REALIFE Conversations for Christian Coaches · Teresa McCloy

Ep. 358: Falling Back in Love with Ordinary Life, A Sabbatical Reflection a Year Later

October 29, 2025·28 min·2 clips

At 64, Teresa took a 10-week sabbatical to process grief and discover if success could come from rest, not rush.

Teresa begins with a practical invitation. Before the sabbatical reflection settles in, she talks about the Real Life Process Certification Accelerator: one-day trainings, videos, coaching, a December 11 training, and a January 29, 2026 option. Then she slows the room down. A year later, sabbatical sounds less like escape and more like learning to live from rest instead of rush. October matters here. She describes setting up the end of the year early so Thanksgiving, December balcony time, and two to three weeks around the holidays are not swallowed by clients or coaching. Rest needs structure, which is the practical lesson sabbatical left behind. Margin came from rhythms she had already built. She also names trust: God, the leading of the Holy Spirit, her team, and the systems already in place. She knows not every coach has a team, so she brings it back down to earth. A solo coach might plan ahead, hire a contractor, or let someone carry a few pieces for a season. Her own team is modest too, independent contractors working a few hours each week, not some glossy executive setup. The hard part was surrender. She had to lay out the work, set the vision, get up on the balcony, and trust what had been built. That felt scary. Stepping away from the business, shutting parts of it down, and not knowing what would come back was unsettling. But the stop made things clearer. With so much set aside, she could notice what gave life and what drained it, instead of forcing the next decision. The reflection turns spiritual without getting syrupy. Sabbatical became a season of being present to God, to the people she loves, and to rest itself. Ordinary life is the gift she keeps circling back to. The extraordinary is still there each day, big or small, if she slows down enough to notice and hold it.

As heard by us

A thoughtful sabbatical reflection that turns rest into a working discipline.

Teresa treats sabbatical less like a luxury and more like a way to live with room to think. She ties that idea to ordinary planning, margin, and trust in God, other people, and the systems already in place. The year-later reflection is the strongest part.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a calmer reflection on rest, discernment, and building rhythms that make space possible.

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