Returning to Your Creator | What If You Don't Have to Leave Your Life Behind?

Maggie (00:01.792)
At some point we started calling the creator's world nature and man's world real life. But how do we find our way back to his world without leaving everything we know behind? Welcome to Women Folk Revival, where we are deeply rooted and wildly intentional. I'm Aggie.

Meara (00:22.702)
And I'm Era. And I love this because somewhere along the way

We really started separating these two. We started calling the creator's world nature and a man's world real life. And somehow we convinced ourselves that if we wanted to go back to the creator, we had to leave everything we knew behind. And that is just not true. We don't have to escape our late lives to find the creator. We've just forgotten how to see him in the life that we're already living. And one of the biggest reasons so many of us feel disconnected from this.

Maggie (00:31.244)
Ha ha ha

Maggie (00:55.075)
Mm.

Meara (00:58.052)
Is because we have made returning to him feel like something we only do in a certain place for me. So, like going to church once a week or the mosque or temple, you know, or wherever it is that you worship, it's almost like we treat that, that's where you have to go to reconnect and just that one day a week for one hour, and then life starts all over again for the rest of the week, you know? And for me, returning was never limited to a

Maggie (01:17.708)
That's where you find God. Yeah.

Maggie (01:23.49)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (01:27.922)
Building. It was it was something that we carried or I carried with me every single day, every second of the day, when we're making breakfast or driving to work, you know, or doing the dishes. We're sitting quietly with that cup of tea. And I think we've just forgotten that our creator is present in every moment of our lives.

Maggie (01:46.162)
Mm-hmm. And I and I do think with this disconnect from nature, you know, it's just so weird to think about, right? Like like we return to nature for like like an outing, an activity to do or vacation. You know what I mean? Like as an escape, you know, to kind of rejuvenate ourselves and yeah.

Meara (02:07.331)
Yeah, yeah.

Meara (02:12.899)
Refresh us for the week.

Maggie (02:15.873)
Yes. How how silly is that? But that is that is the world that we're immersed in. We're this man's world is just built right on top of it. And it's there, you know, it's it's there separating us from it. But yeah, I I totally lost my original thought. It just it just astounds it just is down to me when you know

Meara (02:23.768)
Yeah.

It is.

Meara (02:42.295)
It's pretty wild.

Maggie (02:44.875)
The world that the world that is that was created for us is is almost kind of unknown to us. It's this

I I don't know. And I and I think, you know, when you're talking about where you go, where people go to church or wherever, it's not it's still in man's world, you know. And it's and I'm fine, anyone can be whatever religion they want to be, but it's also man's religion in a way too, right?

Meara (03:05.604)
Yeah.

Meara (03:18.233)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Maggie (03:22.837)
I so I don't go to church or any other kind of establishment for a religious experience. I I find being in nature being right there with our creator because it's what he created. I there's nothing between me and his creation like a building.

Meara (03:44.493)
Yeah.

Maggie (03:45.098)
and when you when you stop and pay attention to nature, when you look at nature, you look at the patterns and you know how all living creatures live and and function and you know, their their flow of life. And there's no mistake that this world was created.

Meara (04:04.323)
They're doing it the right way.

Meara (04:09.849)
Yeah.

Maggie (04:14.697)
You know? And I think we've all and I I've been there before, but I think we've all gotten to into this idea of evolution, right? Because science tells us that's what happened. It's hogwash.

Spend time in nature and you will see it. You will start seeing with the eyes that God gave you. You will start hearing with the ears that He gave you, and you will start using your mind the way He intended you to. This and I'm not saying that everything in societal societal life is bad. It's not. But the majority of it is.

And it's doing you know, and it's doing us harm and it's disconnecting us from the real reality. And that is we were created and we were given this natural world to live in and to be a part of.

Meara (05:06.201)
Yeah.

Meara (05:15.097)
Yeah, with all the resources that we need. So like returning to our creator isn't about waiting till Sunday or Friday, or Saturday. But I feel like it's kind of

Maggie (05:19.575)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (05:27.481)
With the way society is, how this needs to be done, this needs to be done, like really fast paced, you know. that it's just another thing on the calendar that we're going to do to reconnect real quick so that we have the rest of the week. And so that's how I feel like it fits into that. And I don't g I never went to church gr well, I did. I went to church every Sunday with my mother, but it was non-denominational. But it was still what they said, how they felt how things should be in the sermon. And same when we went to Catholic school where

Maggie (05:39.509)
Yeah.

Maggie (05:55.009)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (05:57.428)
we went to school, I felt like I loved our what was he, a pastor. I l

Whoever he was, I I really liked him. Yeah, father. I liked him a lot. But I've been all over the place. I liked him a lot. But it's also what they feel and their experiences that they've had for how things should be. And there's nothing wrong with going to church or going to temple or any of that. I should be going. I don't go on Fridays. but it's about remembering him throughout the day. And maybe that just starts with one simple intention when we wake up. Like, you know, creator.

Maggie (06:03.98)
Father Yeah

Maggie (06:17.26)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (06:33.615)
Help me remember you today and not just because we have to check a box. Okay, we did this for the week. This is my religion. This is who I am. It's because we're choosing to begin our day with our creator in our heart. And the beautiful thing about that is you can do that anywhere you are, anytime, no matter where you are. And that's the beautiful part about it.

Maggie (06:54.134)
Mm-hmm.

And and do it with your kids. I I started and this was another thing that that my husband turned me on to. it's so

Meara (06:59.641)
Hmm.

Maggie (07:09.098)
You know, it's so funny because this is this is a way that I really started navigating towards how I want to live our lives. And he is very good about picking out all the things that I'm doing that I say I don't want to do. Or I'm not doing things that I've that I've talked about or that I I would like to start implementing. but every morning now I I sit with the kids, I wait until they're they're all awake.

And then we sit down and we just give gratitude, you know, gratitude for a new day. you know, thanking God for the previous day that we had, and and now we get a brand new one, and letting go of anything that we were upset about or anything that we did wrong, because that's all in the past now. And now we just have this present day to move into the future. And and it's it's very lovely.

Meara (08:02.764)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (08:09.078)
And the kids really like it. And now I'm gonna even one one step up it. And I want to make a like a prayer circle in our yard. And you know, I want to plant a tree and some some native flowers, you know, that have some meaning towards, you know, prayer or resilience or just, you know, peace. And and every morning, rain or shine, warm or cold, we will go.

Meara (08:19.136)
That'll be so cool.

Maggie (08:38.858)
go out to our prayer circle and that's where we will have our moment of gratitude and it's a place where we can go when we do need quiet, we do need to, you know, step away and and remember our our connection and remember that, you know, to take time to slow down and and just know that it's it's not only okay to, but you should.

For your well being and for the well being of everybody around you. You should absolutely take those moments.

Meara (09:10.447)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I love how you are intentional about it. And with your children too. the one thing I do love about being Muslim is every part of our day is remembering our creator.

Maggie (09:31.784)
Mm.

Meara (09:33.07)
We before we go to the bathroom you say a prayer. Before you leave, you say a prayer. Before you eat, you say a prayer. And I know when of my grandma she was Catholic, she would always pray before she ate. And there was different times during the day where she did the rosary in remembrance of our Creator. But I just kind of feel like people aren't doing these things anymore. They're just going about their day. And so I wonder if we've made this harder than it needs to be, with thinking that returning to him has to be this huge pivotal moment of you know that everything has to change overnight. But when I think about the people

Maggie (09:50.228)
Hmm.

Maggie (10:00.513)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (10:03.673)
That I love the most, that's not how relationships grow. They grow because we spend time together and because we're present and because we notice one another. And I think that's the same with our creator, that he's simply just rem inviting us to remember him every day, every moment, every second. Just even if you're whatever it is you're doing, just thinking about him.

Maggie (10:22.156)
Yeah. And I I will always encourage people to get away from societal living as much as possible. That is my personal belief that that is what is best for not every individual, but what is best for humankind. you know, in this natural world.

Meara (10:42.093)
Them. Yeah.

Meara (10:47.363)
Mm.

Maggie (10:49.012)
And I and I understand that that a lot of people can't and and probably don't want to, you know. but you can absolutely stop letting modern life consume your entire existence, you know. It does. It really does. All of your, you know, your aches and pains and your these

Meara (10:53.635)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Meara (11:06.127)
'Cause it affects you. Yeah.

Maggie (11:16.914)
mm, these diseases that have, you know, taken over, they don't exist in God's world. They only exist in man's world. You know.

Meara (11:23.501)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Maggie (11:30.893)
If that if that right there wasn't enough, I I don't know. I don't know what is.

Meara (11:37.018)
And that's where life happens, isn't it? You know, it's not during those big milestones, but it's doing like just the dishes or or being outside in those quiet and and in those quiet moments that we are like, Okay, we're gonna take a quiet moment and then we rush through. It has taken me years to accomplish that because I never just really understood. I was so stuck on, well, society's doing it that this is this is and everyone's getting everyone's getting by with doing that and it it took me to until I realized that okay, now I'm not really healthy and and then I started seeing little things.

Maggie (11:46.124)
Yeah.

Maggie (11:50.806)
Mm.

Maggie (11:57.396)
Right.

Meara (12:06.961)
things little by little. Okay, this is happening and maybe this is how this should be, and then I started to see the change. So what if these moments aren't what if these moments aren't getting in the way of our relationship with our Creator? What if what if they are the relationship with our creator, these quiet moments that we're having while we're watering the garden or just making dinner, you know? You just simply pause and thank him for it. Notice the food in front of you. Notice how your the taste and not because life is perfect, but because

Maggie (12:11.328)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (12:27.03)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (12:37.145)
Gratitude has a way of turning our hearts back towards the one who gave us every one of those gifts.

Maggie (12:44.737)
Yeah.

And you you hear people say all the time, you know, where is God now? Well maybe everyone is just too damn loud and too too darn busy to to hear him and to see what you know the messages around us that we're just totally, you know, totally missing.

Meara (12:58.103)
Yeah.

Meara (13:04.676)
Thank you.

Meara (13:08.803)
That are right there in front of your face.

Yeah, and there's a lot of people that are gonna push there's gonna be tons of pushback with this. Well, I don't understand why you're saying all of this. Nothing's wrong with me. And I do think about my creator. Okay, we get that. I've been there too, where okay, I don't need this. You know, I don't need to think about these things. I I have my creator here with me. Everything's fine, but I'm still living that crazy life and I'm not really still not okay. It's about setting those intentions and taking that time, even if it's just for a few seconds, no one's asking you to change your whole life around. There's no way you can change your whole life around. And especially in one day.

You know, it's just again, it's always about the intention.

Maggie (13:41.696)
Yeah. I've it's a and it's it's a long road, you know. I it's taken I feel like it's taken me a lifetime to get here. I mean, I feel like I kind of was always there in a way, but I was never fully participant in it because I felt like I needed to be living in the societal world with everybody else.

Meara (13:49.474)
Yeah.

Meara (13:59.824)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (14:10.069)
But even now, you know, there's you just do what you can do when when you can do it. you know, and it'll it'll happen piece by piece and especially when you do it slow, 'cause it's hard. It is hard to totally change your your life around and your habits around and your thinking around.

So take your time with it and little by little you will you will get there and you will find you'll wanna get there more and more and you know, things start to have more meaning and a lot of things in society start to have less meaning. So

Meara (14:55.469)
I hear everything you're saying, my kids keep begging me for an orange in the background and I'm just like, get her an orange, get her an orange. Yes, yes, okay. Orange.

Maggie (15:05.287)
I we have oranges right now too. And I feel

I felt horrible getting because obviously they're not in season. But I just got two huge zucchinis from my from my neighbor down the road and I wanna make zucchini bread. And I just of course, you know, I can't just do like one simple version. I'm gonna you know, I'm like, Can I do one like this? Can I do one like this? 'Cause they're you know, I ha I need to use all the zucchini and you can freeze zucchini bread for a long time. So

Meara (15:21.709)
Yam.

Maggie (15:35.667)
I did get oranges 'cause I'm gonna do a cardamom and orange version and yeah, so

Meara (15:45.561)
So yeah, well with what you were saying, life isn't gonna slow down on its own. You know, there's always gonna be another errand that we have to do and another appointment that we have to get to and but

Maggie (15:46.677)
Yeah.

Maggie (15:54.73)
Life will get faster if you don't make an effort to slow it down.

Meara (16:00.749)
Yeah, life returning isn't about escaping those things either. It's just about inviting our creator into them to make it easier for us and better to manage and

Maggie (16:08.447)
Yes.

Meara (16:12.941)
Not lose our minds when kids are asking for oranges. Simply remembering and simply noticing and living with gratitude, I think we really forgotten how powerful remembrance is. You know, the more we remember our Creator throughout the day, the harder it becomes to forget why we're here in the first place. And and it not because we're trying harder, but because our hearts are just facing in that direction, you know, towards him. So

Maggie (16:24.768)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (16:29.131)
Yes.

Maggie (16:40.381)
Yeah, and not not only not only remembering him and why we're here, but also remember that they who established, you know, this whole system that that we're living in, you know, they they want us disconnected from him. They want us disconnected from the natural world.

Because, you know, the natural world it it heals us and it keeps us alive. And they want us as their slaves, working hard in their world. They don't care how

how badly we get hurt or how sick we get because they're going to make money on fixing you. Not healing you but you know putting band-aids on bullet wounds is is what they're is what they're doing. Because you know, because if they heal you then they just lost a client. You know? If you're not doing a bidding, then they just, you know

Meara (17:30.191)
Yeah, I was just gonna say that.

Yeah.

Meara (17:41.998)
Yeah.

Maggie (17:47.401)
They just lost a slave.

Meara (17:50.797)
Yeah. Conforming to chaos.

Maggie (17:51.826)
I

Maggie (17:55.792)
I you know, they they want they want wealth and they want control and they want power. But the only one that has true power is our Creator, because he is the most high and everything is because of him.

And we only have powers as individuals when we give ourselves to our Creator. And you know, we have then we have health and we have peace and we have love and we have everything that we're supposed to have.

Meara (18:30.435)
Yeah. Yeah. To me wealth is having my family and being comfortable in my environment and understanding how things work. And I did want to add touch on the end of what you were saying earlier with man, I just slipped my mind again. With how it's taken forever for you to get there and how it's taken forever for me to get there. I also want to say one thing that

I've gotten to the point where now I'm at a level of understanding what's going on, but I still have a lot of work to do. Like it's never gonna end, you know, because things are always changing and you're always changing and your mind's always changing, and things that you're doing are not gonna be the same years ahead of when you first started. So it's not a process of starting this transition, this journey that we're on, and getting to a place where we're like, okay, everything's perfect, we don't have to.

Maggie (19:11.787)
Yeah.

Meara (19:22.801)
Have these conversations anymore. We know what we're exactly what we're talking about. I'll never know exactly everything that I'm, you know, I'm never gonna know everything. And that's one reason why I love us having women folk revival and having these people on women folk revival because they bring their wisdom to us and their knowledge to us, and we learn so much more and things we thought we knew, we knew nothing about, you know, and then like s I'll stand corrected. We knew we needed to know. Yeah.

Maggie (19:30.207)
No. Mm-hmm.

Maggie (19:39.891)
Yes.

Maggie (19:43.421)
Yeah. And and sometimes things that we didn't think we need to know know about, but yeah. We find that it does, you know, intertwine with with what we're all about. Yeah.

Meara (19:59.704)
I agree a hundred percent.

Maggie (20:01.503)
so I would say, you know, how I think the biggest step that we can all take on how to get more I guess reacquainted with the world that our creator gave us is to is to put down your phone. Put down your phone.

Meara (20:19.919)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (20:26.014)
You know, I I'm on my phone a lot because I I like to I do a lot of learning from it and a lot of planning from it. And I'm on at most when my husband's home because I know that I'm able to, you know, he he can watch the kids while I I do some things.

I I was just at a a playground with my mom and we're watching all these, you know, we're watching my kids and and and talking, catching up, and I'm just looking around at all these moms and dads that are just sitting on a bench staring at their phones.

They're not watching their kids. And some of these kids are way too young, you know, to be like off on their own. Like, no, no, you you should not climb up that 'cause that is like certain death if you fall, you know. and we're just we're just missing everything that's going on around us. I mean not only, you know, is it dangerous in in certain aspects, but you know, you're not you might miss that moment when your kid finally, you know

Meara (21:15.311)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (21:22.723)
Yeah.

Maggie (21:31.42)
climbs up that that big ladder to the big slide that they've been scared to do and just a joy in their faces. You know, and and slides aren't a natural thing, right? Like that's not part of nature exactly. I'm sure you you you have mud slides and things of that sort. Right.

Meara (21:46.051)
Hills are

Maggie (21:50.747)
So so like I said, you don't have to escape everything and and say the world, but the moments that are happening, be aware of and be part of it. Be part of life and and interact with other human beings, especially your children, especially your your family and friends and your community. Put your phone down. You know, it's I heard someone talk about the fact that it was called a cell phone.

Cell like a prison cell, and it so is when you really think about it. Just put it down.

Meara (22:25.773)
It is. It is. Because you're not aware of everything going on around you. Yeah. Well, I think for our listeners who are listening today and are thinking, I don't even know where to begin, we would like for you to hear this. boy. You don't necessarily have to do anything to begin returning. Sometimes being still is the return. Noticing your breath is a return.

Looking around at the space you're in is a return. And you can do this anywhere. In your car, kitchen, walking outside, at work, or even lying in bed before you just fall asleep. Pause. Take one slow breath.

Become aware that you're here, that you're alive, that with every breath you're taking is a gift from your creator. Look around you, notice what you've been given. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's a meal on your table, maybe it's the trees outside your window, or simply another opportunity to just begin again. And then thank him. Remember him. Carry him wherever you go, because returning isn't one day a week, it isn't a building, and it isn't another thing to check off your list.

Simply remembering your creator in the middle of your everyday life. And maybe that's where we've been meant to find him all along.

Maggie (23:45.938)
Yeah.

Meara (23:51.169)
So maybe we don't have to leave our lives behind to find our way back to him. Maybe we just have to slow down enough to notice that he's already there. So if this conversation meant something to you, be sure to subscribe and follow to Women Folk Revival on your favorite app and come join us in our Facebook community.

And next week we're going to talk about something we've been noticing since we've started slowing down. How getting quieter can actually make you notice so much more. The people, the world around you, and the things we normally rush right past. And sometimes even the little even the little things that get under your skin. Because once you start paying attention, you can't unsee what you've just saw. So is that right, Saul? We'll talk about that next week. So until then.

Maggie (24:19.114)
Mm-hmm.

And yourself.

Maggie (24:27.465)
Yeah.

Maggie (24:39.284)
Stay rooted and stay wild.

Meara (24:42.352)
Stay wild.