Podcast

Daring to Celebrate Joy When It Feels Risky. Nicole Zasowski

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Nicole: ’cause again, we think of celebration as we have to add or change something to our life in order to celebrate it and. No, this is about extracting more joy, experiencing more joy in the life that you are already living.

Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these conversations.

Kelly: Hey guys, I got a question for you. I am wondering how many of [00:01:00] you find it hard to hold on to joy? Does it feel difficult sometimes to celebrate because you’re cautiously guarding your heart from the next disappointment? I have been there friends, and if you’re a regular listener on this podcast, you’ve heard some of those stories and currently, I’ll just be honest, there’s still an area of my life where it feels pretty risky to jump into the deep end of joy with my whole heart.

Kelly: Well, my guest today knows what this feels like too. She writes, I was sure that celebration always came with a catch. So I became practiced in praying for the miracle while preparing to mourn and dreaming while rehearsing disaster. But the Lord gently led her through a journey of healing where she learned to embrace joy, and we are gonna be drawing from her new lifeway Bible study titled Daring Joy.

Kelly: What six women in the Bible teach us about the power of celebration when it feels risky, complicated, and even impossible. So let me tell you [00:02:00] just a little bit more about her. Her name is Nicole Zasowski. She’s a licensed marriage and family therapist and the author of multiple books As an old soul who wears her heart proudly on her sleeve.

Kelly: I can’t tell you how much I love that description. She enjoys writing and. Speaking and you know, you guys, she shares so much biblical wisdom out of her personal experience and her knowledge as a professional therapist. So it’s really interesting how she combines those two in this Bible study.

Kelly: Nicole lives in Connecticut with her husband and her three young children. So Nicole, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me.

Nicole: Oh, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be with you.

Kelly: I absolutely love the subtitle because people don’t understand.

Kelly: That’s one of the reasons they’re not living in joy is because it truly is a risk and it feels impossible to stay there.

Nicole: Yes. No, I I, it had never occurred to me either until I [00:03:00] walked through a season that could largely be characterized by change and loss. And what I noticed is that when we did start to encounter some breakthrough things, we had longed for, prayed for, for years.

Nicole: Yeah, I was hesitant to embrace the joy that came with that breakthrough. I, I saw myself holding it at arm’s length. Hmm. And I was so grieved when I realized that. Yes, I’ve experienced a lot of tangible loss in my life as, as I’m sure many listening have, but a lot of the loss I’ve experienced has been my refusal to embrace and engage with the joy that God had for me right in front of me, and I thought, no more.

Nicole: I don’t wanna miss out on my beautiful God-given life because I am so busy. Preparing for the worst. Mm-hmm. Or waiting for the other shoe to drop. And [00:04:00] so my book what if it’s wonderful and, and then the following Bible study daring Joy are, are born out of that place.

Kelly: You just quoted part of something that Susie Larson put in one of her books closer than your next breath.

Kelly: Mm. And she, I was listening to it on audio and I heard your name, and I’m like, what? Wait, go back. Yes. This beautiful quote where you said what you just said, but I’m gonna read it. I don’t wanna look back on my life. My beautiful wonder filled God-given life and realize that I’ve mostly missed it while I was busy preparing for the worst.

Kelly: And that so beautifully captures that place where so many of us live.

Nicole: Yeah. And, and as you were speaking to earlier, again, it had never occurred to me. That joy was such a vulnerable feeling, but as I dove into scripture and I dove into the neuroscience research, I’m a therapist, so I’m fascinated by the way God designed our [00:05:00] brains.

Nicole: And I realized that joy is actually, I’m, I’m not alone, that joy is actually one of the most vulnerable emotional experiences because. When you hold something, it is automatically accompanied by the possibility of loss. And if you’ve been through trauma or pain of any kind, it can feel a lot safer not to hold that joy at all than to hold something that.

Nicole: Could break in your hands. Yeah, and I mean, you mentioned you’re walking through something and me too. I, I had a situation probably over the last month where I was really challenged in this area and it’s hard, it’s hard to. Believe that hope is a good idea when the outcome might not be what you hope and pray for.

Nicole: And yet, scripture tells us it is not because of what we might receive, but who we receive no matter [00:06:00] what. And, and I’ve really tried to practice that even when I don’t feel like it.

Kelly: Yes. You know, you used a phrase that I’ve never used before. I have, I’ve studied this before. So the whole idea, especially the book of, especially when you wrote about Sarah and Elizabeth, those are places.

Kelly: Oh, yes. Whoa. I have been there. I mean, I have studied those places so deeply, but here’s a phrase you use. It’s at the end of this quote,

Kelly: . but the more we encounter painful events, challenging circumstances and broken relationships, we’re tempted to believe that hope is merely an avenue of disappointment and that it’s safer and maybe even more prudent to be suspicious of joy. So that’s the phrase I had never heard before. Yeah, and it really does capture where we live.

Kelly: I’m kind of suspicious of this joy. Not sure I can embrace it.

Nicole: Yeah. I think we have this false notion that if we embrace the joy fully or if we take a chance [00:07:00] on hope, that we’re gonna have further to fall if the outcome isn’t the one that we pray for or, or dream of, or hope for. And then it’s interesting because, you know, I believe the neuroscience research is always just catching up with scripture.

Nicole: The brain research supports this idea that, you know, we protect ourselves from that gap. Of hope and reality with pessimism and cynicism. Like, and that’s the suspicious, the being suspicious of joy. Like, well, you know, I can hope for the best, but I’ll, I’ll prepare for the worst.

Nicole: Or God would do that for her, but not for me. I’ll just have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised. Well. The research is really clear that actually that doesn’t work at all. That even if that outcome that we fear, let’s, and [00:08:00] that’s a big if ’cause often there’s a great quote. I’m gonna totally butcher it, but.

Nicole: You know, some, I think it may have been Mark Twain. You know, I’ve spent many, many years preparing, many days worrying for something that never happens, or, you know, so often that negative outcome does not happen. But even if it does, having prepared for it mentally and emotionally in advance actually doesn’t take the sting out of that outcome at all.

Nicole: Wow. So all you’re doing is robbing yourself of the delight the, the joy of anticipation, the intimacy with God that comes from praying and hoping for something. Yeah. You’re just robbing yourself of all of that in the meantime. You’re not protecting yourself at all. And so that, that was a wake up call for me.

Nicole: That’s a huge

Kelly: wake up call.

Nicole: Yeah. ‘Cause not only is it, [00:09:00] is it not God’s invitation in scripture to protect ourselves, but. It doesn’t work.

Kelly: You know, something you said reminded me of a, something from Paul Miller. He wrote the book of Praying Life. Mm, yes. And because we were just believing God for so many huge things with our girls with special needs.

Kelly: And then we were getting ready to launch them and then there was a sudden extra pile of hardship and it looked like all of our dreams again were shattered. So there was this phrase, he said, it’s really easy for Christians to develop kind of a defeated weariness in their prayer life.

Nicole: Yeah.

Kelly: Where they’re not, they haven’t gone all the way to cynicism, right?

Kelly: They’re kind of hedging their bet. They’re on the

Nicole: journey,

Kelly: right? They’re on the journey to cynicism. Right? And so their prayers are becoming weaker and weaker and really less about God’s goodness and more about protecting their hearts. And that I was in this place when Lee, my husband, was saying, well, what can we believe God for?

Kelly: Like everything we prayed for hasn’t [00:10:00] come, so what can we believe him for? And I asked God to speak to me, and he immediately alerted me to Isaiah 43 18 and 19, where he just says, I’m doing a new thing. Pay attention. And it was such an invitation to walk away from self-protective. Prayers and self-protective dreams and open my heart to all the goodness that he was already pouring out on our family.

Nicole: I love that. That’s exactly the invitation that is in Daring Joy that I saw just jumping through the pages of, of the Bible as I read, which is why when I finished my book, What if it’s Wonderful I, I could have never anticipated the application of that book. And, and the, you know, you know what? When you write a book, you know what a message means to you, right?

Nicole: And your story, but. There’s so many people who have so many different kinds of stories, you walking [00:11:00] so many different kinds of circumstances. I just, I could have never anticipated the reach of that book. And simultaneously, I, as I continued to study scripture. I was learning so much more about this same topic and so that’s why I felt like the Bible study needed to be written.

Nicole: ’cause there’s just so many invitations on this same topic I’m that are glad, so important for us. Yes.

Kelly: Yes. I’m so glad you wrote this study and so I would love it if you could just take us into one of the story of Sarah. Sure where it talked about the vulnerability of joy, which was, that was so eye-opening, and I wonder if you can just explain, again, you already have touched on it, but in her story, how being vulnerable opened her heart to joy.

Nicole: Yeah, I’m often asked like, which of these women do you relate to the most? Yeah. And I, I say that Sarah is the one who really held up the mirror to my own [00:12:00] struggle with vulnerability of joy. And particularly when scripture, it’s not overt in its description of her laugh, but the context in, in when she laughs.

Nicole: In response to God’s promise that she would bear a son in her old age, the very thing she’s longed for and prayed for for years. But clearly was protecting her heart from the, the continued hope of that happening. Mm-hmm. Because when, when God promises this to her, she laughs with what we’re given clues is as.

Nicole: Cynical laugh you know, would God really do that for me in my old age? Like that feels too risky to actually put my weight on that promise. Yeah. It’s sarcastic in nature and I think it’s easy to judge that until I look at my own life and say, well, how often do I do that with? Promises I read in [00:13:00] scripture, again, I’ve, how many times have I thought, well, God would do that for them, but probably not for me.

Nicole: Or, or something along those lines. I think if we’re honest, we all have versions of that.

Kelly: Absolutely.

Nicole: And. I, you know, it was, it stood out to me even more in contrast to Abraham’s response, who was equally shocked by the promise. I mean, it, it was, it was kind of unbelievable. But his laugh was more of delighted disbelief.

Nicole: Like, I, I’m not sure how you’re gonna pull that off, but I can’t wait to see how you move in our story. And so it, it, it was. From such a deep love and excitement about what God could do and who God was and how he was gonna move in his story and Sarah’s response was more of a turning away. In her story.

Nicole: In her story, we see that with Hagar and the way [00:14:00] that she. Said, okay, well God’s promised this to me, but it ain’t happening, so I’m gonna help him out a little. And she turned to control and Abraham also didn’t understand, but turned toward God with questions. Yeah. And he wrestled with God in that and.

Nicole: That’s also an encouragement because questions and wrestling and a lack of understanding is not a sign of distrusting God. It’s a sign of intimacy with God. It’s when we stop trusting God and saying, I’m gonna take this into my own hands, is when we are turning away versus turning toward. So she really held up the mirror to.

Nicole: My own tendencies to fall into the vulnerability of joy and all the traps that exist within that instead of having the courage to take God at his word.

Kelly: Amen. That’s [00:15:00] so good. A lot of times I’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast because when you’re in a long story. Your temptation. I mean, you’re gonna get weary.

Kelly: Yeah. And you’re gonna head towards cynicism. And so some of the things, like you said, we all have these words that will come out of our mouth that can alert us to the condition of our heart, like mine would be, oh great. What else can happen with an eye roll and a shoulder shrug? You know? We’re so used to bad things happening.

Kelly: There’s no surprise. Thanks God. You know? And whenever that happens, I just know, man, I gotta run to the Lord because my heart is not Tinder toward him. And I found so much freedom in the story of Jeremiah and in the story as well, just to be able to say, I can be confused about what God is doing, and still convinced that he really.

Kelly: Is that my creator and the lover of my soul, and the one who brings delight and has good things, and that really freed me just to wrestle with the Lord in that place. And I just think so much that it’s [00:16:00] humility that rescues us.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. Knowing that God is who he is, is our comfort, and, like, I don’t, I don’t know how God works, but I know God, and, and that’s a phrase I’ve hung onto a lot as well.

Nicole: Like, I, I’m not sure, I don’t understand why this is happening or what, what he has for me in this. But I do. I do know him. Yeah. And I’m gonna continue to get to know him because that’s where my peace and joy will be.

Kelly: Yes. And would you say that that’s the lesson you really learned from that story?

Nicole: Yes. And I think her in combination with the other women you know, because some of the women hold up the mirror to what’s keeping us from joy and then some of the women in the study. Are more examples of how to practice this Joy. Elizabeth, for example which you mentioned [00:17:00] earlier she is my model in terms of how to actually practice joy in seasons that are.

Nicole: Where it’s not so obvious and, and circumstances might not lend themselves to that naturally.

Kelly: Well, let’s talk some more about her. So Elizabeth, the subtitle is The Practice of Joy, and I just love her heart so much because she’s been in this long, long waiting period and yet she managed to keep her heart very tender to the Lord through this. Yes. We know that because of how the Bible describes them. So talk about her story and how we can maintain that tenderness when our hearts are breaking. Mm-hmm.

Nicole: Yeah. I, I am inspired by her for the same reason you are.

Nicole: I mean, and we see the longing and waiting happening not only in her personal life, but in the life. Of her people. Yes. So it’s been 400 to 500 years of silence from God. The people have not heard from him at all, and you can [00:18:00] imagine they’re holding this promise, but generations are coming and going with a promise and seeing no fulfillment of that promise.

Nicole: Yeah. So you can imagine the questions that would start to emerge, the doubt, the cynicism that would start. To plague God’s people as they’re supposed to be waiting. But that would be hard to do. It’d be hard to hang your hat on after so many years of just quiet. And you’re right, because of how scripture describes both her and Zacharia, that they loved God.

Nicole: They were from the priestly line of, of their community and that their hearts were tender to the Lord. Simultaneously, she’s also been longing for a child all these years and was barren. So she has a microcosm of this waiting in her own life. Yeah. And. What I love about [00:19:00] her so much is as soon as she hears about this breakthrough in her story and in the story of God’s people, because she’s hearing from the Lord, she celebrates immediately.

Nicole: And we see this in contrast to, to Zacharia who’s like, ah, I’m gonna need some proof before I’m willing to trust this promise. Yeah. And I love that she is just able to not only recognize God’s voice, but but to celebrate his presence and movement in her life with no hesitation. And I think to recognize God, we have to know him.

Nicole: We have to be intimately familiar with him and his word, and that’s why, because she has maintained such a tender heart toward God, such an intimate relationship with him. That’s why she celebrates him so readily and recognizes. Oh, this is the Lord moving in my life. Mm-hmm. [00:20:00] The other thing I find so inspiring and fascinating about her is I, again, I mentioned the neuroscience research when I was looking at how do we actually practice joy If joy is a practice, a rhythm in our life, not just a reaction to good news or a reward for an accomplishment, like we tend to think of it as right.

Nicole: How do we do that? Like what, what, what are the practices? And two of my favorites, I’ll just go through them quickly. One is savoring, and that is just taking a snapshot from your day. One moment of delight, like not a whole dinner party, but maybe it’s the look on your friend’s face when you give them a compliment or you know, just one tiny moment that you could take a picture of with your brain and you ask your five traditional senses what they’re going to remember.

Nicole: About that moment. So what do you hear? What do you see? What do you [00:21:00] smell? What do you taste? And what do you feel? And what that does is it extracts joy from a moment that your brain would be tempted to dismiss. ’cause your brain’s not inclined to notice, celebrate, or even keep those small moments of delight.

Nicole: And it stores it in a part of your brain where you’re able to recall it later. Wow, that’s fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a great, I love it. ’cause it’s free. It’s short, it’s very doable as a daily practice in your everyday life. ’cause again, we think of celebration as we have to add or change something to our life in order to celebrate it and.

Nicole: No, this is about extracting more joy, experiencing more joy in the life that you are already living. Because I think some people hear celebration and they think, oh, that sounds time consuming. That sounds like a lot of energy, and that [00:22:00] sounds expensive. So I love kind of reframing what, what celebration looks like.

Nicole: And then Thanksgiving is another one. And this you definitely see a lot of in. Elizabeth’s story. Thanksgiving is different than gratitude. We talk a ton about gratitude in our culture, which is good. It, it is helpful. It helps us notice and name what is good, and it does increase our joy. What we don’t often talk about is that Thanksgiving is the outward expression of the gratitude that we feel in our hearts.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. And when we say things out loud, our brain processes it differently than had we simply had a thought or written something down. So it. It’s like throwing gasoline on the joy that we would’ve experienced it. It Thanksgiving increases the joy even more. From [00:23:00] what we would experience had we simply felt grateful in our hearts.

Nicole: And if you pay attention, if you read Luke one and you see how many times Elizabeth is exclaiming things out loud and giving testimony to what’s happening we see that all throughout her story in, in just that short. Little bit that we get a glimpse of her story. So my point is that when I looked at all those practices in the neuroscience research and then I read Luke one, she’s a great example of many of them just in that one chapter.

Nicole: And I point those out in this study and give lots of opportunity for the person doing the study to actually. Practice them as well.

Kelly: Gosh. Don’t be any good things there. Yeah. I love the extracting joy from a moment. Savoring, savoring, and then as you meditate on it, it moves to a place where your brain stores [00:24:00] it and is able to pull it up again.

Kelly: And that’s so important. I gosh, that’s just beautiful. And then saying things out loud, I hear that a lot, that that makes it, it imprints it in your brain and builds new pathways in your brain. In the story of Elizabeth, I love it so much. As you said, she is just so quick to praise the Lord.

Kelly: Like David, she just has this heart that is so tender and responsive to what God is doing. But I’m curious. I’ve always wondered about this one tiny little part of her story where it says she found out she was pregnant and she went into her home and lived in seclusion for five months, and there’s this part of me that thinks.

Kelly: It’s because she didn’t want to hear what people were saying. She didn’t wanna see their eye rolling or hear their doubts because she knew this was from the Lord. But lemme think about that.

Nicole: I’m not sure. And I too wish. We got more color. Thank you. On, on what exactly pulled her [00:25:00] into her house. Yeah. I, but I think that’s probably knowing the cultural norms at the time I think that’s probably a logical guess.

Nicole: And of course traveling Mary coming to her, you know, it, it’s, there’s so many things there in that timeline. Yeah. That are just so interesting to think about what that, why they would’ve done what they did when, um Right, right. But I think given the culture at the time, I think that’s probably a good guess.

Kelly: Well, it’s just fun to wonder about because you realize Totally. She’s a real person. Yeah,

Nicole: yeah. You struggled just like we do. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Kelly: Well, you learned something from your music teacher about learning to practice joy or habits of joy. Can you talk about one of those stories from your Bible study?

Nicole: Sure. So I, I had an amazing, like one of those teachers, they make movies about choir director. [00:26:00] Yeah. And he always had these phrases that he would repeat over and over again. He was one of those teachers that’s more deeply invested in our personhood than, than our performance. Mm-hmm. But one of the things that he shared was.

Nicole: That you perform, how you practice. And so these, you know, and, and I hear this from athletes all the time too, right? So if you can’t. With the game time conditions and the pressure and the loud crowd noise, and you can’t expect to just throw that, that perfect pass. If you haven’t done it millions of times under, you know, the less pressure normal conditions, right?

Nicole: Like you, you need that muscle memory. And that’s where the practices that we learned from Elizabeth. Are so important. Again, I mentioned these are not reactions to good news. These are not [00:27:00] rewards for an accomplishment. These are how we build rhythms into our lives so that we’re extracting joy from seasons where maybe we are waiting or maybe we are experiencing disappointment and celebration, and, and joy are not meant to negate the reality of that pain, right?

Nicole: It’s. It’s meant to help us plug in to who God is, the and his steadfast character and his faithfulness to us. And you see this, one of the most encouraging things to me as I studied was looking at the Old Testament and, and the life of the Israelites and at all those feasts and festivals, those celebrations that are outlined in detail in the Old Testament, whether they were practiced every seven years, every 50 years, annually, weekly, they were practiced because it was time.

Nicole: Not because the [00:28:00] Israelites happened to be in the mood, or it happened to make sense for them. In fact, knowing how challenging their story was. I can imagine there were many times where a certain festival came up and they weren’t in the mood to celebrate at all, but they celebrated anyway, not because they felt like it, but because they were remembering it was a rhythm of remembrance of.

Nicole: God’s character and his faithfulness. Yeah. And that’s really what’s available to us all the time, regardless of, of the kind of season we’re, we’re living.

Kelly: Absolutely. Another quote that goes along with what you were saying comes from the Navy Seals, where they say you don’t rise to the level of the challenge that’s before you, you sink to the level of your training.

Kelly: Hmm. And so we have. To train and train and train and practice. And practice and practice before we can respond well. And when the Israelites were in captivity [00:29:00] in Babylon, God told them, continue to have babies, continue to live, continue to get married, plant gardens. You know, he was inviting them to continue to celebrate his goodness and his presence, just like what you were talking about.

Kelly: And that’s such a challenge for us.

Nicole: Absolutely. And it’s, it’s the practice we’re learning so much about where change actually comes from in the brain and it it is in the practice. Mm-hmm. And so it’s not just. A fruitless workout for your brain. It, it’s actually rewiring your brain so that it is more inclined toward joy or it is more inclined toward hopefulness even in seasons where that’s not necessarily the most logical response.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. That’s so helpful. Thank you for that. Yes. One of the questions that you said changed your life along the way as God was just leading you into being able to embrace joy was. [00:30:00] I think it was, what has this cost you? Hmm. Can you talk about how to apply that question to our own lives?

Nicole: Yeah. I think so when I was, it was a really, really, really dark moment in my own story.

Nicole: I had had five miscarriages. Hmm. And I was. In Georgia leading a marriage intensive, which just to give you a picture of what that looks like, it was four straight days, all meals with five couples, and then group therapy with five couples in between each meal.

Kelly: Oh

Nicole: my goodness. And these were not.

Nicole: Educational days where I was just delivering information, I was definitely very active in the therapy. Like this was yeah, not a re marriage retreat, a a marriage intensive. So I mean, it just required all of me. [00:31:00] And it was day two, which is the hardest day typically. And on my lunch break I got a call from my doctor delivering some really painful news regarding our fertility.

Nicole: And I had just had these five losses and I was just at the end of myself and I didn’t know how I was gonna go back in and do marital therapy with five couples. And so instinctively I called my mentor. He’s a, a personal and professional mentor, so he’s a therapist as well, and he developed the model that I use in my therapy practice and we’re we’re also very close.

Nicole: So I called him and he just listened and listened to all my pain, my fears, and the first question he asked me was, what has this cost you? Wow. And it just gave me so much permission to, you know, this was initially [00:32:00] before I was thinking about what I was gonna do with this pain. It just inherent in that question is the assumption that it’s never just the thing itself.

Kelly: Right.

Nicole: It’s, it’s the way that it touches. You know, I always picture like a, a rock being thrown into water and the ripple effect of that. , It’s the way that that loss touches other dreams for the future or other relationships that you have, or the things that. You’re not gonna be able to do because of that or, you know, I’m speaking very generally.

Nicole: ’cause we could have vast applications of what this, it looks like based on what the struggle is. But it’s never just the loss or the, the pain itself. It, it touches so many other things. So he just gave me permission to name all the costs of the loss and that’s been a helpful question [00:33:00] for me. Moving forward and also with my clients you know, before we get to the business of walking this out and learning to live with this pain in a whole way let’s name what this has cost you.

Nicole: Let’s acknowledge. That this has touched a lot of things. And the other thing he said in that same conversation, which has always stuck with me is I know you’re gonna be a good steward of your pain.

Kelly: Oh, I love that.

Nicole: Yes. And that you might see that showing up in future writing projects. But that has also been a phrase that I have clung to because we can’t always.

Nicole: Change or extinguish the pain in our lives, but we do have, we are empowered to steward it well, just like we’re empowered to steward our finances [00:34:00] or our time, or our talents. Well, we’re also called to be a good steward of our pain so that it can be a force of healing and wholeness and connection in the world.

Kelly: Amen.

Nicole: That that was, there was a lot packed into that one conversation. Yeah. Wow. But that’s the question I was referring to.

Kelly: Yeah. I’m just imagining you finishing this blubbering conversation and then going out to minister to people. I know. I was a

Nicole: miracle and they were so gracious with me and say, said, do you need some time?

Nicole: But yeah, it was definitely the power of the Holy Spirit that got me through that intensive. For sure.

Kelly: Oh my goodness. . I think it’s so important

Kelly: To wrestle through the pain , we can’t just stuff it into a closet in our heart. It will come out and our brain knows that we’re stuffing things. Right? And so I just think it’s so important to remember that we’ve gotta take time to grieve all the losses and to [00:35:00] process it with somebody, with the Lord, with a friend.

Nicole: Yep. I agree that, that joy doesn’t negate the pain. And we cannot change what we will not name. So we have to name what hurts. That is the first step. It is just a step. We, we also need to take action to steward it well, and that’s probably another conversation which we can have down the road.

Nicole: But. Yes, you have to put a name to what hurts. Mm-hmm. Because people often ask me, well, what’s the difference between celebration and escape? And escape is a reaction to pain. That’s. Putting pause on our processing by just numbing out and believing there is nothing I’m empowered to do, to move through this or make it different.

Nicole: Whereas Celebration keeps us connected to our emotional experience. It keeps us [00:36:00] connected in our relationships with each other, and it certainly keeps us connected in our relationship with God. And so. I am not with joy or celebration, talking about, you know, blowing off steam or escaping in any way.

Nicole: It’s actually a way of processing our reality, even in seasons that are painful. And it will look different certainly. But we always have that remembrance of, of God’s character and his faithfulness to us thus far. Mm-hmm. That’s really the heart of celebration is remembering that

Kelly: We can declare out loud who God is, even in our pain.

Kelly: And I love Lamentations three where . He just says, Jeremiah’s going, yep. Everything I had hoped wouldn’t happen has happened. And he’s just rehearsing the grief. But then he says, but this, I know your mercies are new every morning. And he just declares the power of God, the name of God, the faithfulness of God, and, [00:37:00] and that rescues his heart from that place.

Nicole: It’s one of my favorite passages in scripture because. It’s very obvious that nothing in his circumstances are have changed. Yeah. And there’s no indication that his feelings have changed either. Yeah, but it just shows it. It goes to show the power of being able to say. This is the truth. I am choosing to put my weight on and I’m going to walk this out even though my feelings, my very real feelings are not leading me there.

Nicole: I’m, I’m gonna call this truth to mine and I’m gonna act on it. Hmm. And it shows us the power of that.

Kelly: Yeah. That’s so good.

Kelly: One of the other things you talk about that can steal our joy is. Comparing ourselves to other people and Miriam is the example you used. So would you please talk to us about that?

Kelly: Because I know we all struggle with comparison. There’s not [00:38:00] a one of us listening who doesn’t have a moment where we walk into a room and we feel ourselves wondering how we size up with those who are there.

Nicole: Yes. Miriam. I love, I, I really loved being able to include her in this study because like I said earlier, most of the women either fall into kind of a what not to do category or a what to do category, and she’s.

Nicole: Kind of a fun blend of both. On the one hand, she leads the first worship song on record in scripture, right? And so she’s very boisterous in her celebration and, and reacts so beautifully to God’s faithfulness after he rescues his people from Egypt. And then kind of down the road, you know, she is given this leadership position which for a woman.

Nicole: Was very unusual. But it, it doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles that Moses’s [00:39:00] leadership position comes with. And so she finds herself being dissatisfied with her role when she looks at it in comparison to the other. And I, I do put this CS Lewis quote in there, but I think it’s. Just so brilliant, and I may not get it word for word, but something to the effect of pride gets no satisfaction out of having something, only out of having more of something than someone else.

Nicole: And how true is that? I mean, we could all celebrate our lives. And then looking side to side. Find lots of reasons not to celebrate our lives very quickly. And so this was Miriam’s story. And, and Aaron’s as well. There’s a few indications in scripture that she seemed to be more complaining ’cause she kinda took the brunt of the consequence around that.

Nicole: But one of my questions, [00:40:00] because this is such a common. Thing, a common struggle among us all, like you mentioned, was okay, most of the time we hear, don’t compare when somebody is celebrating something that maybe steps on the toes of a dream that you have for yourself. We should not compare, but I, I haven’t really gotten a lot of instruction on what do we do in what, what is the invitation?

Nicole: If, if we’re just supposed to avoid comparison, that doesn’t really give us an, a good alternative to practice in opposition of that. And I noticed. I, I was pondering this question and I happened to be in Deuteronomy in my own Bible reading plan. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would’ve noticed this story ’cause I had never paid attention to it before.

Nicole: But it’s the story of Moses in Deuteronomy three. And the Israelites, just for context, they’re so [00:41:00] close to the promised land that they can actually see it in the distance. And as many of us know, Moses has been the leader of God’s people up until this point. But because he disobeyed God earlier in their journey, he was told he’s not gonna be the one to lead God’s people into the Promised land, and he’s not gonna get to enter it himself.

Nicole: So he goes up on this mountain to talk to God and he, I love his honesty. He asks God, one more time, if God would change his mind, can I please be the one to lead your people in? And, and God gives an emphatic no, which is. Definitely challenging, but what I was really convicted and challenged by is what God says next to Moses.

Nicole: He says, I want you to commission Joshua, which is essentially saying, I want you to prepare and help Joshua for the journey that you [00:42:00] would love to have for yourself. And what that says to me in answer to my question of what do we do if we’re, we’re not supposed to compare? What do we do instead? Is that when somebody is celebrating a dream that maybe we would love to have for ourselves?

Nicole: Our call is to not merely accept their joy, like find a way to be okay with it. Our call is to help accelerate their joy. Oh wow. And pushback that I get sometimes on this is, you know, our culture really values authenticity and, and we want to, we want our feelings to be congruent with our actions, and I understand that.

Nicole: However, that’s not how the brain works. We can think of and act our way to a new feeling. Mm-hmm. We cannot feel our way. To a new way of thinking and acting. And so if we wait to feel like celebrating this person that [00:43:00] maybe we’re a little jealous of. It’s not, it’s not really gonna come. What that’s gonna look like is gonna be okay.

Nicole: I’m gonna find a way to feel okay about it, but I’m not really gonna dive in and celebrating and accelerating their joy. So what I tell people is the action has to come first and then the feelings will follow. And that’s not fake. That’s formation. Hmm. The way that God designed our brains, and I don’t know why, is that we, we have to change our thoughts and change our, what we do with our hands in order for our feelings to follow.

Nicole: And don’t be discouraged. If the feelings aren’t there, your heart will follow. It will change and form your heart differently when you take that step to accelerate someone else’s joy.

Kelly: Wow, that is such a powerful invitation. I love that so much. And you’re right, we have not had something [00:44:00] tangible to hold onto.

Kelly: When people say, don’t compare. Don’t compare. It’s always poison, blah, blah, blah. Because we obviously do compare and we know it steals our joy, but to have this tangible way to just. Step in fully with our whole heart and say, how can I help? Is there any way, is there anyone I can connect you with to accelerate your dream to come true?

Kelly: Yes. That is just such a beautiful invitation. And I love the example of Moses. Yes. I thought about that before he, he was instrumental in causing the Israelites to trust Joshua. Like he, it was a necessary part of their transition. Absolutely. He invited him into it and then he did wholeheartedly give himself to it.

Kelly: He obeyed God in that.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. Which must have been really hard to do. Yes. You know, he’d gotten the people so far to that point and to hand that job over. At, at the point of celebration, the the final destination would’ve been really [00:45:00] challenging.

Kelly: Really challenging. You know, his heart had been broken so many times by these people.

Kelly: Yes, we could have gone in 40 years ago, but you people,

Nicole: yes, exactly.

Kelly: Yeah, that, that’s just really powerful. Thank you for that example. Well, one of the things I’d like you to speak to as we are getting close to closing is the question that this podcast is framed around is, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays keep breaking mind?

Kelly: And many of my listeners are people who are walking through hard stories. They’re not resolved, they’re experiencing ongoing disappointment as they are just challenged to keep their heart. Tender to God. So how could you just leave them with a nugget of truth? I know you’ve said so many good things, but is there just a way to encapsulate a message of hope that you would give to them?

Nicole: I think it’s that, that message of the Ebenezer, you know, when the Israelites built an altar of Remembrance I, you know, I don’t [00:46:00] know all the whys and ins and outs of why they were instructed to do that, but. When they encountered hardship, it was important that they had something to look at, to remember.

Nicole: God was faithful to me at that juncture. Mm-hmm. His character was true at that juncture, and it’s true today. I think remembering, and I know I’ve said this a few times in this conversation, but it’s, it’s worth repeating remembrance. Fuels our hope for the future. It it causes us to be able to turn toward the future with curiosity about what could God do?

Nicole: How might he move? That’s why the, the title of my book that I wrote before the Bible study is What If It’s wonderful because that, that became my question to kind of prompt my heart toward. Hopefulness, but also a curiosity and [00:47:00] maybe even an anticipation of how’s God gonna move here? What, how might he show up?

Nicole: And it may not be the outcome that I’m longing for or in the timing that I’m longing for, but how is he present with me and and buoying me in something that I didn’t think I could do? And how is he with me and been faithful even in this? Because I don’t think we can. Yeah, I don’t like Pollyanna responses, and I’m sure you and your listeners don’t either too, you know?

Nicole: You know, just slapping joy, a joy bandaid on, on our pain. Right. And so hopefully I’ve, I’ve addressed joy in a different way that that honors the pain, but also allows us to steward it in a way that squares our shoulders toward hope.

Kelly: Oh, I love that phrase that squares our shoulders toward hope. I wanna read this quote that goes along with what you’re talking [00:48:00] about, and it’s really a call to courage, and it’s a call to joy to just live in the habits and the practices that you’ve outlined for us.

Kelly: And you say, let’s practice the courage. We need to hold God’s gifts without fear that they will be taken away because the joy that’s available through Jesus. Cannot be lost, stolen, or extinguished. This is the joy you were made for.

Nicole: Yes. Wow.

Kelly: That is so beautiful. Well, Your Bible study, again, is Daring Joy: what six Women in The Bible teach us about the power of celebration when it feels risky, complicated, and even impossible. So Nicole, how can listeners connect with you?

Nicole: Yes, I would love to connect with listeners. My website’s a great place to do that. You’ll find all the things there.

Nicole: It’s just Nicole Zow, Z-A-S-O-W-S-K i.com, and I do have a free quiz on the website that might [00:49:00] help you diagnose what’s holding you back from. The fullness of joy that God longs for you to experience. That’s been fun. And then my books are from lost to found. What if it’s wonderful and my Bible study is Daring joy, as you’ve mentioned, and I hang out in terms of social media.

Nicole: I hang out on Instagram most often and I’m just at Nicole Zasowski There.

Kelly: Okay. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much. All the, the truths that you have laid out for us are so beautiful. I love your study. I didn’t mention this, but I’m doing it with my sisters on Google meets.

Kelly: We meet every few weeks and it is so good for us and so I recommend it highly to all of our listeners, and thank you for. Walking through your hard story with honesty, authenticity, and, you know, maintaining that tenderness toward the Lord that allowed a work like this to be produced.

Nicole: Thank you so much for having me and [00:50:00] hosting this conversation.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope podcast.