Sheree: 0:00

God sees it all. He sees the whole picture and we only see what's right in front of us. It's so important to cultivate that relationship with the Lord, the trust and know He has your best interest.

Trisha: 0:10

Welcome to Seeds of Your Marriage. I am Trisha Walker and I have with me my dear fellow sister in Christ, Sheree Shannon. She is a powerhouse woman of God and I am just so excited to have her on our podcast when I first met her, it was actually at an event and she was just, she just started sharing like when she was speaking up there and it just really, Resonating with me and how much she has a passion for women, how much she wants to see people live out their destiny. And the way that she is so diligent and writing all of her books and doing what the Lord has put in front of her to carry Christ and help people know who he is personally. And so I just knew that one day we would be here or we would have this interaction with one another. So welcome to our podcast. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. Yeah. Let's just get right into it. So you written eight books. Some are

Sheree: 1:07

books, some are actual devotionals. Yes. Yes. So two main books. And then I have journals that go along with those. I think generally is so important in your journey. And then I did guided journals because I just think when you're reading and writing at the same time, it just helps you take it all in more. So I've done a few of those. And then I've started a children's book series that I'm really excited about. So I finished my first one. And so it's going to be a series.

Trisha: 1:35

Oh, that's awesome. I love that. I was on your website and I saw you said that we leave a legacy. On your website, you said your view determines not only how you live today, but how your future plays out. That really impacted me, that speaks to me about our generations and what we're doing today to impact our generations. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Sheree: 1:57

How we think affects how we see things. Whatever thoughts are going in your mind, that will determine how you see the things in front of you. We want to see things in God's light and we want to see things how God sees them. It's so important for us to learn how to align our thoughts in that way. How we view the world, how we view God, how we view our families, our spouse and our home, it's so important that we're seeing that through the right lens. And obviously, when you think of legacy with the family, the communication is key. But sometimes if we're not seeing things properly, we don't even know how to communicate. We're seeing things through our own lens of how we've been hurt, disappointed. Or just through the lens of how we've been raised that maybe is completely different than how our spouse is raised. And it affects everything. And so if we don't learn how to harness that. In a healthy way, it can really have a negative impact on every area of our life.

Trisha: 3:07

Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree and have seen how that has played out even in our own life, in Thomas in my life, in our family's life. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about you, your marriage, how long have you been married?

Sheree: 3:21

Your husband's name and, okay. So I fell in love with my husband, David. I was 15. And he was actually in college, so it was a little bit, he was. Only three years older than me, but it makes a big deal when like you're in high school and they're in college. But anyway, we dated for a while and then we were engaged to be married secretively. We hadn't told my parents yet and then the Lord really started convicting me about getting married and I'm like, this is amazing. I would get along great. There's no reason why we shouldn't get married. And then God just made it so clear. And so that was a very difficult time that I had to enter the relationship and it was quite devastating. And so then a couple of years went by and then God brought us back together. So it was really awesome because. God sees it all. He sees the whole picture and we only see what's right in front of us. And that's why it's so important to cultivate that relationship with the Lord, the trust with the Lord and know He has your best interest. He knows what you need. He's looking out for you. These are not punishments. When you're going through it, sometimes it felt like punishment, this is an amazing guy. We have an amazing relationship. But then when we separated, I lived some lives that I would have missed out on living in that God knew I needed to live. I took trips. I went to college and dorm with my best friend, and then what I didn't know simultaneously, what was happening with him is he had put me on a pedestal and put me first. And so he became angry with God and angry and just Went his own way for a while and learned a lot about himself and such. And so then once I didn't know at the time of what he came to that place where he was like, okay, God, I'm laying it all down. I want you. I want to serve you and. Then I'm in California. He's in Illinois and God speaks to me and says, call him it's time. And so we came back together. So we've been married 34 years, but together way longer than that, we've have three amazing sons. And we have our own business, we started a business together

Trisha: 5:27

that's awesome. I love it. You are a realtor.

Sheree: 5:30

Yes. I did get my real estate license. I've not done a whole lot with that. I've helped friends buy and sell. And and when we were in Illinois we did investment properties. So it was like, it just makes sense to have a license when you're buying things for yourself. And then it was awesome because my son, when he went to buy his first house, I was able to put. My commission in for their down payment, which enabled them. It's not something I actively pursue. It's just. Just a nice thing to have and when the opportunities arise. Oh, it's good. I love it. What business do you guys have then? We it's called Shannon tile works and we do basically construction, remodel of bathroom and kitchens. And when we started, I did it all with them. I went to the job sites doing estimates and the customer would be saying I like to do this and this. And what do you think about this? And my husband would just be like, Oh yeah. That's great. Yes. We totally do that. And then we'd walk out and I'd be like, you know how to do that? And he's Oh no, but I'll figure it out. So we just built it from ground up and, you just. You go into Home Depot and ask questions and now you can YouTube things and we figure things out. Of course, that was 30 some years ago, but yeah, so we've been doing that. But now at this point, the only thing I do is I help clients if they need help, like picking colors or styles or designing and all that. And then I do the books, I don't do the hard labor anymore.

Trisha: 6:54

Yeah. That's great. I love it. Oh, you learn something about someone every time I do this, But you have a book, which I actually love, I have three of your books, but one of them it's called journey to wholeness of mind, maximize the power of your mind to transform your life. And I just, this is a really good book. And I was taking some key nuggets out of it that I will ask you. But first of all, I just wanted to see if you could tell me a little bit about What does like journey to wholeness, what does it mean when you're talking about being whole?

Sheree: 7:26

It came out of, just me pondering with the Lord and asking the Lord. I just had a lot of frustration with feeling when I get with my girlfriends and we're talking about our struggles and things going on, I felt God, we don't look any different than the world, it's like, everybody's talking about how stressed they are and overwhelmed and anxieties and fears. This doesn't sound like the church that I would think you've designed and want. And so I spent a lot of time with the Lord pondering about that and struggling with that. And then one day I just heard Him speaking to my Spirit. It's a journey to wholeness. And when He said that I knew it was a book and then I just started that journey with Him. What does this look like? And so I think that we all have it's to me. It's all about the pursuit, our pursuit of God and all that He has for us and His plan for us and His design. And as we get in that pursuit, then. We start learning the things. He starts revealing things. It starts healing things. But if we don't get on that journey in that pursuit, we don't even recognize that we're not whole or the struggles. And we just live our life and frustration and anxiety or fear and all these things. So once you say my goal is wholeness, my goal is to live the life that God designed for me to live and live in the fullness. Of what he has for me, this God of love and joy and peace and all these amazing things we read about in his word and how do we actually attain all of that? And these books are about that pursuit of getting into the journey and starting to recognize the things. are robbing you because the enemy came to steal, kill and destroy. And He is doing that in every opportunity in every way He can find. And so many times we don't even realize it's happening or, cause we just think, oh, that's the way I was raised. Or that's just how I am, or this is just life. And so when you start healing all of these places, you learn how to bring Jesus in to touch all these places. Then You start having more joy, which then breeds more joy and then more peace. And then you start realizing like, Oh my gosh, I used to totally freak out when this happened and I don't freak out anymore. And that used to make me so angry and I don't get angry. And it's beautiful when we learn this and start surrendering and God starts healing all these things. Life gets better. Even if our situations don't change, the circumstances don't change we're changing. It's like our inner world starts. Being so beautiful and healthy that the outer world isn't banging us up anymore and beating us up anymore. Now I can actually start affecting my outer world because my inner world is in peace.

Trisha: 10:00

Oh, that is so good. I understand what you're talking about when you're saying sometimes we don't even know in our life that there's something missing or there's, deception that's happening, right? Sometimes we don't realize it. That, Became real to me probably around 2009 and, Spirit filled, one, going after God, all of that, but. There was things in my life. There was things in our marriage that it was almost this veil was over our eyes and it was like deception. And when he started removing that veil and realizing, Oh, there's some things here that I need to actually address and give to God and I need, like you said, there's that healing that happens and there's joy that comes. And it's just our marriage when we were both doing this together and really allowing Him to, I say, burn us, that fire that burns everything away that doesn't belong. It's just so much joy in our marriage together. So much like just a completely new marriage than we ever thought we would have. Yeah. Completely transformational. In your book, you said by acknowledging what is happening in our thoughts and our emotions, we have the power to make the choices necessary to heal and move forward. So how do we do that? How do we know what's happening in our thoughts and our emotions to be able to do that?

Sheree: 11:26

2 Corinthians 10 That we're to take every thought captive like every thought. I think the 1st step is to start thinking about what you're thinking about, for so many of us, we've checked out. Or we keep so busy we just fill our lives so that we don't have to think and we don't really want to think about what we're thinking about. And so I think the 1st step is to start thinking about what is happening in our brains and then looking at that and saying, is this working for me or against me is the way I'm thinking, improving my life or hurting my life? And then we start bringing those things before the Lord. And, just learning to acknowledge him in everything. It's all about intentional living. And we got to make the choice. Like I'm going to live intentionally. I know that God has a plan and a purpose and a design for my life. And I want to live in the fullness of that. So I'm going to start paying attention and being intentional about what I'm saying, how I'm thinking, what I'm doing. And when we acknowledge with the Lord, when a fear thought comes, so we recognize that, Oh, I'm being fearful or anxiety. Put whatever the word is there. And we can start going to the Lord and saying, okay, this is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm thinking and how we acknowledge Him is okay, but I know that's not your word. I know that's not what you have for me. And so I'm going to start choosing what you say. What you have for me, so we find the verses we find the scripture that we're going to stand on that anchor verse and these moments when fear arises or whatever the thing is, it's not working for you. That's robbing you. And I think the tendency is to want to suppress those things or cover them up or ignore them or just say something nice in place of it. It's that's not healing. The healing comes as I acknowledge there's fear here. There's anxiety here. And we bring it up for the Lord. He says to cast our cares. That's an action word. That's not lay it down. That's a casting. This thing is robbing me, affecting me, and I'm going to cast this on the And then I'm going to get what he has in exchange for that. And then we have to have a system or a way we're going to walk that out. And for all of us, it's going to be different based on what it is and what's going on, but we got to have a plan. If you know that you battle with feeling overwhelmed, then it's starting to recognize what causes me to feel overwhelmed. Let's get to the root of that. Let's see what God has to say. Let's implement God's truth and God's word. What that means for the minute I wake up in the morning. This is what I'm going to do so that I can maintain this walk of peace with the Lord, or I know in these situations, I usually come under attack. I'm going to my in laws house, whatever the thing is where you start recognizing what the triggers are what brings that up and now I'm gonna have a plan to how I'm gonna address that. Yeah, yeah,

Trisha: 14:33

that's really good I really like what you're saying about being intentional living like yeah I see what you're saying with our thoughts like, okay being able to slow ourself down enough to recognize You what is the thought that's even going through my head and even being able to write it down, you talked earlier about journaling, writing this thought down. Okay. Let me analyze this. Let me ask God about this thought. Is this thought bringing me light or is it causing me harm? Is it, is it not helpful in my life? And doing that with the Lord is really powerful. And like you said, in the heat can. Start to reveal to you how to remove that thought, if it's a negative thought, like giving that to him and saying, I don't want this. I don't want this anymore. What's the positive? What's the opposite of this negative thought? What are you giving me? What's the positive? And,

Sheree: 15:24

Yeah, that's really good because you got to replace. A lot of times we try to stop doing things and we can't, There's an exchange and God wants to start exchanging, making the exchanges with us. We give to him, what's hurting us and he gives us something and to replace that, we can't just stop thinking those thoughts. We have to replace those thoughts. Yeah. And just thinking about in the sense of like in marriage, like if we could stop and recognize like what benefits our marriage or doesn't benefit our marriage, And start looking at, okay, maybe we just have a different perspective, back to how we see things, we see things differently just because we're male and female. That is enough alone, right? But there's so many other factors. I think about, even with my husband And I grew up in a home where my dad was a perfectionist and we couldn't sit down and eat together because there's a right way to do everything. And so like you were to pick your fork up and then you put it down between you chew your food so many times and you eat everything on your plate. If you have ketchup there, you still eat it. We just got to a place where we didn't sit down and eat. My mom prepared the food and whenever we were hungry, we would go and got it. My husband grew up in a home where there was nothing good with his dad except mealtime. When they would sit down as a family, like that was that one sacred hour. And that was his only good memories. So here we get married and we come in and, I don't think. Any thought of sitting down and having dinner together. And that's one of the most important things to him, especially when we started having kids and I had no idea, like never put it together. See, our view is different. And so he's feeling not happy and I'm feeling fine cause I don't know. There's this expectation, but then once he shared that, and then I could see. Through his eyes, the value, it was like, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. Let's do this. And then it became important, so it, but if you don't start looking at these things, there's always a solution. Yeah. We just don't see it so often because we're seeing things differently because of our own life experiences.

Trisha: 17:41

And this is a process, it's not, we're not perfect, we're not going to be perfect when we're trying to really take all of our thoughts captive and to really address things in our life. I can think of, situations where I would allow things to bottle up inside without even realizing it. It was like, push it down, don't deal with it. Just move on. Just keep on going. I one of those people that was my schedule was so full. Controlling my life, control my kids' life, controlling everything because if I saw anything that was out of control, I just couldn't deal with it. Yeah. But when we were going through this process of really wanting to move into wholeness and health and healing, I realized, okay, I have to be able to be more verbal. I have to be able to explain what's going on inside of myself, but it wasn't, I wasn't always great at it. Sometimes I would, and so I would have to learn not to let it bottle up and then I would explode, but how to Recognize inside of myself. Oh, this is something that I'm feeling. Oh, this is an indication for me. I need to actually have a time with him. We need to sit down and talk, at some point when we're both are in a position or place that we can actually hear one another and just, Tell him what's what I'm thinking or to tell him what's going on inside of me Because when I can do that then it doesn't bottle up but I wasn't always perfect at it at first, right? It was a process where I had to learn

Sheree: 19:07

In so many times like we don't even know. Yeah, because it's just how we've always been it we just think this is normal And so that's why I say the first step is to start thinking about what you're thinking about and then it's a journey Yeah Once I figured that out, like, how do I do it? And how do I communicate that? And then suddenly some of the people in your life don't understand what's happening. Like all of a sudden you're sharing your thoughts and you're talking about it. And then you have to give them time to adjust to Oh, we're going to do things different now, right now. And so that's why I love the word journey, and we got to just take the pressure off of ourselves and it's supposed to be fun. I think it's exciting to go on a journey. It's exciting to discover ourselves and discover what God has for us and retraining our brain. I think for me, the biggest thing that popped in writing this book and all the research I did was that my brain actually believes what I tell it. That was like huge for me. I don't know what I thought before that, but suddenly we're like, okay, my brain believes what I tell it. And so our brain is like a computer. It's a hard drive. It's just all these things have been downloaded our whole life and we've just accepted it. We've lived it. It's in our subconscious, all of our trainings, teachings, things we were exposed to, it's all in there. And so to now recognize I have the power to Teach my brain what I wanted, how I want to live, how I want to see things. And that was so exciting and so empowering to me. And it just opened up this whole world. Like our belief systems are just based on our repetitive thoughts. So what are you repeatedly thinking and you can change that and you can start looking and going like that thought doesn't work for me. I get to change it.

Trisha: 20:52

Yeah. It's reprogramming your brain is what you're talking about. It's the neural pathways where part of your brain is being activated and the different thoughts that we have. And you know what, where we're focusing our thought life and our energy really creates these different parts of our brains become active and it creates all these neural pathways. So if we want a different life, then we have to, like you said, we have to think differently

Sheree: 21:19

the reality is so many of us, we want change in our life. But to have change, something has to change. And that's just the reality. So something has to change to have a change. and it's interesting, now they have all these ways to study our bodies and our brain, and it's so exciting, all these machines and scans and the reality is our body is rebuilt every 11 months. So we have the ability in 11 months to be a totally different person, but we're generally not because everything produces after its own kind. So your cells are dying and reproducing constantly, but they're reproducing the same thing because that's what they do. So to have yourselves be different, you have to give yourselves different information. And so it's so exciting to think, I can start changing how I think. I can start making different choices. I can expose myself to new things. And literally, in 11 months, I'm a different person. That's powerful. Yeah. And that's, the board talks about that transforming our mind, renewing our mind. This is what transforms our life. Is when we start doing this with the Lord and it just becomes beautiful and that doesn't mean anything else around you changes I think that's what we get caught up in think if this gets better if that happens if this happens Then it'll be better. It's no It all gets better inside of you Despite what's happening on the outside and that's what God intended for this world in here to be full of peace and joy and not be Constantly Toss to and fro by what other people are saying, what other people are doing, what's happening, the economy, the losing the job, whatever. It's like life can be hard, like bad things happen to all of us. We all have struggles. Like life is never going to be where there's no problems, right? Absolutely. It's perfect. But I think as Christians, we get into working towards that, we just got to get life perfect. And then I'm going to surprise. I'm going to do all these things. I was like, no, it's it's our internal world will transform the outer world.

Trisha: 23:33

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember listening to this, I can't think of his name right now, but he is a negotiator. He negotiates on terrorists. When there's bank robberies and things like that, and I was watching this documentary and he was talking about this and he was talking about our emotions and when we're able to recognize the emotion and verbalize it, even if you can recognize that emotion in someone else. And be able to say, I think I'm sensing here. There's maybe some fear. I think I'm sensing some, some sadness that's happening, with you or whatever it might be it helps to lower that level of emotion that they're currently feeling because now they've recognized it. And now their brain goes into the mode of, okay, I don't want this anymore. And so they can move past, they can start moving past that emotion, but the first step is being able to recognize it. And yeah, so I'm just thinking about that. Like some people want to push past their emotions. You're talking about the journey of, The journey of recognizing the journey to wholeness of recognizing our thoughts and our emotions. We've been talking a lot about thoughts, but there's also of being able to recognize what emotion am I actually feeling right now?

Sheree: 24:49

Yeah. And sometimes if you're not sure how to navigate that is start thinking, okay, which emotions will work for me, which ones are going to help me and start focusing on having those, because every single thought and emotion releases a chemical into our bodies. And so that's why you're saying like, they can trace that 90 percent of all sickness can be traced in some way back to stress. Because of the stress hormones that are released these chemicals when we're that get released into our body or start breaking our body down and so if That's why gratitude is so important, being grateful. So when I have a grateful thought, it releases positive chemicals into my body. And so in the more positive that comes in, the easier it is to be positive. So I think when you can see that a negative thought breeds another negative thought, which breeds another negative thought, because you're releasing a negative chemical that empowers the next negativity in the next. So we have to learn to switch because we really. Can't come up with positive ideas. We can't come up with solutions when we're in a frame of a negative frame of mind. And that's what, like the negotiator saying, when you're in that, this is a downward spiral and somehow you have to stop that downward spiral. And so in our own lives, It's just, we can see how it happens. Somebody hurts our feelings and we go internally and this, if we stay there, it just spirals till now this is a terrible day and I just gotta crawl in bed and get under the blankets.. And it's like just switching quickly to a positive thought of becoming grateful for something shifts the chemicals that are being released, which then now enable us to do something more positive. For some people it's easier to go I'm going to start thinking of which emotions would be positive. And then it's easier to recognize with, oh I'm not having peace. I'm not having joy. Okay, what's happening here? Yeah. So good. Oh my goodness. So how can people learn more about you? Okay. So I'm on Instagram is the, where I mostly like to live as far as social media and that's journey with Sheree. I think if you put my name in, I have an account with that and that it directs you to my journey with Sheree. And I try to post like encouraging, inspirational things, I'll do really good for a week and post every day. And then I won't post for a couple of weeks, but I try like on that site to just always be giving life, giving things. So Facebook too, but I do have my website shereeshannon. com and you can go on there and purchase my books. See a little bit more about me, you can ask about me on there. There's a place where you can email me and and then I also do coaching. So if you wanted to make you can reach out if you want to make an appointment sometimes you just need help stepping into that journey or somebody, sometimes it helps when it's somebody who doesn't know us that can just see. Here's the facts, and help us step into that, walk that out. And so I do love to do that with people, help them highlight the areas that they're going to work on and see some transformation happen. So

Trisha: 28:11

that's awesome. Thank you so much. This has been such a fun time. Bless you. Bless everyone and have a wonderful rest of your day. All right.

Thomas: 28:21

Thank you for listening to Seeds for Your Marriage with hosts, Trisha and Thomas Walker. We pray this episode has given you tips and tools on how to thrive in your marriage. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Trisha and Thomas. We want to hear from you. Be sure to leave a review and let us know how we're doing. It's our desire that this podcast completely benefits you. So also let us know future marriage topics that you would like to hear about.