Hello! It's a beautiful day here in Kansas where I live. My name is Cicely Wyatt and
my husband and I, Dustin, will be doing the rest-intensive. I've never done one.
Well, I did Ashley's mini one that she did in Amish country. I don't remember
when that was. And this is my first rest-intensive so I'm a little... I've
watched a lot of her teachings before but never done an intensive so I'm
excited to be here. I'm a little nervous. I've been like watching the videos and
being like wanting to come on here but being like I don't know really where to
start and I'm kind of an over-sharer. I just I don't know how to like get to the
point sometimes so hopefully this isn't like 30 minutes long. But I was introduced
to Ashley because of Carrie Filer. Hi Carrie! A couple years ago I had a
pretty significant health scare and it just sent me in an absolute tailspin and
never experienced that kind of anxiety in my life, depression, just psychological
things. And I'm a stay-at-home mom. My husband worked nine to five, eight to five
you know job and my son is five and that's at the time he was three and he's
just a very, I don't like using the word challenging, but he is very full of life
and just never stops you know from the minute he wakes up to the minute he goes
to sleep. And we were living in a place where I just didn't have a lot of
community and you know about four hours from all of our family and I just I was
just really struggling really badly. And I've never met Carrie in person and I
think I started following her on Instagram because of her sister Loretta
because I did some sourdough stuff with Loretta and I don't even know how I
found Loretta. But I just had followed Carrie's journey you know for a while
and then saw that she had come on and just started talking about how so much
had changed in her life and her relationship with the Lord and I could
just relate to a lot of the things that she was saying so I reaped up to her and
she started sharing with me about rest. And excuse me, I have just I have similar
story to Ashley and some of you others like I just I grew up in the church and
have always been a Christian and have always been the good girl and done the
right thing and you know just been good and faithful and you know done all the
things and been in church and been in ministry and been on worship teams and
you know served and served and served and created my community from you know
like-minded people and and when all this well I feel like I started kind of
questioning things when my son was born of just like how I wanted to treat him
didn't line up with like how I felt like what I knew of God treated me you know
it's like I have very like perspective of God that like he's a punisher and I
have to do all these things in order to be in right standing with him and and
and then I had a child and and I just was like this is how I feel about my
child like these are this isn't the way I would treat my my son and and I was
just like this doesn't make sense to me anymore you know and and so I began to
kind of question and I would had a mentor at the time he's actually my my
stepmother and it's like she just
I wasn't allowed to think differently than that I guess and it just really led me down a worse
path of just more performance and more pressure and more expectation and more getting it right and
you know I can't be upset with the Lord. My son, four months old, developed severe eczema. He's
five and he still struggles with it and at times it's been incredibly bad and you know I began to
be like I have to know how to help him and treat him and so I just it just was always like I'm
putting all this pressure on myself that I have to know I have to have all this knowledge. I can't
trust the medicals so you know I did all the diets and all the supplements and all the things with
him and he just never got any better and I just found myself being really angry with the Lord
and just being like you know I've served you my whole life.
I've done all these things and I've been this person and I've you know
done it because I made certain decisions because I wanted to please you and I didn't see like
the reciprocation of those choices. What I felt like is I do good and bad would happen and I do
more good and more bad would happen and it's just I'm still kind of in the place of like
just kind of always waiting for the shoe to drop you know like bad is just right around the corner
the corner like it might be going smooth now but just wait you know and uh and so you know I
started talking with Carrie and um just she began to share with me like her journey and um
I can't remember my stepmom at one point and our relationship is very um
challenging right now let's just put it that way
um and I remember saying to her one time that I was angry at God and she's like you can't be angry
at God that's you have to love him with all of your heart soul strength you know and all this
stuff and I was like why would I love somebody that it just feels like he's abusive towards me
like why would I do that like and it just began this began this unraveling for me of just being
of just being like if this is really who he is I can't trust him I can't love him I can't
give my heart to him and you know just love him more than anybody else in my life like I can't do
that um and Carrie just really encouraged me to just be honest with God and to just tell him these
things and to be vulnerable with him and um some pretty just you know interesting things began to
surface um in all of that and so there's so much like more to it but um it's kind of where I'm at
right now um we've had a really huge like transition um we were living about four hours
away from all of our family with a beautiful home and like an idealistic kind of like neighborhood
and all of this but I was just so lonely and um overwhelmed with life and just told my husband
one day I don't know that I can continue to do this and live like this and you know um so we just
it's just kind of crazy because we've always my husband's really gifted um
with his hands and uh building and construction and that isn't what he was doing we remodeled
the houses that we've lived in and um and so we had talked about like doing a business
together um fixing up homes whether like our own homes or for clients or whatever so
I just was like what if we just tried this you know we're both 41 and we're just like what if
we just gave it a shot and you know move back closer to family and all this stuff so literally
in like I don't even know like three weeks we'd found a house to fix up sold ours for more than
asking I mean all of these things just fell into place and then I began to just like freak out
because I was like oh my gosh why are we leaving this place and what are we doing and
I can't believe we're doing this and and things have not gone gone um awesomely um we currently
live in my in-law's basement and the home that we purchased to fix up is an hour from here and um
Yeah, it's just my animals aren't what I would consider like believers, you know, like Catholic,
they're Catholic and they just live their life very differently than than we do.
But it's just been it's been interesting to be in that environment and I don't know.
And yeah, it's just it kind of feels like all of this stuff like I mean, Carrie said
to me as I'm telling her like how things just were falling into place for us to move and
all that.
She's like, well, sounds like you're in rest because like God is literally like making
all the pieces fall into place.
And I found myself in the process being like, but is this what I want to happen?
You know, and so now we're out here and we're like, well, we don't want to stay out here.
What did we do?
Like, isn't really where we want to raise my our child and, and so
we're just in a place of being like, we have no idea what we're doing and what the Lord
is doing.
And it feels like we got here and then all of the like, pieces falling into place kind
of stopped.
And now we're just like, hey, God, where are you?
And so I'm excited to walk through this group with you all for the next six weeks and beyond.
I don't know.
Because I feel like we just don't really know how to live in rest and don't really know
how to make decisions.
And we went back this weekend to where we moved away from and I just was like, why did
we leave here?
Like, this feels like home and I don't know why I struggled so bad when we were here and,
you know, just all these things and so just a lot of confusion and I can't remember one
of the gals and maybe Steph was like, I'm, you know, the hot mess of the group and I'm
like, I can take that title.
Because yeah, every day I'm just like, I don't even know what we're doing.
So that's me.
My husband will probably not do an intro video or anything like that, but I'm happy that
he is choosing to do the intensive with me and yeah, just meet you guys and grow with
you guys and learn to live this way.
So that is me who stayed till the end, props to you.
So I'm happy to be here and excited to get this started.