Podcast

How Trust in God Rescues Us From Cynicism and Apathy: Kelly Hall and Jennifer Slattery

[00:00:00]  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 friends. Thank you so much for joining me for the 101st episode of Unshakeable Hope. I am so grateful my friend, Jennifer Slattery was able to join me for the second part of our conversation where we’re discussing a couple of places in my story where God so tenderly rescued me.

Kelly: as always, the main question we’re addressing in some way on this podcast is how do we trust God’s heart when his ways and delays break hours? And that’s the title of the 100th episode, so please go back and catch that as well. There are so many more [00:01:00] stories I would love to share in these two episodes, but Jennifer and I cover some powerful moments of God’s miraculous care in our family’s story

Kelly: I mentioned last week how hard it was for me to celebrate, but God’s timing is just blowing me away. The release of these two episodes, the hundredth, the hundred first, are occurring right on my birthday week. I just love how he orchestrated that.

Kelly: Today we’re looking at a couple of places where God so tenderly rescued me from a crisis of faith, and he proved he is a God of love, who relentlessly pursues us in our brokenness. He rescues us from our enemies, as David describes in Psalm 18, and he pulls us out of deep waters and I love this, the Bible says he rescues us.

Kelly: Why? Because he delights in us. That’s the God we find in the Bible. He loves us. He delights in us. He treasures us. He’s singing songs of deliverance over us. He is faithful and worthy of our [00:02:00] utmost trust. Let me tell you a little about Jennifer. She’s an author, speaker, and podcaster. I encourage you to listen in on her Faith Over Fear podcast, which is so powerful.

Kelly: She’s a great Bible teacher and you can catch some of her teaching on her socials. Or on the, your Daily Bible verse podcast. She’s joined me multiple times and I’ve been on her podcast as well. I love her and I’ll put all of her relevant info in the show notes today. Jennifer and I cover a lot of ground.

Kelly: We’re really getting curious with practical ways to navigate our hard stories with faith and cultivate tenderness with the Lord rather than giving into cynicism and apathy,

Kelly: Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me again for this second part of our conversation.

jennifer: I’m really looking forward to hearing your, like last time you gave so many really helpful, practical nuggets. I’m looking forward to hearing what you’re gonna. Talk about today.

Kelly: Yeah. That [00:03:00] last episode that we did together, it really blessed my heart and I’ve had some great feedback from listeners about how the Lord was just speaking to them through some of the things we shared.

Kelly: So I’d like to just spend a moment just touching on some things. So one particular friend was really impacted by our portion that we talked about mom guilt. Like how do you deal with all the guilt you feel? Yeah. When you’re raising kids. And it was so funny ’cause my husband said, you’ve never talked about mom guilt before, but wow, you had a lot to say.

jennifer: Wow. So we were doing therapy right here, right?

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome. Like I had processed a lot of it before, but I was so glad you asked that question. And one of the things that I shared with a friend of mine later was, another way God helped me with guilt, when we began to discover so many other diagnoses my girls had, and I would feel so guilty that I hadn’t helped them with these things earlier.

Kelly: God just led me to this thought that [00:04:00] if he had wanted me to do therapy in those areas, he would’ve revealed the issue sooner. He would’ve uncovered it, and so I didn’t need to feel guilty about that.

jennifer: Wow. I think you need to say that again because I think a lot of people hearing in their situations, like I’ve heard people say like, well, I feel like we didn’t save enough for our kids to go to college.

jennifer: Or, well, I feel like I didn’t plan for this, or I should have known this and say that again. And maybe to the listeners like, really listen to what Kelly’s saying right there. Say it again.

Kelly: Yeah, like Jennifer was saying, we all have places in our life where we have regrets and we think, oh, I wish I would’ve done this. But what the Lord showed me was Kelly, if I had wanted you to respond differently, I would’ve revealed this to you. Mm-hmm. Our God who lives outside of time, he knows what’s up ahead.

Kelly: Amen. We don’t have to know all the answers, but he does, and we can trust them to alert our hearts when we need [00:05:00] to pay attention.

jennifer: Yeah. When I like, it makes me think of, I heard a phrase from I think it was Nate Holdridge maybe. I’m not sure from a podcaster that God makes crooked crooked lanes straight or crooked roads straight.

jennifer: And so even if we do mishear him,

jennifer: he still has a way of like, you know what, okay, you’re trying to honor me, so I’m just gonna nudge you a little bit over here and make sure that you’re on the right path.

Kelly: Yeah. He’s so good to rescue us and to guide us and to speak to us in those places.

Kelly: So many times we think we missed it. I was afraid that I had failed my kids and that I was behind and I hadn’t done enough. But God, there was that one time when, three years we spent at a poor school for kids with hearing issues, and I can tell you that looking back, they’re in the same place they’d be if we stayed at the school.

Kelly: I really feel like that time wasn’t wasted, that time wasn’t detrimental to their progress because God had them and God took care [00:06:00] of it.

jennifer: Amen.

jennifer: Yeah.

jennifer: Well, I, I think that’s one of the things I really appreciated about. Our conversation last time too was how you shared just how you wrestled with God.

jennifer: Like you really gave yourself space to wrestle with him. And I think that’s so helpful. And then something that I started practicing after our episode is I’m like, huh, maybe I should be reading a psalm a day. Like you shared how you used the Psalms to pray. Yeah. And so reading the Psalms through that lens, like how can this inform my interactions with Christ is a really helpful, ’cause sometimes I can kind of fall into a rut with my scripture reading.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

jennifer: And so I like those fresh ideas that like, how can I make this more interactive with the Lord? And so I loved how you’re like, we’ve got a whole book in the Bible that guides us in that. So I thought that was really helpful.

Kelly: Oh, I love that. That’s so good. [00:07:00] We are always as people, just because we’re human, it’s very easy for us to fall into ruts.

Kelly: And I love that God is a creative God who is continually pursuing our hearts and opening, opening us up to more of him. It’s so cool.

jennifer: Yeah. Well, I, that makes me wonder, though.

jennifer: Is what about when we think we can’t hear him and we just feel like we’re stuck? Like, is that something we’re gonna talk about?

Kelly: Yeah, we’re gonna touch on that. We’re gonna touch on some of the ways that we hear from him. And I think one of the first things that is so helpful, we’re gonna look at a couple of different stories from my life, but I think what’s gonna happen is we are gonna discover that.

Kelly: Some of us don’t pay attention to our souls. Like for a long time, I didn’t pay attention to my soul what’s going on inside of me. And I think these stories really help me and help people. I’ve shared it with just realize, oh, I, I need to pay attention to some of those things I’m feeling that’s from the Lord.

Kelly: [00:08:00] And so I think he’s, A lot of times people will say, I don’t hear from God. And I’ll start asking questions like, well, have you ever been reading the Bible? And suddenly a thought popped into your mind? Or, or a verse was highlighted, well, that’s God’s voice. See, you hear from him. That’s him. And so anyway, I, so today’s topic is different than the last time.

Kelly: Last time we really did an overview, as I said in the intro, an overview of some big places in my story. And we looked at some foundational truths that help us as we walk through heartache. But today, we are really looking at the longer story when we start getting weary of our situations and we start getting tired of becoming intimately acquainted with unanswered prayers.

Kelly: Like, I wish I didn’t know what that felt like so well. And so we’re looking at questions like, how do we trust God when we’re just tired of waiting for him to come through? And how do we keep our heart tender to God when we see him answering our deepest longings and somebody [00:09:00] else’s life?

jennifer: Yeah,

Kelly: that’s so painful.

Kelly: And then in these long ways, as the disappointments pile, here’s something that’s true. We have to fight the slide into apathy and cynicism. If we do not intentionally disrupt this slide, we will become cynical and we will start settling for less than what God has for us and we’ll start muting our desires and we’ll stop ringing them before the Lord with faith.

Kelly: Like we’ll just stop believing that God really wants to do big and good things in our lives. And so I think the question that comes out of that thought is how do we believe God? Is doing big things and that he is good and he is very generous and he is generously pouring out his kindness on our life.

Kelly: So also there is this tension that happens when we’re living in unresolved heartache and the pain of unanswered prayer. It’s very difficult to learn how to navigate those spaces and the Lord, because he is [00:10:00] so good and tender and kind, he is always pursuing us in these places to just draw us deeper into intimacy with himself.

Kelly: Because the answer is not why am I suffering? It’s who is holding me. He Jesus is our answer. That’s really what I think is so true, is that as God brings us deeper into intimacy with himself, we discover, oh, you’re the answer I was looking for all along. Thank you. Thank you for healing my heart in this broken place.

Kelly: So Jennifer, I’m just wondering if you’ve not had people on your show that have talked about things like this or you’ve dealt with it?

jennifer: Yeah, actually , I don’t remember the date, but we have Jamie. Okay. She’s a musician. I forget her last name, ,

Kelly: jaimie jamgochian

jennifer: Yes.

jennifer: I think so. I think so. Sacred Surrender where, ’cause she talks about a long waiting season and I was actually just researching this morning the wilderness [00:11:00] season, like the symbolism of wilderness in scripture, which is what I hear you talking about. Kind of that wilderness.

jennifer: Like, I feel lost. Everything feels foreign and hard , and really. Like, there’s so much divine revelation that can happen in wilderness seasons. And so

Kelly: yeah,

jennifer: I’m looking forward to I mean, we heard a little bit of last episode where I wonder if you would have developed that deep intimacy with Jesus without all of those really hard, and I’m thinking particularly of when, because we’ve moved a lot, my husband and I, and it’s, every move is a grief.

jennifer: It’s like you’re, you’re grieving your old church, you’re grieving your old people. You feel uprooted, you feel lost, and then to have your girls, right?

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: So yeah. So I was kind of thinking about that, like how does God use those waiting periods to really heighten your awareness of him and his heart?

jennifer: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. You know, one of the things I would say is that. [00:12:00] All the painful places that we’ve walked in with the Lord have really purified our hopes. That’s how I would describe it. Like I’m hoping in a lot of world worldly outcomes. Like I want their lives to look like this.

Kelly: But what God did over these years, through all the heartache, through all the suffering, is he just purified our hopes. And our hopes became so much more about Jesus experiencing him and walking in the story that he is writing for our family. And there was, and we’re not gonna talk about this today, but during that time as he purified our hopes, he really called me to surrender my idol of normal, where I was just expecting something that looked so much more normal in our lives.

Kelly: And he uprooted that and he just said, why do you want normal when I’m doing something so much more beautiful in life? Because as we walk in the tension of heartache, one of the things that I know is it feels like heaven is speaking a [00:13:00] resounding no over every part of our life. You know? But what if? What if God is really saying new?

Kelly: I’m doing a new thing. And that’s mind altering for me.

jennifer: Wow. So like in your brain, when you hear no translating new, is that what’re right. Wow. Yeah. I’m gonna have to think about that and cultivating anticipation rather than expecting loss and despair. , I feel like that is a really difficult, like when you were talking about not falling into apathy and cynicism, I feel like that can be a defense mechanism.

jennifer: Absolutely. You know, like, this, hurts too much and so I’m not gonna believe, or I’m, I’m gonna turn bitter or, and to shift from anticipating despair to anticipating God’s goodness. I can see how that can be challenging right? When you’re, when you’re hurting. But I can also see how life-giving that practice would be too.

jennifer: So talk to me about, I [00:14:00] know, ’cause we talk a lot, right? Yeah. Like, I know you went through a crisis of faith.

Kelly: Right. Yes. So I think that this really surprised me. The crisis of faith surprised me and then the way God met me in that place and then healed me. So I really do wanna talk about that.

Kelly: I didn’t even realize I was having a crisis of faith.

jennifer: Okay.

Kelly: But I started feeling depressed, like that was my main symptom. Okay? Like, I’m super busy in ministry, I’m leading women, and I’m teaching the Bible and I’m traveling and speaking about, courageous faith and how to trust God in hard times rather than trust in yourself.

Kelly: Every morning I’m reading the Bible and I’m, I feel like God is speaking to me through the word, but here’s something else that was happening. I, he was also saying, Kelly, I really wanna talk to you about that place in your heart. And I would be like no, I really don’t want to do that because I don’t busy Lord there.

Kelly: And yeah, you’re interrupting our Bible [00:15:00] reading time,

Kelly: but I was kind of scared about going there. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what’s in there. I don’t have time to fall apart. What is that gonna look like? And so it was really hard, but what happened as I continued to stuff, whatever it was, because I didn’t know, I did start to notice a mild depression settling over me, and I had muted emotions and, and I just wasn’t experiencing.

Kelly: God’s presence and joy, even though I knew he was with me. So I finally felt like, okay, I really need to respond to the Lord because I hate living this way. And so he was bringing to mind Matthew 1128 through 30, which has come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I’ll give you rest.

Kelly: And so I thought, you know, I need to get away. I kept thinking of prayer retreat, maybe that would be good. And so I talked to my friend, she said, I’ve been feeling God telling me the same thing. Let’s go. And so we’re gonna go to the mountains and just spend some time in prayer. And the beauty of Colorado.

Kelly: [00:16:00] I was excited about it, but then as the day approached, I started thinking, this is dumb. I don’t have to spend money to go spend time with the Lord. God can speak to me right here. Like I will spend all kinds of money on my kids, helping them be okay and you know, therapies and all this stuff. But I felt like it was really selfish of me to take time away from my family for this.

Kelly: So it was very difficult for me. I was ready to call my friend and tell her I’m canceling, but then I noticed an envelope on, someone had sent me an actual letter, a physical letter, and so I opened it and inside was a key verse that my friend had shared at their women’s retreat. I had spoken at it the year before, so she sent it to me and it was Matthew 11 22 30, but it was from the message.

Kelly: So I’m gonna, okay. I’m gonna read it from the message because I just think it’s so cool. Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion? Come to me, get away with me and you’ll recover your [00:17:00] life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Kelly: I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn how to live lightly wow. Such a powerful invitation to life. So I started crying and I called my friend and I said I was just about to cancel, but guess what God did? I know God is telling us we are worth it and he’s worth it.

Kelly: So let’s go. And then I left a message, but she called me back and said, Kelly, I was just about to call you for the exact same reasons I was gonna cancel.

jennifer: Wow,

Kelly: I was gonna cancel. But the moment you shared that with me and the way God intervened. Let’s go. God’s got something for us. Wow. So we went and we, it was a beautiful time.

Kelly: The main thing that happened, we spent time apart worshiping God, praying, journaling, whatever, and then we’d come back together for meals and process what God was speaking or [00:18:00] what we were feeling. But the second day we went to this mountain lake and I was spread out on a blanket with all my stuff, you know?

Kelly: It was so beautiful.

jennifer: Oh, it sounds so lovely.

Kelly: Then my friend came over and she said, Kelly, God just gave me a vision of you, and I would find out later. God had never given her a vision before. She said it was a vision of you covered in ashes from head to toe.

Kelly: And it reminded me of what I’d seen on TV after the World Trade Centers collapsed. Like everyone is covered in gray ash and God spoke the word mourn. Does that mean anything to you? And I immediately started crying. And y’all may get tired of me saying, I was crying, but I’m an emotional listener.

Kelly: When the Holy Spirit speaks, I do often get emotional. But he touched this part of my heart where I just knew, I knew, I knew that I did need to mourn. And I was surprised by that too. Like, Lord, I’ve grieved, and I think I said this last time, I’ve grieved so much. It’s hard for me to believe there’s more [00:19:00] for me to grieve, but I felt the freedom to grieve.

Kelly: What I love so much about the Lord is that when we’re in these broken places, he is never saying, get your act together. Try harder, be more. Read more pray more. Pray differently. He’s never saying those things to us. So if you’re hearing those things, it’s from the enemy of your soul, or it’s from your own thoughts.

Kelly: That’s not the Lord. So what the Lord did was he met me in my brokenness and he just said, come to me and let me help you work through your grief. It was so healing and I felt so much freedom and so much love in that place. It was a long process. I’ll say that right up front, and I’m not gonna go through the whole story, but when we came back, God led me to a song and it was a song of lament, but in the lament, the person was claiming the promises of God.

Kelly: And I listened to that song seriously. I listened [00:20:00] dozens of times every single day as I just wept and grieved in places that were too deep for words. And sometimes there are just not words for the grief and the losses that we have walked through. Like it’s so complex and it’s so deep. But we’re, we can be so comforted to know that the Holy Spirit is praying for us, and Jesus is interceding for us in this place and always, always, always pursuing our hearts and leading us into a path of rescue and soul healing.

Kelly: So that was just so comforting to me. But one of the things that God does and. This is, so helpful. He wants to uncover the lie at the very root of your grief and at the very root of your pain. And that’s what God did for me. So I discovered that I was offended at God. I was really offended at all the hardship he was allowing in my girls’ lives.

Kelly: And I was surprised once again by that. But here is the prayer. God led [00:21:00] me to pray my confession, he just showed me what was true about what was in my heart. And this is something that is so helpful when we are in places of brokenness. When God shows us what’s true and we confess it to the Lord, all we’re doing is telling God the truth.

Kelly: And this is what my prayer was. God, when my heart reads the story of my girls’ lives, what I see is neglect not the care of a good shepherd. I can’t see anything else that’s true about their story, but I do know that that’s not true. I know you are the good shepherd, so please help me see differently. So he just made me aware of this lie that was at the root of my heart, that my, my lens of interpreting their story was flawed by my own heartache and my own disappointment, and I was not seeing God for who he was.

Kelly: As I asked him to help me see differently, that’s the healing journey just continued. And I won’t go through the whole thing, but I will say two things. So number [00:22:00] one, I just could not believe God loved my girls. It did not look like love and it really, really hurt me. I mean, my feelings were deeply hurt by the way he was taking care of our family, but God reminded me of the very familiar story of Lazarus where he hears Lazarus is sick, come quickly.

Kelly: And he waited several more days, three more days, I think it was. But he waited , but the Bible says, God led me to this verse. The Bible says he loved them, and yet he waited. And that spoke to the deepest need in my heart. I just began to weep in the truth that God was saying, I love your family, Kelly. I love your girls.

Kelly: I am taking care of them. My delays are not evidence of my absence, and my delays are not evidence that I have. Stop taking care of you. I’m still pouring out my goodness on your life in so many ways, and I’m gonna help you see it. And that was the [00:23:00] healing journey. God was just purifying my hopes and helping me see how much love and goodness he was pouring out on our family’s life.

Kelly: The second thing I wanna share with you, because I think it’s important, there is a scripture the Lord led me to where John the Baptist is in prison. And boy does that look like an unfair outcome, and that’s where he dies.

jennifer: Yeah. I mean,

Kelly: really it doesn’t, it seems like you’re neglecting John the Baptist.

Kelly: So this story really related so much to my story, but John says to his disciples, go to him and ask him, are you the one we’ve been waiting for? So you can see John was struggling with the,

jennifer: yeah.

Kelly: unfairness of the situation too. And Jesus says. Yes, I am the Messiah. I’m doing all these things.

Kelly: But then he says, blessed are those who are not offended by me in the ESV. And in other translations it says, blessed are those who don’t stumble on my account. So basically he’s saying, blessed are you, when you’re not offended, by the way, I’m [00:24:00] taking care of you.

jennifer: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I love that story too, because, well, and combined with yours in both, like, I’m thinking of when you open, you’re like, we can get stuck in apathy and cynicism, or we can fall into despair, which I would say despair and sorrow are very different.

jennifer: Whereas despair is when you lose hope. Whereas sorrow is when you’re like, Hey, this is super hard. But I, it’s easy when we are in that place of pain, when we are offended by God, when we feel like he’s not answering. To just quit. Right. To say, I, it’s too painful to read my Bible. It’s too painful to pray.

jennifer: But then we just get, it actually gets worse, right? Like the pain gets worse, the hurt gets worse. The, and so the healing comes when, and with John, he could have just stewed. Yeah. In, in the prison and in a, let’s be real, it was a dungeon. I mean, it wasn’t like, you know, our prison reforms where everything’s all nice and air conditioned and heated and, [00:25:00] and he could have stewed, but he went straight to the one with the answers.

jennifer: And, and I hear that in your story too, is even in your wilderness, that was a long wilderness journey, right? Like that was a long waiting and you just kept coming to him. And, and I think the, you talk about like people who, who struggle with whether they hear him or not. To me it’s like, I feel like as long as we’re not telling him no.

jennifer: As long as we’re not hearing his voice and denying it. Like I feel like we, we know when we’re outside, typically know when we’re outside his will. So then if we’re not sensing that clear from, ’cause he’s such a good father, he’s gonna let us know. Right. Right. So if we’re not sensing that, then we can trust that, okay, either he’s not speaking for a time for some reason, or maybe I’m not hearing him but I’m okay.

jennifer: I’m, I’m okay where I’m at [00:26:00] right now because he is the one to lead and to guide and to protect. And I just wanna say that because I think there’s a lot of times, especially when you’re dealing with those really intense, complex heart issues, it’s really easy to, to kind of fall into guilt and shame and condemnation.

jennifer: Partially because that’s what we experience in the world, right? There’s no other relationship apart from Jesus. Even our healthiest relationships where there aren’t some repercussions when we, you know, don’t respond as other people want.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: And so it’s, it’s easy to, I think, carry that into these really hard circumstances.

jennifer: But that wasn’t what, how God came to you. He didn’t come to you and say, like you said, Kelly, get your act together. Like chin up girl. You know? Yeah. Like, , don’t be in a mess. He came to you with love and grace and healing. And so, I, I just say that for those who are listening, you mentioned that the mom guilt was a big part.

jennifer: Well, [00:27:00] we are so programmed to live in guilt and condemnation, so maybe if people can, if they’re struggling with that. A good story to read is John, because

jennifer: jesus praised John for his doubt and for his wrestling.

jennifer: He publicly to the crowd, he’s like, no one born by women is better than John. He’s like the greatest prophet. And so like he’s saying, here’s a man of God, which we know and, and he clearly knew who Jesus was, like the lamb of God, who takes away the sins from of the world. And now here he is questioning.

jennifer: And Jesus wasn’t like, well, what happened to you? Like, where did your affirmation go? Where did your faith statement go? And now you’re doubting me like, what’s your problem? Yeah. He praised him.

Kelly: Right? Right. He understood the doubt. He didn’t condemn him for doubt. He didn’t condemn him for wrestling. And I love so much you brought up that point that he remained in conversation with Jesus.

Kelly: And I think that’s the key for us. When [00:28:00] God hurts our feelings, when our prayers are not being answered, when we’re wondering, when we’re starting to head towards cynicism and apathy, and we feel like we’re starting to believe God for the least he can do, rather than the best he can do is to talk to God about it.

Kelly: Just remain in conversation with them. Ask him to uncover the hurts and the lies that are rooted. Because really my lie was about the character of God because I was so disappointed. I just started seeing him as a neglectful father rather than a good shepherd. And when he uncovers those lies in conversation.

Kelly: He, I mean, I love this truth. He only reveals what he’s gonna heal. Like we don’t have to be afraid of what he’s gonna uncover in those places. Like I was, I was so afraid to talk to him about what was maybe hidden in this dark place in my heart. But I have just come to realize that if he’s uncovering it, he is leading you on a healing journey and we don’t have to be afraid.

jennifer: [00:29:00] Yeah. Well, and I love, so how did he, , in that season? Was he pursuing you or was it more like you’re trying to clinging to him? Or was it a little of both?

Kelly: Definitely. He was pursuing me. And if it had been up to me, I would’ve just become depressed and I would’ve drawn away and I would’ve become more and more cynical and hurt and jaded in my faith.

Kelly: I just love so much. We see this throughout scripture, don’t we, Jennifer? You know, so many stories. God pursues the people. Jesus pursues the hearts. We see the heart of our Father who runs after the one when he has 99 with him, like he pursues us. He is relentless in his love for us, and he loves us too much to allow us to stay stuck in our places of dysfunction.

jennifer: Yeah. So what are some ways then, so when we’re in that place, what are some ways that we can, so he does his part, which I love, and you were responsive to that. I love that as well, because. That’s a challenge [00:30:00] is being responsive when we’re hurting, especially if we feel like he’s the one hurting us.

jennifer: How can we keep our heart tender when we’re in that really tough place?

Kelly: Yeah, that is, that’s the question we need to ask. And I think what we see in scripture is that rather than getting cynical, we need to get curious. And that’s what John did. He got curious, he had a question for Jesus, and he sent his disciples to ask Jesus this question, are you the one?

Kelly: Like, I’m really having a hard time here. This isn’t making sense. So in the places where things are not making sense and we’re starting to feel. Discontent, dysfunction, we’re starting to pay attention to your reactions. If you’re starting to get snippy and you’re starting to be cynical and you’re starting to hear these words come outta your mouth, you know, pay attention to that and get curious.

Kelly: Remain in conversation with the Lord and bring the questions to him because there’s nothing he wants more than to lead us into wholeness. I had a friend say [00:31:00] to me even this morning, do you want it to be a one and done thing or do you want complete wholeness?

jennifer: Wow. Say that again.

Kelly: Do you want it to be one and done?

Kelly: Which means do you want it to be just super fast and easy, or do you want complete wholeness?

jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that, that’s making me think of. Jesus’s words. It’s a familiar verse. I’m sure many of you listeners will recognize this, but he said, you know, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come to give you life and give it to you abundantly.

jennifer: And it sometimes that’s hard to trust and believe, but it’s like, do we believe that he meant what he said? And he, he proved it by dying on the cross, right? And rising. He proved his heart for us by dying on the cross, his heart for our freedom. And then he proved his power to bring us freedom when he rose from the dead.

jennifer: But I, for me, when I’m in a struggling place, it can be helpful. I’m not saying I always do this. I wanna do it better, but it can be [00:32:00] helpful if I’m like, okay, this is what scripture says is true about Christ’s intentions for me at every moment. So therefore, am I believing that in this situation right now and are my actions.

jennifer: Drawing me closer to the life he’s called me to, or am I drawing closer to the life that the devil is trying to pull me to? Yeah. And so that offers a stark kind of like, , it helps me analyze, I guess, some situations and my responses. To them.

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really helpful. I think I shared last time that I often felt like God was putting two paths before me.

Kelly: Like, you can shut down emotionally, you can choose that path, but it’s gonna lead to despair and so I would always think, I don’t wanna have to clean up that mess or despair, so let’s go the other path. And even though it’s so confusing and you live in the tension of the unexplained,

jennifer: yeah,

Kelly: God is not coming to you saying, this is [00:33:00] why I’m allowing this long delay and this is why it’s hurting so much but down the road it’s all gonna make sense.

Kelly: Like, he never explains why. And even, and here’s something I heard just the other day, which I thought was just fabulous and brilliant. Even though Jesus knew all things. He knew the why of him going to the cross. He knew what it was for, but yet in Gethsemane, he still said, Lord, if there’s any other way,

jennifer: yeah.

Kelly: Can you remove this from me? And if not, your will, not mine. And he surrendered to that.

jennifer: Yeah. I, I’m also encouraged by your story, you know, as I’m thinking about how Jesus brought people with him into the garden at his weak moment, and with your story, you brought a friend and so God spoke to you personally and pursued you personally, but then he also pursued you tangibly like through this friend and I, I bring that up because I think it’s really, for me, when I’m hurting, I’m less apt to be [00:34:00] around people.

jennifer: Yeah. I’m, it’s harder for me to be relational and so I admire that. I heard that in your previous story as well, that you’re like, I’m hurting, I need somebody. I need an adult, I need a person. And then here you’re relying on someone. I think because when we’re in those weak places, it can be really hard, if not impossible, to stand on our own, right?

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: To get all the strength from within ourselves or even just, yes, God will carry us. And if, if you don’t have, if you’re in a place where maybe your humanity is unavailable to you right now, he will carry us. But he so often uses other people, right?

Kelly: He does. That’s so much of his story, and I know she was so blessed to be able to share that with me and be a part of my healing journey.

Kelly: And she’d never experienced that before from the Lord. So that was really,

jennifer: yeah.

Kelly: Cool for her as well. It was so, so cool. Another thing I really wanna mention about this story is I think we all, Jennifer, have those times where we just [00:35:00] think, I don’t wanna deal with what’s inside of me that’s hurting because I don’t know what’s there and I don’t wanna uncover it.

Kelly: And

jennifer: yeah.

Kelly: One of the, another thing that God said to me and this actually came through a friend who was really impacted by our last conversation. So she, has been through a lot of trauma and there’s a verse in the Bible that ministers to her, it’s Colossians the, character of Jesus is being explained and it says he holds all things together.

Kelly: And I’ve always found a lot of comfort in that. Like he holds my story together. He holds my mind together in all these places where I’m feeling torn apart. He’s holding it together. But she said that as she meditated on that verse, God spoke to her and he said, when she was feeling like, I don’t wanna talk about all this trauma, she was pushing back on him.

Kelly: He said, I hold you together so that you can fall apart.

jennifer: Wow.

Kelly: I know. It’s so powerful. When she was feeling afraid to go [00:36:00] to those deep places in her heart to face some of the trauma from her past, to process that out with the Lord, he was just saying, I’m a safe place. Come to me. I will hold you together while you fall apart in my arms so that I can heal you.

jennifer: Wow. Wow. And that’s exactly what he did with you, right? Yep.

Kelly: Exactly. That’s what he did. Well, I wanna go a little bit deeper into talking about how we can pray when we’re in these long journeys. And I think, maybe even another question would be, how do we keep our hearts tender to the Lord?

jennifer: Yeah,

Kelly: we’re following him and he is not living up to our expectations.

jennifer: Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: And that’s a big issue, unmet expectations. And so as we’re struggling with the temptation to be cynical, and we’re dealing with that feeling of we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, we’re kind of living in a trauma place where we can’t believe [00:37:00] that something bad is not about to happen.

Kelly: So we’re living in what do you call that? Fight or flight almost.

jennifer: Yeah.

Kelly: We’re guarded and we’re, it’s just really hard for

jennifer: hyper vigil, I would say hyper

Kelly: hypervigilant.

jennifer: Hypervigilant, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah, that’s a better word. So how do we, you know, we’re tempted to stop praying as we talked about, or we’re tempted to water down our prayers where we stop believing God for good things.

Kelly: And I can remember a time when my husband even said, like, we were dealing with so many unmet expectations, and we, he said, well, if we can’t believe God to answer those prayers, what can we believe him for? And ouch. That’s yeah. Ouch. Like, wow. Yeah. What can we believe God for? He promises good things and we keep praying for good things, but he’s not doing these good things.

Kelly: So what can we believe him for? Like, how do we pray? How do we pray with faith, with like a deep conviction of who God really is? And so I went to the Lord with that and he led me [00:38:00] very quickly to Isaiah. I think it’s Isaiah 43, 18 and 19, which talks about, I’m doing a new thing. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but he says, don’t you see it?

Kelly: I’m doing a new thing. I’m making a way in the wilderness. I am bringing springs into the desert. And so it is, it’s a message of so much hope. God is saying, this is not the end of your story. This is not a great big, no, I’m doing something new. And so I, I’d like to talk about this when. Through another story of mine about how we can keep our hearts tender with the Lord because it’s so, so, so hard.

jennifer: Yeah.

Kelly: It’s so much easier to shut down.

jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Now, and I do have a question. So when you were, when your shutdown phase? How long did that last, and do you think, like if you were to look back did you sense God kind of nudging on you or was it just like oblivious and then [00:39:00] boom, okay, revelation, this is what’s going on.

Kelly: It went on for several months. Maybe three months, but I was always sensing the Lord saying, I wanna talk to you about that place in your heart and I Okay.

jennifer: Okay.

Kelly: Would veg out. There I was getting to the point where mild depression was setting in. My emotions were numb. I did not wanna talk to him about it, and I started turning on the TV a lot more. Yeah. And that wasn’t helpful. I was just hiding, escaping.

jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. So I wonder for listeners, if they are noticing, behaviors that could be numbing out, even if they don’t recognize they’re doing, like maybe that could be a signal to them.

jennifer: Yeah. Like, Hey, let’s hit pause and, and you’ve got something going on. , Because I think some people, a lot of us may not be. Alert to what they’re feeling or what’s going on.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: And so they might just feel tired or muted and not recognize, okay, I’ve got this heavy emotional weight that I’ve been carrying for a long [00:40:00] time that I haven’t fully processed.

jennifer: So maybe seeing that is a signal that that mm-hmm. Something that God might be inviting them to go deeper.

Kelly: Yeah. And when I would hear me say things like when something difficult would happen, if I heard something come outta my mouth that sounded like, oh, great. Now what else is gonna happen? I mean, that’s an immediate red flag, honey, you are sinking into cynicism.

Kelly: Get yourself, get yourself to the throne of Jesus and talk to him.

jennifer: Yeah. So

Kelly: I think, again, that it is so important to pay attention to our soul, to talk to the Lord, to ask him to uncover what’s going on again, instead of being cynical, to get curious and have those conversations.

Kelly: I think too that there’s something else that can help us in this journey;

Kelly: so we moved to Arizona about eight years ago and all three of our girls were not doing okay. So all three of ’em moved in with us. One of our daughters has never been able to live outside of our home, but they weren’t doing well. I took my oldest daughter to a [00:41:00] doctor and we discovered she had chronic Lyme disease and she was starting to have a lot of symptoms and needed treatment.

Kelly: And it was very expensive. So we were gonna treat her, go through all that stuff, and then we were gonna wait to treat my younger daughter, one of the twins, until she was done. But my daughter. Started getting really, really bad very quickly.

Kelly: She started feeling like she needed to be in a wheelchair. It was getting harder for her to breathe and swallow and chew. Wow. Like all the muscles in her mouth were kind of tightening down. There was something happening that we didn’t understand and it was the chronic Lyme and it was neurological.

Kelly: We started treating her as well. And the treatment, Jennifer was harsh and hard and long and expensive where they got ports and they had like six hour treatments three times a week at a clinic.

Kelly: It was a very hopeful environment, but it was just hard. And the daughter that I mentioned that was the sickest, she started having what they called pseudoseizures. She just started having seizures that wasn’t [00:42:00] causing brain damage, but it was being caused by the neurological impact that was going on in her brain.

Kelly: She started having a lot of anaphylactic reactions to substances. So struggling to breathe and having to go to the emergency room. And my oldest daughter was being treated and there were times when she started losing her appetite and we weren’t even sure if she was gonna make it. , Wow. We had been through this whole long journey and I was just at this point where I thought, everybody’s launching and yay. I can

jennifer: breathe.

Kelly: Yeah, I can breathe now. Here, comes all the things I dreamed of for my girls. All the so-called normal things that I expected to happen and it was really disorienting for me. When I just had, and I know our listeners can relate, so many of our listeners, they’re walking through hard things where there’s not just a few things going on.

Kelly: There’s a pile of disappointments Yeah. That keep piling without a breakthrough. Like you’re waiting for the breakthrough, but things are getting worse instead of better. [00:43:00] And so I just said to the Lord, you know, I, it chokes me up a little bit. Like it was so hard. My heart was so broken, it seemed like too much for any person to endure.

Kelly: Absolutely. Your And I just said, again, I know you love me and I know you’re good, but I’m having a hard time feeling it. And I started meditating for 10 to 15 minutes every morning on verses that talked about God’s love and care for us. This changed my life. It was huge. So I would read Psalm 23. I would read Psalm 91 where it just talks about God’s care.

Kelly: I would go to verses that talked about his love, and like Jeremiah 31, 3 and four, I would spend time just thinking about that and believing. It’s hard for me to grasp the truth of the Bible. And so sometimes I will, especially when my heart’s hurting. So sometimes I’ll just picture Jesus standing in front of me, just saying my name.

Kelly: Kelly, I have [00:44:00] loved you with an everlasting love. I am drawing you with loving kindness. And I just imagine him speaking those words to me over and over, and just praying that God would help me believe that he loved me and he, he loved our girls in the midst of really the fear and the chaos and the heart.

Kelly: And it went on for three or four years, where I would say four years, where it wasn’t. Okay.

jennifer: I can’t even imagine. One, one thing I do have a que because I’m thinking of, of those who are listening that are like, I don’t even know if I have the strength in me to do that. Like, to, because that, that took, that was a lot of really brilliant and helpful and Holy Spirit led intention.

jennifer: But what are some ways like, I like for the new believers listening.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: You know, that, that haven’t yet, like when I, ’cause I know you right? And I, so you’ve got a long history of God’s. So you had, you had a bit of a foundation, right? Yeah. You knew [00:45:00] scripture. So how might, maybe, like, I’m wondering like, would it be appropriate like just to maybe find a mature believer in their circle and say, you know, I’m really struggling with this and I wanna put these action steps into place, but when I’m in a really hard place, I know I’m not going to, I know I’m gonna wanna just turn on the tv.

jennifer: Like, what are some things they can do to give them that little oomph when they lack the strength And Yes, thank, thankfully the Holy Spirit is always giving us strength, but I’m, I’m like, I tend to shut off.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: Like is, so that’s what I’m wondering, when you’re just way exhausted, overwhelmed, and you’re doubting God’s goodness anyway, and then you’re like, okay, so I’m gonna go focus on his goodness.

jennifer: Like, but if that bridge feels really wide

Kelly: There’s so many things that we could talk about here, but one of the things that helped me so much is when I. Found somebody who had walked through a lot of suffering and they had come out on the other side without giving up on [00:46:00] God.

Kelly: So I looked for people who really knew suffering, but they refused to give up on him and they refused to give in to doubt. And maybe our listeners, they’re walking through a place where they don’t even feel like they have it in them to reach out to someone. But I think you do have it in you to maybe read a book about somebody’s story.

Kelly: That’s where God captured my heart at a very young age. And I shared that last time just reading stories of people who walk through hard times. But those two things, they refuse to give up on God. And they refuse to give in to doubt. That doesn’t mean they didn’t tell the truth about their doubt.

Kelly: So they wrestle through. God, I’m just so mad at you right now. God, I don’t know how to believe you. God, I don’t have the strength to go on. I am having a hard time believing You’re with me. Will you show me?

jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really important ’cause I hear a lot. So with the faith over fear podcast, we talk about a lot of really tough stuff a lot of the times.

jennifer: Yeah. I hear from people how they often [00:47:00] will receive the message in faith circles, just , my therapist calls it left brain discipleship. But just, you know the truth. Say the truth. Speak the truth. You’ll be fine. Say the right prayer, memorize the right verse and everything will be okay.

jennifer: And there’s there it’s important to know truth and to memorize scripture and to pray. But people who understand that and normalize what I’m hearing, what you said is normalize the wrestling. Normalize the doubt, normalize the anger, because sometimes I feel like we can get stuck in it. By trying to support, like that’s what you Oh, yeah.

jennifer: Sounded like the beginning of your story is you didn’t wanna go there, understandably. ’cause you’re like, I, I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t want you anymore. Too hard.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: But being careful with who we share with maybe and Yes. And saying like, and that’s why people, so when I, when I launched Holy Love Ministries, which is no, I handed it off, but I would intentionally look for people who had suffered [00:48:00] to be on my team because I’m like, we are dealing with some people who are really hurting.

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: And you need, it’s very important. Our team is safe. And so you need to know what it feels like to suffer. And so I, I hear that when you said, and even in your story last time of a woman who had been there, right. Who, who God sent your way. That I bet was an entirely different conversation and relationship than someone who’d never had.

jennifer: Children with hearing challenges or, or any other special needs, it, those conversations probably go are vastly different.

Kelly: Right. I’m so glad you brought that up because if you’re a young Christian and you’re not knowing who to trust with your story, what you can do is just test a little piece of it with somebody.

Kelly: And if they come back with a dismissive response, then you know they’re not a safe place and they have not walked through enough suffering to be able to meet you [00:49:00] in a way that’s going to bring the healing and love of Jesus to your story. So I just think it’s important to be very careful who you trust with your whole story.

jennifer: Yeah. Or even trying to fix it. I think that, right, that shuts it down. because you talked about mom guilt last time, and I’m sure with anybody raising kids, you’re gonna get advice from everybody else and you’re gonna be told how you’re doing it wrong.

jennifer: I mean, people well intentioned, but my question is, are they praying as intensely for your children as you are?

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: And is God really gonna speak to that? Sometimes he will, but he’s probably gonna speak to you about your kids and your situation most. And so that to me is another way to gauge is those people who are prayerfully invested in your life and listening to God for your life is going to be a much safer person than somebody in Bible study, three tables down who happened to hear you mention something and they’ve got a beeline to you because they’ve got the solution.

jennifer: Right.

Kelly: Right. Oh, [00:50:00] Lord. Save us from those people and forgive and say that’s

jennifer: by being those people.

Kelly: Yeah, forgive us from the times when we were those people.

jennifer: Yes.

Kelly: It’s so easy to go there. I think I wanna just very briefly and succinctly summarize something I found in the story of Moses, which really helped me with this situation, with praying through a time when God disappointed me.

Kelly: So Moses finally did agree. Okay, I’ll be your deliverers. Not, I’m not, it wasn’t up for it first, but sure. So he goes, he talks to Pharaoh and then Pharaoh retaliates on the people by saying, I’m not gonna let them go free. In fact, I’m gonna double their workload. And here Moses has put himself out for God.

Kelly: And so he goes to God and goes, you know, what are you doing? Like I told the people all this and you said you were gonna come through and you’re doing the exact opposite. And so he’s like, help. I love that there was a moment in Moses’ life where exactly what God had said suddenly looked like God was doing the exact.

Kelly: Opposite. And it’s so important to know that [00:51:00] that can be a part of the story. Yeah. Like things can get worse before they get better, but it doesn’t mean God’s not working in that. And so Moses hears this. God is so gracious, he just meets him in all this wrestling. And I love that Moses went to God with his questions.

Kelly: He didn’t shut down. He remained in conversation. He was honest, and God spoke. And he again, reiterates the promise. He assures him. Yep, I’m taking everybody. The promised land’s gonna be great. And so Moses so filled up with the new promise, the new that God is gonna do, not the no. He runs to the Israelites and gives them God’s message.

Kelly: And the Bible says, and this is so instructive for us, that they couldn’t hear the words of God because they were so discouraged. Because of their hard labor.

jennifer: Yeah. When you know, when I, when I think of, because we were talking, we opened talking about not getting stuck and instead turning, God, that is one of the.

jennifer: Saddest aspects of that whole Exodus story. The whole [00:52:00] journey of the is ancient Israelites leaving Egypt. And if you look at it like, it seems to me like Moses and the Israelites started in a same, in a similar place. Like when God first encounters Moses and, and Moses, like, you know, he, he argues with God even after God shows him all these miracles.

jennifer: And he is like, okay, send somebody else. But then you look at the end of his story and, and scripture in Deuteronomy 34 talks about him being like the most powerful prophet at the time. Yeah. And what really strikes me is so both he and the people started pretty much at the same place. They remained stuck and they never entered the promised land.

jennifer: Whereas Moses became a powerful man of God and I, and it comes down to exactly what you were saying. Moses routinely turned to God when it was hard. When he was frightened. The people. Were turned to each other and complained and griped and fed their fears and fed their sense of despair.

jennifer: And so it’s [00:53:00] again, another reminder. I mean, yes, we can turn to people, but make sure they’re safe people. And they’re not leading us down. They’re not awfulizing with us. But again, like you said, just turning to God bit by bit because we can start out afraid and sad and broken and end our story whole and with a powerful legacy and a testimony of hope and transformation.

jennifer: And it’s all, it all comes down to what we do in moments, not how strong we are in moments of crisis. Right,

Kelly: right,

jennifer: right. But who do we turn to?

Kelly: Yeah.

jennifer: In moments of crisis, ourselves or somebody else who’s hurting, you know, in the chaos with us. Or Jesus Christ who watches from above the chaos. Right. But but also stands with us in it.

jennifer: But he’s able to see the whole picture.

Kelly: Right. That’s such a hopeful way to end this podcast. And I think another one thing I just wanna summarize [00:54:00] is what we can do as well is just remember this, that we can be convinced that God is who he says he is. And confused about how he’s working at exactly the same time.

jennifer: Amen.

Amen.

Kelly: And that’s okay.

jennifer: Yes. And, and I like your story. You can be cognitively convinced and that’s important, but in, in your emotions wrestle. And I think that’s okay too. That doesn’t mean you don’t believe, it doesn’t mean you’ve turned from God, it means you’re hurting.

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: There’s this one quote that has ministered to my heart so much over the years, and it says, “the answer to suffering is not an answer at all, no simple answer can really tell you what you need to know. The hope is in the Answerer It’s Jesus himself. It’s not a bunch of words. It’s the word.” Because when we try to look for a why to our pain, there’s nothing, there’s no why that’s gonna make any sense to our, our broken heart.

Kelly: And we talked about this at the beginning, [00:55:00] that it’s Jesus that we need. It’s Jesus that we need to focus on. And when we go to Jesus, when we focus on the good heart of our father and the love that he is pouring out on us all the time, it changes us. We start to see his goodness. And I would say today that as God began to show me his generous heart and that he is the giver of good gifts, that he is pursuing us with love and mercy at all times, that his generosity and love is being poured out on our story in ways that I can’t see.

Kelly: If I could look behind the scenes, I would be stunned at how much God loves us and loves our family. But one thing I would say is after walking through all of this. God has healed me for being offended at him. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have to wrestle really hard when my heart is broken, but I can say that I’m deeply convinced that he is good and [00:56:00] that we’ll see his goodness

Kelly: On this earth in our family as he opens our eyes to know his heart even better. And then just as a way of summarizing my story, because a lot of people will get frustrated like, you never ended. Where are you now? How are people now? I would say that so many of our prayers have been answered that even though it wasn’t an instant healing with chronic Lyme disease, my oldest daughter is in remission and she is doing well. She still has to be cognizant and careful in different ways, but I’m so grateful. I look at her now and there is life and energy and joy and her face, and God is answering decades of prayers right now in, in her life.

Kelly: And all our girls are doing much better than they were and we’re just thrilled. One of them is married, one of them Wow, is starting to just pursue the Lord in new ways. And so even though it’s not normal, like maybe what we wanted, it is beautiful. Yeah. And [00:57:00] I am, I can just tell God I am so grateful for all the ways God has answered prayers in our life.

Kelly: So what I would say to myself a lot is, I know goodness. Is coming, Psalm 27, 13, and 14. I know I’m gonna see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So I’m gonna be strong, I’m gonna be courageous, and I’m gonna keep looking and waiting for him.

jennifer: Amen.

Kelly: Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for this conversation.

Kelly: It was so much fun.

jennifer: You gave me so much like, yeah, I’m gonna have to go and process so many things that actually encouraged me personally. So yeah. So that was awesome.

Kelly: Thank you.

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 and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope podcast