Episode 51: Changing With The Seasons
An interview with Betsy Wright
Betsy shares her in-process story of changing with the seasons.
The Seeds
Name: Betsy Wright
Where do you call home: San Francisco, CA
Relationship Status: Married
Season of Work: House Flipping and Non-Profit.
Hobbies: Travel, Reading, Looking at Real Estate Online.
Jesus Journey: I grew up going to church regularly. My mom worked as the children’s minister at our church. I was baptized in middle school after attending a church camp, but my faith became my own once I was in college. I chose to continue to attend church on my own and grow my relationship with Jesus.
The Branches
For most of us…change, shifting assignments, and end of seasons are hard. A few years ago your youngest was about to head to Kindergarten. You were ending a long and faithful season of leading the mom's group at our local church and leading your three children full-time in the home. What emotions, feelings, and questions did you have during this time?
My biggest dream was always to be a mom. I specifically wanted to stay home while my kids were young. I hadn’t thought much past them all being in school in terms of how I would spend my time. And I had never been particularly drawn to having a career in the traditional sense.
About 3 years ago when my youngest was in daycare part-time, I had more time and space. I started to feel like maybe there was more I should be doing, but didn’t feel called to be doing anything specifically. It was an internal pressure. Nothing external contributed to this feeling. My husband has always been super supportive of me staying at home or not.
I also felt a little bit of guilt for wanting more when I had been begging God to become a mom just a few years before and He provided exactly what we hoped for with our 3 kids.
I was growing out of a season of staying at home with young kids and the other roles I had taken on (Moms Group at church). But if I wasn’t doing those things, what was I meant to be doing?
We have known each other for a decade and done much life together. I can remember you questioning your worth, giftings, and being nervous about your place in this world. What did you learn about your identity during this time? What did you learn about God? What did you learn about your community?
I wasn’t so much questioning my worth as a person or the importance of my role as a stay-at-home mom as I was questioning if I was missing something that God had for me to do in addition. I think the “in addition” part is really important. I knew that I wanted my role as a mom to stay my primary focus and continue to be where I spent the majority of my time.
I remember attending the IF conference at a friend’s house and was surrounded by many women who were moms AND writing books, starting companies and schools, and doing such big, great things alongside “mom” -ing. At that moment, the feeling of not doing enough was so big, but in the car on the way home that day, I felt God telling me to “own it”. To own my role as a stay-at-home mom and be content with knowing it was what He had for me right then. I also felt clarity that I shouldn’t force myself into starting something just because I was feeling this way and if God had something more for me to be doing, He wouldn’t let me miss it.
Having a community of mom friends has been so important in every season. I have a lot of friends with kids of similar ages to mine who have been encouraging and supportive of every phase of motherhood and life. I also think having friends ahead of and behind you in the motherhood journey is important.
Your family is your #1 priority and assignment, but about a year ago your assignments expanded a bit. Can you tell us how “Bring the Coffee SF” & Elevate Properties came about?
Both Elevate Properties and Bring the Coffee were ideas my friends brought to me.
About a year after feeling like God was telling me to continue to own being a stay-at-home mom, my friend Jayson asked if I would be interested in flipping a house with him. He works in real estate and thought the market in his area would be good for it. I knew I wanted to do it, but the timing didn’t feel quite right with our youngest still not in full-time school. My parents were also planning to move near us at the same time he would start Kindergarten so we decided to wait until that happened. Once they moved and school started that fall, it was like a whole new world for me! I had so much more freedom and flexibility with my time. I was able to use that focus for starting up Elevate.
There were a few months between starting Elevate and finding the right house to do our first project and in that time, another friend, Kelly, was telling me about this idea that she had to partner with local coffee shops to bring coffee into public school staff lounges. I kept thinking about it after our conversation and had some ideas and connections because our kids go to public school. We talked about it more and Kelly asked if I wanted to help make it happen. We piloted the program last spring, made a few changes, and this fall started delivering to public elementary schools. We began with the lowest-ranked (and often least-resourced) schools in the city and worked our way up.
Have you ever pictured yourself as an entrepreneur? Where do you gain inspiration? What gets your creative juices flowing?
I never pictured myself as an entrepreneur or starter of a company or non-profit. This made starting both pretty intimidating. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing so maybe I shouldn’t be doing it. God continued to open doors and remove obstacles, encouraging me to go in the right direction. Encouragement and support from friends and family also helped. Sometimes you need someone’s outside perspective to remind you what you are capable of and push you outside your comfort zone a bit to make it happen.
I like working with a single partner on projects like Bring the Coffee and Elevate Properties. It is a good balance for me of accountability, but also easy collaboration if there are just two people making decisions.
A lot of my inspiration and creativity come from conversations and bouncing ideas off of each other and building from there.
There quite possibly is a mom in our community saying to themselves, “What do I have to offer I'm JUST a mom?! ” How would you encourage the woman who is struggling with their worth, value, and assignments?
“Just a mom” is not a small or less-than assignment. I think we have more influence as moms with our children, than any other assignment provides influence with other people. The time moms spend with their children during their early development years gives us so much opportunity to help shape their morals and values and introduce them to Jesus. What is more important than that? We have a quote on our wall from C.S. Lewis that says “Children are not a distraction from more important work, they are the most important work.”
Being a stay-at-home mom makes it easy to connect with other moms. Use it and make friends who are living the same or similar experiences. Being a mom is hard, find other moms so you can encourage and empathize with one another. Through my time staying home with my kids, I built new friendships and deepened established ones. Now those women are some of the most encouraging and supportive as I am starting to balance new things with continuing to prioritize being a mom.
Encourage the mom who is full-time caring for their children or a woman in our community caring for a parent/loved one in their home who has set aside a career or pressed pause on some dreams and personal plans for their family members to thrive.
Lean in as much as possible to the assignment and season you are in right now. Find the parts you are good at and enjoy. Ask God to show you how to learn and grow through this season. There are things I was able to do as a stay-at-home mom that I enjoyed and learned so much from that I wouldn’t have been in a position to do otherwise and it has given me skills and confidence to start things in the next season.
Connect with people in the same stage. People who can encourage and support you and vice versa.
Look for opportunities to use your giftings and dreams this season even if it’s not in the way or scope you imagined. God has given us those gifts and dreams and will provide opportunities to use them if we are willing and seeking.
God cares for us so much which means He cares about the timing of seasons and appointments. Looking back, is there anything that didn’t make sense or happen in “your timing” that makes sense now?
I would not say that I’m “glad” by any means that we had fertility struggles. But it was not how I planned to become a mom or in the timing I wanted. Looking back, I can see God’s hand in it and even see a purpose to it. It has allowed me to connect with and walk alongside many other women through infertility and share my experiences in what is hopefully a meaningful and helpful way to others. And for myself to feel like those hard experiences had some kind of bigger purpose.
Struggling with infertility and then having our kids on the other side of it grew my faith more than anything else in my life has. It’s the experience I look back on when I need to be reminded God has a better plan than we do.
Do you view seasons or assignments changing differently now that you're on the other side of all of your kids being in elementary school and tending to your two businesses?
The new assignments I have now (Elevate and Bring The Coffee) are ones that I never would have imagined 5 years ago. I think a shift or change in assignment can be more gradual, something that you prepare for, and other times, it’s an opportunity that comes along that is unexpected. Sometimes a new assignment is scary and intimidating, but it’s also exciting and fun to figure out something new and do things you didn’t know you were capable of.
Olive Us was created for women to share their in-process stories and be reminded they’re connected through Christ and not alone. Why is this important?
The more we are willing to be vulnerable and share our stories, the more connections we can make with each other. No one wants to feel like they are alone in their experiences. And we’re not. If we aren’t sharing our experiences and talking about them, we will never know who else we can connect with or know when we can help and encourage another woman through something. Our stories and gifts were meant to be shared to further God’s work.
The Olive Tree
Finish these statements:
God is…faithful.
When seasons change, expect…a time of rebalancing.
‘Olive Us’ are better when…When seasons change, expect…a time of rebalancing.