Podcast

106 A Doctor’s Journey of Resilience and Hope: Dr. Michelle Bengtson

Michelle: [00:00:00] I just sensed it very strongly, show her. And I knew where that voice was coming from and so I rolled up my shirt sleeves that were bruised from my wrist to my shoulder where the IVs had been, and I showed her my bruised arms and I said, I just want you to know I can relate so much more.

Michelle: Then you think I can, and I want you to know there is a reason you are here today. God sees you. He loves you. He has a purpose and a plan for your life. And we will get through this together. And the tears just started to flow and she said, I can’t believe I would come into an office of someone whose story is so much like mine.

Michelle: If you could make it through, I can too. And that’s when I really became convinced that God can redeem our pain.

Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. [00:01:00] 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.

 

Hey friends. I have a beautiful new devotional. I mentioned it last time on the podcast. It includes 31 stories of hope from women from all over the country, and it is absolutely free. I am thrilled and honored to be able to offer this to you through my website, kelly hall.org.

It’s available now. I’m so inspired by these stories and I can’t wait for you to see it. All you have to do is submit your email on the homepage of my website or go to the resource page. You’ll receive a confirmation email. Check your spam folders if you don’t see it. Then in three to five [00:02:00] minutes you’ll receive another email with the link to the devo, which you can save to your phone and your computer, so it’s available at all times.

I wanna read just a tiny excerpt from the beginning. The pain of life can make you feel neglected, forgotten, and even unworthy of God’s love. But the words of life from the Bible make it very clear that God’s heart is for us.

His love is larger than our fears, deeper than our shame, and greater than our suffering. I can’t wait to hear what you think of this, Divo and we are just praying that the Lord would use it to deepen your trust in him. Well, if you’re feeling weary as you continue to fight for hope in your own story, I’m truly glad you’re here for today’s conversation.

My guest, Dr. Michelle Bankson, is a board certified clinical neuropsychologist who’s been in practice more than 30 years and has helped countless individuals find freedom from fear, stress, and discouragement. She hosts the top rated podcast. Your hope filled perspective, I [00:03:00] encourage you to check it out.

Michelle refers to herself as a hope concierge, which I believe is quite appropriate because she’s always handing out biblical hope for all the places where we need it most. Not only is she a trusted voice in Christian mental health, she’s also the bestselling and award-winning author of Hope Prevails.

Insights from a doctor’s personal journey through depression and the book Breaking Anxieties Grip, how to Reclaim the Peace God Promises Out of Her eight books. The book we’ll be drawing from today is her newest and it’s called Sacred Scars, resting in God’s Promise that Your Past Is Not Wasted. And if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, do you know that that’s.

Subtitle is very close to one of my husband’s and my deepest prayers. Lord, please don’t waste our pain. We’re willing to follow you through whatever you wanna allow, but don’t waste our pain. We wanna see your redemption. We wanna see your glory in these hard places. You’re gonna see that today in Michelle’s story.

But the theme to [00:04:00] me that gives Dr. Michelle the most credibility is that whatever she writes about this woman has walked through. And we know that’s just priceless for those of us in long, hard stories.

Kelly: Michelle, it is such an honor to have you here. Thank you for taking the time to join me.

Michelle: Kelly, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation because I know your heart and mine are knitted with the same thread of hope, and we’ve both been at places where we wondered how do we hold onto that?

Michelle: So I’m hoping your listeners find the perfect God-sized nugget for them today.

Kelly: Amen. Well, I remember I’d seen you on social media for a long time, been encouraged by your content, but then I got to meet you in person and it was such a treat to connect with you in that way. I just felt like your prayers and just who you are ministered to me in that conference, so thank you.

Michelle: I appreciate that you encouraged my heart just by affirming that I’m doing what God’s called me to [00:05:00] do.

Kelly: I love that. Well, as I said, you’re not only an experienced neuropsychologist, but you’re also well acquainted with suffering in your personal life, and that’s so important to have people. Speak biblical truth out of their pain.

Kelly: And so I would love it if you could just share some of our back, some of your backstory with our listeners who might not know who you are.

Michelle: I am well acquainted with suffering. Took me a long time to realize that that suffering had a purpose. But you know, this goes back. Almost 60 years, Kelly, where I was born premature at a time when children weighing less than three pounds didn’t typically survive.

Michelle: Oh wow.

Michelle: And that was a struggle. I was in the NICU for a long time, but eventually was released stable to go home. But when I was, three days after my third birthday, I became deathly ill. Had a fever of 107 doctors were concerned that I might not make it through the night, and if I did, I would probably be [00:06:00] mentally incapacitated.

Michelle: So my parents did everything the doctors said, alcohol rubs, ice baths, you know, the good old fashioned home remedies when nothing worked. They told my parents to give me aspirin. Well, my parents nor The doctors knew that I was deathly allergic to aspirin, and that sent me into anaphylactic shock. So doctors warned my parents that I might not survive that, and when I made it through the night, they were very concerned that I would be mentally incapacitated and possibly never walk again.

Michelle: Because what happened was the aspirin in my system started wreaking havoc and deformed both legs and my right foot. To the point where I have one leg that’s two inches shorter than the other. It looks like a peg leg like you would see in the movies. And I have a deformed foot that’s half the size of the other one and looks like an Asian woman’s foot who’s been bound.

Kelly: Hmm. My

Michelle: ankle is fused. My toes are fused. I, every day I walk [00:07:00] with pain, but it doesn’t keep me from walking.

Kelly: No, it doesn’t. My, I think you continue to walk miles.

Michelle: I do Every day. Every step hurts, but it, you know, my mom’s fortitude through that time because doctor said she’s never gonna walk again. And my mother was from New Zealand and had had that British Air about her and said, not my daughter.

Michelle: And I think it was my mom who really taught me. About perseverance, about tenacity, and over my life, that became very helpful because the pain didn’t end there. When I was a child, my father died at 42 of a sudden heart attack. And then I went on and I got married and had a miscarriage and we went through job loss and my husband has been diagnosed with cancer three times.

Michelle: The week that I turned in breaking anxiety script, I was given a cancer diagnosis.

Kelly: Oh my gosh. So

Michelle: pain and suffering are not something that [00:08:00] is foreign to me. As I’ve searched it out in the scriptures, I’ve realized that if we will allow God to enter into our pain and suffering, he will bring beautiful scars from it.

Michelle: We see example after example in the scriptures. Job was a very constant companion of mine for a couple of years as I sought to really understand this suffering

Michelle: because kelly, I think sometimes. We fall under the hope that as Christians, we won’t suffer. Yeah, as Christians, our life will be easier. And really, that’s not how my Bible reads.

Michelle: My Bible says, you know, if you’re gonna follow me, take up your cross. Because in this world, you will experience trouble. That could also be read as pain, suffering, heartache. But God promises that even in that suffering, we can take heart because he’s overcome the world.

Kelly: Yes. And that’s the hope that we have as believers.

Kelly: Everybody [00:09:00] walks through pain and suffering, but as followers of Jesus, we can hold on to the biblical hope that his spirit is inside us and doing all the things that we can’t even imagine. And you, I think I heard you say this one time that you even spoke the day after you had a surgery, like you have so much resilience.

Michelle: I did, and even the organizers were shocked and said, we can reschedule. I’m like, no, we are not gonna let the enemy win. And I think that’s what people know me for is they, I’m very honest about the pain and suffering. I don’t ever want people to look at me and think, oh, she’s got it all together.

Kelly: Yeah, and

Michelle: in quiet I’m suffering.

Michelle: No, I want them to see God working through real life and that we really can appropriate the name of Jesus and we can appropriate the blood, and he gave up so much so that we could have victory. And sometimes we don’t see the victory here on earth. Yeah, but it’s coming. We will see it. There will be a [00:10:00] day when I will have a new, glorified body and I won’t be in pain.

Michelle: But until then, I look for God moments in the pain and suffering.

Kelly: Hmm. That’s so helpful. One of the things that I said many, many years ago is I realized in our hard story that the people that encouraged me the most were people like you who refused to give up on God and refused to give up on themselves, refused to give up on his word, refused to let the enemy steal from them.

Kelly: You know, they didn’t back. Down. They stayed in the fight because they knew God’s word was true and they knew that there was hope in him. And so I, I love that so much what you have shared. It really gave me hope in places that I felt like I wondered, should I just give up?

Michelle: And we all have those times and I don’t want anyone to feel shame if they’ve been in that place.

Michelle: That’s the enemy’s mo. He seeks to wear us down and wear us out. And believe me, I have my days when. I’m, I’m good for just about [00:11:00] nothing, but my overall attitude is I’m not gonna let the enemy win. Why should I let him have that satisfaction? No. He’s

Kelly: not gonna win. That’s awesome. Well, I know you explain in your book that the scars in our life may be physical, but they can also be emotional.

Kelly: And when we live in emotional pain, there’s so much that comes with that. So much baggage we may not understand, it can wrap us in shame, but we often see it lead us into weariness and despair and so we just wanna give up like you just described, but how can we develop that kind of resilience and the different perspective that Jesus talks about in the Bible?

Michelle: God tells us in his word, do not despise small beginnings, and he tells us that if we will be faithful in the little things, he will give us much. I think it’s a matter of coming back to we are always gonna fall backon what we truly believe, and a lot of [00:12:00] times we get to those moments of crises where we purely react.

Michelle: We don’t respond, but we react. Well we are going to react out of what we believe. So if, if you’ve not had, a major trauma or difficult situation. That’s wonderful, but it’s probably gonna come at some point. So now is the time to get really firm in your beliefs. Mm-hmm. What do you believe about God?

Michelle: What do you believe about his faithfulness? What do you believe about his goodness? Because when those difficult times happen, it’s just human nature to res, to react rather than respond. And our reaction’s gonna be based in what we truly believe. It’s okay to question. I referred to Job a little while ago.

Michelle: Job asked God a lot of questions. The interesting thing is God didn’t answer job’s question of why me? But God had so much more for him, and so [00:13:00] our perseverance starts small. It starts by speaking the word over our situation. It starts by bringing our honest feelings to the Lord because Kelly, he’s big enough to handle ’em.

Michelle: The problem comes is that we can’t develop perseverance if we’re running away from God. Mm-hmm. And when we hit those difficult times, we have a choice. We’re either gonna run towards him or we’re gonna run away. Please run towards him and he will sustain you. He will give you strength. For the moment, we’re so busy trying to figure out how the whole future is gonna be organized and how we’re gonna get through this, and God says his mercies are new every day.

Michelle: He’ll give us enough of what we need for today. Just like the manna in the Bible. Then tomorrow he’ll give us what we need to sustain us for tomorrow, and all of that builds on our ability to persevere when we can reflect back on God’s faithfulness.

Kelly: [00:14:00] That’s so good. That’s so, so good. I love the fact that you started with, we don’t have to be discouraged by small beginnings.

Kelly: And then you also took us back just to that moment, like, don’t try to figure out how you’re gonna persevere through the whole future. That just right now, today, God gives you grace for today. So ask for grace for. Today and just stay in today with the Lord instead of worrying about everything that’s ahead of you.

Kelly: That’s very, very helpful. In your book, sacred Scars, you talk about how scars or scars can become sacred and they’re different than the wounds that life inflicts on us. So can you explain that to us?

Michelle: Wounds are those things that hurt us. They can be physical, emotional, relational, financial, spiritual wounds.

Michelle: The interesting thing is that when we develop a scar, that wound doesn’t hurt anymore the same way it did because it’s experienced some healing. [00:15:00] Mm. But I’ll tell you, after I was diagnosed with cancer and then had surgery when the surgeon took those bandages off. I just found myself thinking, that is so ugly.

Michelle: I’m now part of a club nobody wants to be a part of, and how am I ever gonna look at that as beautiful? And the Lord took me back to that childhood illness that left me with physical deformity that I still have today. He showed me. You think those scars are ugly, but to me they are beautiful because it’s a reflection of how far you’ve come.

Michelle: And so now I can look at those scars and say, ah, that’s a testament to God’s. Goodness and faithfulness and is healing in my life. Do I still have areas that need to be healed? Absolutely. We’re all gonna be growing and healing from now until we get to glory, right? But it really is a matter of our perspective because the enemy always wants us to think in the negative terms, and God always challenges us [00:16:00] to look in the positive.

Michelle: If we go back to Philippians four, eight, any. Commands us to think on whatever is lovely, whatever is true, whatever is pure, all those good things, but we become so focused on the negative. There was a story in my book, if you’ll indulge me for a minute, there was a professor. Who had told the students that there would be a pop quiz.

Michelle: And so they came in one day expecting a quiz and they found a sheet of paper turned upside down on their desks. And the professor said, when I tell you, go turn that sheet of paper over and I want you to write for me what you see. So she told them when to turn it over, and they did. And what they found was a piece of paper, regular computer paper with a black dot.

Michelle: She said, I just want you to write your reflections on what you see. And they turned them in and the teacher looked over each comment and said, I’m not going to grade this quiz, but I find it really interesting that every single [00:17:00] one of you focused on that small black dot and not one of you wrote about all the beautiful white space.

Michelle: That’s a reflection of how we can become so narrowly focused on the negative in our life when in reality the negative is a small component of a big, beautiful life God has given us. Mm-hmm. And that challenges me, Kelly, because it is so easy when we look at our world today, or we look at our personal suffering.

Michelle: So easy to focus on that. Yeah. But if we will focus on God the problem solver more than we focus on the problem, we’ll be so much better off.

Kelly: Oh, that is so good. I love the white space analogy. It we limit, it’s a self-limiting belief when we look at the things in our life and all we do is focus on the losses and then the assumed losses for the future.

Kelly: We do that a lot. Like when we walk through something, we’ll say, well, this means [00:18:00] that I’ll never get to experience this, this, this, or this or this. And we have no idea if that’s true. So we need to just stay in this space, focus on the white space, on what is true. What do we know that’s true and this helps us gain a different perspective on the loss.

Kelly: So I just wanna go back to how you incorporated that into your own life. When God spoke to you about the losses after your surgery, after your cancer surgery, and you saw all the scars, and God reminded you that all the losses you experienced as a child and the bullying and the rejection and feeling like you didn’t fit and God was saying, but look at all the glory.

Kelly: Look at all the good that I worked into your life through that. That’s really powerful. I’m wondering if you could even elaborate on a little bit of how God has worked good in your own life through that.

Michelle: Yeah. That was really a challenge he, he made to me because I was so focused on the negative. So I spent a lot of time in the scripture and God took me to the resurrection story.

Michelle: [00:19:00] I had some faulty theology going because I really thought in Jesus’s resurrected body, he wouldn’t have the scars anymore. It would be, he would have this glorified body and the scars would be gone. God took me to the passage in scripture where Jesus appeared before his disciples, and the first time he appeared before the disciples, Thomas was not there, and he showed the disciples that it was him, and they go running back to Thomas and, and said, we’ve, we’ve seen Jesus.

Michelle: We’ve seen the master. And Thomas is like, Nope. Not gonna believe it until I see those scars. And when Jesus appeared again, Thomas was there and Jesus approached Thomas and already knowing what Thomas in his human fallibility needed, he showed Thomas his scar, as he said, see it as I see my hands and feet touched them.

Michelle: He knew that Thomas needed [00:20:00] to see those scars and it, it was like a light bulb went off in my head, Kelly, because it was as if the Lord was saying, my own son’s scars serve a redemptive purpose to prove that he was who he said he was and he did what he said he would do. Yeah. And if you will allow me to touch your scars,

Michelle: they too can conserve a redemptive purpose. I’ve been able to talk to families whose children have gone through similar things. Yeah. And show them this doesn’t have to limit you. Scott and I have been able to talk to many people, have gone through miscarriage or job loss or cancer, and share the hope that we have.

Michelle: One of the biggest examples where God really showed me, if you’ll let me. This can be redeemed for my glory was I went through bout of severe, severe depression. It was about 10 years ago [00:21:00] when I went through a medical illness that resulted in two emergency surgeries. I was kept alive on IV hydration and nutrition.

Michelle: I dwindled from 113 pounds down to a skeletal 74. I hard to imagine. So I 30 pounds less than I do before you today.

Kelly: And you’re tiny to start with. Imagine. And I was

Michelle: put on medically induced bed rest for five months. I could not be the doctor. I wasn’t much of a wife or a mother during that time. And the longer I stayed in that sick bed, the more depression got ahold of me to the point where I cried out to God and said, God, if this is gonna be my life, like I’m not sure I wanna go on.

Michelle: Yeah. But you’ve allowed this to come into my life. So my prayer is that you won’t. Was it by the time physicians said you can start to go back to your private practice, but on a very, very time limited [00:22:00] basis. Like I started with one patient that week, but Kelly, as only God could, I walked into the office that day.

Michelle: I had detached my home IV to be able to be in the office for an hour. And my patient was brought in. I had never seen her before, never met her, and she started telling me about a very complex medical con condition that she was going through. She admitted she was very depressed. She wasn’t even sure why she was there because she didn’t wanna go on living.

Michelle: And I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but I strongly sensed in my spirit show her. And I knew what that meant. And I was like, God, you have got to be kidding, because in mental health, we don’t typically reveal a lot about ourselves because we’re there for the patients to share about them.

Kelly: Right.

Michelle: And I, I just sensed it very strongly, show her. And I’m like, you’ve gotta be kidding. But I, I knew where that voice was coming from and so I rolled up my shirt sleeves [00:23:00] that were bruised from my wrist to my shoulder where the IVs had been, and I showed her my bruised arms and I said, I just want you to know I can relate so much more.

Michelle: Then you think I can, and I want you to know there is a reason you are here today. God sees you. He loves you. He has a purpose and a plan for your life. And we will get through this together. And the tears just started to flow and she said, I can’t believe I would come into an office of someone whose story is so much like mine.

Michelle: If you could make it through, I can too. And that’s when I really became convinced that God can redeem our pain. God can make it so worthwhile if we will surrender it up to him. But I was still very concerned about the depression. I was like, Lord, I don’t know that I can really go back to seeing patients ’cause [00:24:00] they’re gonna think I don’t have all the answers here.

Michelle: I’ve gone through a major depression. I’m not sure that my referral sources will continue to refer to me. What does this mean? That as the clinician, I’ve been severely depressed? Well, it was during that time I had the contract to write Hope Prevails Insights from a doctor’s personal journey through depression.

Michelle: That

Kelly: timing is crazy, but can I

Michelle: tell you, having gone through it. That book is so different than it would’ve been had I finished writing it before I went through the depression myself, and now readers say it’s like you read my mail. I can tell you understand. Wow. I can tell you’ve gone through it, Kelly.

Michelle: That book would’ve been very clinical and sterile, and this is what you gotta do instead. It was like, I’m walking alongside you because I do understand I have been there, and our stories may not be identical, but I understand enough to point you back to the [00:25:00] hope in Jesus that I found. Wow, that’s a sacred scar.

Kelly: Oh my goodness. That’s so beautiful. My heart was so touched by the story of that woman who came in your very first patient after came to work

Michelle: and I went home and I reconnected to the iv. ’cause I still wasn’t well. Right? But God had me there for a specific purpose that day. I cried all the way to the office that day.

Michelle: I was not ready to go back, but God was.

Kelly: All of the stories that you share just remind us that God truly does transform our wounds, our groans into glory. And I, I even think of the empty grave, the empty that where Jesus was. And he has redeemed that and he is alive. But I’ve just thought so many times that’s the ultimate groans to glory story.

Kelly: Jesus suffered so much and now he’s alive. So that we can live. Just that little phrase kind of captures what you’ve shared and helped me through some hard times as well. God, just turn these groans into glory. I know you see them [00:26:00] and I know you have the power to do it. Oh my goodness, I’m so overwhelmed by these beautiful stories.

Kelly: It’s hard for me, but I love it so much. I wanted you to just talk to us about shame, because I was really surprised to learn in my fifties that shame had impacted my life because I always thought shame was usually about something you’d done or would’ve been done to you, but it could also be something where you had a lens.

Kelly: I had a lens of rule following and kind of perfectionism and, and so I came out of my childhood just feeling like I was a disappointment because I hadn’t done all the things that I felt like I should have done. And so that was a really different definition of shame than I thought. And so I’d like for you just to explain what shame can look like in our lives.

Kelly: What it is, and this is a big question, I’m sorry, but I’m giving you thing. Explain about shame, what it looks like in our lives, how we can recognize it. And then the second question is, [00:27:00] how do we rewire our brains to believe God’s truth in place of the lies? Any lies about ourselves and about God?

Michelle: Shame is one of the biggest tools of the enemy, and sometimes it comes about because he’s tempted us to do something we shouldn’t have done.

Michelle: Sometimes though, shame comes about because of things that have been done to us.

Michelle: And shame basically in a nutshell is that development of the belief. Not that I made a mistake, but then I am a mistake, and that somehow what I’ve done or what was done to me makes me unworthy. Of the love of others or of God.

Michelle: And shame can then present itself in terms of people pleasing. It can present in terms of [00:28:00] our being sensitive to the opinions of others or, or allowing others to take advantage of us, or developing that belief that. We’re rejected or inadequate. It can even cause us to shut ourselves off from other people.

Michelle: If they knew the real me, what would they think? Oh, how many times in my life have I asked that question? If they really knew me, would they still like me? Would they still accept me? Would they still love me? And shame can look like avoiding being the center of attention. To the second part of your question, how do we rewire our brains to believe God’s truth?

Michelle: First of all. We have to know God’s truth first. Yeah. We really can’t begin the rewiring process, and I have to tell you, in the beginning of my career, 35 years [00:29:00] ago, we didn’t believe in this concept called neuroplasticity, which basically means our brains can change and grow over time. We thought. What our brain was, is what it always will be.

Michelle: Interesting. So the field has come a long way in 35 years. Yeah, but here’s what’s interesting is that the field is now starting to prove scientifically what God’s truth already said, that we can take captive. Every thought and bring it into the obedience of Christ, we can renew our minds. But in order to rewire our brain to be in alignment with God’s truth, we have to know the scripture.

Michelle: And I remember 30 years ago being at a conference with a popular female Christian speaker and scripture just rolled off her tongue. And I remember saying to the Lord, I want that. But that’s just too hard, which was a lie from the enemy because he didn’t want me to know God’s truth because he knew once I knew God’s truth, I would share God’s [00:30:00] truth.

Michelle: I would live out God’s truth. I would base my hope in God’s truth. And during that illness that I told you about where I was on the five months of bedrest,

Kelly: yeah.

Michelle: As God brought scripture to my mind, either through my own Bible reading, people would send it, it would be in a song, I would write it down on a little post-it note.

Michelle: And I would stick that post-it note where I would see it throughout the day. It would be on my home IV pole, on my nightstand, on my bathroom mirror, on the dashboard of my car. But I went a step further. Every time I saw that scripture, I repeated it out loud three times. And the reason for that is because scripture tells us faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Michelle: So I needed to not only write it, but hear it and recite it, so it became part of me so that I learned it and trusted God’s word to be truth. Yeah. And now when I take the time to monitor my thoughts, I, which is a [00:31:00] hard job. We have between 50 and 70,000 thoughts a day. So that is a lot of taking thoughts, captain.

Kelly: Yeah.

Michelle: But we start by slowing down and saying, wait a minute, what did I just think? Okay, but is that consistent with what God’s word said? And if you don’t know, go look in scripture, Google it if you have to. What does the Bible say about. People pleasing and go, look on my website, I’ve got 15 years of resources about this, because then we go, wait a minute.

Michelle: That’s not what God says. Oh. That’s a lie from the enemy. Okay? I reject that lie. And God, I believe that you say, I am beautiful. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am the apple of your eye. That’s how it starts. And the more we do it, the quicker we will pick up on those thoughts that are consistent with shame or fear or jealousy or any of the things that we struggle with.[00:32:00]

Michelle: Yeah, but the thing is to pick up on them quickly and not to come into agreement. Go. No, no, no. That’s not what my God says. Yeah. I’m going to choose to believe what God says, and when we struggle to believe, be honest with God and say, I believe, but help my unbelief. Mm-hmm.

Kelly: Oh, that’s so powerful. You know, what you described was the transformation process that the Holy Spirit does.

Kelly: And you weren’t describing just memorizing scripture, you just described praying it.

Michelle: Yes,

Kelly: you were reading it, but it was always in prayer. And I’ve heard you talk about that before. And I also wanna mention that Michelle referred to her website. So for my listeners. Her website is like a library of hope. I mean, truly this woman puts out some very powerful content, so go subscribe.

Kelly: I love the explanation of rewiring our brain. It’s not as hard as we think.

Michelle: It’s not, it’s not. I think the way I describe it to people, it’s [00:33:00] describe many different ways, but the way I describe it is like tending to our garden. You know, I plant seeds in my garden and beautiful things come up. But if I’m not out there pretty regularly looking at my garden, things are gonna also come up that I don’t want to be there.

Michelle: They’re weeds. Yeah. I go out and I pull the weed. Well, I need to go out the next day and see what other weeds have popped up, and I pull them out before they have a chance to take hold and destroy all the beauty that’s out there. We have to tend the garden of our thoughts because otherwise what happens is that the thought goes through our head and we come into agreement with it.

Michelle: I was getting ready to speak at a conference once, and I’m not real tech savvy, so a friend was helping me with slides and she’s like, Michelle, I just need to know what it is that you know that you wanna communicate in these. Well, my son happened to be sitting at the dining room table with me and I said, I don’t know.

Michelle: I’m just so stupid. Oh. And my [00:34:00] 12-year-old son said, not if you believe that mom. Like what does God say? And I was like, you are so right. I am not stupid. I have the mind of Christ. I just need to slow down and think about what it is I’m trying to communicate. So had my son not said that. That thought I’m so stupid, would’ve been like a weed that was gonna start to infest the garden of my mind.

Kelly: Right. And you know, one, I love the garden analogy and one of the things that I just, that you’re describing is you’re paying attention. To what’s happening. . You’re not just going through your day thinking about your schedule all day. You’re actually paying attention to, to your soul.

Kelly: You’re paying attention to what’s going through your mind. You’re paying attention. What is my reality? I know what my circumstances are. But what is my reality right now? And when you do that, you, I just, I wanna say one of the things that happened to me is I began to notice kind of a negative self-critique, critique in the back of my [00:35:00] mind that I hadn’t even been aware of.

Michelle: Yes. Yes. And that contributes often to our feeling like we have to do more. We have to be better to please God, to be worthy of his love. Jesus made us worthy because he, amen. Died for every sin. God wants us to recognize just how much he loves us. I think too many of us go through too long in our life not truly appreciating how much God really loves us.

Michelle: He knew we would mess up. He knew what trials and experiences we were gonna go through. He loved us before we were even knit in our mother’s womb. Yeah, that’s powerful.

Kelly: It’s powerful. Yes, that is just one of the things that I, that you talk about so much on your website that, gosh, we are so loved and we live with these lies that maybe God is, I’ve heard people [00:36:00] say this, maybe God is just mad at me.

Kelly: Go through this life thinking God is mad at me. But if we could picture the truth and actually just see Jesus standing in front of you, like you’d see a big smile on his face, that he just, he is delighted. Thrilled he thinks about you all the time and he loves it. Every single time we turn our attention to him because he just wants to show us how much he loves us.

Kelly: The love is constant, he is love. It never changes,

Michelle: and I’ve heard that lie. I’ve believed that lie. God must just be mad at me. Yeah. Again. He loves us so much, he knows we’re gonna mess up. That’s why he offers the opportunity of confession and repentance. Yes. Because he wants to restore that right relationship.

Michelle: Will I forgive my child if they lie to me or they disobey me? Of course I will. Yeah. Because. I love them. Might I set them on a course correction? Absolutely. But it’s because I love them and I [00:37:00] want good for them.

Kelly: Yes. Our tendency is to hide. And some people they have that response they wanna hide. But if we would just look to Jesus, we would realize his arms are thrown open wide and he’s just staying saying to us, come to me.

Kelly: Come to me. Let’s talk about this. I love you so much. You explain in one of your chapters that in Christ we are stronger than whatever’s trying to hurt us. Can you help us understand that?

Michelle: Yeah. Our scars indicate that we’ve gone through something and we’ve started to heal from it.

Michelle: The fact that God has brought healing shows that in him. We have the strength to overcome whatever it is that tried to assault us. It didn’t take us out. It might have caused us to fall down and stumble for a while. Yeah. But once we have those scars that proves. Satan was defeated, [00:38:00] God has won. And that’s something that allows us to look at those difficult trials, those difficult circumstances, the pain and the loss in our life, and realize God loves us too much to leave us where we are.

Kelly: Yeah, and

Michelle: Kelly, those scars are so sacred. I’ve never been through an abortion. But I know women who have, because they have been through that, they are in a much better position to minister to other women who have gone through it. I haven’t been through divorce, but I know many who have, because God has brought them.

Michelle: Through it, they are in a position to minister to others. Because I’ve gone through cancer and depression and job loss and miscarriage, God has uniquely equipped me to minister in those areas, and that is such proof of how God redeems our pain and our past, even when [00:39:00] it was due to our own mistakes.

Kelly: Yes.

Kelly: Right. That is so powerful that God can redeem the bad choices that we’ve made, that he can redeem those places where we would, if we could go back in a moment and change it all, we would, all the regrets. But God just says, I love you and I’m gonna work a better story than you could even imagine. And that’s what just blows me away with God when you see him orchestrating a masterpiece.

Kelly: Through your pain, writing a story that just blows your mind away. We, we can’t even believe it. And your story is a story like that. Every single one of us have a story like that.

Michelle: And it doesn’t mean that God is calling all of us to write books or speak from stages, right? Yeah. It could be sitting down over coffee with your neighbor.

Michelle: Yeah. Who’s going through a hard time. It could be taking an extra minute to share hope and truth to the clerk at the store as you check out. Those things are [00:40:00] just as big to God. If we’re obedient to what he’s asking us to do as writing a book or speaking from a stage or hosting a podcast, it’s that one person that God puts in front of you that redeems that pain.

Kelly: Amen. That is so true. It can seem so small, but when we take a minute to just let God interrupt our day with a conversation, it, we can’t just, we just can’t even believe what could happen. My husband has tons of stories of things that happened at Walmart, believe it or not, where he has seen. He has seen God be glorified in some interesting conversations.

Kelly: Oh,

Michelle: God can redeem even Walmart. Amen. Even

Kelly: even Walmart. Yeah. My Bible study gals used to laugh when I would start a story with when I was at Walmart oh my goodness. Well, it’s easy to believe in our pain, the lies that God has left us.

Kelly: We look at our pain and our heartache, and especially when there seems to be like a pile of heartache without any [00:41:00] relief, we start to think God has abandoned us. We’ve been left. He is absent. What would you say to the person right now who is struggling through just an ongoing. Very, very painful situation, whatever that might be, a long story of heartache and suffering, and maybe they’re just really struggling to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Michelle: Satan wants us to believe that God has abandoned us so that we will abandon God. And I have been in that place many times where it has felt like God abandoned me. Satan wanted me to believe that, but God promises in his word. That’s where we have to stand on truth, even when our feelings don’t align with it.

Michelle: He promises Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I abandon you. But I believe that sometimes. God’s [00:42:00] presence isn’t as easily felt. We want the feelings. We want to feel like God’s giving us a hug or like we’ve got a soft teddy bear to hold onto in our pain and suffering. But I think sometimes.

Michelle: God gets more quiet because he’s trying to get our attention in some other way, and it’s during those times when I have to challenge myself to look for God in the little things. I’m originally from Michigan. I now live in a state where there is no fall, and so when I see a leaf changing color, God knows that thrills my heart, but I have to look at that and go that that tree wouldn’t be changing color.

Michelle: If God didn’t make it that way, and God let me see that today ’cause he knows it thrills my heart. Or when I’ve got a new flower opening up in the garden, thanks God, that’s evidence that [00:43:00] you are with me. Or that text that comes through and it was just what you needed. That’s no coincidence. That is God’s presence speaking through someone else.

Michelle: So when it feels like we’re alone in our suffering. First of all, I’d encourage you to go back to the Psalms. David was so good at being honest and vulnerable and saying, why is my soul so downcast? And yet I will trust him. He cries out to God and said, where are you in my suffering? Go back to the Psalms.

Michelle: Go back to the truth of God’s word, but then challenge yourself to look for God’s presence in the small things. It’s not always gonna be a rainbow in the sky. Sometimes God says, Hmm, but will you look for me more than you look at your own pain? And Kelly, that is something I’ve really had to struggle with.

Michelle: God has really had to work with me on it because especially in physical [00:44:00] pain or emotional pain, it can seem so overwhelming, and that’s when it’s easy for me to look more at my problem than look for the problem solver. But I promise you, he’s the. There. Listen to podcasts like Kelly’s and mine that share hope and ask the Holy Spirit, remind me of your presence.

Kelly: Yeah, that’s

Michelle: okay. He would love nothing more than to answer that prayer.

Kelly: Absolutely telling him the truth. So often if you’re just saying, God, I, I know the Bible says you’re here, but I don’t feel it, please help me. Please help me believe it. As you said before, the prayer in the Bible, I believe, but help my unbelief and God responds to those prayers.

Kelly: And so many times when we tell the truth about the lies that are standing in the way, it really does remove the blockage to hearing what is true, to believing what’s true deeper in our heart.

Michelle: I would encourage you to go one step further when God shows [00:45:00] you those little things. I refer to them as simple joys, just just simple reminders of God’s presence.

Michelle: Journal them. It doesn’t have to be long drawn out paragraphs. It might just be bullet points. But then when you come to another day where you’re really struggling and you’re like, God, are you really there? God, I, I read that you’re faithful, but are you faithful to me? Go back and reread those things that he showed you before.

Michelle: Absolutely encourage your heart. It’s, it’s just like in the Old Testament where God told them to build alters of stones of remembrance.

Kelly: Yeah.

Michelle: This is our stones of remembrance because I have a very short memory and when things get difficult or overwhelming, sometimes I can forget what God already did.

Kelly: Yeah. And

Michelle: sometimes. I think that’s why God does allow our suffering to seem long, because sometimes for me, this might not be true of anyone else, but if he fixed it quickly and overnight, [00:46:00] my memory is short enough that I’d probably forget.

Kelly: Yes. That’s so true. We all have short memories and remembering and rehearsing what God has done is an extremely powerful exercise.

Kelly: You’re really praising him. You’re really just sitting in the truth of his love for you when you do that. One of the things that I have done in those moments when I was like. God, I believe you, but help my unbelief and I was really struggling. I would write at the top of my journal, I remember, and then I would just start to journal all the stories that God brought to mind of ways that he had worked for this particular loved one or in my life in this particular area.

Kelly: And I would just keep writing until I finally got to the point where I could say, okay, now, right now, today, I believe you’re with me in this moment today.

Michelle: That is really powerful. And it’s a good reminder that God commands us not to lean on our own understanding.

Kelly: Yes.

Michelle: And [00:47:00] so when we take the time to record those glimpses of God’s presence of his goodness and his faithfulness, and we go back and reread that from time to time, then we turn our understanding to God’s understanding, ah, this is how I showed up for you.

Michelle: It may not look like you wanted or if. Thought it would, I’m dealing that with that with a child right now, or things are not the way they thought it would be. That’s when we can’t lean on our own understanding, but in all our ways to trust God.

Kelly: Yes. In those places of unmet expectations, that’s just another place where we have a lot of heartache.

Kelly: Well, Michelle, I’d love for you to just tell our listeners where they can get in touch with you, I, and also just share some of the resources you have on your website or anything else you wanna highlight.

Michelle: You can find all the information about me and my books, and my blogs, and the podcast episodes and all the free resources.

Michelle: The easiest web address is dr michelle b.com. That’s DRI love that. Michelle, because nobody can pronounce or [00:48:00] spell banks correctly, right? Dr. Michelle b. Com and there you’ll find 15 years of resources. One of our most popular ones is how to Fight Fearful Thoughts and Win, and it’s free.

Michelle: My goal. Is to give resources that are going to encourage and equip and point you back to hope. And from there, there’s buttons on where you can get each one of the books. There’s buttons on wherever you want to listen to podcasts. And if there are needs and questions that you have that you want me to address in future books, articles, episodes, let me know because I really wanna be of service to you.

Kelly: Well, thank you, Michelle. I think I said this a minute ago, but your website is a library of hope, and I just hope all of our listeners will go check it out, and I know they’ll find encouragement there. So thank you so much for the gift of your time and your heart.

Michelle: [00:49:00] Thank you, Kelly, for giving me a chance to share the hope that God has given me, and encourage your listeners,

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.