THE GROW PODCAST | S1E1 | Origin of GROW | Summer Lee | Purpose Driven Coaching & Consulting
Beth 0:00
Welcome to the Grow podcast. I'm your host, Beth, and I'm so glad that you're here in this first episode, you will meet summer Lee. Summer has been a successful business owner for years, and you may know her now as the owner of purpose driven coaching and consulting. But what you may not know is that behind that success was a long, painful season of pushing through physically, emotionally, spiritually, until she finally said, God, I don't want to do this on my own anymore. And out of that surrender came something so rich and life giving. It's her grow framework. I had the honor of helping summer pull her story and her message into alignment, and the moment I read her manuscript, something just jumped off the page. Now she didn't even realize it at first, but what she had written actually spelled out something so profound, Grace, rest, obedience, waiting, that's grow. And this episode tells the story of how grow came to be, not just in concept, but as a personal healing journey that's becoming a movement. So if you have ever, ever felt that you're carrying too much, doing too much, or trying to figure out everything on your own, this episode is for you, and we're gonna jump right in by listening to a candid conversation of how grow came to be. Let's get started.
Summer 1:16
Grow is really a product of my healing journey. It is the solution, say, God's solution to my life that was not aligned with his way of of living.
Beth 1:33
So I met you, and we talked a few minutes, and then we decided that you were going to send over your manuscript. You told me that you had written that we
Summer 1:44
talked for three hours. We didn't talk for a few minutes.
Beth 1:48
Okay, I stand corrected. That is true. That is true. We talked whatever length of time, and then when you sent it to me, just coincidentally, both of our husbands were out of town. It's very rare that I have, like, a whole Saturday morning just to kind of do whatever same, you know, and so you had emailed it to me, and I could not put it down. And literally, the grow, like, and I say grow, I didn't even realize in the beginning that it spelled grow. That's the coolest part. So I was like, making notes, kind of because I had printed it out. And so I was like, oh, Grace. She's talking a lot about grace. So, like, I had made a little note on my little doodle, and I doodle a lot when I'm reading, and underline and highlight. And then was like, oh, rest. Like, this is really good. These are really good lessons about rest. And then, you know, oh, she's highlighting obedience. I'd like, wrote out the word obedience, and I'm still just kind of doodling and reading along. Went got some more coffee, and then I'm like, oh my goodness, okay, she's talking about waiting. I have a season that I can relate back to almost instantly about waiting. So I wrote waiting, and then I went and got my coffee, sat back down, and like, the word grow was like, literally illuminated off the page. And so I think I need to go back to our text messages. That is hilarious, because I'm like, did you know that, like this, this growing process that you're talking about? Like, actually spells grow. I don't remember how I told you that
Summer 3:18
you didn't tell me immediately. You sat on it for a while, and
Beth 3:22
notorious for doing that. Because I don't I mean, when you're doing this kind of work, you've got to make sure that what you're speaking into someone is, like, really what God wants them to hear. You know, yeah,
Summer 3:30
I did. You sat on it for a while, and then you sent it to me. And I was blown away when you did.
Beth 3:35
I really felt like the presence of God was so tangible. It was such a God thing. It was like a little God wink. I was like, this girl's got something. And then so for me, that was my first experience with grow. It really resonated with me.
Summer 3:50
You also shared Genesis rhythm with me.
Beth 3:54
Oh yes
Summer 3:55
at that time. And that blew me away, because the entire time that I was writing months and months and months of writing, I could not come up with a title totally blank, or any title I would come up with. I would Google it, and there's already, like, multiple books called that, when you shared that, and not just Genesis rhythm, but Genesis rhythm a balanced restorative path back to God's original design. Yeah, I was like, Oh my gosh. I had been like, I'm not even finishing this book. This was just a part of the process that God needed me to go through to heal and process things out loud. I'm happy with it staying in my computer forever. And then when you gave that book a title and a subtitle. I'm not well, I guess I gotta write it now, yeah. So well, that book has to be written. So I think that was my aha moment. Going back to that is I remember when you said you were not meant to do this alone, and that was huge for me, because if I went back and we will, I'm sure tell the story. I felt so alone in in the journey of trying to build this business and figure out what is it? Because it's a business, but it's a ministry, you know. And I came to that understanding, but I did not know how to do all the things that you know how to do. And it's so much deeper than that. It's not just that you have skill sets that I don't you have spiritual gifting that is different from mine. And when you put those two things together, that's where growth came from.
Beth 5:29
Supernatural things happen. Let's go back to the Genesis rhythm. I was reading your manuscript, I knew that that those words belong to you, like I just so crazy, and so I went out on the internet and I did a fact check, like, who owns Genesis rhythm? Like, where have I heard that? Could find nothing on on that. So I truly believe that the Holy Spirit gave me that. Now I'm not saying that someone somewhere has not said that before, you know, but at the same time, it was like, okay, that's yours. And this really does have to do with growing, but also going back to his original design and making sure that we're in alignment like now, grow is. We know what grow is. We know that it was birthed in your story. Just telling your stories like this is the journey that God has taken you on. But do you remember what life was like before Grow?
Summer 6:21
As with most things in life, I'm sure, I mean, I know some things do happen in an instant. You know that maybe there was a trauma or a specific event? You know, for me, it had been a lot of years of struggle in multiple ways.
Beth 6:37
Tell us one main struggle.
Summer 6:38
Probably the most defining struggle, had been when I started havingproblems with my hip, and that was right around the time Jason an I were probably dating and got married, and no one could figure out what was wrong with my hip. And I ended up getting to a hip surgeon and then telling me that I had hip dysplasia. And I was 40 years old, I did. I mean, you hear about hip dysplasia in dogs, I'd never heard of that, you know, in a human, or even knew what it was. And there was something about that being spoken over me. That diagnosis, which we call it, a diagnosis, I was born that way. It wasn't necessarily like a diagnosis. I was just born with some skeletal abnormalities, you know, in my hips. But no one explained to me how dysplasia was causing my pain. Because I was having a lot of pain, I always kind of got treated like, bless her heart, you know, instead of, hey, there's some things we can do to make this better. So it really probably reinforced the control in me to grasp at. I've got to figure this out. Nobody's helping me like it really reinforced, probably, themes that have been carried throughout my life. Of it's up to me. I've got this. I'll figure it out, and that's what happened. I started trying to figure it out, and I was exhausting myself, and as I did, and I worried and I feared, you know what this dysplasia meant for the rest of my life, it started causing a spiral. Another guy. There'sthings that got thrown into that spiral too, like a hysterectomy, you know, and 2020, you know, there were, there were things that just brought a lot of stress. I had, you know, been recently married. Life changed a lot. So there was a lot going on that was just kind of throwing my life out of kilter. You know, I had been a, like, a hardcore crossfitter for 10 years, and all of a sudden, like, I had this awful hip pain that was like taking me out, you know, so things that my identity unfortunately had been rooted in, like fitness, like it got stripped away, right? And anyway, this downward spiral went on for four years before, three years, four years before, I finally got to a point where I understood enough about what was happening internally, in my mind, in my heart, my spirit, that was affecting my physical body negatively. So while, yes, there's this structural issue, there were also a lot of emotional things, spiritual things, wrong thinking patterns that were manifesting in my body and making those things very exaggerated, and so I just was in a place where my flight or fight response was off the charts, and my nervous system was responding with with pain. My life up until that point, had been probably full of a bit of arrogance marked by my ability to do things on my own and my success in those things. And it doesn't mean that I didn't know that that God was with me, that I didn't give God credit for the way he had blessed my life and blessed my business. But. I think I had a really bad habit of solving problems on my own.
Summer 10:06
Do you feel exhausted? Burnt out? You're not alone, and you don't have to stay there. The grow course is your invitation to get back in rhythm with God's design, back in rhythm with Grace rest obedience and waiting. It's practical, it's rooted in Scripture, and it's an invitation to a change of pace and perspective. You can learn more about the Grow course and discounts for podcast listeners in the show notes below. Now let's get back to the show.
Beth 10:39
A lot of people have really bad habits of trying to solve things on there, yeah? And because independence is so glorified, yeah,
Summer 10:46
oh yeah. I mean, I would have told you that my independence was a strength, yeah? And looking back, I realized that, you know, while independence is a strength in that I'm able to take care of myself and live independently from someone having to physically or financially take care of me. Yeah, you know that that fierce independence, and there's deep roots there that that, there's another story, but there are deep roots to that fierce independence that even caused me to probably, you know, it even times, not intentionally, put my hand in God's face, but not have the awareness that he's the answer. He has the solutions. It's not all up to me to have to figure this out, and I think that's a very common struggle, especially with women who are they're high achievers. They get it done. They're responsible for a lot of things and a lot of people, and it's almost like I can't let go of all these balls that I'm trying to juggle, because if I do, one of them will drop. And so we tend to just hang on and hang on. Try to solve, try to do, because we fear what letting go will do. And the most powerful thing that I've ever been able to do is to let go. And when I learned to let go, that's when God began to grow me.
Beth 12:08
That's so beautiful. I love, I love the way that you said that you know, what came to mind was, you know, you have to be independent to be interdependent. A lot of people stop at the independence, though, and they don't ever get step into that collaboration and that synergy, which is, I mean, if you look at it from a biblical standpoint, that's the body of Christ. I wish I could give credit to who said this, but I do. I have read before the last independent decision that you should make is to choose Jesus like that should literally be your last independent decision, and everything from that point forward includes him and you want it to and it's not a weakness, it is strength. And in fact, I was just reading earlier, before I came here again, that his, it's in our weakness that his, that he, that he shows up and he is straight. So I think that that is a beautiful full circle for all of that, for starters. And you can speak to this, if you want to, you were single when you had your business and you had the height of your success. I mean, you did that alone. I mean, I would be proud of that. You know what? I mean, like, so independent, like the enemy can come in and just say, like, you've got it all figured out. You've got it all figured out. I would probably be pretty arrogant too about
Summer 13:32
I actually had a former managing partner in that business tell me that I was arrogant, and it offended me to no end. I was so mad. But looking back, I can see how he thought that, I think in ways that you know, when you're the lone female in a highly male dominated this, I was the only, you know, female financial advisor right there in the Birmingham area within our organization. And that's not an easy place to be, so you have to have some head yeah, and I think this is totally different topic, but I think that a lot of times confidence and, like business smarts and ability, sometimes in women comes across as arrogance, whereas that same trait in a man wouldn't come across that way,
Beth 14:18
or it does come across that way. It's just, it's like, totally acceptable behavior, yeah, or expected, even, you know, someone says that to you. Are they coming to you in love, like, Hey? I think, I think we need to pray through some humility, or are they like, in their own arrogance, coming to you and just projecting onto you? So there's so many different dynamics. My point is this, do you remember that moment? Was there one moment? Or maybe there was multiple moments where the Lord said, like, Hey, I'm gonna humble you.
Summer 14:46
There are a lot of moments, yes, and a lot of those moments you don't even fully see, except in hindsight, yeah, you can look back and go, Wow. You know, God stripped away. Are a lot of things that were idols to me that I didn't really realize. They were places that I had placed my identity where they didn't belong, like my career and my fitness and my body, right? I mean, it's been a very humbling and painful process of losing the ability to do a lot of those things.
Beth 15:26
Did you always have pain? Or what did it start? Or did it increase? Does that question make sense?
Summer 15:32
It has increased and decreased at different times over the last six years. It usually depends on my activity or what I'm doing, or, you know, stress, you know, we'll flare it up. Inactivity, will, you know, but
Beth 15:48
when you were, you were at the height of your height of pain, of financial success in the financial company, were you experiencing health issues?
Summer 15:57
No, not at that time. Not at that time.
Beth 15:59
So what was the moment where you were like, my health is I'm hitting a brick wall.
Summer 16:05
I hit a brick wall for several years before I chose to do something about it. I would say that's probably common, to just keep pushing through because you feel like you have no choice. And you know, when I talk to other women, I hear this a lot. They don't know how to get out of the situation that they're in that is causing all the well, I won't say it's the cause, but, you know, maybe it's one of the contributing factors to the cycle that they find themselves in, because they don't know how to let go of it. They fear I'll never be able to get back into it. They fear the loss of finances, right? There's a lot of there's a lot of real there's a lot of real things that come with that and grow actually helps you with a lot of those things. But your question was, when did I realize something had to change? So I spent several years fighting through it. And then in the fall of 2022 I just began to feel a tug on my heart to make a change. And probably that came about because my business coach at the time, she had allowed me to coach some of her clients, and, well, back up, I wanted to be a coach for like, 15 years. Oh, wow. Yeah, that so that wasn't really new. My heart always desired, in some capacity, to coach or teach, speak, write a book. I mean, I always had those things as dreams. I didn't believe they would probably come to reality until I had retired. You know, we'll call it from my, um, my main career job. So I started feeling this tug on my heart, and I didn't understand it, because I felt like my financial planning business was my ministry, and I knew that God had called me to it, so I didn't understand why he would call me away from it. And so I battled with that, but I heard some messages during that time, like from Charlotte gamble, and just she was, like speaking days, like she was going through it in a way, and I just kept thinking, I want to talk to her. Please tell me, how did you know? How did you know that you needed to let this go? And for me, the experience of knowing came after speaking out loud to a colleague one night at dinner when, of course, my husband was on a hunting trip, like every time Jason, we have to stop and pause that every time Jason goes on a long, you know, seven to nine day hunting trip, I do tend to make some major life changes. Kind of makes him a little scared to go now, that is so but this particular year, in 2022 I was having dinner with a friend, and I said to her, I feel like God is asking me to put down something good, because he's calling me to something greater. And it finally all made sense. This tug, you know, like, what do I do? I'm confused. I didn't want I didn't want to leave financial services because I was exhausted, because I was worn out, because I was in so much pain. I mean, I didn't want it to be me if I left. I wanted it to be because it's what God wanted for me. So when I spoke that to her, I woke up the next morning and I had the name purpose driven coaching and consulting in my spirit, and God gave me a vision for two things that showed me what that business would look like. And it was so compelling that I knew I had to take steps. So of course, I tell Jason, okay, I've got to sell my business. He's like, what can you wait till I get home? Hang on, just because he'll tell you. He freaked out a little at first, but it's so beautiful how. Well, he, he knows my heart, and He knows my relationship with God enough to trust the decisions that I make. And he, he says, Yes, you know. And so I talked to my business coach, and we agreed, you know, well, the first thing you need to do is talk to the person that you want to buy the business. And that's when supernatural things started to happen.
Beth 20:22
Okay, so summer's story is so raw and real, and it's proof that God can take even the most exhausting seasons of our lives and turn them into something that truly multiplies healing, not just in us, but through us. What started as her own healing journey has become a calling, one that now lives inside of her business. Purpose Driven coaching and consulting is the space where women, especially high achieving, high capacity women, are finding a new way forward. And I know for me, going through grow has truly helped me to pause and understand what I can do to step back in to God's original design for my life. So this is all about alignment instead of effort or performance, and purpose instead of pressure. It sounds so simple, but we're gonna walk it out together, each step one by one. In next episode, we're gonna talk about the red flags. Now these are the things that we probably ignore or don't even recognize as signals from our bodies and our spirits that something needs to shift. So it's going to be a really good episode. So go ahead and hit follow, and just know that we are inviting you along for this entire season, and we cannot wait to get to know you and to hear how grow is impacting you.
