For episode 100 I’ve invited my favorite person on earth to join me!  My wife Emily has a life that’s worthy of a book.  She married a widower, adopted his daughter, walked through the journey of childhood leukemia with her oldest son, fostered and adopted, and is in the midst of a daily battle for the healing of a mentally ill child.  Any one of these challenges could be the most difficult thing someone has ever faced, and yet Emily has walked through them all at the same time. You’ll be encouraged and strengthen by our very honest conversation about expectations, anxiety, feelings of failure, and seeking the presence of Jesus when it feels like your world is falling apart.

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Show Highlights

• Understanding the hand of Jesus during singleness and loneliness
• Marrying a widower
• Adopting a child who has lost their mother
• Getting involved with the messy foster system
• The pain and hurt of losing children you thought would be in your family forever
• What it’s like to hear the diagnosis of Leukemia for one of your children
• Seeing the grace of God while your world falls apart
• The importance of community during crisis
• Walking through a childhood cancer battle and adoption journey at the same time
• Understanding and treating childhood mental illness
• Enjoying God’s grace in the ordinary things
• The futility of putting your hope in circumstances
• Battling to understand what God’s doing when He doesn’t make sense
• How to hold on to hope in the midst of crisis and chaos

 

Resources Mentioned

There are a number of books that have profoundly helped or influenced me and Emily over these last few years.  I highly recommend the following:

Renting Lacy: A Story Of America’s Prostituted Children (A Call to Action)

Don’t Waste Your Life

Hinds Feet in High Places

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Parenting with Love and Logic

Tortured for Christ