David: I think we made it, Karen. Are you still alive?

Karen: I’m still alive though I’m aching and I can hardly talk. That’s a lead.

David: Yesterday was the deadline, that’s when Joel, our son, had to be out of his house and he didn’t have all the help, but two old timers came and we made it through. But it was a squeaker.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Maybe Karen, we should give a little more detail than that, do you want to try it?

Karen: Well, our son Joel Mains is making a big shift in his life and as that was going on we said to him, “Well, why are you doing a mortgage payment? Sell your house, the market’s supposed to be great and come live with us until you decide what you want your direction to be.” And so he did that.

David: The house sold very quickly.

Karen: Right away in a day and for more than he was asking because the market is so good. So anyway, we’ve been helping him clear through things in his house for the last month maybe, but we had to do the heavy work this last week.

David: Unlike the return of our Lord, we did know what the deadline date was for him.

Karen: And he needed to be out of his house with a broom clean and everything taken care of by nine o’clock yesterday morning.

David: And the walls putted.

Karen: Walls putted, you’re the magic putter. I’m cleaning like crazy. Joel’s lifting boxes like crazy and getting them into a van and then to a storage locker and then over to our house. So, we are blasted today. I think we had two hours to sleep, not last night but two nights ago.

David: Two nights ago, yeah. We left his house at 10, it takes half an hour to get to our place. We slept for two and a half hours and we’re back again about 3.30 in the morning because this was the final run.

Karen: This was the final run. So, in the midst of this, we have this podcast to make and what are we saying in this podcast?

David: You’re asking me, I was supposed to ask you that.

Karen: In times of extreme stress.

David: Make it a practice of looking to God for his help and the truth is I was doing that all the time.

Karen: You were, yeah, yesterday.

David: Yeah. The interesting thing to me, which made it difficult, it was bringing back all these memories of when we had to close down the Chapel of the Air ministry and this huge warehouse. We had two buildings we owned and then a massive warehouse.

Karen: With literally tons of products. That’s true. So you were going through that yesterday?

David: Oh, a lot of the time. Oh my goodness. Oh, I’m going to need. Yeah, you’re going up and down the stairs.

Karen: Carrying things, the sorting and.

David: Well, yeah, it brings back all those memories. No question about it. It also was a very interesting time to me because I did much better than when the ministry had to close down because I was practicing the presence of the Lord very consciously the whole of the time.

Karen: Well, at our age, one fall, you know, is enough to put you in senior care for the rest of your life. I mean, that’s true.

David: I know it’s not funny, but it’s funny.

Karen: And you don’t want to break a leg or, you know, put your back out or lifting all that stuff. I mean, Joel was doing the lifting, but back strain or, you know.

David: I was. When the putting I don’t know how some of those holes got so high on the walls and you’re on a step ladder.

Karen: You know, a whole making monster or something.

David: It was funny, but I remember saying, “Lord, you know, I don’t know how this relates to ministry, but I’m practicing your presence.”

Karen: Well, also to do it with a good attitude because, you know, under stress and fatigue in a deadline like that. It’s so easy to get short with one another. And then you have, you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. Joel and I were sort of this morning, because he did move in with us and came home. I slept here for the first time last night talking about how different leaders have different kinds of ways of doing things.

You develop a strategy. So he came down yesterday. He had a strategy for how to get rid of and sort and organize and purge all the tools in the garage. And we’d already taken everything off the walls and we’re packing it away without considering him his strategy.

The older strategist, namely father had swooped through this command. We got to get this done. That’s a praise we hear from you very frequently and pile them into one box and we’ll sort it out when we get it home. But then screwdrivers that you needed to undo some of the last things in the house had to be found and, you know, that sort of stuff was going on. So you want not to, in times of stress, to offend the people who are going through it with you and cause even more stress by that sort of thing.

So your attitude needs to be checked as well. So we did need help on every single level. Physical help, spiritual help to keep us remembering that God was helping us. He was working on our behalf and then interpersonal help as well.

David: He was most helpful in the deadline, which was 9 to 15 in the morning. 9 to 15, yesterday morning. It got put off for a little while.

Karen: 10 minutes. But we were out of there by 9.15. We rolled out of the driveway. Everything clean, nothing left in the house. And that’s the signature of God’s help. He’s often not way ahead of time, but he’s right on time.

David: I’m laughing now. I don’t ever remember being so tired that I’m thinking a couple more trips to the car. I also was thinking, Karen, because I pray for these people. Some of them, they don’t have a day when it all is over. I think of the lady who’s prayed with us and she said, she’s a nurse. She said, “I’m no longer working at the hospital because my husband has Alzheimer’s.”

Karen: Let me give a little context to that, honey. You have this prayer group that meets by phone weekly.

David: These are people who either write to me or we have some kind of a personal phone contact or whatever. Some of them are part of the group.

Karen: You prayed, I think it’s three years or so. And this one, you’re referring to this woman whose husband has Alzheimer’s, is new to the group. So you don’t have a history from her. You didn’t.

David: You just pick up things.

Karen: You pick up things. So she casually mentioned, it’s not casual to her that her husband has Alzheimer’s and he’s living with her. So she’s carrying with someone with this ongoing dementia. That’s extraordinary stress.

David: Yeah. There are people, Karen, who like our son, who he was many years with this organization.

Karen: 17 years.

David: Now he’s laid off. I’m thinking specifically of individuals for whom I pray. Here’s an individual in my mind who has a contentious marriage and is trying to work through that. And it’s so hard to maintain a Christ-like attitude. I’m thinking of an individual who has a wayward grandson and that doesn’t seem to be moving positively.

Karen: It’s a heartache for parents and grandparents.

David: Chronic physical problem. You know, it’s always there. It’s that sharp edge. I think of people I’ve talked to and they just, “I’m just exhausted.” And I don’t relate to that word that much, but I did these last couple of days.

The final three days up until yesterday, I was just exhausted all the time. And you just think one more trip down those stairs, now another trip down those stairs. “Are we finished with that room?” We close the door. And you’re just saying, “how do I get through this?”

But some of those dear friends, they can’t close the doors on things. You know, it just goes on and on and on. It’s very, very difficult. So the big question is, how in the world do you live in that kind of a situation?

Karen: In times of stress. There are all kinds of stresses and distresses in people’s lives.

David: We try to put it into a sentence. Let me read that. It’s during times of extreme stress, make it a practice of looking to God for His help. How did that appear in just these last few days for us?

Karen: Well, I attempt to begin every morning in prayer as much as you can. You can’t always do that. But at least prayer enough to say, “Lord, I’m looking to you today. I know that you will be with us. You have been constant in our lives for the good all of these years that we have known you all of these years of this ministry, marriage that’s gone on for 60 years. And we need you to be with us today.” And I have a sign that’s in Chinese, but he will give his angels.

They will keep you from falling. Sorry, I’m not getting the script. So please allow your angels to keep us from falling. And I mean that in the literal physical way because for any of us are dangerous, particularly for the age of. I want to be mindful of your presence all the day. I don’t want to just make a little emergency prayer in the morning.

David: I take it to a level. I say, “God, you got to be careful. be clapping like mad because I’m doing very well here.”

Karen: Yeah, so it becomes something constant. Yes. It’s a constant mantra that becomes just sort of a phrase. I’m looking to you for your help and help me have a good attitude here and let me fill the room with laughter and you know whatever it takes to make the attention.

David: Yeah, I’m tired but I think my son is even more tired. Yeah. So help him through the frustrations of all of what is involved here.

Karen: You know one thing that I was thinking about this as we were putting the podcast together was you know we pray and ask God to help. We don’t always remember that he delights in helping us. You know the way you feel about your children, “Well I can do this for you. Thank goodness I had that money and I could loan it to them or how wonderful that I was there and picked up the very last tickets to that event that we thought we wanted to go to and didn’t think we were going to have enough funds for it and then something came through and I thought oh okay, tickets for us all and there was enough for us all but those were the last tickets.” Things like that. So he delights to do those sorts of things for his children. He delighted to help us in ways we couldn’t possibly see with our physical eyes to get through that moving effort, that extreme stress that did have an ending. But he’s delighting in helping those who are in the interminable situations too, to be with them, to give them his love because he loves them, we’re his children and the way we love our children and love to delight to do for them is the way he loves us and likes to do delightful things for us as well.

David: I have a feeling, Karen, that we’re not experts by any stretch of the imagination but I think that in the New Testament when people did certain things they kind of looked up to him, “Did you notice that God? It was a pretty good one.”

Karen: Like what are you thinking you got a specific?

David: Oh I’m thinking of Paul and Silas. You know they’re in jail, they’ve been beaten, they’re in chains and they’re singing hymns.

Karen: And praises to God.

David: Oh my God. And then this earthquake comes and their shackles are all loosened. I would have beaten it out of there as fast as I could. But they don’t, they stick around and the jailer comes and they lead them to the Lord and I think that there is that sense of Paul and Silas leading them. “We did a pretty good one there didn’t we?” So anyway, I was saying it’s not that level yet God but I’m doing pretty well for who David Mains is you know.

So anyway I have a scripture. This is again from these guys who are real heroes of the faith. This is Paul and Romans. “What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship?” Now we’re getting in some of those big words of “persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword. As it’s written, for your sake we face death all day long. We’re considered a sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I’m convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.” It’s absolutely unbelievable.

Karen: What’s the reference on that? Romans 8.

David: Well I read a number of verses. What I’m talking about begins in 28. We know that all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. And he says we know that. Sometimes we don’t know that. You know, and we get grumpy and drouchy and say words we shouldn’t say to others, maybe sometimes even bad words. But that’s not the way of the Christ life.

Karen: I have a suggestion for people who are under stress is that they just read that passage daily and maybe even try and memorize it. I’m trying to memorize more scripture these days. But I think that is an extraordinary reminder. One of the things I was thinking was not only do we need to constantly go to him and ask and expect his help because he loves us and we’re his children, but we need to be grateful. We need to be grateful when he does help us. And it’s so easy to forget to do that.

We might say to us, “Gee, thanks God,” but there needs to be an extended practice of gratitude that says, “We asked for your help. You were with us as we were cleaning that house, starting to clean it and order it and purge it and make it good for selling. And then it did sell it sold in one day for more than our son’s asking price. I mean, extraordinary. So I’m grateful for that. Grateful for the fact that we had strength enough and that you and I, David and Karen had strength enough to do all that heavy labor.”

David: 85 years old here.

Karen: And we didn’t give up. We kept doing it. We said we’re tired.

David: Funny thing, Karen, here in February and we were taking some of the last things to Goodwill. And I was loading the car and there was something in a paper sack and I picked it up and it slipped and it fell. It was a crock pot.

Karen: Yeah, it broke.

David: It broke. I thought we only lost one crock pot in the whole time.

Karen: And we didn’t throw it and it fell on its own. It didn’t hit your foot.

David: And it all stayed in the paper sack.

Karen: You didn’t have to clean it up. Yeah. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Father.

David: Yeah, it was good. It was a good experience. It was a very different experience than cleaning the warehouse.

Karen: With a huge emotional baton watching all that product going out and being turned away.

David: Yeah, there was really tons of materials. There was no place to put it.

Karen: So basically we’re saying in times of extreme stress, not only keep a reminder that you need to depend on God, remind yourself, but you also need to be grateful for his help all along the way. Keep the gratitude going.

David: I have a sense that that experience, it was only three days of really heavy work. I thought to myself, if this went on for like a week, I don’t know how I would have been nearly as well emotionally. If it went on for a month, what if that went on, you know, months and months?

Karen: Perhaps it’s been flooded out and you had to go in and reclaim everything or fire or, you know, disasters. “Oh, Lord, let’s remember, you know, those who are really in times of extreme distress.”

David: Anyway, I guess I started by asking you, how are you doing? Here’s smiling. I love your smile.

Karen: Oh, it’s so wonderful having our son here and knowing that this is working for him and we’re getting ready to start in this podcast. He was repairing a closet door in my closet. I have built-ins that has not worked for about 10 years and he’s staying in that room and he’s got it all fixed up. He needed me to hold the cupboard door up and, you know, hand him the screws. I’m thinking, you know, this is extraordinary. We provided a place for him out of love because we want him here and yet he’s first day here saying, “Here, Mama, let me fix this for you.” You know, that’s wonderful. It’s just a great, great gift. I’m doing good.

David: We’re coming along. We are not falling silenced level yet.

Karen: No way, Jose. And I think you’re doing well too, aren’t you?

David: Good. I think I am too. I’m gonna go to bed. What about you?

Karen: I’m not working in the garden today. That’s for sure. Okay. Well, we are sympathetic to our listeners who are in deep distress or in unending stresses or have a temporary stress. We know where you’re coming from and God will be with you.

David: I don’t know that we know where they’re coming from, but I do know this, that they’re remarkable people and I see some of them, especially with physical, ongoing ailments and I think they’re saints and on top of that, they’re just incredible.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast and if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lower case letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.