You're listening to Women in Peace Radio, while women in the marketplace connect with purpose and spirit, where the conversation covers all things women, business and fascinating faith. And now, your host, Christy Lynn Olson. Welcome to today's show. I'm so excited because in this episode, we kick off our new series of interviews from the co-authors of our latest Women in Peace book project.
We have gathered 19 of the most amazing women of faith from across the country, who are opening up their lives as women working in the marketplace as professionals from a variety of industries. I wanted to publish this two-volume book series because I have had so many conversations with women who work and at times feel conflicted about how to live fully as women of faith outside the local church. There are times when they have felt less than valued because they are using their gifts in the marketplace and not recognized for their gifts within the walls of their own church. And I have to admit that most churches I've been involved with over my life have tended to best serve women, married women with children who stay at home.
Nothing is wrong with that, so please hear me when you listen. No judgment here. Yet as a career woman or as a single woman or as a single working mother, I often felt disconnected from the church along with a lot of other women. And most of the women's Bible studies were held during the day on a weekday so I could never attend.
Now that's not everyone's story. I want to be clear about that. But it did get me to thinking. And I wanted to find a way to help other women see the value and power of their kingdom calling outside the church and in the marketplace as they use their gifts and talents to impact and influence a generation.
Walking by faith is a journey. And as for Christian women who work in the marketplace, that journey can be particularly challenging as they strive to do their job with excellence and be salt and light in a world that's filled with challenges. To have faith means to always have a vision of what success looks like for you and to stay encouraged and engaged in your faith as you walk that out on a daily basis. And sometimes everything around you looks like an insurmountable obstacle.
That's when you need faith like never before. That's when you have to be confident in what you see in your spirit and now be swayed by what you see with your eyes in the natural. The Apostle Paul knew this struggle all too well and he wrote, for we walk by faith not by sight, living our lives in a manner consistent with our confident belief in God's promises. That's from 2 Corinthians 5 verse 7.
And that's from the amplified translation in case you're wondering. The women I am interviewing in this series over the next few weeks are women who bravely share their stories. They have learned to navigate their role in the marketplace as they live consistent and confident in God's promises for their lives. I want their stories to inspire, equip, and encourage you to keep pressing on as you walk by faith and not by sight.
Today, my first guest is the beautiful Patty Enriageway. She has such a strong confidence about her now that maybe because she's from Jersey. But in spite of that, she has a lot of trials that met her head on in her journey and she's always kept a sense of humor. And it was fun to hear more about her take on owning a business, starting over a few times, parenting, and now moving on to a bigger vision for her life.
Patty is a faithful, blessed, and highly favored child of God. She is the proud mama of 5 grown children and she calls herself mama to 6 grand girls. She is passionate about her family, her faith, and feeding people. Yes, feeding people in the truest sense of the word.
She co-creates with ordinary people on a physical, financial, and spiritual level so that they may live extraordinary lives and pay their blessings forward. Her life is driven by her God-given purpose, which is based on Proverbs 3, verse 27, to withhold not good from those to whom it is due when it is in the power of my hand to do it. Let's listen in now to my interview with Patty and make sure you take a look at her website, ProjectFeedItForward.com. I'll put a link in the show notes to that for this episode, so let's listen in.
Welcome to the Women and Fuse podcast radio show. Today we have Patty and Ridgeway. Patty, I am so happy to have you on. It truly is such a treat to have you as my guest today as we talk about women of faith in the marketplace.
We are going to have a book that is coming out and our listeners are going to hear and get a link of how they can get that book. It is called We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight, Women of Faith in the Marketplace. I am excited to have you because you specifically had so many twists and turns in your journey. I wanted to ask our listeners to really listen in as you share.
I was looking at some of the things you have done. You have been a real estate investor for 25 years. You specifically said you were given a journey that took you out of your comfort zone and stretched you. I was wondering if you could share with us a little more about that process of trusting the Lord and the stretches and getting out of your comfort zone that brought you to this moment today and what you are doing.
Sure, Kristi. I would love to share. Thank you for having me. I am really, truly blessed and honored to be on this journey to put the piece in the book and speak with you today.
Stretching and leaking out of your comfort zone. Not our favorite subject. No, not at all. I think that that encompasses embracing change, which is oftentimes hard for us.
As I said, I was a real estate investor for years and years while I was raising my five children. Then I went through a devastating divorce. I was in business with my husband, so I lost my job. There was a lot of change that happened in a short amount of time.
I really leaned into my faith because I had no idea what the future was going to bring for me. I just kept holding that little lantern that only showed a few feet in front of me. I just had to keep journeying on to the doors that I knew God would open. But it was a challenge.
It was definitely a challenge to keep my faith, keep my strength up, not knowing in what direction he was going to leave me. So there were a lot of changes in my career path. Originally, I went back to school to become a pastry chef and I was doing some modeling at the time. I was doing a lot of things, but I just knew that that wasn't the journey God was taking me out because my heart wasn't feeling fulfilled and I wasn't feeling like I was serving other people in my journey.
So I just kept persisting and that's when I stumbled upon the industry that I'm in now, the network marketing industry, and I'm a health and wellness coach. And I love what I do. But again, I still felt like God put me there for a bigger journey. And after six years in this industry, I've had a new path open up to me in the same industry with the same company, but I'm actually feeding the hungry with our product.
And so with open up another door that had to make me stretch a little further beyond just being a health coach. And I just know again that this is a divine appointment. My industry is a divinely inspired one and I just keep following that light that God keeps shining on my path. I love when you say, and I've heard that story before as well, that your pastor said, you know, you have a lantern and it shines just enough light to get to the next step.
And I'm thinking that that's probably indicative of your journey as well, that sometimes we only know what to do tomorrow or what to do next week. And we are just trusting in the Lord to give us what we need, but he has given us gifts and talents and certain strengths. I'm wondering if you could tell us and tell our listeners, what are some of your strengths that you think have really helped carry you in this journey? Well, I think, you know, I think we see a lot of our strengths in retrospect.
You know, we don't always notice them as we move through life. But looking back, I brought twins home to a three or four and a five year old. So one of my beautiful strengths is, you know, organization and inspiring, inspiring my children and in filling independence in people and in, you know, in their ability to grow and to be who God designed them to be. So I think leadership really is a strength that I have that, again, as I was moving through it, I didn't see it, but I think it's, you know, it's one of my great strengths that I put to use today.
I think my faithfulness, you know, and maybe people don't look at that as a strength, but, you know, I look back and I see if there was any advice I could give to people is to develop your faithfulness because, you know, every morning I get up and I do my devotional because that's going to help me tap into my divine purpose. And so if I can connect with that or have people, you know, know to connect with that purpose, their faithfulness every day, it makes embracing the changes and the day to day so much easier when we know that, you know, we've connected with this plan and we're just following along on the journey that he's laying before us. So I think there's some of my core strengths. I'm very personable.
So I love connecting with people. And again, I think that's a strength I've put in me because he's using me as a link in the chain and people live to, you know, maybe not bring them to Christ, but definitely show them, you know, my journey and share all the tests that I've been through and have that become a testament. You know, to inspire and relay for the other people who may be going through some of the same challenges I went through. You know, and I think you've hit the heart and the core of what women infused has stood for is we're on purpose with spirit.
And so we know deep down God has a calling, but we don't always know what that looks like. And I love what you said about your one of your strengths is leadership, but you didn't always realize that. And I just think that's even a characteristic of a leader because we humbly serve. We just do the work that's laid out before us yet in that faithfulness that you were talking about God shows up every single time and he gives us everything we need.
And that is the way that we can influence a marketplace and a workplace with all the skills that we have. So I'm so glad that you talked about leadership and faithfulness as coexisting because I think sometimes we have to separate that. So I've heard you say that. No, that's really, you know, you can't separate that and we have to keep that apart of who we are.
So that kind of leads me into the next question I've been wanting to ask you is as we're called to be salt and light in this world as believers, you mentioned something in the book about feeling like you could be the tour guide and that just struck me. I wrote big circles around it and I thought, Oh my goodness, that is so awesome to think of myself as a tour guide in the marketplace, but that also involves being effective and doing things with excellence, but not perfection. So here's I'm getting to the question. So we're not necessarily called to be perfect, but as leaders and as you've seen in your life in your business, you know, how can we do things with excellence and be more involved in effective as that tour guide for Christ?
Can you give us some specific tangible examples of how that has played out either in the teams that you're building right now or in previous careers? You know, how have you chosen to be more involved as a tour guide in the workplace? Okay, you know, in everything you were just saying, I love one of my favorite quotes is God doesn't call to qualify. He qualifies the call.
Yes. And I just I love that because that is so in tune with what we're doing. And, you know, even when I said I was stretched beyond my comfort zone, when I got into the network marketing industry, you know, I had been home working as a real estate investor. I was not, I did not feel like I was a business person.
I did not feel qualified to be a business person, but as I built my teams and as I built them with faith and shared my faith in building them, I presented our business opportunity. It's really a mission. It's a, you know, it's a kingdom building mission. I'm teaching people to honor their temple, you know, I'm utilizing all of my spiritual tapestry, my spiritual journey, my spiritual history to to instill in other people what they need to do to honor their temple and to show them that, you know, it's when we take care of ourselves and when we keep our toolbox filled with proper nutrition and exercise and, you know, and our spirituality that we can truly live into our destiny and be that to others.
So I think it's so important to, you know, to keep growing spiritual so that we can be that fault and light for others and we can show people our journey and take them as tour guides, you know, through what we've been through. It's not about perfection. I mean, there was a lot of times that, you know, that light started to dim that I had to get on my knees and say, God, you know, when I couldn't stand anymore, I love that you get on your knees and say, God, show me where I'm where I'm falling off track. And then again, that leads back to my daily, you know, just my daily and my hourly and every minute of the day, you know, we focusing on his purpose for my life and, and we connecting with the people.
And we connecting with him so that I can be that toward I and I can be the thought and the light and I can, you know, live through the test that I've had to be that testimony for others. Right. And I love that we can take those tests and build that into our testimony. That's what is the word, asks us to do.
You know, I want to circle back a little bit. You talked about one way that you've been able to do this is to structure your time, optimize any opportunities that come your way and you hinted at it. And I want to follow back up on that when you unexpectedly, I found that word funny that you unexpectedly gave birth to identical twin boys when you already had three children at home, correct? Yeah.
So looking back, can you share, you know, you said sometimes and you just even said some of that light dims along the journey, but you mentioned in the book that the threads of your sanity and your spirituality war thin. I'm wondering if you can share a little more about what that experience looked like, even though it wasn't the highlight of your life, but give us some practical advice or even tactical advice. We're working moms today who might find themselves in that season. They see no hope.
Their life is crumbling around them and they're just looking for something to hang on to. How could you address that? Or how could you tell our listeners what that looked like for you and what's one thing you really hung on to? Okay, so, so yes, as you said, I went to the hospital to deliver my fourth baby and found out after the first one out that there was another one in there.
So I was totally on the air for that. And again, I brought them up to a three or four or five year old and I was working. At that point, we probably had, oh, close to 50 rental units, you know, probably 15 houses that were single families, most families. So my life became this, this really this craziness, but that's all I ever wanted was to have a family and have a career and, you know, just that is what I wanted, but it really was just too much for me at that time.
And I am sure many women may not have had quite as much, but we all have something that gets overwhelming in our lives when, you know, when we just feel there's too much on our plate and we don't know what to do with it. I think there's a lot of things that we can do to help us with that. First of all, again, praying and having faith that God is, you know, he's not that he's testing us, but that he's not getting us more than we can handle, but he's developing our, he's developing our journey and he's developing our, you know, what he plans for our lives and although it may not have been what we plan, what we plan, know that there's a purpose and know that his perspective is bigger than ours and at the far end of it, we will grow beyond measure through that journey. Hey, everyone, this is Kristi Lynn Olson.
Wasn't that an awesome interview? And that's only a highlight of our entire interview together. To hear the full interview, uncut and full of wisdom and practical tips for women of faith in the marketplace, you need to download the free women infused app available on Apple and Google Play stores. After you download the app, go to the Women infused podcast radio network.
There you will find the full interviews for all of the We Walk by Faith book series co-authors as we release them. Plus, if you download the app today and go to the Women infused radio network, you will have the opportunity to receive a free e-book devotional called Love Notes of Encouragement for Women of Faith in the Marketplace. It's full of special bonus inspiration and encouragement, including a special collection of notes of encouragement from some of the co-authors of the We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight, Volumes 1 and 2 book series. Hurry because this offer for the free e-book will only be available for a limited time.
So go to Women infused app.com. That's W-O-M-E-N-I-N-F-U-S-E-D-A-P-P.com for links to download and the free app today. There's also a link in the show notes. Join our community of faith-filled women and we look forward to connecting with you there.
And remember this. Alone, you are significant. But together, we are missed.