S3.Bonus | Surgery Update Plus A Look at IHIWC
In this bonus epsiode Carla comes to you from her bed where she is recovering after knee surgery.
She shares her journey so far, including how God is sustaining her through the pain after declining perscription pain killers to protect her sobriety.
Carla also provides more details into what In His Image Wellnes Collective is all about - and invites you to become a part of it during September enrolment.
Info on how to enrol in IHIWC --> https://forms.gle/9Q8XYAnHkmAc55QW6
Surgery Update: Navigating Pain with Faith
Carla shares insights from her recent knee surgery, highlighting the challenges of post-surgery recovery and the decision to decline prescription pain medication. She emphasizes the role of faith in navigating pain and encourages listeners to turn to Jesus in difficult seasons.
Invite Jesus into your pain; He wastes nothing and uses it for our sanctification.
In His Image Wellness Collective: A Kingdom Approach to Wellness
Carla introduces the In His Image Wellness Collective, a transformative community focused on stewarding wellness for the Lord. She shares her personal journey from chasing external changes to finding value rooted in Christ, leading to the creation of this empowering collective.
Shift from external changes to stewarding wellness for God's glory.
The Kingdom Lens: Living for Eternity
Carla encourages listeners to adopt a Kingdom lens in their suffering and daily decisions. Reflecting on the temporary nature of pain, she urges a focus on eternity and living in alignment with God's design.
Live for eternity; pain is temporary, glory is eternal.
Community, Faith, and Wellness: Join In His Image Wellness Collective
Carla invites women to join In His Image Wellness Collective, emphasizing the importance of community, faith, and holistic wellness. The collective offers workouts, devotions, meal plans, and a supportive community to help women steward their lives for the Kingdom.
Embrace community, prioritize faith, and steward your life for the Kingdom.
Enroll Now for Transformation: Kick-off on September 12th
Enrollment for In His Image Wellness Collective is open, with a special focus on 20-minute workouts, daily time with Jesus, intuitive eating, and community support. Carla encourages those feeling a nudge to join and emphasizes the transformative power of this faith-filled wellness journey.
Follow the nudge, join the collective, and experience transformative growth.
Connect With Carla:
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Join In His Image Wellness Collective ---> carlaargeswellness@gmail.com
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
transcript
[00:00:00] Carla: Hey friends, welcome to Affirming Truths. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith, and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review.
[00:00:30] Carla: I am so glad you're here. Let's get started.
[00:00:37] Carla: Hello friends and welcome to this bonus episode hanging out in between season three and season four. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that right now I am recording from my bed two days post surgery for having my knee repaired. [00:01:00] And it has been A bit of a journey these last few days and I just wanted to share an update some insights I'm having and something exciting that is coinciding with the launch of season four.
[00:01:15] Carla: So. Season three is over. Season four launches September 12th. I am taking a little break in between to recover from the surgery. Two years ago, I tore the meniscus in my right knee. And after two long years of dealing with it, I finally had surgery on Thursday, September 1st. And, you know, God is good in so many ways.
[00:01:46] Carla: Um, we didn't think that the surgery would happen until winter, and there was an opening right now in fall, which is such a blessing if you've ever had to be on crutches, like navigating the world on crutches [00:02:00] in winter, not fun. In terms of my mood, I'm able to sit and look out my window and see sunshine and blue skies, not necessarily that atmosphere that happens where I live in the winter.
[00:02:15] Carla: So that's been a blessing for my mood. It's made it easier for my parents to come and help not having to navigate winter driving. So God is in the details of our life. And I just want you to be reminded of that. This hasn't been easy though. Um, I, I've shared to some extent that, you know, I was involved with drugs when I was younger and, you know, currently I am alcohol free, praise the Lord, but in doing this surgery, protecting my sobriety and my past abuse of drugs and pills was very important to me.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Carla: So I declined prescription pain medication because prescription pain medication is all narcotics based. So can I tell you that I have been in some pain and it has been hard, but 1 of the things that I'm learning. Continuously through different seasons of my life and different pains that come in the seasons of our life is that God does not abandon us.
[00:03:31] Carla: And if anything, if we let him, he uses our pain in order to further our sweet dependence on him as our Lord and Savior. Right? Like, if we allow God to work in our pain, he does not waste it. He uses it as a means to further sanctify us and bring us to holiness. He uses it as a means to tether ourselves to him.[00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Carla: He uses it as a means to show his mercy and grace and his glory. He wastes nothing. Now, I am smack dab in you. This recovery, my pain levels are high. I'm having trouble navigating the bathroom situation. You'll have to watch my IG stories to get the TMI on that. But, you know, it is. It is hard, it is hard, but God is the God of hard seasons.
[00:04:36] Carla: I don't know what you're dealing with right now. Maybe you're dealing with heartache, infidelity, maybe you're going through financial crisis. Maybe you're really struggling with your mental health or the shame from past decisions. I don't know what hard thing you're walking through right now. I don't know what painful thing you're walking through right [00:05:00] now, but I just want to encourage you to turn to Jesus in it.
[00:05:05] Carla: Welcome him in your pain. He is familiar with pain. I think sometimes we, we don't fully grasp the fact that Jesus became fully human. Yes, he was God, but he became fully human. He went through the experiences of loss, of disappointment, of discouragement, of temptation. He went through all the pains and the ups and downs and the joys and sorrows of life.
[00:05:37] Carla: He is intimately familiar with what we're going through. Not just because he's intimately familiar with us, but because he walked it himself. He knows what you're going through. You can invite him into your pain, and he will meet you there, and he will encourage you, and he will comfort you. [00:06:00] I can't promise he'll take the pain away, but I can tell you that he will not waste it, and he will work it out for good, according to Romans 8, 28, for his glory, for our benefit.
[00:06:15] Carla: You see, because it's not just about this temporal time, it's about eternity. This pain... Is temporary. Does it feel temporary? Temporary in the process? No, I am dreading every time I have to get out of the bed to use the washroom because the pain is so intense. I'm literally crying out in pain and groaning in pain.
[00:06:39] Carla: It is intense and it feels like it won't end. But that's just a feeling. That's not reality. The reality is we have an eternity to look forward to a coming glory. Yes. And amen. This pain is temporary. It will pass. It will [00:07:00]pass. Our time on this earth is short. Are we living for eternity? I want to encourage you to put on a kingdom lens as you're walking through your suffering right now.
[00:07:16] Carla: Jesus loves you. And he wants to comfort you in this space. My hope is that God will show me new ways, deeper ways of relying on him as I go through this long recovery process. My hope is that the Holy Spirit will work out this experience, not only for my good, but in informing my ministry going forward.
[00:07:45] Carla: God wastes nothing. Another example of how God wastes nothing in my life is the challenge I had with disordered eating and disordered [00:08:00] exercise. He did not waste those battles, instead he's used them in the creation of In His Image Wellness Collective, and I'm so excited about it. You hear me talk about it a little bit on the podcast, but I want to give you a more in depth look at what it is.
[00:08:18] Carla: I was someone, and maybe you can relate to this, who was always chasing diets. And... really took her value from the scale number, the size of her pants. I was always trying to change my body to be smaller, to be skinnier, to be fitter, all with the intention of that. I would feel more worthy or I would feel more beautiful or I would feel more acceptable.
[00:08:50] Carla: Or I would feel more valuable if I could just maintain this exterior aesthetic. And can I tell you, all my time of chasing [00:09:00] that, even when I got to my smallest, there was no joy. I did not feel more valuable. I did not feel more lovable. I felt exhausted. I felt burnt out. I felt even more like a failure because I could never get exactly what I wanted.
[00:09:20] Carla: And God lovingly showed me that I had my eyes on the wrong thing. I was chasing an external change in my life to fill an internal hole. And maybe you can relate to that. And God really showed me that. You know, rooting my identity in Him, rooting our identities in Christ is so crucial, because then we fully understand where our value comes from.
[00:09:51] Carla: Our value is in the very fact that God of the universe chose to create us. That He knit us together in our mother's womb, that He knows us, that [00:10:00] we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and He has prepared good works for us to do. That is where our value comes from. Full stop. It has nothing to do with what you accomplish, your grades, your pants, pants size, your ethnicity, none of that.
[00:10:18] Carla: It is because you are a creation of the creator and he doesn't create junk. Now. He does want us to steward our life for his glory and for the kingdom. That means looking at decisions like how are we spending our time? How are we spending our money? How are we spending our energy? Where are we pouring out our gifting?
[00:10:44] Carla: Are we making decisions that ultimately give God the glory? Are we making decisions that ultimately bring us closer to holiness in Christ? And this is where in his image wellness with creative, because I understand the [00:11:00] tension of wanting to be healthy and have energy and take care of our physical resource.
[00:11:11] Carla: I understand the tension of that in light of this culture that wants to tell us how we should look in order. To be worthy, especially as women. This is especially for women. And I, I, I sense that even now, as I'm like growing out my hair to be gray, that there is a difference in, in how society treats aging and how the bot and how they treat people in different body types.
[00:11:39] Carla: And I can tell you that it's not kingdom design and we want to live within kingdom design. So in his image, wellness collective is a place where we steward our wellness for the Lord. We do workouts together. And when I say together, I don't mean we're actually in the same space at the same [00:12:00] time, but we're all working on movement goals that we look at intuitive eating and really relying on how God created our bodies to know what it needs when it needs it.
[00:12:13] Carla: And retraining our body in our relationships with food is a place where we do weekly devotion. Um, we get together on an optional weekly zoom call where we pray together and stretch together. We have an incredible group chat where we put prayer requests, celebrations, encourage each other, talk about what challenges we have.
[00:12:40] Carla: We do daily group posts that are meant to challenge our thinking and renew our mind when it comes to the area of diet culture and stewardship. And it's just this incredible place where faith filled women are coming together saying, [00:13:00] I want to be healthy for Jesus, but I don't want body image. To be an idol in my life anymore.
[00:13:07] Carla: I don't want to chase another diet. I don't want this to consume me anymore. I want to lay down the idol that body image has been and pick up the lens of stewardship in my decisions. And that includes stewarding our time to spend with Jesus each day. That is a challenge of the group, right? It's not just about food and exercise.
[00:13:34] Carla: It is about our spiritual health, our emotional health, our mental health. These are all connected. And so, I have the group open for enrollment right now. We are kicking off September 12th with a new focus, 20 minute workouts to fit into the busy season of life, challenge to spend 10 minutes a day with Jesus, looking at intuitive eating and Re [00:14:00] establishing a healthy relationship with food, weekly devotions, weekly meal plan inspiration, weekly prayer time, just community.
[00:14:10] Carla: And can I tell you, community has never been more important than now. And I've seen the evidence of this, even just being home with the surgery. That I have a community of women online, prying for me. I have local community through my Bible study that have shown up with meals for my family. We need community sisters in Christ.
[00:14:36] Carla: We need to come together to sharpen each other, to bear each other's burdens, to fight against the world's standards of what they say women should be and fight for our Biblical, biblical way of being a woman in Christ and what that looks like. And no, a woman of [00:15:00] Christ is not meek and quiet. Look at Deborah, look at J.
[00:15:03] Carla: L., like, we are strong prayer warriors. But you know what the enemy wants us to do? He is so concerned about our influence. That he wants us distracted by our bodies. Do you get that? He is so concerned by the influence us women have as spiritual barometers in our family, the nurturers, the prayer warriors, the ministers, the helpers, that he wants us consumed with our bodies.
[00:15:39] Carla: And I want us to say no to the enemy. And yes to Jesus in this area of our life. So I'm inviting you to join In His Image Wellness Collective. Enrollment's now open for September. September 12th we kick off. I'm going to put a link in the show notes here [00:16:00] for you to click on so you can get more information.
[00:16:03] Carla: And I just really encourage you, if you feel a nudge, follow that nudge. If you need support in this area, don't be shy to reach out. We all need each other. And this is your opportunity to get involved in something that I think is really powerful and full of blessing and full of growth and full of Jesus.
[00:16:27] Carla: All right, I've got to get some ice on my knee. I've got to rest up. I have. A long recovery in front of me, but I cannot wait to be back here September 12th with season four of the podcast. It is going to be amazing. Bye friends.
[00:16:50] Carla: Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges or at [00:17:00] Affirming Truths. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye friends.