Faith & Feelings

What do you do when it feels like God broke His promise to you?

Grief and pain come to us all, and sometimes they come through shattered dreams: when life crumbles, and with it, the God you thought you knew. In the disorientation and confusion of what grief can be, we can experience a death without a funeral. Those unseen, unclear deaths of ideals, expectations, hopes, and even versions of ourselves. 

In this episode, my friend Melissa joins me to share her about her family’s move to Togo, West Africa as missionaries…in which they staked everything they had…to the excruciating decision to return to the US just a few years later. She puts words to the visceral feelings of failure, shame, and not-enoughness that can surface when your whole world “dies.” By guiding us through her own messy, interior journey, Melissa beautifully models how staying awake to these deaths can be the crucible in which new life and spiritual wholeness is birthed. I hope you’ll listen in.

What do we do when something unexpected happens, and life suddenly curls up into the frightening mark of a question? When we’re standing on shifting ground, how do we live this question well?

In this episode, my friend Iris joins me to share about an injury during high-school that nearly resulted in the loss of her leg. She puts language to the panic, powerless, and self-contempt that can come when something happens in our lives that we would never choose. With gracious honesty and gentle humor, Iris helps us understand how being transformed into a person who experiences the Shepherd as near and kind begins by practicing a a more compassionate posture towards the darkest parts of yourself and your story. I hope you’ll listen in.

I often wonder if, in our Western context, we’ve so fused the American dream with the risen Christ that when suffering enters our lives and does not leave quickly, all we know how to do is hide, judge, or despair. Prolonged, continual experience of weakness, pain, or loss often places us in a position that feels vulnerable and unsteady. How do we keep on living with pain that has no foreseeable ending? 

In this episode, my friend Jenn joins me to share about her husband, John’s, cancer journey. While suffering can cause us to question God’s nearness, Jenn bears witness to the truth that living with pain that lingers can mean more fully receiving God’s presence that lasts. I hope you’ll listen in.

One of the hardest questions to answer in life is not “Does God exist?” but “Is God kind?”

Sometimes, unspeakable things happen at the hands of others. Experiences of spiritual abuse in particular shatter our ability to trust ourselves, God, others, and the world around us. When the hands that harm us embody the words and face of Jesus, it can feel as if we’ve been given the raw data that God is not good. 

Today, my friend Jennifer joins me to share her excruciating story of spiritual wounding and sexual abuse from a church leader. This conversation is both profoundly painful and profoundly beautiful. By bearing witness to the truth of her wounds, Jennifer welcomes us to see the larger truth that the Wounded One walks with us… and even if we walk away, he still walks with us. I hope you’ll listen in.

*Jennifer is currently in the process of editing and updating her book. A link will be provided below as soon as the revised edition is available.

So many of us have experienced a before and after. 

A "before” you knew that life was fragile…and an “after.” When you can’t go back. You can’t un-know. You are changed. In some ways, grief will always be accompanying us. Where is God in this? And what do we do when, like David expresses over and over again in the Psalms, we feel a sense of divine abandonment or betrayal? 

In this episode, my friend Jessica joins me to share about her recent miscarriage journey. Although she shares about the loss of a child, she speaks to the emotional undercurrent of loss in a way that I think will deeply resonate with many different experiences of sorrow. What Jessica does so beautifully is put words and phrases to the devastation of loss in a way that feels anchoring, truthful, and sacred. I hope you’ll listen in.

Sometimes suffering lasts…and where is God in this? How do we find joy, hope, and love when life becomes undone? These are two questions that I’ve sat with over the last few months. In this episode, I set some groundwork for our next series “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense” and give you a glimpse of some of the guests I’ll be hosting on the podcast over the next several weeks.

In many of our Christian contexts, we’ve internalized a belief that we demonstrate holiness by demonstrating happiness. I share some raw and honest reflections on my story as I trace the threads of this belief throughout my own life up to this point. However, as I’ve taken a deeper look at the life of Jesus, I'm learning that emotions are not the opposite to faithfulness. They can actually be a compass, leading us to a God who is present, even in suffering.

There’s a myth that is easy to buy into: that obedience to God will equal an easy life. In our modern context, many of us have absorbed an understanding of faith that requires life to work out…but what happens when it doesn’t? In this next podcast series called “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense,” I’ll be hosting conversations with wise, deeply authentic, and kind people about their stories of pain and sorrow, and what they’ve learned about hope, lament, joy, and courage when life falls apart. My hope is that these conversations offer words and phrases that capture the emotions of your heart and give voice to your pain. Conversations that I pray will encourage and sustain you for the days and weeks to come.

What does it mean to love someone who has hurt you? In today’s episode I’m joined by my friend Ashley Volk, who received her certificate in narrative-focused trauma care from the Allender Center. In her experience over the last few years in facilitating Story Work groups, she has identified 7 important questions to consider when engaging with someone who has hurt you. We unpack each of these questions together and explore how love can take many different forms: from having a hard conversation, to putting up a firm boundary, to no longer engaging in the relationship. All of these options could be the right option when grounded in a prayerful discernment and Holy Spirit-driven love. 

LINKS + RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE:

To wrap up our first series on the podcast, I’m giving you the microphone to ask me your questions. I love hearing your voices whenever I can, and I think this will be a lot of fun. I’ll do my best to offer some solid and thoughtful responses, if not answers. 

LINKS + RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE:

The experience of anxiety is often coupled with a felt-sense that withdrawing and hiding is our safest option. It can have a crippling effect, reshaping the way that we engage in relationships and even the way that we inhabit our bodies. Of course, the goal is to move through our anxiety into a calmer, more regulated state. But do you know that there is an incredibly wise & kind part to your anxiety? Anxiety is often like a blinking light on the dashboard of your heart, alerting you of places inside of you that are hurting or not yet healed...and in doing so, invites you be loved here. In this episode, I explain why the antidote for anxiety is not a solution, but connection, and why healing often begins with the brave and risky act of being known.