HOPE Unlocked - Discovering Faith and Purpose: Kristin Kurtz's Journey from Turbulence to Triumph

Join me as I recount my deeply personal journey from a tumultuous and HOPEless childhood filled with instability, to discovering faith and being rescued by God at age 25. My story is one of resilience and finding HOPE amidst adversity, I’m eager to inspire you to embrace joy and peace regardless of your circumstances.

In this episode, I also share more about the journey of starting the HOPE Unlocked podcast, exploring the motivations and challenges that shaped this endeavor. Along the way, I reflect on finding purpose in work and challenge you to consider your own motivations. Do you feel anointed in your work, or are you simply punching in for a paycheck? Tune in for empowering insights, heartfelt testimonies, and a chance to connect further through my discovery call calendar HERE. May you find HOPE unlocked in every moment!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

Hello and welcome to the Hope Unlocked podcast. I'm your host, kristen Kurtz, and I'm also the founder of New Wings Coaching, where I empower and unlock women to soar in their calling and roar with their voices. If you're curious to learn more about how coaching can help you unlock your potential, be sure to explore the show notes for ways to connect with me further. Get ready to dive in as we uncover empowering keys and insights in this episode. So tune in and let's unlock hope together. Hello, happy Tuesday. I am wearing my hope t shirt. I just got it. It's like my uniform, for I think I'm gonna wear this every Tuesday, because most Tuesdays I do podcast interviewing, and I thought I would just share a little bit about the Hope Unlocked story with you guys if you want to hear it and I really want to first of all point you to listen to the podcast episode that I just released today. It's episode 74. It's again. My podcast is called Hope Unlocked, which is the title of this Facebook Live, and I really wanted to just point you to that because a lot of things that I post on the socials get suppressed, so we're just kind of pushing things through in other ways. So if you happen to be hearing this, go check out the episode with my sweet friend, dr Michelle Bankson. She shares an incredible she just shares amazing hope-filled perspectives, which is actually her podcast. But she just released a new book today, so it's her book Book Birthday Today and the name of her book is Sacred Scars. I'm just reading the rest of it, so don't mess it up. Resting in God's promise that your past is not wasted. So I actually ordered a couple books, one for myself and one for somebody in my life who I won't mention. But I just wanted to come on and just share a little bit about the journey to Hope Unlocked and a little bit of the journey to, I would say, becoming a Hope Igniter.

Speaker 1: 2:31

So a lot of you maybe grew up with really challenging childhoods, maybe challenging teenhoods, maybe challenging young adulthoods. That was a lot of my story, just a lot of challenges, and it's 414 here for such a time as this. So I actually grew up, I would actually say, pretty hopeless. Honestly, I had a lot of things going on in my life that just seemed hopeless and I won't get into all the story there. A big part of my life was moving a lot. I mean a lot in a four-year period of time. We left California when I was 10. We went from California to Vermont, to California, to Vermont, to California, to Illinois, to Virginia, and then I went back to Virginia or to Illinois by myself in eighth grade. Then I went back to Virginia and then to Minnesota. So it was a lot of moving, a lot of moving in the very crucial years between 10 and 14. So my life was? It just felt really hopeless.

Speaker 1: 3:42

And looking back at those times of my life and then finally moving here to Minnesota when I was a freshman in high school, it was a lot to bear. It was a lot to bear and I did not grow up in church, so I didn't have the Lord in my life. I was kind of walking aimlessly through life and ended up getting into alcohol and drugs and just really didn't care about life at all. To be honest with you, I ended up just living a very Russian roulette kind of life. And I look back and I say like I literally should not be sitting here talking to you right now. There's so many situations that I literally just shouldn't even be here Because I was so down such a dark pathway, down such a dark pathway and life just literally felt hopeless. I didn't have any direction, I just was just doing the things to barely get by and to make this really short, to make this really long story a little bit shorter, because I tend to share stories story a little bit shorter because I tend to share stories and it takes me a while. So I'm going to try to make this short.

Speaker 1: 5:09

The Lord rescued me when I was 25, a year after I got married. My husband and I have been together since we were 18, since we were end of senior year in high school and I literally, like I said I should not be sitting here talking to you, but I am, and he rescued me. He rescued me when I was 25. I had a very quick deliverance of. I had no more desire for alcohol, drugs. I quit smoking right away. I mean, it was just like straight up miracle, right, and anyways, I started learning that there was there's, there's hope, there's actually joy to be had, there's peace. Um, that was probably the the hardest, longest, um, I guess fruit of the spirit that took hold of me Because life just didn't feel peaceful.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Like I said, many years of being hopeless, very lost. But my hope started stirring up, especially after I had two miracle boys. Doctors told me I couldn't have babies and I had two miracle boys who are 19 this week and 16 next month, which is crazy. But I had two miscarriages right after I got saved. So I was just like, huh, what? What is this now?

Speaker 1: 6:43

So I've had a lot of trials and a lot of tribulations and a lot of trauma throughout my life and I think, because of the massive amount of those things that I've walked through and I know everybody has their stories and much of what I've walked through maybe isn't as maybe horrible as you walk through. I'm not trying to compare here, we all have our stories but because of that, I've just always been like an empath and I've really felt other people's like what they're feeling, people's like what they're feeling and I've always wanted to just stir up hope in others. Even when I was like hopeless growing up, I wanted to be a good friend to others. I wanted to be, um, you know, I've always been one who was like kind of the counselor. People would come to me with their things and I was like a safe place, because I don't. I just never wanted to hurt people, you know, because in the ways that I was hurt.

Speaker 1: 7:47

So, um, all that, to say, part of my journey, um was like my voice felt really locked up and I really didn't feel like I could speak well. I felt like I just had like a speech impediment. Almost there was this lie that I had a speech problem, that I couldn't speak well, that you know, I said um, all the time. There was all these little things that came for me Um, um, so, say it now, which, whatever you guys so if'm is like holding you back from speaking. I just want to release you today to just go say um, as much as you want. Okay, so there was this um moment back in 2017. And part of why I share I'm sharing this today is because it kind of goes along with my posts I did earlier today.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I went through Christian Coach Institute to become a coach and I was just floored because I was like this is what I was created to do. This is literally what I was created to do, but it took a little while to get like in alignment with, like truly how I was to operate as a coach, because it is different. So I I ended up starting to coach women, but I was also still working full time, ended up being freed and released from the corporate side of health care. I like to say I retired early because I was tired. I was tired of working in the system. I couldn't even take money from the system anymore. I knew that I needed to break free because I've just I literally have always been kind of a wild one, one who doesn't fit in, fit in the lines and, honestly, you guys, nobody is supposed to, let me just tell you that. I'm just going to tell you that. But I especially, like I am like a free bird. I need to have space to free roam, to be cage free, to be like a chicken that is out of the coop. Although I'm not a chicken, I'm an eagle, let's just put it that way.

Speaker 1: 10:04

So one of my biggest things was the voice. My voice was. I felt like there was a chokehold on my voice. I felt like Moses. Now I'm going to tell you that is actually a stronghold that had to be broken. That is kind of a generational thing, right? So when the Lord was showing me in 2020 to start a podcast, I actually laughed. I thought it was funny because I was just like uh, I think you got the wrong one. There is no way that I will ever do that and I just kind of put it on the shelf. Now it started coming back around the bend again and I'll just speed it up.

Speaker 1: 10:46

So last year 2023, I just kept hearing my spirit that it was going to be the year of the stretch with my voice, because part of what I'm called to do in my coaching is to help unlock and release women's voices. I was kind of like the stagehand right. So if there was a woman that was called to be a speaker, I was in the background behind the stage calling her up, you know, helping her get her herself up to the microphone. So he did a little switcheroo with me last year and was like not only are you going to be helping women to to come out and do their speaking, but you're also going to be doing that as well. And I was just like okay, okay, whatever.

Speaker 1: 11:35

So he gave me the name of the podcast, hope Unlocked, and it just it resonated. And not only was that part of it, but the verse that is the anchoring verse for Hope Unlocked is Romans 6. He showed me that it's not a podcast. For me personally, that it's not a podcast. I'm always hearing different words, seeing different words, flipping the script, I heard in my spirit that it's a seed cast. How cool is that? A pod is like it's in a pod, it's kind of stuck in there, a seed, like a seed goes out and it multiplies. So that's when he showed me the name of the podcast, hope Unlocked the verse Romans 15, 13, and that my podcast was not going to be a podcast, it was going to be a seed cast. I said yes because I knew that when we were called to do something, we can either like put it on the shelf and say no, which I don't believe we're called to do somebody hearing me, um, but we're also called to do things differently.

Speaker 1: 12:51

I I actually the biggest like potential hang up for me was like oh my gosh, I don't know how to do the tech for a podcast. So what I did was like you know what some people would do is you go do a little research? And I googled like how to do a podcast and I ended up finding a girl who had like a free PDF how to get your podcast launched, and it was just so complicated and it was like this whole launch plan and I'm looking at it. I'm like Lord, this is. This is too much. And he said yours is going to be different, you don't need that. And as far as the tech goes, I said, okay, lord, I've got a computer, show me what's in my hands and how I can get this thing up and running. And within five minutes I was shown, very supernaturally, how to get this podcast up and going. So I just wanted to share that story today and also share my new shirt.

Speaker 1: 13:50

Um, this was actually created from a company called Dear Heart out of Texas and, um, I think I can't remember I think her name is Nicole. I'm pretty sure her name is Nicole, but she has an amazing, amazing story entrepreneurial story journey. I'm hoping to have her on the podcast sometime soon, because that's who I'm highlighting right now is women who are pioneering. They're they're pioneering different. They're not willing to like get in the stream with where everybody's going. They're kind of the salmon that's swimming upstream and doing the hard things, because that's what we're kind of called to right. Um, it's definitely not an easy journey.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So I just wanted to come on here, kind of share a little bit more of my background, of going from hopeless to being a hope igniter, because God can use anything. He can use the hardest parts of our stories to encourage others. And, like I said, I shouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now, literally, if you saw me back in the day when I was living the wildlife. I'm living the wildlife in a different way now, but if you saw me back then, um, you probably wouldn't have hope for me either. So I want to encourage you today Go listen to the podcast that I shared. It just launched at three o'clock today with Dr Michelle um Bankson. She has a new book called um sacred. I mean, I'm going to read the whole thing because I don't want to jack it up. Um sacred scars resting in God's promise that your past is not wasted. So if your past is holding you back, I want to encourage you that that's not now.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Take today and move on. It's time to move on. It's time to grab onto that thing that the Lord's calling you to do. It's time for you to do it different. It's time for you to stop looking to everybody else's blueprints and ask him like what is it Lord? What am I called to do in this season? Because he was showing me I think it was yesterday that I'm a bodybuilder, not in the sense of, like you know, weightlifting. But I'm a bodybuilder, I'm called to help the body be built up, and you are too.

Speaker 1: 16:23

So get out there, go do some resistance training. You're going to need to resist a lot in this season. You're going to need to stay really focused in this season and if you need somebody to come alongside you, you know where I am, I'm on here, new Wings Coaching. I would be happy to jump on a call with you. See what you're up to. We may not be a good fit, but I might know somebody who can help you in your journey, because we're not called to do this thing alone. I can't even imagine my journey on my own. Oh my gosh. I mean, yes, of course we have the Lord with us, but he didn't call the disciples out by themselves. They went two by two. So, um would be happy to be one of your two by two-ers, um, so that we can get out in four by four in the wild terrain. So, all right. Well, that's a little bit about my Hope Unlocked story going from hopeless to hope-filled and abounding in hope. Romans 15, 13.

Speaker 1: 17:23

So this is a shirt from Dear Heart, that company I told you about. I'll link it in the comments. I will also link my discovery call calendar below if you want to reach out, you don't have to. I just put it out there because it's good stuff. You can go read testimonies. I'm just here doing the work that the Lord's called me to do and, like the question I asked earlier today, are you anointed in the work that you're doing? Are you just doing the work for the money? That was a Holy Spirit coaching Kristen question. Take care Bye.