do I do this, and why does it cause problems? And so, on both sides of that coin, learning to see myself differently is definitely helping my heart and my mind to align better. But also my heart to somebody else's heart is more in alignment, because I feel like I can see myself more clearly, and I'm learning to see others more clearly.

Audrey

Everything Lindsay just described — the alignment between her heart and mind — none of that happened because she found the right system or the right book. It happened because she found her people.

And that is what I wanna talk to you about in this last conversation, because I think it might be the thing we underestimate the most. You can have the right framework, you can have the right principles, you can even have the desire to change, but without a community of women who share the language, who can tell you the truth when you ask for it, who will push back when you're lying to yourself, and cheer wildly when you're not — the growth is slower, lonelier, and so much harder to sustain.

Brenda Haas has spent her career watching what happens when women build that kind of community with intention. She's built schools, coached founders. Her first homeschool was with her oldest when she was not even five years old. She traveled with her kids to places most people would think was impossible, and she'll tell you without hesitation that none of it would've happened if she had tried to do it alone.

So listen up to Brenda.

Part Three: Brenda — Together, There's Nothing We Cannot Do

Brenda

There was a huge difference between before MDM and after MDM. So yes, you and I were connected, and I knew about MDM, and I was excited to get on that path and start that. And so I wanted to grab all these women that I loved — that were in my group, that I was so connected to. I loved their kids. I loved them. We all really knew what each other's values were and where we were coming from, and I was like, "Let's all do this journey together. Let's do it." And we did.

That was an incredible year for us, and I think that one of the reasons why was because it was great content. The content itself really encouraged these great, deep conversations. And it wasn't fluff. It wasn't just this superficial, let's rehash the events of a book and let's see if we know what the timeline was and can name the characters of a fiction book. That was not what it was. It was actually discussing character and values, and how a character would apply to us, and how we saw our values mirrored in them or not mirrored in them — which led to deeper conversations, which led to this beautiful...

There was a vulnerability that had to happen in the class, and that came over time. It's not like you just jump in with a group of people and automatically have that. But it did grow, and it grew steadily, and we were able to celebrate the things that were different in each other, and also celebrate the things that were similar, and honor each other. So we really learned to hold space for other people, and be excited about their stuff even if it wasn't our own, because we knew they would turn around and do the same thing.

And I think that one of the things that I look back on — and I joke with my students now that I'm an old lady, right? Well, I'm 55, and we joke around about it, 'cause I'm older than their mothers, most of them. But I look at my 40s as this incredible time of growth for me, and MDM was a huge part of that. I felt like a grown-up when I was going through MDM. I felt like these are questions, and books, and content, and things that matter, and that are actually gonna make me a wiser person. So it was exciting to dig into it, and I saw the growth in myself, and it has made a huge difference in me.

It also made a huge difference in our community, because I wanted the moms at the time — that were the moms of my children's friends — to have the same stuff that I had. To have that same stable platform and the confidence in who they were, because that gets passed on to their kids, and then to the family cultures, and then the community. It was beautiful. It was awesome.

Closing — Audrey Rindlisbacher

Brenda, Lindsay, and Karen. I hope you enjoyed their amazing stories. And I can tell you that there are many other women with similar experiences who started working on themselves and then found that they were much more brilliant and capable and powerful than they ever imagined that they were. So with all of that in mind, I hope that this was inspiring to you.

I hope it will help you on your own journey. And if you'd like to know more and you wanna better understand the program and the principles they learned that made this huge transformation in their lives, I'm gonna do a free training next week, June 11th, and it's gonna be 8:00 Eastern. It's called How to Stop Feeling Powerless and Become the Expert in Your Own Life.

And we will dive into some of the frameworks and key concepts that you need to know in order to begin your own transformation like these women have had. I would love to have you join me there. The link is in the description, and you can also sign up at themissiondrivenmom.com. Thanks for joining me today, and I'll see you next time.