The messy middle: How to stay nourished while you wait

There’s a part of the journey we don’t talk about enough.

The waiting.

The unknown.

The messy middle.

In this episode of Thrive Like a Mother, we’re diving into what it really looks like to stay grounded, nourished, and faithful when life isn’t fully making sense yet.

Inspired by the story of Abram and Sarai, this conversation explores why the waiting season can feel more physically and emotionally exhausting than we expect and how neglecting our needs can make it even heavier.

We talk about:

• Why the messy middle feels so draining (even when you’re “just waiting”)
• The connection between nourishment and obedience
• The 3 types of nourishment every mother needs: physical, mental, and spiritual
• How comparison and burnout creep in during waiting seasons
• Why community is the missing piece for sustaining you through it all

If you’ve been feeling tired, stretched thin, or questioning where you are in your journey… this episode will help you come back to yourself.

✨ And if you’re in Atlanta, you’re invited to experience this in real life at The Morning Table and Seasoned Conversations where food, faith, and community come together.

Remember:

The messy middle isn’t a punishment… it’s preparation.

Follow and chat with me on Instagram:

Podcast account - @thrivelikeamother.podcast

Personal account - @thrive.empowered

Sending you light and love always!

Transcript

Depletion Breaks Faith And Obedience

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We cannot sustain our faith while we are depleted. We cannot sustain our obedience. Running on fumes, running on empty, running on caffeine without rest, skipping meals. Hey love, I'm Ebony and welcome to Thrive Like a Mother, a podcast for women who are ready to slow down, nourish themselves, and build lives that feel anchored and intentional instead of rushed. If you're tired of surviving and ready to thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually, you're in the right place. Each week, I share grounded conversations and practical rhythms to help you regulate your nervous system, strengthen your relationship with food and rest, and return to yourself. So love, take a breath. You don't have to do this alone. Let's thrive together. Gosh. And we're going to be talking from it not only from a faith standpoint, but also from a nourishment standpoint. And so this episode, we're going to chat about why the messy middle feels more physically demanding than sometimes we like to admit, even though we are waiting, right? We're going to talk about how nourishment can actually sustain our obedience in that waiting season and how it's not about being more urgent. And lastly, we're going to chat about community, of course, and just what place it has and how it's honestly just the missing piece in that season that you may be looking for. So let's let's get into it. Because a few months back, my pastor shared a sermon that honestly stuck with me in a way that it has never stuck with me before. Now I had heard this story before between Abram and Sarah. But y'all, when he shared this message in the sermon about this waiting season and being obedient in it, which they were not at a certain point. And to be honest, you know, as a human, you know, it is it is difficult in these waiting seasons, right? To be obedient. But there is just there's just something that apart about that message that I couldn't shake. And it's really about how we as God's children, like we love the promises and we celebrate when they are fulfilled. But what about that part in the middle? What about that part in the middle where we are waiting sometimes for years and years and years for the fulfillment, where we are wondering if it's ever gonna happen, where we are needing to be obedient without knowing when that fulfillment is going to happen, without the evidence, without the proof, without much of anything, when you're just in the messy middle. They weren't just waiting like spiritually for this promise, you know, of a child. They were also waiting physically, right? So in real time, they are aging, they are watching their bodies age, they are feeling their bodies age, and they are wondering if it's ever going to happen. And honestly, starting to have some doubt and some disbelief that it's going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Here's the thing sometimes we forget, like in that messy middle, like it's not so like when we're looking at other people's stories, right? We often see like the full thing.

My Wake Up Call On Energy

Physical Nourishment And Real Fuel

Mental Nourishment And Comparison Traps

Spiritual Nourishment Without Applause

SPEAKER_01 4:29

We see the promise. We may watch their messy middle, but then we also get to see their fulfillment. Sometimes it's not as grand when we ourselves are in that messy middle. It's honestly exhausting, it's taxing on our body. Think about, you know, when you're parenting while building something that's me right now, a mama of three, building this community, um, expansion, expanding, expansion of your dreams and your goals. Um, knowing although you start to see pieces of this fulfillment coming, you are still in that messy middle and you have to stay committed to the path. And a lot of times it's while it's working your nine to five, turning on mama mode, and then going and working. A lot of people talk about the nine to five, five to nine. For a lot of us mamas, it's um nine to five for a mama mode, and then it might be like nine to eleven, nine to midnight sometimes. Anyway, it's exhausting, right? It is exhausting to be in that middle ground where you are working towards the fulfilled promise, where you are waiting for the fulfilled promise. And a lot of times, like I said, while not being validated, while not getting any applause or praise from anyone just yet, because the promise hasn't been fulfilled. And so here's what I want to gently name for us today. And that is that we cannot sustain our faith while we are depleted. We cannot sustain our obedience, running on fumes, running on empty, running on caffeine without rest, skipping meals, ignoring our emotions that come up during these waiting seasons, because I know there's a lot of them, right? Frustration, anger, sadness, confusion. Those are just some of them. You know, we cannot sustain ourselves in a messy middle, in a waiting season while we are chronically tired. Because if we do that, that season is going to feel a lot heavier than it needs to be. It's already heavy by itself. The waiting season and being obedient. You don't want to make it heavier by not taking care of yourself. And I'm talking from experience, y'all. I'm talking straight from experience. I want to chat a little bit just about my own personal experience where I realized that my energy levels were getting depleted in this messy season, in this waiting season, in this season where I needed to be obedient and stay on the path because I can feel and I know and I have the faith that the promise is going to be fulfilled. I am living out God's purpose for my life. And I started to make some choices and some decisions that were not properly supporting me in this messy season. And one of those, I'm gonna I'm gonna be real with y'all. If you've been here for a while, then you know I used to be a 5 a.m. girl. I used to wake up before the sun came up, before my babies woke up. And I used to work out, do my devotional, I would get into meditation, I was doing all the things. And suddenly I have baby boy, and he's my third, he's my last little one. And this season looks different, where my fitness journey cannot match what it has before. But I know that I need it in this season for my mindset. I know that I need it in this season to stay properly nourished, and so I want to break down this thought of nourishment really into three layers, y'all. Because when we think about nourishment and how important it, shout out to Micah with the cameo. I don't know if you guys heard her squeak. But as we this is the life of a podcast mama, completely. We're gonna keep rolling because even beyond Micah's toy squeaking in the background, I want to talk to y'all about these three layers of nourishment that are so essential in the waiting season. And that is your physical nourishment, your mental nourishment, and then your spirit nourishment. Let's start at the top. Let's start with our bodies, right? When we're thinking about our blood sugar levels, our energy level, our even our like flexibility, our ability to move our bodies the way they need to be moved throughout the day. If your blood sugar is constantly crashing, if you're not eating and there is no fuel for your body to function as it needs to, if you're getting to dinner every single night and you are crashing out because you don't know what to cook, but you know that you need the nourishment to literally survive, y'all just survive. Then in your mind, more things like doubt are gonna creep in, more things like brain fog are gonna creep in. You're going to start comparing yourself to other women, other mamas, other families. And in this day and age, it's so easy to do that because it's literally at the top of a finger for us, where we can see other people's the highlights of their lives. And we're wondering, why can't I do it like that? Right? Those things start to come into our head instead of actually taking action on the thing that we need to do, which is physically nourish our face so that we can be obedient in this waiting season in the messy middle. We need fuel, y'all. And sometimes the reason that being in that middle feels unbearable is because we literally don't have the fuel. Even though you're waiting, like Abraham and Sarah, even though they were waiting, they were still aging, y'all. They were still needing to move throughout life in that waiting period. They didn't lack the faith up until a certain point when they did try to take matters into their own hands. But it's not about lack of faith. Sometimes it's just a lack of properly nourishing your body with what it needs to sustain itself throughout the waiting period. And so I want to move on. We've talked about physical nourishment, right? Gotta make sure you're eating, gotta make sure we're moving our bodies, gotta make sure we're staying flexible, especially as we age. A lot of our, a lot of um just movements that we uh do as we get older. I think about like the times when I was younger and I and even watching my kids, like they're squatting, they're doing all the things like on a daily. And as we get older, we start to not do those things as often. We have to keep that up because those keep us physically strong, physically nourished as much as the food. Let's talk about mental nourishment now. This is where the messy middle, honestly, y'all. It starts to play games with your mind. Especially like I said, in this day and age, when we are scrolling and we are seeing, we have access to seeing the highlights of other people's lives, watching other promises get fulfilled, you start comparing your timeline to other people's. And that is a dangerous place to be in because then not only are you starting to question yourself and your abilities, but you start to possibly question God and what his promise for your life is. And when we're talking about mental nourishment, it really looks like I want to say keeping your peace, but it really comes down to being intentional about what you consume on a daily in that waiting season or just in general, to be honest, y'all. It looks like instead of choosing to scroll all the time and choose the digital noise, it really looks like deciding to pick up the phone and talk with someone, or say, hey, you want to meet up to like chat for a minute. And it's remembering just what the promise is instead of trying to chase the new confirmation. And this is where I want to talk about what Abraham and Sarah did is they were waiting and waiting and waiting, and they were not seeing this promise of a child that God said that he would bless them with. They were not seeing it. And years and years and years go by. And I think that this example for us is that they took things into their own hands, right? Because they were like tired of waiting and waiting and waiting, watching other people. Other families have children, obviously around them, watching themselves get older, feeling themselves age, and wondering if it ever was going to happen. And so protecting your mental nourishment or making sure, really making sure you are properly nourishing your mental really looks like reminding yourself over and over again of the promise. So you don't get derailed and you're thinking, you know what, I can make this happen faster, right? I can shift the timeline, I can take things into my own hands. It really comes down to trusting the timeline that, not even the timeline that you were given, because oftentimes we are not given a timeline at all. We are just in the season and we don't know when that promise is going to be fulfilled. But we know that we need to practice obedience and thinking about like what things support you mentally in doing that, whether that is meditation, whether that is journaling and being honest about your feelings and your emotions, um, whether that is like daily prayer, what does that look like for you to be mentally nourished? Now I want to talk about this last one here. And y'all, like I said, these things honestly they kind of fit together, right? So if you notice you are lacking in one area of nourishment in your life, there is a high chance that one of your other areas may be affected as well. So you see how these things fit together. Your physical, your mental, your physical can affect your mental, mental can affect your physical, spiritual can affect all of the things.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Um, here's the thing like we I said I said this about not knowing the timeline.

Community As The Missing Piece

Gathering Around Food And Presence

Recap Breath And Closing Question

SPEAKER_01 15:54

We often don't have proof that the promise is going to be fulfilled, but we have to trust. That's hard. That is a difficult place to be in. Spiritual nourishment is choosing to be obedient even when there is no praise, even when there is no applause, even when no one is watching. It's seeing what you have in your life now, intending to that in the best way possible, and trusting that the growth and the promise and all the things, they are still going to happen. They are still happening, even without us seeing that they are. I think there is both beauty and challenge in being in the waiting season and being in the messy middle. But something that I know that holds all of these things together, your physical, your mental, and your spiritual nourishment is community. It really is being surrounded by a group of people that share the same values that will keep it real with you, that will raise their hand and say, me too, I'm going through that too. Or I went through that at some point. Here are some resources that helped me. Community holds all of these things together because we can be in those waiting seasons and we don't have to be alone. And oftentimes we aren't alone. We may just think that we are. Yes, I love to cook. Yes, I love to show my love through cooking, through flavors, but it's it's always more than the food that we're putting in our bodies, which this whole episode has been about. I pray that it has started to help you think about just what areas of your life you need some more support and nourishment and more than just what you're eating. It's really about having conversations that feed your mind while you're enjoying a meal. It's about choosing to be present as you're eating and allowing your nervous system to reset, to calm, to be surrounded by other people who are also resetting their nervous systems at the same time. It's just it just really is um a beautiful room and a beautiful energy to be around. So if you've been literally craving that real life connection while you're in your messy middle, like I said, community is one of the strongest things that helps us really ensure that we are supported in all three of those areas, then I'm gonna make sure all of those details for you to reserve your seat are in the show notes. And so let's just recap today. Uh and we chatted a lot, y'all, about why being in that messy middle is more physically demanding than we might admit. And really how those three areas of nourishment that I shared with you sustains our obedience in that season, being physically, mentally, spiritually nourished, and how community really helps you in that season. While you're going through it, as opposed to them being a part of the promise being revealed and then the promise being fulfilled. We really need community all throughout that waiting season, that messy metal. So I want to end this episode, as always, with a place for you to land.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

So we're gonna take a slow breath in, let it out.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

And I want you to this week think about this question. And remember, you don't have to fix anything today. Just notice it, become self-aware, and think of one action you can take to start being better to you. And that question is where in my life am I trying to endure or be urgent in something that is actually needing more nourishment so that I can sustain being in the waiting season, the messy middle. All right, y'all, reminder that messy middle is not a punishment. It is preparation. It is preparation for properly celebrating that fulfillment that is coming. So thank you for sitting with me in the messiness today. And I will either see you at the table or I will see you right back here next week. Thank you so much for listening, love. If anything in today's episode resonated with you, share it with your bestie or share it on social media and tag me so we can chat about it. As always, sending you light and love. And remember, you are worthy, you are enough, and you deserve to thrive.