Hey friends, I'm Jess Connolly. I'm an author, a coach, a Bible teacher, and a local church leader,

and I love talking to real people who know what it means to have full lives, but also want to walk in abundance.

This podcast is for you. It's not my podcast. It's ours. It's for people who crave

lighthearted conversations and deeply spiritual truth.

It's for people who are busy, tired, waiting, growing, dreaming, working, or praying about what's next.

Wherever you're listening from, if it's quiet, mundane, or busy, I am praying for you,

and I'm so glad you're here. Let's go.

All right, it's coming. How do we end up feeling every single year? The holidays go by

in a blur. We often find ourselves in a wild combination of

overwhelmed, underwhelmed, and exhausted. For many of us, the holiday season feels like we already

had too much on our plate, and then somebody asked us to hold a turkey, a Christmas tree, and put

11 more events on our calendar.

So what if this year we started early by asking some thoughtful questions so we can show up feeling present, grateful, and grounded in the actual love that compels us to celebrate in the first place?

Listen to this episode before the holidays. Let's go.

All right, pals, listen, this is a quick, encouraging, hopefully equipping episode for my ladies

before the holidays hit. My husband often calls Halloween the gateway drug to the holidays.

That's what he says.

He says, you know, once it starts, once Halloween kicks off, it's just going, going, going, all the things.

And specifically, he uses that phrase in relation to food because he says, you know, you eat that one bite of candy corn and then that's it.

It's you and sweets from here until January 1st.

But the gateway to the holiday season is coming.

And this is what I want to capture.

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