Picture this scene. You're a mom, but your

nest, it's empty. The birds have flown,

your emotions are haywire, and you wonder

if you're the only one. Susan Yates and Barbara

Rainey say no, you are not alone.

One of the main things that we found as we've talked to other women and

as we've been honest with each other is how lonely we are. The Empty

Nest is a season of great change. And one of the most important things

for navigating the season of the empty nest is friendships. And we've

learned a lot about how important it is for us as women to have some

good friends who can stand with us in the journey.

Welcome to the Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home, where

we're dedicated to helping you experience God in your home.

Thanks for listening.

Every mom has some mixed emotions when she thinks about her child

or her children leaving home after decades

of caring for them. She knows the relationship is changing

and often she has lots of questions. In this four

episode series, Barbara Rainey and her co author Susan Yates

are going to examine four of the most common questions

Empty Nest moms are asking. These are questions they

unearthed in their research for their book titled Barbara and

Susan's guide to the empty nest, Discovering new purpose,

passion and your next great adventure. This

first episode is free for everyone. We hope it will encourage

you to join us for episodes 2, 3 and 4

after you sign up for Barbara's friends and family.

Let's listen. Here are Barbara and Susan speaking to

a gathering of women in Dallas.

Susan and I have discovered on this journey that all of us are asking the

same questions. And they boil down to four questions. And the

first one is, am I the only one who feels this way?

I remember thinking that and feeling that after my youngest left. And it's

a very common emotion for us in the Empty Nest. Most

Empty Nesters feel that they're the only one. One of the big

ones for us, for both of us, was loneliness because the house is empty

and it's quiet and we're not used to that. Well, one of the things that

we have found in talking to many women is that this season is very

complex and it's really diverse. It's just plain

messy. And you know, when we were mothers of young children, we went

through many of the similar challenges, learning to share

back talk, potty training, but it had sort of a beginning and an

ending. And then as we hit the teen years, we went through similar

challenge. But you get to the empty nest and it's just

messier it hits us at different times. It hit both Barbara

and me at different times. I remember when it hit me. I have a vivid

picture. Our kids all married young. They graduated from

college in a period of seven years, and most of them got married right

after college. So I never had

a chance to really adjust to the empty nest. Because

as our third child was graduating from high school to go off

to the university, our first child was getting married within a week

period of time. And so I was

overwhelmed. So it wasn't for me until our

last daughter, one of the twins, got married. Our twins got married within

six weeks of each other. So that was a crazy summer. And they're girls.

And they're girls. Yeah. And I remember the

day after Libby's wedding, she was the last to marry,

going up to the girls room that they'd grown up in that they'd shared their

whole life. And Susie and her husband, who'd been married for six weeks,

were packing up the u haulet to empty everything else that was left in the

room. And as I stood in the room, I looked around

at the walls and there were lines where the pictures had hung.

You know, there were pieces of little scraps of paper,

but otherwise the room was bare.

And as that truck pulled out of the driveway

with my last child off to

her new life, I just sort of dissolved into tears and

crumpled on the floor. And as I look at these bare walls,

I noticed the closet door was ajar. And

on the floor of the closet, I saw a rumpled old blue

prom dress. It seemed out of place.

It was all alone. It was not

needed anymore. It in a way was out of style.

And as I looked at that prom dress, I thought, that's just how

I feel. I'm not needed anymore.

I'm a little out of style. And I remember just sobbing and.

And so for me, that was a real oh me, this

really is the empty nest. As all of my children were finally

married. Well, all of us will experience

different things as we hit the empty nest. And as Barbara and Dennis

experienced the beginnings of the empty nest, they experienced it with some real

heartache. Yeah, we did. As we began the

empty nest season, we were in a season of suffering as parents.

One of our daughters, when she hit her senior year, things really began to

unravel in some pretty serious life altering ways. And we'd sort of

been dealing with some of her issues through high school and we were doing everything

that we could think of to help her. And it seemed

like at times things were working, but we found Ourselves in a

really difficult season as that year progressed, dealing with

an eating disorder, and she began to experiment with alcohol and drugs.

And our lives as a family just began to spiral. And.

And it really affected us and our marriage. And here we are

entering. We're approaching the empty nest. We weren't there yet, but this was the way

we entered our empty nest. And so we spent her

senior year watching other families do proms and

graduation ceremonies and all these wonderful senior activities. And we

were wondering where our daughter was, where was she spending the night?

And it was such a time of heartache and loss for

us, when it should be a joyous, wonderful season of life.

So we were in a very vulnerable place in our marriage and in our family

because of this great suffering that we were experiencing.

We went through that season, and there were two things that were very important

for us. One was a small group of friends, and it was just really a

couple of couples who stood with us and prayed for us

even when we didn't know if they were praying. There were many times that we

didn't even see them, but they had committed to pray for us

through this difficult time in our lives. And the second thing that

really got me through that season of life was God's word.

I remember I had the verse James 1, verses

2 through 8 written out on a card, and I taped that card to

my steering wheel, and it must have been there for two or three months. And

when I would get in my car and something dramatic had happened or

something was really weighing on my heart for my daughter,

I remember driving down the street, saying that out loud over and over again,

because there was nothing else that I could hang onto. Nothing

else seemed stable in my life except God's word.

So those two things really, really got us through. So

we've learned that the empty nest is a season of great change. And one of

the most important things for navigating the season of the

empty nest is friendships. And we've learned a lot about friendships in

the last few years as we've worked on this and how important it is it

is for us as women to have some good friends who can stand with

us in the journey. One of the main things that

we found as we've talked to other women and as we've been honest with each

other, is how lonely we are. You know, for many of us, when we were

mothers of young children, we were desperate to be with another mother

of young children just so we could complete a sentence, because we felt like our

brain had fried. And so we sought out other women,

and we went to women's groups and Montreal groups and had play dates.

But then what happens often is as you hit those teen years, you find that

you put your girlfriend relationships on hold a little bit

because you want to savor those years with your teenagers. And so you're

at their ball games on the weekend and you're doing things with your teenagers,

and then they leave, and all of a sudden you realize you're out

of practice with how to go to a deeper level with

girlfriends. And the first thing that hits us in the face is, we're

lonely. And does anyone else feel like I do?

Well, in our book, we talk quite a bit about this, and we also give

several keys to how to begin to reconnect with

other girlfriends. I'm going to give you three of them, and the first one

is simply, pray God, make me a good friend

to others. Ask God to lead you to one

or two other women who would become soul

sisters, who would be of encouragement to you.

And then secondly, take the first step. Actually

write down a list of three to five women that you would

like to get to know at a deeper level. Call them up,

ask them to go for a walk or meet you at Starbucks for coffee.

Be persistent. Think up good questions.

I found it helpful to think of questions in two categories, and we've also

shared these categories with our children because it enables us to become good

conversationalists. One is schedules. Everyone has a schedule.

What's a typical week like for you? How are you spending your time?

And then relationships. Who have been some people in your life who've had a

great influence on you? Tell me about your family. What's your

extended family like? Who has been a person who

you look to as a model, who you'd like to be like in

this season of life. So take the first step.

A third key is to simply be persistent. So

you didn't really click with that girl you went for a walk with or you

had a hard time sort of conversing at Starbucks. Simply call

up another one. Keep going. Keep taking

the initiative, and God in time will bring

to you a good girlfriend. But it's scary,

isn't it? It's scary to take that first step.

So our first question is really to give us each a little bit of relief.

Our first question is, am I the only one who feels this way?

And the answer is most definitely no.

Again, that's Susan Yates along with Barbara Ramey.

To hear their comments on the other three questions, you need to

subscribe to Barbara's friends and family. To do

that, go to barbaramy.substack.com or

everthinehome. The subscription cost is only

$5 a month, or you can sign up for a whole year and get

two months free.

I'm Samantha, and I hope to see you in the next episode of the

Barbara Rainey

Podcast.