Podcast

How Do We Trust God’s Heart When His Ways and Delays Break Ours? Kelly Hall with Jennifer Slattery

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable whole 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 friends, I am over the top excited that you are joining me for the 100th episode of the Unshakable Hope Podcast. I honestly can’t believe it. I think back to when God first called me to start this podcast a few years ago. I was so scared. I couldn’t imagine how this would work or how I could learn all the things that had to be.

Kelly: It seemed impossible and insurmountable, but God has been so faithful to provide everything I needed, every person I needed, and to make a way where there [00:01:00] truly seemed to be no way. I just wanna take a minute and thank every single guest that has joined me on this podcast. Thank you for the wisdom and heart that you brought to each episode.

Kelly: We have prayed together. For the interviews and it’s been such a delight. My faith has been strengthened and I pray and trust God that he has encouraged and deepened faith in our listeners as well.

Kelly: Thank you so much to every one of you that has taken the time out of your day to listen to these episodes, to share them with your friends, and even to take some time to get back to me and tell me how a particular story or truth impacted you or a friend. It’s meant so much to me. My story has sprinkled throughout some of the solo podcast and throughout in.

Kelly: But I’ve had a lot of people ask me to consolidate parts of my story into one or two episodes, and so that’s what this, that’s what we’re doing today, the 100 and 101st episode. The main question that God has answered in my heart over the years is the question that’s in our opening. How do we trust God’s heart [00:02:00] when his ways and delays are breaking hours?

Kelly: But then there are so many other questions that go along with that. How do I walk through suffering without giving up on God? How do we trust God through ongoing disappointments? You know, when it seems like things are getting worse instead of getting better? How do we surrender our stories to God when we’re weary and we don’t see light at the end of the tunnel. In today’s episode, we’re doing an overview of just a big part of my story, and

Kelly: jennifer, my co-host that I’ll tell you about in a minute is going in a little bit deeper into places that have made this a very rich conversation. We talk about some of the beautiful, even miraculous ways that the Holy Spirit met me in times of grief, in times of loneliness, when I was just absolutely at the end of myself.

Kelly: And we talk about mom guilt, which I haven’t spent much time talking about on this show at all.

Kelly: And we are gonna get some very practical suggestions on how to cultivate joy and how to cultivate intimacy and hope with the Lord. So this episode is [00:03:00] packed full of so much encouragement and so much hope. Okay.

Kelly: I’m almost done with this intro, but I just want you to know I’m somebody who kind of struggles to celebrate. I tend to minimize accomplishments, so I made it a point to celebrate by having my friend, join me as we walk through some of the story I’ve just described to you.

Kelly: I’m beyond thrilled to have my dear friend Jennifer Slattery, co-host this episode with me. We’ve been on each other’s podcast and she joined me a year ago for two episodes on how to pray through a crisis, and I’ll link those in the show notes because I want you to hear her story, especially in that first one.

Kelly: She tells a little bit about herself, which is fascinating, but let me tell you a little more about her. Jennifer Slaty is a writer, speaker, and co-host of the Faith Over Fear podcast, which is so powerful, always so encouraging, and she’s one of the hosts on the Your Daily Bible verse podcast, which I also recommend.

Kelly: She’s such a good Bible teacher. Jennifer’s family often jokes how she doesn’t really care much [00:04:00] about what she’s doing so long as she’s with her people, and that is so true about Jennifer.

Kelly: I love that about her so much. She’s been married to her best friend for nearly 30 years. The more I learned about this man, I’m just so grateful that God brought the two of them together. She has a creatively brilliant daughter and a son-in-law. She absolutely adores. She has a 22-year-old son by choice and the cutest dog that brings her such great joy. Jennifer, thank you so, so, so much for joining me. Jennifer, thank you so, so much for joining me on this podcast.

Jennifer: I’ve heard bits of your story, but I’m really looking forward to hearing the full, like just what you experienced and where God met you. So thank you for letting me do that.

Kelly: Oh, thank you. it’s truly, a gift. I just kept praying, Lord, should I do a solo?

Kelly: But I’d really like you to provide a friend to do it with me. It’s just so much more fun. So Jennifer is joining me for this 100th episode recording and maybe I can even talk her to, [00:05:00] into coming along for the hundred first episode for the second half of my story. Well, Jennifer, I guess I’m gonna turn it over to you

 

Jennifer: I would love to hear being a mom myself. Of the moment when like you’re anticipating being a mom and having these littles that you’re gonna snuggle and raise to adulthood. And then you received some news that you, that really shocked you.

Jennifer: Right,

Kelly: right, right. My husband and I, were gonna wait five years to have kids. And so really the first shock was, oh, we’re pregnant three months into our marriage. And actually, just to give you a little spoiler alert, five years into our marriage, we already had four because our third pregnancy was twins.

Kelly: So many surprises.

Jennifer: So you are busy. That’s like, yeah. Hit the ground running.

Kelly: Yeah. So things were busy and overwhelming, but when we first found out, so the big surprise was, Hey, you’re pregnant. My husband kind of freaked out and then , we had this beautiful, sweet [00:06:00] little bitty girl we had prayed and prayed and prayed so much. And she was born and she was absolutely adorable.

Kelly: And we didn’t know the first thing about how to raise a baby. Like we came home from the hospital and both of us kind of looked at each other and shrugged our shoulder and was like, oh my gosh, well what do we do now? And I being, I was kind of prideful way back then, you know, 38 years ago, and my thought was.

Kelly: Well, I’m a smart person. I can read a book, right? How hard can it be I think those are the most foolish words that have ever escaped my mouth. But when she was only six months old, we had to go through another big transition because my husband was told, Hey, you’ve gotta go remote for a year. So that’s one of the things fighter pilots do in the Air Force.

Kelly: He was an F 16 pilot. They often had to do a one year remote in Korea, and that means your family can’t come with you. They can maybe come visit for a little while, which we did. And it was so hard for my husband, he didn’t wanna leave his [00:07:00] new little baby. But , God led him to somebody who said to him, well, do you feel like the military is your ministry?

Kelly: Because if you do, then you’ll just say yes to God and realize that this separation is just part of the process. It’s just part of the journey, and it’s from him and covered by him so you can trust him through it. And so that’s what he did. He’s always felt like the military was a ministry and so did I as his wife.

Kelly: He made the decision to go. I made the decision to move in with my parents just so I’d have a little more help. But that was hard with him being gone. And then as our little girl was developing. You know, I began to be concerned about some things.

Kelly: She wasn’t responding when I called her name and she wasn’t babbling. Like we didn’t hear uhoh, she made a lot of noise, but nothing sounded like speech or precursors to speech. So the story I wrote in my mind was, well, she probably has fluid in her ears and maybe that’s why the speech is not [00:08:00] coming. So I took her to a doctor my husband knew about this appointment. When I was there, this nurse, rang a bell and my daughter didn’t turn, and I still didn’t get the truth that my daughter couldn’t hear we kind of write stories, we interpret things, we get used to things, and I just thought she was really busy with her play.

Kelly: So she wasn’t responding when I called, but she was very concerned. She immediately set up an appointment with the specialist. I went to the specialist. They checked her hearing in an audiology sound booth. The sound was so loud, it literally brought tears to my eyes and she didn’t even respond.

Kelly: So the doctor comes in and he says. Yeah, she’s deaf. There’s nothing you can do about it. Here’s the phone number you can call an audiologist. When you feel like you’re ready for that.

Kelly: And then he spoke some words that I truly needed to hear. This is not your fault, because I immediately started thinking of all the things I must have done to cause this. I took [00:09:00] antibiotics when I had an infection. I’m just wanting to blame myself.

Kelly: I just went home in shock. Literally, I can’t believe. How hard it was for me to process the news that my daughter was profoundly deaf. And, as I’m driving home, I’m going through all the stages, like I’m looking at her and she looks so perfect.

Kelly: She’s got this blonde curly hair, these big blue eyes. She’s so tiny and adorable, and I’m thinking this can’t be true. That doctor, he’s wrong. I can’t believe that this could possibly be true. No one in our family has ever had a child born with special needs. I’ve not even known somebody who was deaf. I don’t even know how to process this, but it’s so interesting how the Lord, he was very, very gracious with me.

Kelly: The moment we got home. I was taking her out of her car seat and she grabbed my hand to pull me to play, and I, this electric shock went through my body as the Holy Spirit just convinced me. She truly [00:10:00] is deaf. This is your reality. And my dad had gone with me to the appointment, so he had taken off work, and so he just took her to play and I went and laid myself out on the floor and processed all this grief with the Lord.

Kelly: I couldn’t believe how much it hurt Jennifer. I just honestly could not believe how it felt like there was a knife in my heart, an elephant on my chest, how I just wanted to escape more than anything from this reality. And I just poured out my heart to God. I started asking him all the questions like, weren’t you paying attention?

Kelly: How could you have let this happen? And then suddenly I had this thought that. Hey, wait a minute. We’ve been praying all this time for this perfect healthy girl, and then we’ve been thanking you ever since she was born for this perfect, healthy little girl, and you knew all along that she was deaf, and you hadn’t bothered to tell me. Suddenly I felt like God had betrayed me. I’m like, how could you not have let me know? How could you have received all my thanks and [00:11:00] praise and not let me know that there was something wrong?

Kelly: I poured out every question I could think of. And then once it was all out there, I was quiet. And in that quiet, the Holy Spirit began to speak truth to my heart. I can’t even tell you how much I love this part of the story. God spoke exactly the words I needed to hear. First of all, he reminded me of Romans 8 28. And we know God really truly does work all things for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And then he reminded me of the story of Joseph. And I had a memory of my mom teaching me that story when I was little and we know the story of Joseph, but really a lot of bad things happened to him.

Kelly: But in all of those bad heartbroken places, the Bible says God was with him. God was with him, God was with him. And then we see how in the end, God worked everything together for good. And [00:12:00] Joseph even says to his brothers, who betrayed him, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good so that he could save a nation.

Kelly: And what God did in my heart was he began to lift me out of the pain, out of this place where I thought. There is no hope to seeing beyond my heartache into a place where there was purpose in our story. And there was hope that we were gonna see. God is sovereign and in charge and in control of all of this.

Kelly: He is working. Then he reminded me of John nine, where the disciples come to him and say, Hey, Jesus, look at that guy born blind. Is he blind because of his sin or his parents’ sin? And Jesus said, neither though, this chokes me up because this was such a word from the Lord. I needed to hear neither but that, but so that the works of God can be glorified and can be presented through him.

Kelly: God spoke to my heart and just that deep, deep [00:13:00] wounded place where I wanted to blame myself.

Jennifer: If we can really pause and, and stay here for a second. I’m, I’m really glad you brought up that What I’m hearing you say is initially the doctor gave you that from a medical perspective, right?

Jennifer: Like this is not your fault, so that you kind of have the head knowledge and, and somebody in authority telling you that. But it sounds like that still was a lingering pain. And, and I guess one of the reasons I wanted to kind of sit here is I think moms always have so much guilt. Like, yes, we can, in the best circumstances we can, we can recognize every little thing we have done wrong or might have done wrong.

Jennifer: And I think it’s even more challenging today. And, and I know from your story that they also had neurodivergent Yes. Challenges. Yes. Especially in today’s climate where people are reading constant posts about autism is caused by this, A DHD is caused by this. And, and we don’t know like [00:14:00] people are just.

Jennifer: Angry and upset and scared but I think that it can exascerbate Yeah, whatever, guilt and, and really make that battle challenging. So what I wanna know is how did you wrestle just with the, the guilt and where do you go now? Like, I mean, what are some like practical ways? I love that God met you in that.

Jennifer: So first of all, yes. That you, that you turned to Jesus, but, but just kind of walk me through, like when it kept popping back up, how did you. Dial it back down with truth.

Kelly: Yes. And that’s such a good question. And we didn’t even know how many issues our girls had at this point. All we knew was profoundly deaf, and I didn’t know really what that looked like.

Kelly: But we would later find out that all three of them had a DHD. They all have some forms of anxiety disorder or depression kind of mixed in with all of that. They have learning disabilities and they’re [00:15:00] primarily mild, but like short-term memory where they can’t memorize a whole list of historical facts or biology words, you know?

Kelly: But then they also have dyslexia, small forms of dyslexia. So there’s a lot, a lot mixed in there. And I would often, Jennifer. Come back to blaming myself because they also have sensory processing disorder. And I knew that early on, but I couldn’t really imagine how I could treat that when I felt like it was so overwhelming to teach them language,

Kelly: and we’re moving every two to three years and I’m trying to set up new services for them so I could only handle one thing. Okay. So I’m just working on the deafness and the normal childhood things and then teaching them about the love of Jesus. So that’s my focus. But there, which is

Jennifer: a lot. .

Kelly: So there have literally been hundreds of times where I felt so guilty about many parts of their story, wishing I had done more, wishing I had been more wishing I had paid more [00:16:00] attention to something wishing I had, I had known about something ahead of time. And every single time I bring that before the Lord.

Kelly: I remember the truth. This one truth helped me more than anything that God is outside of time and he sees our entire story. It says in Psalm 1 39, all our story is laid out before him and written in the book like he sees it. All this, this one thought captured my heart more than anything else. Even that day on the floor in the bedroom, when I’m grieving.

Kelly: Nothing takes God by surprise. This did not take God by surprise. He saw this coming. I would sometimes feel guilty about the fact that she was 15 months old before she was diagnosed, but in the next door, I’m gonna tell you, you’re gonna see how that was God’s perfect timing. I felt guilty because she didn’t get a cochlear implant when she was four when they first came out, but instead she got it.

Kelly: Seven. But there is a very powerful reason why that was an excellent [00:17:00] provision of the Lord. I felt so guilty that I didn’t treat their sensory processing disorder until they were teenagers because I learned from them that my oldest daughter, she couldn’t feel anything inside of her mouth and that’s why speech therapy had been harder for her and my girls, my twins, they couldn’t feel parts of their body and that’s why a lot of things about the anxiety and a lot of things that ways that they process the world were difficult for them.

Kelly: So the guilt I had was ongoing, but I would always come back to this truth. This did not take God by surprise. He operates outside of time. He revealed this, this new thing in exactly his perfect time, and I don’t need to feel guilty this was the time that he wanted me to know about it, and now he’s gonna give me the grace to walk through it and deal with it.

Kelly: One other thing about God being outside of time that helped me so much is in this journey of guilt of mom guilt, I always felt like we were [00:18:00] way behind the power curve. Like they didn’t learn to talk till later. And we have like 5,000 things we need to work on and we’re always, always behind and I was always being reminded, you’re behind, you’re behind, you’re behind.

Kelly: And so that was another place where I just had to say, God, you see all this, you’re gonna provide what they need. You can do more in one moment than I could accomplish in a lifetime. And whoa, that helped me so much.

Jennifer: What I’m hearing, a couple things. Okay, so to your listeners, I’m sorry, we’re gonna like make Kelly’s story a 10 episode because there’s so many elements.

Jennifer: But a couple things I hear going back to your Joseph Romans 8 28 is you didn’t get stuck, you intentionally didn’t get stuck in that part of your story. You were able to recognize that good was on the other end. And then the other thing I heard you say is. You recognize that you weren’t God, you’re not omniscient, you’re not, all powerful.

Jennifer: You’re not all knowing. And, and so I wonder sometimes if our guilt comes from this [00:19:00] inaccurate expectation we have of ourselves to have God-like qualities when it comes to raising our kids or loving our family. And so what I heard you say as well is you came to a point where you’re like, okay, I didn’t know all about this.

Jennifer: I don’t a hundred percent know what I’m doing, but God is God and he knew about it, and he’s with me and he’s gonna lead me. I, and I would like to also, if you don’t mind, and you, you’re gonna have to push me forward if I’m just taking too much in all these details. But there’s so many layers. Also, I wanted to talk about the, the grief because I am.

Jennifer: Maybe. And if you can write separately a devotion on this, the guilt of grief, because I’m sure there that had to be as well, that you’re even feeling guilty for experiencing all this grief. But I’m wondering if you had kind of a complex grief, like what are the various things you were grieving? And the reason I ask is sometimes, like when my, my daughter got married during COVID and it was ended up being in our, our [00:20:00] living room.

Jennifer: And I really struggled and I had a, a, a counselor friend, basically encourage me to consider the losses and, and to grieve the losses. And we don’t always, we don’t always think about that. Like the loss of dreams, the loss of joy, the loss of interactions. So. What for you? Like what were you grieving? That

Kelly: is such a good question.

Kelly: And one of the things that I’ve talked to a lot of moms about, a lot of women about is like they would go through something and then they couldn’t understand why years later they were grieving again. And there’s so many layers to grief and it is extremely complex. And here I had this beautiful sweet little baby that I was so grateful for.

Kelly: And like some people maybe in, maybe they have, maybe all their relatives are deaf and like they would hear this and think, well, that’s no big deal. But for me, I had no idea about deafness. I was un, I wasn’t expecting it. So I had created dreams and expectations for her. [00:21:00] And at that moment, what really happened was I felt like my little girl that I thought I knew had died.

Kelly: That’s what it felt like. Okay, I know she’s really alive, but I felt like everything I knew about her. Was untrue, and all my dreams for her were shattered. And I knew I’d have new dreams. That was the hope God was preaching over my heart. I knew that what God showed me in that moment was grief and hope can reside side by side in the same heart.

Kelly: I had hope, but the grief was complex. And so I felt like every dream I ever had for her like shattered at my feet. And I knew Dr. New dreams would come, but I didn’t know what they could be. I didn’t know what they would look like. I didn’t know what I could dream for her. So it kind of felt like I have this beautiful little girl.

Kelly: I’m not sure who she is, and I don’t know how to dream for her. So there was a loss of her future, the future I had imagined, there was a loss of understanding who God is. Somewhere in my view of who God was.

Kelly: I had [00:22:00] placed some expectations that he will respond to me the way I expect, and I expected that none of my children would be born with any kind of disability. That was pretty much in stone in my heart. I had prayed about it and I knew that’s what was gonna happen. So I understood that God can operate outside of our expectations and we have to let him be God.

Kelly: So that was part of what I grieved. It was really a false view of who God was. It was hard to rebuild.

Jennifer: Yeah, who

Kelly: my daughter was. But here’s one thing that really helped. Like I played with her later that evening and she just laughed and I, and as she laughed and played and enjoyed, uh, her grandpa and enjoyed these fun games and I saw her joy, her creativity, her absolute zest for life all wrapped up in her 15 month old body, I realized that she truly was the same girl that I had [00:23:00] fallen in love with, the same little one that God had gifted us with.

Kelly: And we were just gonna walk alongside her on this journey and we were gonna get to discover the dreams that God had for her and they were gonna be beautiful.

Jennifer: So, not to, to be stuck on this again, but I have another question. Okay. Related to that, if that’s okay. So I’m wondering, listening to your story, it sounds like so much was overwhelming and would therefore be also time consuming.

Jennifer: And really, even though you had the support of your parents, you were largely. Had to do a lot yourself. Right. So, right. I’m wondering for those who are kind of in that space where they’re barely able to take a shower because they’re trying to figure out all these things, was there a, can there be a grief for the loss of joy?

Jennifer: Like when you think of like a motherhood, I think sometimes we all have these idealistic hallmark commercial. We’re gonna sit, we’re gonna have floor time and craft time and exploration and it’s gonna be love and story time and, but then [00:24:00] your day is like filled with doctor’s appointments and research and.

Jennifer: Did. Was that part of your grief?

Kelly: Oh my gosh. That, that question brings tears to my eyes because I’m just going to jump ahead in my story and tell a part of my story a little bit further on. So we did have, a son, three years later who was hearing had nothing wrong, but we discovered this deafness was probably with my husband and I each had a recessive gene.

Kelly: So we prayed about whether to have more kids. We had a one in four chance of having more deaf children, and we didn’t feel God leading in any particular way. So my husband scheduled that surgery that makes this decision permanent. But we got pregnant and then later we discovered we were pregnant with twins.

Kelly: Twins don’t run in our family either. So the twins were born, we didn’t know if they would be deaf or not, and there’s a whole, I’m jumping way ahead in the story we discovered when they were two weeks old that they too were profoundly deaf. It was completely overwhelming. However, God was so gracious in the way he prepared [00:25:00] my heart.

Kelly: I moved. At this one point I moved to St. Louis, my husband couldn’t move so that all three of our girls could receive cochlear implants, could go to a special school to learn how to speak, to learn how to talk. My husband wasn’t there. I didn’t have any support. I didn’t have a church. I didn’t have a military community.

Kelly: I didn’t have family near me. I had nothing. And I, and these four little kids couldn’t even understand each other. Like they’re so little. My twins were only one and a half years old. They had no language. And I was, I, I mean, truly, truly overwhelmed just feeling like I was surviving moment by moment on a dropper full of grace from God at a time.

Kelly: But in this time, I had gone, I had grabbed a book from a Christian bookstore. The title was something about Walking through the Death of Dreams. And all I did was read the first chapter of her book where she’s kind of listing all the losses she had experienced. And it was pages of [00:26:00] loss. And as I read that.

Kelly: I started sobbing literally from a place so deep inside of me. I didn’t even know it existed. And Jennifer, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Like my mind wasn’t participating in the grief. I didn’t even understand what was happening. It was like I’m watching myself sobbing on the couch, and it just goes on and on and on and on and on.

Kelly: But I had this deep sense of peace. Like I knew God was with me. God was allowing this, and so I just surrendered to him. I let it all happen, and then it stopped and I washed my face and I was done, and I felt better. But I said to the Lord, okay, you’re gonna have to explain some things to me, because that was kind of the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced.

Kelly: It was very cleansing. It was very good, but I don’t understand what happened. And so I kept asking him that throughout the day. And finally, Jennifer, he said to me, what you asked me, he said to me, you needed to grieve. Gosh, it chokes me [00:27:00] up. Even now, you need to grieve the fun family life you always imagined you would have.

Kelly: I had imagined, you know, all six of us gathered around ga. All my kids and my husband gathered around like board games and laughing over popcorn in movies and having fun family outings, and nothing about our life was easy. It was all overwhelming. It was all hard, and I was just surviving moment by moment on the grace of God.

Kelly: As I said, I prayed his word every single day, but the grief was so immense. The losses were so huge and so complex that. I, I just didn’t know how to process it. But, I had thought before this happened, you know, I think I could benefit from a counselor, but I don’t know how I’d have time to go see one.

Kelly: I don’t know how that was gonna work. So, you know, blow that off. But what I love so much is the Bible [00:28:00] tells us that Jesus is our counselor and that God knows us better than we know ourselves. And God in that moment just became my counselor. He became my perfect counselor where he ministered to the deepest needs in my heart, the deepest places where I needed healing.

Kelly: And it happened without words. And so I just wanna offer this to listeners that when God says in Psalm 34. 18, I think he draws near to the brokenhearted and he saves those fear crushed in spirit. This story is an example of how God does this. We can expect him to always be working to heal our deepest wounds and to take us into deeper places of intimacy with him himself in our heartache.

Jennifer: Well, so again, what I’m, what I’m hearing in this story that I, I think I’d like to ask. That took courage, it seems to me, because a lot of us have been programmed and learned to deny our feelings, to [00:29:00] suppress them. And so when they begin to rise up, they can feel overwhelming and frightening. And what I heard is that you completely yielded that to God and you let him do that deep work.

Jennifer: What do you think might have happened if you’re like, you know what? I’m too busy if I, if I start crying now, I’m, I’m never, it’s gonna be overwhelming. I’m never going to stop. Yeah. Like, what do you think, how much of your healing journey do you think was really furthered? Because you had the courage to, like you said, just let it happen, let yourself sob and, and what, I guess maybe what gave you that courage, do you think?

Kelly: I think it was truly, truly, truly that I learned. Early on in my story to process out all my emotions with the Lord very, very quickly. The thought in my mind was, if I don’t process these out, they’re gonna come out later. You know, we’re, I know. I just had this innate understanding that if I didn’t process them out with the Lord in his love, [00:30:00] that somehow they were gonna get stuck inside and they were gonna come out in a bad way.

Kelly: And I was gonna be someone who was bitter and unforgiving and offended by God. And it was not gonna be a pretty story. Like I was tempted at times just to shut down emotionally. I thought, I felt like. Running away from the pain. And of course I wouldn’t run away from my family, but I could choose to run away from the pain and shut down emotionally.

Kelly: But I sensed God telling me in those places I had a choice. I could choose the path of peace and hope, and that’s processing it all out with him. Or I could shut down emotionally and be deeply wounded and become a mess and then have to process it out anyway. So my thought always was, let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.

Kelly: That truly was my thought. Like, I know this has to be done. Let’s just do it. Let’s do a one and done thing. Do it as fast as we can. Let’s move on in a healthier way.

Jennifer: Yeah. So it sounds like you were really receptive to the, because I would say that was a Holy Spirit realization that you [00:31:00] had. So it sounds like you were really trying to keep your heart open to the Holy Spirit.

Jennifer: Well, I’m, I’m curious because I know you love scripture. I know you spend a good chunk of time, so. Is there somebody in scripture that really resonates with you, that kind of walked through a similar journey or experience?

Kelly: There’s so many my favorites because I think because this has been such a long journey, my favorites are those who have long journeys.

Kelly: So Joseph, as I mentioned before, was one of those guys took a long time to see what God was up to. And the other one was Abraham. I camped out in the story of Abraham for many years because Abraham was promised a son, but wow, that took a really, really long time for it to happen,

Kelly: So I would go to that story and, and I would find much encouragement in my waiting journey. So really it was. God keeps his promises. Those stories told me God keeps his promises. He’s completely in charge of all things. I can [00:32:00] trust him to bring about his plans and purposes in my life as I follow him, and I wanted it to happen sooner rather than later.

Kelly: So I tried so hard to keep short accounts with him because I knew it just makes you a mess. I lived in places where I resisted his guidance. I took things into my own hands. I wanted to make things happen faster than was his plan. And I ended up making a mess. And so because I had this experience with the Lord, I thought, okay, Lord, I never wanted to see that again in my life.

Kelly: Never, never, never. So I’m just gonna follow you. But it took a lot of processing, a lot of working it out with the Lord because I would get so scared of how long things were taking. I would feel so panicked that my girls were never gonna learn how to talk, that they’d never be okay, that they didn’t have the help they needed.

Kelly: And so I had to keep coming back to the word and saying to the Lord, [00:33:00] right now, I don’t believe I can trust you to meet the needs of my girls. Right now, I feel like I have to take over because I don’t feel like you’re doing a very good job. But I know it’s not true. I’ve taken over before and look what a mess that caused.

Kelly: I never wanna go there again. So, God, I just, and this is key. I need you to speak to me very, very clearly right now, like, I need to hear from you. And I can remember one time saying that to the Lord because my, I had moved away from that deaf school with my husband. The, the Air Force wouldn’t let him move to the St.

Kelly: Louis where they were in this grade school. They were learning to talk. And so I moved with him to a place where they didn’t get good help. And then my husband deployed because he’s a fighter pilot and he’s going off to war. And I’m sitting with the Lord going, you know, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Kelly: Here I am. My husband’s not here. I think I could just pack up the car and go back to St. Louis. He wouldn’t even know until he came home but I processed it out with [00:34:00] him and the Lord spoke to me and he said, wait. And he actually gave me the verse from Isaiah, I think it’s 40 31, where it says, they that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.

Kelly: They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint. And so he just kept saying to me, wait, those that wait upon the Lord, those that place their hope in the Lord, those are the ones that I’m gonna lift up. Those are the ones that I’m gonna strengthen.

Kelly: But I was still tempted. And this was so helpful for me. Our God is alive and he’s a God who speaks to the deepest knees of our heart. So I said to the Lord, thank you for speaking the word. Wait. I’m still not convinced. So I, my husband called me from this war area and I told him, I didn’t tell him the whole story, didn’t tell him I was thinking about packing up the car and moving.

Kelly: But I said to him, I’m having a hard time believing I’m supposed to be here with these kids, with these schools that aren’t very good for them. I said, would you just pray that God would speak to me? The very [00:35:00] next day I get an email from him that said, you know, I’ve been doing this bible study with some guys, and I think you should read Isaiah 40.

Kelly: That’s, I just really had some good nuggets in it for me, and that’s the chapter that held the verse that God gave me. So he spoke to the deepest needs and gave me peace that in the way he would make a way.

Jennifer: Yeah. The other thing I love hearing just now you and your husband united together in your pain. I think it is so, so easy when we’re feeling overwhelmed and, and hurting to see our spouse or maybe our friend, whoever our, like our close relationship as the problem or the enemy.

Jennifer: Just because I think sometimes we just get dysregulated and lash out and so I love that, that you came together. Was that hard? Like did you ever have any kind of resentment towards your husband? Yeah, there was one

Kelly: part where I just felt like. I, I did feel a little resentment, but I talked to him about it.

Kelly: I brought it before the Lord. So I have counseled [00:36:00] young couples through moves and things like this, where one felt discontent and was blaming the other. And I have said, you know, my biggest advice to anyone in these situations is you bring it before the Lord. This isn’t your husband’s deal. It’s, it’s your deal.

Kelly: You bring it before the Lord and let him speak to you about your discontent, about your offenses, that you’re caring about your struggles. Talk to him about your struggles and ask him to speak to you because he’s got the final word. You want him to be in charge of your life. You don’t wanna be the one moving y’all around.

Kelly: You want him to be the one that, because he has all knowledge and you don’t. So my husband and I remained united. We consider that one of the greatest gifts of all the chaos we have walked through all the heartache and all the pain. God has given us a marriage that’s remained united simply because of communicating, because of putting God first in these hard things and realizing that it’s really the Lord that we need [00:37:00] to go to, to talk about it and not blame each other.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, and I, I, I love listening to your story too. It sounds like you had a really firm foundation with Christ prior to all of this. Yeah. And so I’m thinking now my, do my, my children are grown, but one of the things I wish I would’ve done better is process some of my challenges with them in a way that said like, Hey, this is hard, but I’m turning to Jesus.

Jennifer: This is hard, but this is the truth. And so I’m, I’m listening to your story thinking, you know, I wonder what. Choices and conversations your parents had that they didn’t realize, like, ’cause our kids are gonna grow up and experience hardship, guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so what are we in, like, what are we modeling?

Jennifer: What are, how are we investing, how are we training? So I, I love just hearing how God even was preparing you for all of this, even with your job, right? Like, he’s like, I’ve already gone before you Kelly, even if you couldn’t see it. And [00:38:00] then, so now if we could fast forward, I know you, so here you are, you’re by yourself and you’re overwhelmed and you’re, you’re hurting and you have to have a little bit of fear with your a firefighter husband, I gotta say, or not firefighter, but with a

Kelly: yeah, yeah. fighter pilot husband, right? Yes.

Jennifer: That, that would overwhelm me personally. Yeah. Like I, that would be, that would that you must have a really strong prayer life. So there’s that, but. Talk about, then you had another medical challenge, correct. That like completely leveled you.

Kelly: Yes, yes. One of the things I just wanna mention about what you said is God really did prepare me, and this gives me a lot of hope for anything I walk through.

Kelly: If we can look back over our story, even if we’ve come out of a lot of trauma, if we can just look at all the trauma and look for God’s hand and find one piece of blessing we, that helps us heal, that’s what neuropsychologists have said. That just knowing that there was a one blessing in this one area that reflected God’s heart [00:39:00] in your heart story, that that is the first step in being able to heal.

Kelly: What amazed me about God is he did prepare me by giving me a very strong foundation in the Word before any of this happened, and he gave me a good marriage and a man who was solidly rooted in the word as well. So when I was in high school, I remember we were a part of a church that taught you how to have quiet times, how to spend time with the Lord in the morning, how to read your Bible and how to pray.

Kelly: And so I was getting up early every morning and just praying through the Psalms, only the Psalms. And that taught me so much about how to process your pain with the Lord. It taught me that you don’t have to be afraid to tell honest, your honest feelings to God, that he’s gonna meet you in those places.

Kelly: That grief and hope can be residing in your heart at the same time. And this was huge for me. And as you can see, that really prepared me to process my pain with the Lord. The other way God prepared [00:40:00] my heart for all I was gonna walk through was I was reading stories about people who had walked through hard things like Johnny Erickson taught and somebody else who had a child born with special needs.

Kelly: And again, you know, you’re seeing the theme of Joseph play out. Like, this is so hard that yet. Through it all. God is showing his glory. And through these people crossing their pain, being honest with him, he’s, he’s presenting his faithfulness and trustworthiness to the world. So people in their midst were coming to know Jesus because of the way they’re walking through pain.

Kelly: And I remember looking at that and going, I was so moved in my spirit and I just said, Lord, I want that to be my life. I wanna walk through something hard so, so that people can see my life and see, oh my gosh, God truly is faithful and he truly is worthy of my trust. Because look what he’s doing in her life as she’s walking through these pain points.

Kelly: It seems so normal for me to pray that, but looking back, I say that was the Holy Spirit all over the [00:41:00] place because I was not that much of a deep thinker as a 14-year-old. There’s no way that would’ve come for me. But God was preparing my heart with actually. I mean, this truly was a theology of suffering.

Kelly: Like you can walk through hard things, but you’ll see God’s goodness even in that. And so he shaped me from an early age and that that gives me hope. Like even for my kids when they’re walking through hard things, to know that I don’t have to come up with the words that God is working in their story and I can trust him to speak to them in a way they can hear him in a way they most need to hear.

Kelly: And that gives me a lot of peace, and it takes a lot of the stress off my shoulders as a mom for my adult kids.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, and I love that you turn to the Psalms because I’m thinking for, for those listeners who maybe didn’t grow up in a Christian home who maybe are new to their faith and they’re like, I don’t know how to pray, or, or just are so overwhelmed by their circumstances that they, their [00:42:00] brain, you know, mushy brain syndrome or struggling to pray so they could.

Jennifer: Realistically, just start with Psalm one and go all the way through every day. Do pray a new prayer. And, and I loved you mentioned neuroscience too, because we know, we know from both a science and a spiritual aspect that when we take in truth regularly, when we take in the truth of scripture, we are rewiring our brains towards joy, peace, hope, and, and increased faith.

Jennifer: And then there’s the spiritual, right? Because the scripture is, is an offensive weapon, right? Like it’s our only offensive weapon that we have in the spiritual realm. And so I, I really love that you anchored in that. And, and so you practice also. Journaling, right? Like when you’re struggling. So what does that look like for you?

Kelly: Yeah. Let me tell you a story about how this came about. ’cause I didn’t journal. My main way to hang, anchor myself to the Lord during the overwhelm was I had [00:43:00] verses printed out on a paper. I prayed 40 verses every single day. And it was the only thing that kept me anchored to the Lord in the overwhelm of my life.

Kelly: Because if you wanna, you know, come up with a verse that’s gonna help you in the overwhelm, you gotta have it memorized because your feelings are so big. They’re so big, like all you wanna do is think negative thoughts. But it was super, super helpful to have the verses written out for me so that I could just pray ’em every day.

Kelly: Like, I’m not trying to memorize this, but I’m just gonna pray them. And in that way, they really got into my brain and into my heart because I’m processing them with the Lord as you pray them. But the, the second thing was about journaling. This came about while I was in the hardest time of my life with these four little kids, and they were getting cochlear implants and my husband couldn’t live there with us.

Kelly: And that went on for 17 months. And I, I remember this one particular day, very early on, and you mentioned when you’re in transition, like you’re grieving a, a list of about. 30 things. And so my [00:44:00] brain was overwhelmed, I was hurting. And my daughter, the oldest one was six years old. She on her, just before her seventh birthday, she had cochlear implant surgery.

Kelly: And you have to wait six weeks for the wound to heal before you can put on the external appliance and then start to hear and start to process sound. Again, remember I felt fear and panic that I’m behind. I’m behind, I’m behind. But now finally, we’re in a place where they can get what they need, but I don’t know if the Air Force is ever gonna let my husband move here.

Kelly: So again, we’re in a hurry, we’re in a hurry, we’re in a hurry. I felt panic. And the school called me and said, we think her incision is infected. And so I had a panic attack. I mean, not a panic attack, but I just got fearful. And I didn’t know what this would mean. We’re gonna be delayed and stirred up all those feelings of we’re behind, we’re behind, we’re behind.

Kelly: And I got in the car and I just said to the Lord. I, I don’t know how to deal with this. Like, have you forgotten who I am? This is Kelly Hall. I have a weak faith. Do you [00:45:00] remember who I am? I can’t handle one more hard thing, and the Lord so gently spoke to my spirit and just said, Kelly, I remember you. Do you remember me?

Kelly: And I, I was just such a moment of peace where I kind of chuckled with the Lord and I said, yeah, let me just remember you right now. Thank you that you are with me. Thank you that this is from you. Thank you that I don’t have to be afraid because our whole life is laid out before you. You’re gonna meet my girls’ needs.

Kelly: You can do more in a moment than I can do. In a lifetime, so I don’t have to be afraid. Like this time fear I had, that’s from the enemy. It’s not from you. And so I started journaling. This was really an impetus for me to start journaling. And I, at times when I felt overwhelmed and I was struggling to believe God, like you’re in that place where I believe, but help my unbelief.

Kelly: I would write at the top of my page, God, I remember. And I would just start writing every single way I could think [00:46:00] of that God had met our needs, that God had shown up, that God had spoken, that God had provided. And I would write sometimes pages as I rehearsed these provisions of the Lord, until I could get to the point where I could say, okay, I believe you.

Kelly: Now. That was really fun. You really are who you say you are. You really do keep your promises. Thank you. And I would say that that is one of the main ways that journaling helped me was remembering. And sometimes it was processing my pain, but usually the journaling didn’t help me process my pain. That happened in places that were, that often went faster than my pen could go.

Jennifer: I actually wanna wanna kind of stick on your journaling for a minute because, so I’m gonna share, so I’m in therapy, I’m sharing free therapy that from my therapist that she teaches me. Okay. Okay. So, and she’ll often talk about, so like when we lost my father-in-law, she was very strongly encouraging me to do things that brought joy [00:47:00] and, and that were, and she equates joy using other resources that informed her.

Jennifer: But Joy is being glad to be with someone. So like it’s a relational connection and, and the, she talks about how the stronger our joy bridge, the more capacity we have to handle difficult things. And also including intentional gratitude, which is re gratitude is not just, Hey, I’m thankful.

Jennifer: If you’re looking from a brain science perspective, it’s gratitude is remembering relational connection that helps you feel loved, seen, known, and, and so what I’m hearing is through that the Holy Spirit is like, okay, yeah, this is super, super hard. You’re right, this is beyond your capacity. Let’s find ways to build your capacity.

Jennifer: And so you are building in the truth, but you’re also strengthening your joy bridge by, and one more thing is, according to my therapist who knows a lot about brain science, our brains. Don’t recognize like past and present. So when we [00:48:00] reflect on a connection memory like you did, remembering how God was with you, which is a relational connection, you’re getting your relational circuits back on whatever, but so your brain doesn’t know that that’s happening in the past.

Jennifer: So you’re reliving that memory as if it’s in the present. And so I’m, I’m just speaking to the listeners because sometimes when we’re in overwhelm for me, I can hear all these great tools, you’ve mentioned numerous great tools, and we can think, well, I don’t have time for that. I don’t really need that.

Jennifer: Yes, I know truth, whatever. But not realizing that we’re actually building our resiliency so that we can manage those difficult things without doing things we regret. Adding to our shame, adding to our guilt. So I, I really, I really love that. And I, I would love too, if you could, I know there was a, you have a miracle story.

Kelly: Yes, and I will share that. But first I gotta, I’ve gotta respond to what you just said. So instead of using the word remembering, [00:49:00] we all know it’s helpful to remember how God operated in our past, because we know he will do that in our future. But the word I use, and I never understood why until you just said, I use the word rehearse.

Kelly: I, because when I’m remembering what I’m doing is I’m going back and I’m actually rehearsing the entire event in my mind. And I never knew why that was so impactful. But what you just described was you, it’s because you’re remembering the relationship. You’re remembering this moment when you felt seen, known, protected, fought for, and loved by your savior in a very intimate and personal way.

Kelly: And that’s why, so that’s why writing out your remembrances. Where it helps you rehearse it and it becomes even more real, and it’s very, very powerful. It does rewire your brain and you are reminded of how much God is actively working in your story at this moment.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, and I wanna add one more thing.

Jennifer: Again, just speaking to the listener again, borrowing [00:50:00] my therapist words, but you’re also getting what’s called your relational circuits back on which parts, parts of your brain, where when you’re in overwhelm and problem solving mode, your relational circuits can actually turn off, which then makes it really challenging to hear from God, but by engaging in.

Jennifer: Rehearsing by remembering his goodness and and gratitude. You’re turning your relational circuits back on, making it easier to hear his voice. And so I wanna say that to people who are listening like, you know what, Kelly, I don’t have that. I don’t hear from God like that. I, where is he? And, and sometimes our overwhelm, it’s not that he’s not speaking, right, it’s just, it makes it really challenging to hear.

Jennifer: But there are steps we can take that. So hopefully people can listen to some of the steps in your story that can increase our ability to hear God’s voice when he is speaking.

Kelly: Yes. That’s so true. And I would just say for the person who’s just starting out for the first time, you’re in [00:51:00] overwhelm, I would just encourage you to pray Psalm 23.

Kelly: Even just that first line, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leads me to the side still. Waters

Kelly: Honestly, I in the most overwhelmed places in my life, and I can’t sleep because the chaos is swirling

Kelly: The worry is becoming big. I will just pray those verses and imagine the presence of God surrounding me and actively working in my whole entire story. And I’m able to go to sleep often when I just keep remembering, Lord, you’re my shepherd, Lord. You are working. I can rest in you. I don’t have to figure it all out.

Kelly: You’ve got me. And then you can start practices also like the rehearsing and remembering. I love that description. Well, I do wanna close out our time, with just one story and explain why this is so, so impactful. And then, so I think this one story means so much to me because again, it speaks to the relational nature of [00:52:00] God.

Kelly: We are not in this alone. Everything that’s happening in your life is not taking him by surprise. He’s not abandoned you, has not forsaken you. He is still actively working with you right now in your story. And he had, and he’s writing a masterpiece so we don’t have to be afraid. This story ministers that kind of truth to my heart.

Kelly: So there I was in St. Louis feeling very lonely and overwhelmed, and I remember it was winter in St. Louis. I’m from Texas. I’m a warm weather girl. So that made me feel even just lonelier and isolated and yuck. , I’m bundled up in all this winter clothing and I came home from dropping off my kids.

Kelly: I had two hours before I had to start picking them up again from various therapies and preschools and all things. And I just said to the Lord, I’m so lonely. And I just poured out my heart to him. And you know, I told him all the truth things and I thanked him. I was so grateful for all he was doing. We were finally seeing [00:53:00] my oldest daughter start to have conversations for the first time in her life.

Kelly: She was seven years old. Good things are happening. But I was, you know, taking care of these four kids by myself. And I just feeling so lonely. I just poured out. I just said to the Lord. Please give me a person that I can talk to about this. But you know, it’s really hard to come to people like in your family with your hard story because then they feel like they have to rescue you.

Kelly: And I didn’t wanna add to their pain and I didn’t know who could understand our complicated story. And so I said, God, I can’t think of anyone. But if you would, if you have someone in mind, would you have ’em call me? So I just rested in his presence. But then I started thinking about some comfort food and I grabbed my keys and I had this plan to go visit Panera Bread and get a, a lovely bagel with cream cheese.

Kelly: But then the phone rang and the woman on the other end said to me, Kelly, for three days, God has been whispering your name, telling me to call you. But I [00:54:00] kept putting him off thinking, I don’t know how to help. I don’t know what to say. But then that day, as she put it, he has been shouting your name to me so I could no longer ignore him.

Kelly: And I’ve called this woman, is someone I met at church. I knew her, but this woman has four grown children three of them profoundly deaf, they had moved to this school for the same reason I had. They had been in the military before and now all their kids were speaking and all of them had cochlear implants,

Kelly: but she understood my story, like she was someone who understood the complexities of what I was walking through. And so that conversation was like a healing balm to my heart. I felt seen by someone else. It, I felt heard, I felt known, but when I got off the phone, I literally fell to my knees sobbing to realize that God is so intimately involved in our lives that he will arrange a phone call for you right when you need it, and he’ll start doing it three [00:55:00] days earlier because he knows that’s how long it’s gonna take.

Kelly: And so in my loneliness, I had never felt so seen, held, and loved on by the Lord. Isaiah 49 16 says, he’s engraved his name on our hands and his our walls are ever before him. And so that just tells me God knows everything about my life. He’s so intimately involved. He is deeply invested in our story, and it delights him to love on us in these places as we just keep coming to him.

Kelly: He is loving on you. As we come to him in prayer, it opens our heart to receive all the love that he has for us. And so I just wanna say that in those moments when you suddenly realize that God is loving you, you don’t feel abandoned because that’s the lie that we go to most when we’re in pain.

Kelly: God has left me. It’s up to me to fix everything. But when we understand that we are held by [00:56:00] the one who created us, it changes everything. When we understand he’s our keeper, it allows us to surrender our, our just driving need to fight for ourselves all the time to make everything happen and trust that he truly is taking care of us in ways that would blow our minds if we could see everything happening in the spiritual realm.

Kelly: So that’s a story that my husband and I have gone back to. Thousands of times over the years we’ve rehearsed it and remembered that story. And also, and I just wanna share this too, the story of how God met me that day that my oldest daughter was diagnosed, my parents came home from work, my mom came home from work.

Kelly: I, you know, we talked, and then my dad needed dinner. You know, men get hungry even during a crisis. And so with my mom and I couldn’t imagine cooking, but we just ran to this nearby pizza place. Let’s grab a pizza. And I walked in the door and there was a woman with four kids and a little boy who [00:57:00] had hearing aids on, and I told her my story.

Kelly: I cried. She turned out that she was a Christian. It also turned out she’d never been to this pizza place in her life. Normally on Friday nights, she and her family stay home , but she said tonight I thought we’d try something different. I had no idea why we ended up at this place. But she looked me in the eye and she said, but now I know.

Kelly: Now I know why. This woman was able to give me a phone number of a place where my daughter could receive help and learn to talk. And then as I was walking out the door, God spoke to my heart and it was just the sweetest thing he said to me. See Kelly, I will never leave you or forsake you. And at that very moment, I knew my husband was already on a plane coming home for a three week leave on a date he had chosen 10 months earlier.

Kelly: This was God’s perfect timing for my husband and I to process this pain together. It was his perfect gift to both of us, [00:58:00] and that woman was such a. Such a powerful reminder that nothing takes God by surprise. That not one part of our store, our story slips unnoticed through his fingers. We don’t have to be afraid.

Kelly: We are in his timetable and we’re in the middle of the most beautiful story ever written. We simply get to follow him and discover all the beauty he has in, in store for us.

Jennifer: That, that, that is beautiful. I yeah. I’m, I’m gonna hold on to your, the, the entirety of your story and reflect upon it because there are so many powerful truths.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm. And, and just seeing God’s tender, tender, faithfulness.

Kelly: Amen. Well, we’re gonna close this time with just, I’m just gonna pray for you and I wanna share. I wanna share a little prayer that I’ve written that actually hangs on my wall, and then I’m gonna pray just a little bit more for every [00:59:00] single listener who is walking through a time of fresh heartache and wanting to know that God is with them.

Kelly: So I have two signs on my wall that are huge. Because I need to be reminded of God’s truth all the time. Deuteronomy 31, 8 says, the Lord himself goes before you and will be with you. He’ll never leave you or forsake you, so don’t be afraid and don’t be discouraged. One of the most powerful promises. But I’ve sat with the Lord in that place and I’ve said.

Kelly: Help me understand more deeply what it means that you’re really with me in all of your love. In all your power. I really wanna understand. And so I just looked over the Bible. I felt the Holy Spirit just driving my eyes and my heart to think about all the miracles he had accomplished in the Bible and to remind me that all that power he poured out in the past is with him right now.

Kelly: And it’s the same power he is pouring out on my life. And so this prayer I wrote, which is also on my wall, is, Lord, thank you that you are with me and for me in [01:00:00] all your sea splitting wonder, working giant, slaying water, walking, sun, stopping obstacle, demolishing, mountain moving. Death testifying power and love at all times.

Kelly: In all the places where we feel like death is growing and all the places where we see dreams dying. God is working life and he is bringing new, new out of the old. He is bringing new hope out of places where we have thought all hope has died. And the truth is God, when God meets us in this grief, he is moving us from hopeless To him.

Kelly: He is moving. Our focus from all the things that steal our hope to him is who is the one who gives us all hope. He is our hope. He is the source of hope. And so I just wanna pray for those listening. Just very briefly, father, I lift up every single person who is walking through times of fresh pain.

Kelly: Or in a long story of pain that just tends to be ongoing. [01:01:00] That right now, today, you will wrap your arms of love around them. That you will surround them with the deepest love that they have ever felt, that they would know, that they are intimately loved, adored, held, fought for, and seen by the God of the universe, by the one who created them, who knew them even before they were knit together in their mother’s womb.

Kelly: Let them know that they are your chosen one, and that you have good plans for them and you are working good right now, and they’re gonna see your blessings up close and personal in every place where their heart is breaking. Thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen.

Jennifer: Amen.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, i’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope podcast.