When You Have to Start Over in Life

Life happens in seasons — and some seasons feel like starting over. In those times, it’s easy to feel like you’ve failed.

But what if starting over is part of God’s plan? In this 16-minute conversation, author Joël Mal and his dad, Rick, talk about keeping perspective on starting over.

Editor’s Note: A transcript follows the embedded video; it was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

00;00;06;11 – 00;00;09;19
Joël Malm
Hey, welcome to the podcast. I am Joël, here with my dad.

00;00;09;22 – 00;00;12;21
Rick Malm
I’m Rick. What you want to talk about today, Joël? What’s up?

00;00;12;22 – 00;00;34;17
Joël Malm
Well, it this whole year, our topic is Conquering mountains. This last month was, relational mountains. Talked about some interesting stuff. Rejection. We talked about how to help your spouse change. Very popular episode. You might enjoy that. If you’ve got a spouse that needs to be changed, we tell you how to do it. You may not believe us, but go listen to the podcast.

00;00;35;10 – 00;00;53;29
Joël Malm
This month, it’s March, right? So in theory, spring is starting. We may get one more Arctic blast down here in Texas. Up north. They may get a several more. But I wanted to talk about seasons because there’s something in us that we I think we all like certain seasons, but then other seasons we go, oh, I don’t like this season.

00;00;53;29 – 00;01;04;11
Joël Malm
But part of life, King Solomon says, is there’s a time for everything. There’s a season for everything, and a time for every purpose under heaven or wait. Or was that the birds that sang that?

00;01;04;11 – 00;01;05;02
Rick Malm
Well both.

00;01;05;02 – 00;01;06;19
Joël Malm
Okay. Yeah. It’s all based off of Solomon.

00;01;06;19 – 00;01;08;06
Rick Malm
Solomon got it for the birds.

00;01;08;09 – 00;01;30;12
Joël Malm
But I want to talk specifically about seasons where we’re forced to start over. One of the most potent quotes that I’ve ever read. A guy named Gene Edwards in his book, A Tale of Three Kings and it’s — if you ever want to survive the church, you need to read this book. I don’t necessarily like the conclusions in it, but I think he’s right.

00;01;30;14 – 00;01;36;12
Joël Malm
And it’s A Tale of Three Kings. Basically. Well, read the book. Short book. But —

00;01;36;14 – 00;01;37;02
Rick Malm
I think it’s called A Study in Brokenness, or something like that.

00;01;37;02 – 00;02;00;14
Joël Malm
Yeah, A Study in Brokenness. Which is a horrible subtitle, because I don’t want that. But, so the thing he said there was this: beginning empty handed and alone frightens the greatest of men, but it also shows how confident they are that God is with them. And I’ve seen in my life several times where there have been seasons where God asked me to start over again.

00;02;00;16 – 00;02;18;24
Joël Malm
And usually it wasn’t because of anything I had done wrong. It was just in asking me to start kind of from scratch with something and I had to begin again and feeling like I didn’t have the resources. Ultimately, I realized as you get older that everything builds in life on itself. So you always do have the resources you need.

00;02;18;24 – 00;02;40;28
Joël Malm
You got them in some previous season, but at the time when you get asked to do something, it can feel like, you’re asked to do something that you don’t have the resources to do. So there are times we have to start over, and I talked to so many people that are that way, they have to start over that to either come back to a and they said, I’m never going to go back there to the small town, this small town, people, small minded people and, and they end up back there in their it’s very humbling.

00;02;41;01 – 00;03;05;19
Joël Malm
Or after a relationship falls apart or something and you’re forced to start again there and I talk about that. The idea why would God ask us to start in new seasons? I mean, ultimately I think he’s building on it. But the idea of when you’re forced to start again, what how do you keep perspective on that and that conquering that mountain of feeling like I’m a failure, like you’re supposed to go up and up and up?

00;03;05;19 – 00;03;12;16
Joël Malm
We always have this idea in our mind that, you know, ever improving, always increasing, but sometimes it’s three steps forward, two steps back.

00;03;12;19 – 00;03;33;25
Rick Malm
Yeah. Well, of course, the story Gene Edwards was referring to was with David. And, you know, he was doing fine out there watching the sheep. And then he runs across Saul, and Saul gets jealous of him, and Saul starts throwing spears at him. And so he has to flee, and he can’t go back home because he would endanger his, parents and family.

00;03;33;28 – 00;03;59;12
Rick Malm
So he finds himself out there with nothing and nobody and just out hiding, out running from the king. And so, I mean, in David’s case, the question being, why would God ask us to start over? And in David’s case, it was because God was preparing him to rule. And sometimes you again, looking at David’s case, sometimes you have to be I have to be broken free from the comfort zone in order to grow more.

00;03;59;15 – 00;04;15;28
Rick Malm
Yeah, I think that was it. And I think that would probably be for all of our kids, you know? I mean the thing is, God wants the best for us. And the reason, for example, the reason he separated Israel and Judah was because he had a special purpose for Judah, and Israel was not going to go along with that.

00;04;15;28 – 00;04;34;04
Rick Malm
And so for Judah to fulfill its purpose, it had to be separated. For David to fulfill his purpose. He had to even be separated from his brothers and from his family so that he could begin to be. He wasn’t then just the younger brother. He was then the, the could become the king.

00;04;34;10 – 00;04;45;16
Joël Malm
Yeah. So while you get that phone call, did you not read the sign that said, please turn off all devices before you stepped into our studio, dad?

00;04;45;21 – 00;04;48;27
Rick Malm
I didn’t. Where is it? I think it fell down. I think I’m sitting on it, actually.

00;04;49;00 – 00;05;09;16
Joël Malm
Well, since we do no editing on this show, that’s going to have to stay. And so —

Rick Malm
Yeah.

Joël Malm
All right, so here’s the thing. That quote is actually from the part of the David’s story where he’s forced to leave Israel or Jerusalem when his son Absalom rises up against him and he says, no, if God’s done with me, peace out.

00;05;09;16 – 00;05;29;04
Joël Malm
If he wants me to be here, I’ll come back.

Rick Malm
Yeah.

Joël Malm
And it’s this idea that sometimes God will ask you — Sometimes we fight to hold on to certain seasons and certain, you know, places we were positions and and we have to hold that loosely. I heard Elizabeth Elliott, I think she said — No, it was that Corrie Ten Boom.

00;05;29;04 – 00;05;34;04
Joël Malm
She said, hold everything in your hands lightly. Otherwise it hurts when he has to rip it from your hands.

00;05;34;05 – 00;05;35;20
Rick Malm
Yeah.

Joël Malm
It’s like oooh.

00;05;35;20 – 00;05;52;15
Joël Malm
That’s true though. And so the idea was David was comfortable enough to recognize maybe the season’s over here and maybe I need to step aside. God’s able to put me back in a position if he wants to, but I’m not going to fight to hang on to something that may have been a cyclical part of the journey. This wasn’t my final destiny.

00;05;52;19 – 00;06;10;17
Joël Malm
That can be hard when you seem like you’ve arrived at the pinnacle. I mean, being King’s pretty pinnacle. And then he had to. He had to step down so that he wouldn’t. There wasn’t a lot of he was trying to avoid bloodshed, is what he was trying to do because his son was preparing to come in the, a civil war, essentially.

00;06;10;19 – 00;06;25;07
Rick Malm
Yeah. So, yeah. And of course, you’re you’re you’re actually this is a topic real close to my heart because I’ve been several times when I’ve been forced to start over again and start over again and, and sometimes not by choice, sometimes by attack.

00;06;25;13 – 00;06;27;18
Joël Malm
By other people’s choices. Sometimes. Yeah.

00;06;27;19 – 00;06;49;03
Rick Malm
Yeah. And I’ve always — I was impressed very early on. I guess maybe reading that that book. But I think even before that I just started teaching and on the fact that letting God be your defense, letting God be your deliverer and, the fact that David did not fight and he entrusted himself to God. That says something about Jesus too, you know. When he was reviled, he didn’t revile back.

00;06;49;03 – 00;07;06;21
Rick Malm
Instead, he entrusted him who was able to deliver him. And so, you know, whenever those things have happened in my life, it’s not easy to do, but I’ve tried to take the same approach. Okay. God, you know, I’m not going to fight back for this. If I fight back, what good is it going to do? Even if I win?

00;07;06;21 – 00;07;15;14
Rick Malm
A lot of people are going to be hurt in the meantime. And so it’s better to just entrust it to God and trust that he’s got something better for you in the next phase in the next season.

00;07;15;17 – 00;07;32;17
Joël Malm
I was talking to a man recently and his wife had filed for divorce, and he he acknowledges his part in it. The failures he had had in the marriage. But he said, it’s hard because he said, I watch her making decisions that I know, the more she takes those decisions, the the greater the likelihood our marriage is not going to recover.

00;07;32;19 – 00;07;52;03
Joël Malm
And he’s like, I want to get back together. I want our marriage to be healed. I want to fix. But he’s like every step she’s taking is taking us further and further away from it. So he said, I’m having to constantly come to this realization that it may not happen. And he’s like, it’s like a death inside. And I thought, but that’s I was like, I told, that’s the only thing you can do.

00;07;52;03 – 00;08;09;26
Joël Malm
Really, though, I was like, you know, if you fought as hard as you could for the marriage, and the person just does not want that and you’re forced to start over again. The greatest thing you can do is grieve it. I mean, again, back to David again? Yeah. He lost his child. He begged for God to save.

00;08;10;03 – 00;08;41;01
Joël Malm
It was the child of his infidelity. Right? But he asked God to save this child. God did not save the child. And then he picks himself up, dusts himself off and moves on, and just realize that apparently this wasn’t God’s will.

Rick Malm
Yeah.

Joël Malm
And he moves into the next thing and he has this, you know, I mean, he’s not starting over over.

But that’s a fascinating thing. The idea that you let go sometimes in order to embrace the new season and what that looks like is coming into the new season, feeling like you’re starting from scratch or with nothing — going back to the place you vowed to never go back to. You’re like, I’ll never leave this. I’ll never come back to this town.

00;08;41;01 – 00;08;59;09
Joël Malm
I see that with a lot of people. I won’t go back to towns. I felt that way back — the town in right now, all of my worst childhood memories. I ran into somebody from, Holy Cross Lutheran, the school where all of my worst childhood memories happened. And, And not not not because of the Lutherans, but because of the teacher.

00;08;59;11 – 00;09;12;17
Joël Malm
And I saw her, and she’s like, what are you doing here? Back here? I’m like, you know, I asked myself that initially. Why am I back here? I was like, I’ll never go back to that little town. Now I find the town actually quite wonderful. But we came back here and in some ways had to start over.

00;09;12;20 – 00;09;29;11
Joël Malm
I’ve seen we are actually starting over, but we had to make new friendships. We had to find everything’s changed, we’ve changed, everything’s changed. And so it is starting over. But I’ve done it enough in my life now. Started over. We’ve moved like ten times that I it’s not as intimidating to me, but it can be hard.

00;09;29;17 – 00;09;43;28
Rick Malm
Yeah, we’re the same thing. You know, we had no plans of coming back. You know, I planned on staying on the mission field for the rest of our lives. But, this is where the Lord has us. And so we’re back here. So, you know, think about we can talk about David, too. And the child died.

00;09;43;28 – 00;10;05;22
Rick Malm
That was a child of infidelity. And it says right after that, he went in and comforted Bathsheba. And after that, then Solomon’s born. And so, I mean, you know, what a picture of, God bringing good who was to be the next king. I mean, it was evil. It was bad. It was ugly. He killed a very loyal man. I mean, there’s just all this ugliness, all this ugliness.

00;10;05;24 – 00;10;09;14
Joël Malm
David was not the most upright of men.

00;10;09;15 – 00;10;16;28
Rick Malm
No, he was not at all. He. He had a lot of major faults. A very poor father. He was good at killing people — that he was really good at.

00;10;17;01 – 00;10;22;21
Joël Malm
Which is what kept him, which is what kept him from being able to build God’s temple. He said, nah you got too much blood on your hands, buddy.

00;10;22;21 – 00;10;46;10
Rick Malm
You’re a man of blood. Yeah. And so. But but the thing is, God brought such a beautiful thing out of that. And, and that’s, that should be encouraging for us. You know, for, for those of us who’ve not fallen, you know, which I don’t know who that would include. It ought to be a warning that because there was — Nathan said because of that the sword will never leave your household.

00;10;46;10 – 00;10;57;19
Rick Malm
That’s Absalom coming out of it. So horrible things happen to his family because of it. But also, it’s for those of us who have fallen. It’s a great encouragement there. Look what God brought out of this beauty from ashes type of thing.

00;10;57;25 – 00;11;21;00
Joël Malm
Which can be encouraging if you’re forced to start over again because of some really bad decisions you’ve made.

Rick Malm
Yeah

Joël Malm
I work, I work with a lot of people that they’re literally having to start from scratch with family, with finances, with career, because they made some very bad choices. And where they’re at now has has left them, you know, midlife starting over. And they’re going man, I should have been way farther along than this.

00;11;21;00 – 00;11;37;14
Joël Malm
But you know I am where I am. And you know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. And sometimes you have to start. I mean, actually always you have to start right where you are. You can’t start right where you want to be. You have to start where you are and then build from there.

00;11;37;14 – 00;11;59;20
Joël Malm
And I’ve seen God, oftentimes in certain seasons, will accelerate things. You know, if you plant something in the winter, it’s not going to grow. It’s just the nature of it, or it’ll grow and it’ll die quickly. But if you plant in the right season, you know, you actually plant towards the end of winter and then spring, it pops up and you may see exponential growth in spring where you don’t see it the rest of the time.

00;11;59;20 – 00;12;01;20
Joël Malm
So some of it is timing, right?

00;12;01;20 – 00;12;20;02
Rick Malm
Yeah. Yeah. Because there are seasons and there are seasons were things just lay dormant. There are seasons where we need that rest. You know, it’s weird to me that God created us where we absolutely need to rest. You know? And that rest is healing and that rest is restorative. And winter is kind of the time of rest for, things.

00;12;20;04 – 00;12;26;17
Joël Malm
Remind me of that needs to be our next episode, seasons of rest. That’s a good one.

Rick Malm
Okay.

Joël Malm
I had another plan, but we’re going to insert that one in there.

00;12;26;17 – 00;12;27;11
Rick Malm
All right, we’ll do that.

00;12;27;11 – 00;12;29;06
Joël Malm
Y’all hold us on to this. All right, all right.

00;12;29;08 – 00;12;30;00
Rick Malm
Hold us to it.

00;12;30;00 – 00;12;31;03
Joël Malm
Yeah.

00;12;31;05 – 00;12;52;13
Rick Malm
All right. So, anyway, Yeah, I think it’s important what you just said about. You have to remember to start where you are. Don’t be looking back, but don’t let the past define you. You know, it’s not really a race. It’s a matter of using what you’ve got. And, God, as you said to God many times, can bring, can bring an acceleration to the to the fruit of that.

00;12;52;21 – 00;13;13;23
Joël Malm
Yeah.

Rick Malm
So, yeah, you just you just can’t keep looking back. You can’t wallow in the mud. You just have to kind of get up. I look at this way, it’s like a fighter. Doesn’t matter how many times he gets knocked down, as long as he gets up one more time, he’s still in the fight, right? He hasn’t lost as long — Just get back up, get back in the ring. Keep fighting, keep going. And you’ll get there.

00;13;13;23 – 00;13;21;18
Joël Malm
And sometimes too, if you can look at having to start over with a new perspective of, hey, maybe here’s a chance to kind of reinvent myself.

00;13;21;18 – 00;13;22;10
Rick Malm
Yeah.

00;13;22;13 – 00;13;44;19
Joël Malm
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. The idea of in fact, Brooks talks about that in the book. The book we always talk about lately —

Rick Malm
Oh, Strength to Strength?

Joël Malm
Strength to Strength. Yeah. In that book, Strength to Strength, he talks about how those who go the furthest in life are the ones who are capable of kind of reinventing themselves every few years — adding a new, a new element to who they are, where they’re not.

00;13;44;22 – 00;13;47;04
Joël Malm
Do you remember that part of that book or that different book, I think —

00;13;47;04 – 00;13;47;29
Rick Malm
No, I think it is there.

00;13;47;29 – 00;14;05;20
Joël Malm
Yeah. He says it’s reinventing yourself where you’re not — You’re not just starting over completely, but you’re saying, I’m going to delve into a new aspect of something.

Rick Malm
Yeah.

Joël Malm
And you always — when you start from the beginning, you always look like a beginner. So you got to risk being looking foolish versus looking dumb, which I think a lot of us are afraid of that.

00;14;05;20 – 00;14;14;04
Joël Malm
Like, if I start something new, I’m going to look dumb and right now, I’m seen as the expert over here. And we have to be willing to look foolish to start over like that sometimes.

00;14;14;04 – 00;14;25;21
Rick Malm
Yeah. And realize, too, you’re not really starting over from nothing because you have a foundation of what you’ve built on, what you’ve what you’ve experienced. You, you know, you know, one way not to make a light bulb, for example.

00;14;25;24 – 00;15;02;21
Joël Malm
That’s right. Yeah. Well, I — As somebody who’s had to start over several times, I would say, it can feel discouraging. But, I really do believe that God places everything in our life, even dumb stuff that we’ve done, even mistakes that we’re paying the price for and we’re having to start over for. I have seen over and over again that, if you will, just lean into what he wants to give you, he’ll give you the grace in every season for what you need in that season, and you have what you need in that season to do what you’re called to do in that season, even if it’s starting from scratch, you’re going to have you’re going to have what you need to accomplish what He’s called you to do.

00;15;02;21 – 00;15;16;20
Rick Malm
Yeah. There again, you go back to David. He didn’t start over from nothing. He was out. He thought he was on his own. But God sent people to him and all of a sudden he’s got an army around him.

00;15;16;22 – 00;15;34;14
Joël Malm
Thanks for listening. Please consider sharing this with your friends on the platform of your choice. For more from Joël Malm, visit JoelMalm.com. For more from Rick Malm, visit RickMalm.com. Our podcast music was produced by Alex Ferguson.