Anchored Not Anxious

Norma Jean and I invite you into a sacred space, our hearts wide open, as we illuminate the grief, yearning, loneliness, and spiritual healing associated with stillbirth and infertility.

Maybe your story is like our story or maybe it’s not. Regardless, you will gain a new perspective and a greater understanding of our God who works things together for good. This episode is divided into four segments: They Are and Why Not Me, Exclusion, God You Were Supposed to…, and Layers of Grief in the Presence of God.

Want to know more about Norma Jean? Find her at the links below and enjoy this short bio.

https://substack.com/@normajeanbennett

https://www.facebook.com/normajeanbennett/

http://normajeanbennettwriter.com

My guest is Norma Jean Bennett, a writer, performing artist, and speaker whose book, Wednesday Mourning, is her account of the stillbirth of her son and of the grief and faith that followed. She also performs Wednesday Mourning: A Theology of Grief, a two-hour solo presentation for those walking through loss and for those who want to learn how to care for them with compassion.

She grew up on an Alberta grain farm, the middle of seven children. For 45 years she has taught through story, writing and performing more than 50 plays and authoring the Norma Jean Mystery Series. She is married to a California surfer turned PCA pastor, now retired after 40 years of ministry.

They have two grown daughters and three grandchildren, and they divide their time between Ojai, California, and a cabin in Northern California’s Lost Sierra, where she hikes, reads, writes, and builds trails. 

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

About ten years ago, Terri and her husband had to play catch-up on something huge. So they did the "crazy" thing and lived unlike anyone in their circle for eight years to make a dream come true.

In this episode, she turns that hard-won experience toward a fear a lot of us are quietly carrying. The headlines about Gen X are relentless — running out of time, retirement crisis, economic reality. They may hold some truth, but they leave you with tightened shoulders and a knot in your gut, and only a morsel of hope. It's too much and not enough.

So what do you do with that overwhelm? Terri offers a gentler, braver way to process it.  This is an invitation to set your own view of the next ten years, and to make sure self-reliance isn't quietly holding you back.

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

When anxiety, overthinking, or discouragement pull you into deep water, wouldn't it be nice to flip open your Bible and have your eyes land on exactly the verse you need? Even if you know a verse or two, these vanish from your mind — and that's not a failure of memory or faith. It's the turmoil dragging you off solid ground.

In this episode, Terri describes three doorways into God's Word — a story, a promise, and a command — with one clear example of each. You'll sit with Jesus's compassion for a grieving widow in Luke 7, rest in God's rescue "out of deep waters" in Psalm 18, and hear two invitations from Jesus Himself to stay close and find real rest. No Bible expertise required — just a place to start when your mind won't settle.

If Scripture has ever felt too big to navigate when you need it most, this one is for you.

Here's a free resource: Wisdom and Promises from the Bible for Your Life

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Did you know the Bible story of Ruth is your story?

Ruth's story is one of perseverance, patience, and hope. Does this sound like your story at one time or another? Maybe this is your story right now.

If you're in a season of overwhelm, anxiety, or exhausting uncertainty, this episode was written for you.

In this episode you'll discover how God uses the waiting to:

• Recover your perspective when anxiety pulls you toward mental and emotional chaos
• Reclaim your peace, your rest, your sleep, and your energy
• Restore your hope and return you to a wise, balanced mind — one not manipulated by negative thoughts and chaotic feelings

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Terri invites Emily Wickham, author of Closer to God – A 10-Week Study on Prayer. Emily is a devotional and Bible study writer and teaches via her podcast, Indestructible Life, and her blog, Heart Stirrings. 

We discuss questions from her book: "Am I really listening?" and "Lord, what about power?". And how Jesus helps us find our purpose. Emily shares why she trusts God and how it made a difference in her life. Find her at the links below.

Website: https://www.proclaiminghimtowomen.com/  

·      Substack: https://heartstirrings.substack.com/

·      YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/emilywickhamauthor

·      YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BibleReadingwithEmily

·      Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emilywickham.author/

·      X: https://x.com/emilywickhamPH

·      Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilywickham.author/

·      Closer to God on Amazon: https://a.co/d/05CPeUBX

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Your body has a built-in anxiety buffer — and you have more control over it than you think.

In this episode we explore how the good that pours out of your heart onto others doesn't just bless them — it releases oxytocin in both of you. 

You'll be asked to consider: What pours out of your heart onto others? Your character traits leave an imprint on the people around you — and that imprint has the power to activate a feel-good hormone that genuinely helps your anxious, overwhelmed nervous system recover.

A small act done with great love makes a huge impact. That's your slogan. Take it and live it out.

References:

Defending the self: The role of oxytocin in responses to psychological threat

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763425004075

Reset Your Nervous System – Dawn-Elise Snipes LMFT LCSW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZ-CctZkpo

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Trusting God is no easy feat in the face of anxiety and worry.  it might come down to this: you can't fully trust someone you don't really know.

In this episode, Terri shares a simple, unscripted thought about why reading the Bible directly — not just about it — matters when you're trying to build genuine trust with God. She describes why God's Word has power, why the red words of Jesus in the Gospel of John are worth your attention, and how trust with God grows the same way it does with anyone — through time and exposure.

No complicated Bible study method. No pressure. Just an invitation to open the book and let the Word speak to you.

If you struggle with worry, anxiety, or feeling distant from God, this short episode is for you.

Hebrews 4:12 | Gospel of John | Trusting God with anxiety

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

In this episode, you'll discover what happens when you stop trying to change them and start surrendering to God what only He can change. Using the Old Testament story of Daniel — a man who faced circumstances entirely outside his control — we look at what anchoring to God in the middle of an impossible situation actually looks like.

Surrender isn't giving up. It's a shift from tension and resistance to rest. It's entering into a powerful partnership with God that increases your endurance, protects your peace, and helps you see past what you don't like to what you do.

You can't change them. But God can change you — and that changes everything.

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140

Financial anxiety is one of the most underestimated sources of future stress for women — and it often starts with what we don't know.

That's exactly what I realized when my friends started talking about the what ifs surrounding the eventual death of our spouses. It sounds morbid, but widow wisdom is precious — borne from difficulty and hard-won experience.

In this episode, I'm walking you through a quick self-assessment — a series of yes, no, or maybe questions that reveal exactly where your financial knowledge gaps are. Because knowing what you don't know is the first step to reducing the overwhelm and anxiety waiting for you down the road.

Get The Anchored Life twice-monthly email.  Discover how including Jesus in each day brings reassurance, wisdom, hope, identity, and emotional and mental rescue remedies. On hard days and in between, you can stay anchored in faith. 

Your story matters to me and I answer every email. Go to [email protected]

Visit Anchored Not Anxious. It's help, hope and resources designed for you

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.hutchinson.140