Podcast

How to Arise from Grief and Flourish: Amy Joob E118
Amy: [00:00:00] did not have an idyllic childhood, so there was a lot of healing that happened. I mean, there was a lot of abuse, a lot of hard stuff, and I saw my dad really grow and heal. Thankfully we celebrated Mom and Dad’s 60th anniversary right before, he passed away.
Amy: ” I go, “Dad, how am I gonna do life without you? How can I do this?” You know? And he said, “I want you to trust God no matter what.” And he said, “No matter what happens, trust God.” And he said, “Whatever you do, don’t stay mad at God.”
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 mine? 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 prayer is that God would renew our hope in his word and his love through these [00:01:00] conversations.
Hey, friends. Thanks so much for being here. I can’t tell you how much I love bringing content, stories, and Biblical truth to encourage our faith and deepen our hope in God.
We’re reminded how much God loves us and how powerfully He is working behind the scenes in each of our stories to create more glory and goodness than we can even imagine. If you want some additional stories of hope, I’d encourage you to download the 31-day free devo from my website, kellyhall.org, which is filled with short stories, devos from women all over the country whose lives were changed when God’s love met them in a wilderness season.
Well, today, you are going to enjoy a heart full of God’s Word in this episode and heaping helpings of reminders of the attributes of God. I always include a list of verses that are mentioned in each episode in the show notes, but I’m pretty sure I only caught about half of them because my [00:02:00] guest knows the Word so well it just spills out all over the place.
So encouraging. Amy has walked through what she calls grief storms. She lost her dad who she was very close to, and as she was still healing from this profound loss, she lost her church community. Then her brother died by suicide.
Throughout this podcast, you will hear of multiple ways the Lord walked her into healing and met her in the deepest places, times where she even just wanted to run away, but there are very special moments.
Her story shines a light on the faithfulness and the love of God in such beautiful, powerful ways. He has been her rock, her shield, her comfort, and her help. So today, we will be drawing from her book, Arise From Grief and Flourish Again.
I’ll tell you a little bit more about her. Amy Jobe is an award-winning author, certified life coach and speaker. She’s a former model and endurance athlete, which kept her [00:03:00] traveling around the world for years. This woman is a prayer warrior. She loves to pray with and for people. She has prayer ministries in many different age groups.
She and her husband, Eric, have been married over 25 years and have two children. They live in Naples, Florida. Her passion is seeing women of all ages arise and flourish in their God-given identity and strength. Well, Amy, welcome to the podcast. I can’t wait for this conversation
Amy: thank you so much, Kelly. It’s such a blessing and an honor to be here.
Kelly: Well, love your book, arise From Grief and Flourish Again. It’s so inspirational. What was interesting is, you have lived through a pile of grief and a pile of disappointments as have I.
Kelly: And so I feel like our listeners, so many of them, can relate to that. Take us through an overview of your story and the losses that you’ve experienced along the way.
Amy: Sure. So it kind of starts in 2022. I [00:04:00] call it a grief storm that I went through. And, you know, I had a change of careers with the pandemic, so everything shut down in Chicago.
Amy: We were living there in 2020 and so I really embraced the call to be a speaker and author. , My second book came out then I started training to be a coach I really felt like the Lord wanted me to launch a ministry, and it was about a year in the making, and it became official in May of ’22.
Amy: So Amy Job Ministries was birthed. Well, simultaneously my dad suddenly got very sick, and he was, like, one of my biggest cheerleaders, prayer warriors, and he passed away on June 2nd. And it was very devastating to me, and, began to, , sort of spiral, I guess, if you will. I mean, it’s so hard to lose a loved one,
Amy: and then, three weeks after that, I was literally thanking God before, you know, after he passed, that we had our church, the Christian community, and then, within three weeks a really painful incident happened within the church which I cannot go into all the details, but it was very devastating. And [00:05:00] then to go meet with the pastors to try to sort through it and, I mean, it was just so much, and there was just not an acknowledgement, uh, ownership taken or a willingness to really process what had happened and heal.
Amy: And so really we lost our community, our church community. So I call it kind of like the one-two punch. Like, the enemy maybe wanted to take me out, and it was a couple months of just devastation. So that was, that was the beginning- Wow … of the grief storm.
Kelly: Oh, that is so hard. , That it’s a pile
Kelly: it’s like a dump truck, just one thing after another after another. How sad that you lost your faith community at that same time. I’m so sorry. And I believe in your book you describe that the loss of your dad was unexpected as well, so that was really very difficult to process.
Amy: Yeah. And it was right when I was just starting to, like, kinda flourish, if you will.
Amy: I feel like in, in the whole area of being a [00:06:00] Christian author and speaker. You know, my second book- Yeah … UnStuck Step into the New, it won a SIPA, um, Best New Devotional or Best Devotional, I think it was called, for a Christian Indie Publishers Association. And yeah. Yeah. And then ministry launching. I was traveling.
Amy: I was traveling around the Midwest and speaking. I even, God was bringing me out, out of state. I had gone down to Alabama to speak, and I w- I graduated from Auburn University. So just a lot of mountaintops, and that’s often how it is, isn’t it? We go from the mountaintop right into the valley.
Amy: Yeah.
Kelly: Yeah. Well, talk about how you prayed during that time. When you’re dealing with so many griefs at the same time, so many losses at the same time, it’s really difficult to put language to it or to even understand the devastating impact it has on your heart.
Amy: Yeah, I mean, I honestly, we were just, like, kinda in a tailspin, and it was probably July that we came down to Florida.
Amy: So it’s kind of always been our healing place, you know, for several years- Mm … even before we moved here. And so came down here to really process. [00:07:00] And I was reading through the Bible in a year at that time and listening, you know, ’cause I listen to it as well. And what happened to us at church was so painful that there was talk of lawsuit, and even from Christian friends that really wanted us to pursue a lawsuit because it was at that level.
Amy: And being down here in Florida, I remember we were getting ready to go to dinner, and literally the place in the Bible, which I need to look this up, but it was talking about you don’t sue a brother or sister. And it was during the time that we were here that God led me. And this is where I would encourage people to pray for the right alignment and the right helpers in your season of grief because he led me to reach out to a Christian lawyer.
Amy: Of course, I talked to, to Eric about it. I had met this fabulous Christian lawyer at a networking meeting up in Chicagoland that I was a part of, and so I just felt led. Eric felt the same. Let’s call this, you know, just for advice it was the best decision. He was very knowledgeable. He was very godly, and he gave us just wonderful advice. And he really guided us through [00:08:00] how to begin to resolve and to seek healing and what I would call, like, restorative justice for what happened within the church and to our family.
Amy: So if people are out there listening, I encourage you, , in the midst of your grief, you just wanna go into a cave and hide, which I get it, and I was in a cave for a while. But then when he told me to come out at key times, I said yes even when I didn’t want to. And, and another example would be, grief share.
Amy: So my friend, who had also gone through the similar grief, had lost her dad suddenly and also had this same involvement with this incident at church. She was like, “Amy, we are the church. You know? Like, it’s not just a building. It’s not just a denomination.” Mm-hmm. ” It’s his chosen ones, his called out ones, and we need to stick together.
Amy: We need Christian community.” And so she said to me, “Hey, there’s this church that offers this grief share. Would you come with me?” I really was just still reeling, but I knew I needed to somehow move forward, yeah. And so I gave Janet my yes, and, uh, the two of us [00:09:00] went to grief share together.
Kelly: Wow. All right, I wanna talk more about your grief journey, how do you keep from just running away from God and never returning?
Amy: I think for me, like, okay, my dad gave me this wonderful advice, so this kind of sums it up.
Amy: Like, my dad was a prayer warrior. We went through a lot growing up. I did not have an idyllic childhood, so there was a lot of healing that happened. I mean, there was a lot of abuse, a lot of hard stuff, and I saw my dad really grow and heal. Thankfully we celebrated Mom and Dad’s 60th anniversary right before, he passed away.
Amy: I helped put on the party. I’m the only girl. I have four brothers. So you know, Dad said to me, ” I go, “Dad, how am I gonna do life without you? How can I do this?” You know? And he said, “I want you to trust God no matter what.” And he said, “No matter what happens, trust God.” And he said, “Whatever you do, don’t stay mad at God.”
Kelly: Amen. We can be fully convinced that God is who He says He is ’cause the Word is true. He is exactly who He says He is. He is almighty. He is all powerful. Yes. And yet we can be very, very confused by how our [00:10:00] story unfolds. So we can be convinced and confused at the same time, but we can also be very hurt by flawed people who- Mm-hmm, yeah
Kelly: who love Him. It’s so confusing.
Amy: It is. It is. I would encourage you, you just started mentioning attributes. I went to a Bible college and I love the attributes of God. So I just feel that it’s- Yes … whoever’s on here right now, maybe study the attributes. You know, there’s the incommunicable, the ones that He does not share, with anyone else.
Amy: There’s the communicable, the ones He shares with us. But some like you said, all-knowing, omniscient, all-powerful, omnipresent, transcendent. He is everywhere. He’s above, beneath, below. There’s no where you can go without Him. He is inscrutable. We don’t understand.
Amy: He’s mysterious. He’s incomprehensible. You know, there’s just so many things about God, how big He is, how much He’s in control, and you start to study these attributes and you realize, wow, God. It gets your mind off the grief and onto the big picture of who He is and what He is, and He will do what He said He will do.
Amy: And it’s [00:11:00] like, okay, I need God on my side. You know, this whole world can cave in, but as long as I’m with Him, and, and He’ll let you tell Him. And I’m, I’ma tell you a little vision I had ’cause I feel led to share this. So I was doing all this prayer, all this intercession, helping lead prayer initiatives.
Amy: We were involved in a big prayer group across Chicago, bringing prayer virtually, physically, connecting churches. I was leading a moms in prayer group. We were praying around, um, schools in Chicagoland because so much was happening. We were literally walking around schools. We were small group leaders at our church.
Amy: We were doing so much. And I feel like it was an attack of the enemy. Why do I feel led to share this? Because I said to God, I felt so weak and I had nothing left. And I’m a strong person. I’m like physically strong. I feel like I’m, you know, and I was just laid out. And I said, “Okay, God, I have no energy to do any of this, to intercede, to pray. And He said, “Amy, come here.” I saw Him as the lion of the tribe of Judah. And you know, Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and he went into this cave as the [00:12:00] lion. He told me to come lay by him, and he laid down. I laid next to him as a lion. I know this is, use your imagination.
Amy: I’m a creative, okay? So I just had to lay down next to him, and he said, “Even strong lions sometimes need to just lay and rest.” He said, “Just, just be here with me.”
Kelly: Mm.
Amy: And so that’s also to say if you’re in a season of pain and deep hurt that you can just come away with him. You know, come away with Jesus, come away with the Father, and just be in his presence, and it’s okay to rest and cry and grieve and lament or just sit, and you might need that season, and I had to have that season for a while myself, so I want to also share that.
Kelly: Oh, really beautiful. I love how the Lord meets us exactly in the ways that we need to hear. He knows how to speak to us in a way that we can hear him. And I have a whole list of his attributes that I will often review because it’s so encouraging. God is who he says he is. He will never go back on his word.
Kelly: He is faithful and steadfast and powerful, and his ways and thoughts are higher than [00:13:00] ours. Mm-hmm. That’s why we can be convinced and confused at the same time.
Amy: Yes.
Kelly: When people hurt us, we do have to walk through, uh, forgiveness-
Amy: Mm-hmm …
Kelly: but we can do it in his strength, and he can help us. Mm-hmm. I truly love this story of laying down with the Lion of Judah-
Amy: yes. Yes, especially for a doer like myself. And then I’ll say, like, when you’re in that secret place, he’ll show you, you know, like, what to do next. Like, he gives you strategies. So for us, he really had me and my husband, especially my husband, really led this, to seek healing within the church, and not just our campus but within the whole church, and really come to this place of closure.
Amy: I’m so thankful for my husband, Eric, that he took this leadership. And there was even a person, kind of advocate that came from the church and said, “Hey, let’s work on this, “How can we help you and your family heal?” Which was great, and my husband had the strength to do it.
Amy: And so that’s another piece. Like, hey, pray. You know, we can’t always reconcile because I’ve had that [00:14:00] happen, too. You know, we’re always called to forgive. That’s one side of the coin. But we can’t always reconcile ’cause sometimes people don’t want to, right?
Amy: And so they really modeled for us and, and really our family met with them, and right away the senior pastor was teared up, and he said, “I am so sorry for what happened.”
Amy: Wow. “Will you please forgive us? And I take full ownership for what happened.”
Kelly: Wow.
Amy: And then when we were sitting in there, he said, “I want you to know something.” He said, “I care more, and me and my wife here care more about you as our brothers and sisters in Christ than we care about this church, its reputation or anything else.”
Amy: He said, “If you even wanted to sue us, I understand. Go ahead.”
Kelly: Wow. That’s crazy. That’s only the hand of the god.
Amy: Started bawling. Yes, I started bawling like a baby, I just grieved, and it was, like, what I needed to hear, and this really started the healing process.
Kelly: Yeah.
Kelly: Oh, God, thank you so much. That’s beautiful.
Kelly: I thank you so much, Amy, for being so transparent about how [00:15:00] y’all were able to get resolution. I know you can’t share the whole story, but I just wanna lift up all my listeners as we’re talking about this to the Lord, because I know so many have been hurt and so many have been offended.
Kelly: But what I love so much is that even when we’re offended by people, and even when we’re offended by God, we can go to Him and we can trust that He will heal our hearts. And just like you have described a way that He met you in a vision, He has met me in places like that as well. Mm-hmm. He knows how to speak to us in a way we can hear Him.
Kelly: As I said previously, we are His sheep, we know His voice, and I’m so grateful for that.
Amy, I know that there was some, even a greater resolution recently with Eric with that church hurt. Could you just describe what happened? Yeah. So my husband, you know, he still travels up to Chicago, for work and so he was walking in a church,
and the new lead pastor said to him, “I want you to know that the way you handled things, with the incident with [00:16:00] your family, was done with such excellence.”
He goes, “I want to say thank you because you really fought to bring healing and restitution and reconciliation, and it is an example to our church, and it was done with such, such excellence. We still talk about it in meetings today.” Wow. That’s incredible. So it’s, , so amazing. , This has now been almost four years, and how God does, Romans 8:28, work all things together for good. And so it is like, “God, what are you asking us to do? Help us to do it and trust you, you know, with the results.” Yes. He is not the orchestrator of evil, but he is the redeemer of all things.
Amen

amy, I want to transition now to the next part of your grief storm that you had described. The next huge loss is almost incomprehensible. You lost your dad, you lost your church, and you were starting to heal So talk to us about how God met you in your next, grief and then how through His [00:17:00] Spirit He brought even more healing to your soul
Amy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it is so wild, like, just so many things.
Amy: I’m like, “God trusts me,” I guess. I feel like, whoo, I’ve been through it. So we moved down here to Florida in ’23, and, um, it was such a good fresh start. It’s been a healing place, and I mean, there’s more you can read about in my book, but He led me to start writing Arise from Grief in January of 2024. And I knew He said at the beginning of the year, “I want you to do, like, a partial fast and pray.
Amy: He’s gonna … There’s gonna be many distractions this year, and I really need you to focus and make time to work on this book.” And it was very much a challenge from beginning to end. I can’t tell you, I would be sitting at my computer and I’d fall asleep. I, that is not like me. Wow. Just things would get in the way.
Amy: I mean, I just had technical problems. I mean, one thing after another. And then as I’m writing this book, and just literally, ’cause we had also lost six loved ones in four months of ’23, from September to December- Wow and so I was [00:18:00] just, like, my husband had come back from work. He owns a business.
Amy: It’s still based in Chicago. He has an office here, travels a lot. He and my son had just come back. We were going to a basketball tournament for our son, and I remember literally thinking on the way back, I’m like, “God, life finally feels like it’s getting normal.” This is a conversation I was having.
Amy: Like, so happy to be with my husband, my son, and just looking forward to the summer, and we’re finally healing, you know, from the grief. And I pull up in the driveway. I’m sharing a story on Facebook about my son, like something he probably did in basketball, you know, proud mom. So a qui- quick story, and then my younger brother calls.
Amy: So as I mentioned, I have four brothers. And, You know we don’t really call each other anymore, we text. And so I’m like, ” Okay, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” He’s like, “No.” “Donnie, he’s gone. He died today by suicide.” Our brother died by suicide-
Kelly: Wow …
Amy: in a treatment center In Minnesota.
Kelly: Mm.
Amy: And I cannot begin to explain the depth of devastating grief. I mean, if you’ve lost a loved one, if you’ve lost [00:19:00] a loved one to suicide, beyond painful. It’s like your heart is ripped out. So let me just kind of share with you kind of the like what happened. So I am in the house talking to my brother Adam, my younger brother, and getting part of the story.
Amy: I come out, I share with my husband Eric and my son Ashton, and I was like, “I just gotta get outside.” I love nature. I feel like I can breathe in nature. So I, like, get outside, and it had been really raining, and, I look up and I see a piece of rainbow, and I hear the Holy Spirit right away. He said, “Amy, Donnie’s here with me.”
Kelly: Mm. Wow.
Amy: And then I look over, ’cause I’m starting to walk through the neighborhood. I look over, I see a little, another little slice of rainbow, and he said, “And he’s here with your dad.”
Kelly: Mm. You
Amy: know, ’cause I literally lost my dad two years before. So I start walking all over the neighborhood, like, for like two hours.
Amy: Feel like my legs were gonna fall off. I’m just so how do you wrap your head around this? I look up on the other side of the community, and then, and the rainbow was connected.
Kelly: Wow.
Amy: And he said, “And I have brought them together here with [00:20:00] me.” ‘Cause there was, like, a lot of tumultuous, kind of things happening in their relationship over the years, and I’m like, wow.
Amy: I mean, it’s like C.S. Lewis said. You know, He shouts in our pain. You know, He whispers in our pleasure. And yeah, to walk through that, I’m like … I mean, I’m still healing. It’ll be two years now in June, and the first year, I was a walking mess, so I was crying everywhere.
Amy: And I will have to say, we’re at Ocean Church in Estero. Our pastors are good shepherds, and they’re helping us heal. Mm. And I’ve been meeting every month with Pastor Angie. Her and her husband is Pastor Eric on, on staff. I meet with Pastor Angie, and we talk and we pray, and there’s nothing I can’t say or do that will make her wanna turn away, and she’s the one that said, “Amy, you need community.
Amy: Community will help you heal.” So again, I’ve been through two rounds of grief share, and I have to say, last year, he led me to go to this Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference. I had not been to a writers conference probably since I went to The Well. [00:21:00] I spoke at The Well, and that’s when I lost my dad suddenly after.
Amy: So this is my first conference last year in almost three years, and I didn’t even really wanna go. I was almost having a panic attack. I’m like, “Why am I going?” Holy Spirit told me to. I go in ’25 to this, with Susan Neill as the director. She’s wonderful. She was, like, my first self-publishing coach, and I just said, “Susan, I’m on a healing journey,” and I was literally crying. I think I could get the award for town crier through that whole conference. But I had to come out and I had to start talking about it, and then I met with Marcella, who was the prayer chaplain, and she said, “You are not done, you know, grieving.
Amy: You need to heal.” And she encouraged me to go back to Grief Share. So I went a second round, and this is kind of a cool God story and then I’ll stop. But she, um, said, “Go back to Grief Share.” So I look up, I’m like, “God, show me a Grief Share.” There’s a lot of snowbirds down here in Southwest Florida, so I… “Is there a Grief Share meeting starting in April?”
Amy: There was. I found he said go to one close by. ‘Cause, you know, if I go close to home, there’s no excuse, you know? And I get there, and the leaders are Sherry and Bill [00:22:00] and Sherry says to me, “You know that we share your same story?”
Amy: “We lost our son to suicide 20 years ago.” They had completely healed, and I completely had a place to open up and share and really pour out my heart and begin the healing journey at a whole new level.
Kelly: Mm. Oh, Amy, . All of these losses, I’m so grateful for the way the Lord leads you. It’s beautiful how you hear from Him, too.
Amy: Yeah. Thank you. And I, I wanna encourage everyone, ’cause, it does say in , John chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and a voice of another they will not follow.” And I, I really feel like He is no respecter of persons, and I would just read, and I think it’s, uh, Hebrews 11:6, , that it’s our faith, we have to come to Him by faith. And He says, “I am a rewarder of those who diligently seek me.” So I feel like that’s the key. We all can hear He wants us to diligently seek. And that doesn’t mean us being pious and, oh, we have it all together.
Amy: I mean, get on your face if you have to and cry. And this is, like, another example. That, after going [00:23:00] to that grief share, I had to, like, get literally on my face. And I remember in the middle of the night, ’cause I would have these panic attacks, I’d wake up like I was free-falling, like, this panic in my chest.
Amy: And I was on my face lamenting. I’m like, “Hello, we have a whole book, Lamentations. You’re not the first one to lament.” Like, bawling into a pillow, screaming, so upset that I lost my brother like this. And then there’s this whole criminal element around that, negligence, and he’s in a treatment center.
Amy: It’s just a whole nother thing. And so I’m j- just crying in this pillow in the middle of the night, and I just remember saying, “God, I can’t do this. I’m at rock bottom. Jesus, what do I do? I can’t handle this pain. I’m at rock bottom.” And I got quiet, and I saw a vision, and it was almost like the, like a basement of a building or, like, a parking structure in Chicago.
Amy: And I saw Jesus sitting against the wall, and then I fell to the ground, and I was sitting next to Him. I said, “Jesus, how do I do this? I’m at rock bottom.” He said, “Good.” He said, “I’m glad you’re at rock bottom. I’ve been waiting for you here.” Mm.
Kelly: Wow.
Amy: There’s nowhere we can go [00:24:00] that He won’t be. Right. So whether we’re having a panic attack, we feel like we’re gonna pop or we’re falling from the earth into the great abyss, He’s there.
Amy: You know, it’s kinda like Psalm 139. There’s nowhere we can go. There’s no height. There’s no depth. There’s nowhere that we’re apart from Him.
Kelly: Yes.
Amy: He is always there.
Kelly: Yes. Thank you, Lord. I’m just so sorry for all the pain you’ve walked through, but I’m so grateful for a God who is faithful, who shows up always, who is always present.
Kelly: And in John 10:3, before the verse that you already talked about, it says, “He knows us by name.” He calls us by name.
Amy: Yes. Yes.
Kelly: There’s nothing about us that He doesn’t understand. Mm-hmm. And even when we don’t understand … I remember one time being so confused by feeling depressed because I ha- I thought I had grieved all the grief that needed to be grieved.
Kelly: Mm-hmm. But He called me to come away with Him. From Matthew 11, “Come away with me, Kelly, and let me speak to you-” Yeah … “about that place in your heart.”
Amy: Ooh, so good.
Kelly: And my friend had a vision of me covered [00:25:00] in ashes, and he spoke the word mourn. And it so, it so surprised me that, you know, how the heart of God that is so good, that comes to us and never condemns us, never says, “You need to pray more.
Kelly: You need to do more. Yes. He said, “You need to grieve more. Just come to me and rest in me, and let me help you heal.” Yeah. I, I just love how He is always walking us into deeper soul healing.
Amy: Yes. Amen. Amen to that. So,, another, thing to share with you is I went to Captiva Island.
Amy: It’s a barrier island near Sanibel. It’s right off of Fort Myers. And there was just a day I was hurting, and one of my prayer warrior friends said, “I think you should just get away with the Lord. Go somewhere. Go your favorite place.” So I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna go to my favorite beach up here at Captiva Island.”
Amy: I get up there. I’m crying on the way, listening to worship music, and the beach isn’t there. I’m like, “Why can’t I get access?” And so I see this little parking booth, and there was a woman there. And I went up and I said, “What happened to the beach up here?” She goes, “Oh, they closed it to the public, and they’ve built this community.
Amy: It’s a [00:26:00] private beach now.” And I was so I was so upset.
Amy: And she’s like, “Okay, you know you can go back?” And she goes, “There’s a beach called Blind Pass.” I’m like, “Hmm.” She’s like, “It connects, you know, between Sanibel and Captiva.” So I go back, and right away, God brought that verse. And I say, “I will lead blind Israel down a new way,” I will show them a new path. And maybe not one that we have chosen, but He is gonna show Himself strong on our behalf there. So I get down. I get, like, the last parking spot. go out on the beach, and I, I remember my friend saying, “I’m praying that God will give you a gift today. Give you something special.”
Amy: You know? And so I’m kind of praying that. I’m like, “God, is there something special for me here at the beach? Would you show me?” I’m in the water. I see a huge conch shell, like a big, big shell.
Kelly: And
Amy: I’m going to grab it, and right as I’m going to grab it, some other woman sees it, and she’s close, and she runs over and snatches it up.
Amy: And I was like, “That’s how I feel right now. Everything good is being snatched away,”
Kelly: everything good is being snatched away. Wow.
Amy: Yes. I was [00:27:00] like, “Holy Spirit.” You know, He said, “Let her have it.” And so I hear her I’m hearing this ’cause I’m walking on. She hands it to a little boy, and he is so excited.
Amy: He’s like, “Oh my gosh.” And I’m like, “Okay, the boy needed it more than I needed it.” But I was like, “God, do you have something else for me?” And literally, the, the waves were really coming in. It was a windy day, it was sunny, and there was these rocky kinda like ledge, and I started, climbing up these rocks.
Amy: “I probably should have got out of the, out of the water sooner.” But I’m climbing up this rocky ledge, which really felt like spiritually what I was doing at the moment, you know, this hard place that it was hard to walk. And I get up on top, and there was this cement ledge, and I look down, and there’s three beautiful sand dollars.
Kelly: Sand dollars, wow.
Amy: So they were all in a row, these three sand dollars, and I right away thought of the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And He said to me, “Amy,” and this is where I got the revelation. He said, “You may have lost your earthly father, but let me be your heavenly Father.”
Amy: And beginning that day, I don’t know, [00:28:00] and to the present, a deeper understanding of the love of the Father. Mm-hmm. Almost like this deliverance from an orphan spirit or not understanding who Father God truly is. He is bringing me deeper and deeper into understanding. So that’s been, is being fulfilled,
Amy: and then second, Jesus. He says, “I will stick closer than a brother.” And I was close to my brother. My brother was prophetic. My brother was a lot like me. He was a creative. He was an evangelist. He led a lot of people to the Lord, including, like, my grandparents, my uncle.
Amy: When he was in the treatment center, he was drawing pictures of heaven and telling people about Jesus. He had his faults, for sure. There was mental illness there. There was a lot of prescription drugs they had him on, but he still had the heart for Jesus, and he knew scriptures. And so He’s like, “Okay, you, you miss your brother Donny, but I will stick closer than a brother.”
Amy: And then the third, the Holy Spirit. You know, the Holy Spirit comforter, advocate, nurturer. So my mom is slowly dying of dementia. She’s in memory care in Minnesota right now. Mm-hmm. [00:29:00] And so she still remembers me, but there’s been also a lot of pain I’ve had to heal from with my mom, and there’s just a lot in our past.
Amy: But He’s given us, like, three or four beautiful years together where she’s been in this memory care. She’s on medication. We would have times of just laughing. I mean, some of my best years with my mom. have been when she’s in her 80s and I’m in my 50s.
Kelly: Wow.
Amy: So that’s a beautiful promise. But also now he said, “I, Amy, will nurture you.”
Amy: Like now he’s, well, he’s blessing me, like restoring things with my mom, but then he’s showing me, , “Amy, you may have lost Dad, you may have lost Brother, you’re slowly losing Mom, but I’m gonna be all these things to you and more.”
Kelly: Mm. That is so comforting. I’m thinking of many of my listeners who have lost loved ones, and I’m just praying in my heart for them to receive that beautiful message from the Lord as if it came right to their heart. That-
Amy: Amen …
Kelly: oh, and it is. It’s coming right to their heart. One of the things I wanted us to talk about is what do you know about [00:30:00] God now that you didn’t know earlier in your grief journey?
Kelly: You’ve touched on some things right there, but would you mind just highlighting that and expanding it for us?
Amy: Yeah. I feel like he’s bringing me deeper and deeper, into his presence, and, what really matters is him. And I feel like everything can go away. Like, one of my favorite attributes is immutable.
Amy: Immutable. He is unchangeable. He will never change. He’s holding us in the palm of his hand. What he said he would do, he has integrity. He’ll never lie. He’ll never betray. He’ll never walk away. He’s eternal. And yeah, if anything, I just wanna be more and more with him, you know, more and more in his presence, and I wanna obey him.
Amy: I wanna please him. There’s been a burning away of, like, a refining. Why am I doing this? I even questioned did I ever wanna speak again, write again. I really questioned my call, my identity. I feel like a nub of a person for a while. Mm. I just had to be in his presence, and I was like, uh, am I called to do this?
Amy: I thought maybe I was just gonna coach, [00:31:00] and then he started bringing this all back around. But now I wanna do this for his glory, not my own. I wanna advance his kingdom. My motives, I feel like, have changed and been refined, and I just love him and I wanna make him known and I wanna work with other brothers and sisters in advancing his kingdom.
Kelly: Oh, yeah. Powerful. Well, you talked about the Father’s love, that you learned to be able to see Him as your loving Father after losing your own father.
Kelly: What has helped you as you read the Word, as you want to cultivate that deeper, receiving of the Father’s love?
Amy: Mm. Yeah. That’s beautiful. I don’t know why this, the picture of, um, Jesus leaving the 99, so that’s not really the Father, but I feel like this is the heart,
Kelly: yeah.
Amy: Like, when I was out, I just walked away from everything.
Amy: You know, like right after my dad died and the church hurt, I saw a picture of myself just out in the dark wilderness. As a sheep, that’s a very dangerous place to be. Even Proverbs says, “A man or woman who isolates themself seeks their own ruin.” And so that’s the beauty of, Jesus leaving the [00:32:00] 99, you know, and going to get you, and just, putting me around His shoulders.
Amy: Mm. And that’s where I could hear, Him closely and feel His heartbeat. And I feel like that kind of ripple goes over to the Father God, to the Holy Spirit, you know? So even now when I pray, I … And He brought me back into the fold, and He’ll bring you into the right fold. You know, it’s that surrender.
Amy: You know, I don’t wanna run. I’m broken. I’m angry. I’m hurt. But you know what? Jesus, Father God, Holy Spirit, I wanna be where you want me. And so it’s this yielding, I feel like that’s … ‘Cause I’m a strong willed person. I’m Finnish. They say we have a lot of sisu, if you’re familiar.
Amy: But I was like- Yeah … “God, I don’t wanna be unteachable. I don’t wanna be bitter.” I want to be where you want me to be, and so, Father, please help me. And that’s where He started giving me this little tagline, Father knows best, which, you know, is like a TV show. But, you know, He will show me what I’m supposed to do.
Amy: He will speak to me, and trusting [00:33:00] Him with all of this, even when it doesn’t make sense. Like you said, His ways aren’t our ways. You know, there’s things that are mysterious. That’s where that incomprehensible, inscrutable, those things. , He does things that blow us away, but we have to wait.
Amy: It’s almost like getting up in the middle of the movie and walking out. It’s like, wait a second. Stay seated till the end of the movie. It’s not over yet, and so it’s like we have to trust in that hard, painful place and to know Father knows best, and He, will lead us through His Word. I think His Word is so powerful, I mean, think about that best-selling book of all times, written over 2,000 years. How many authors, inspired by, and so many, , repeating things. Like, you read the New Testament lines up with the Old Testament. I love the Book of Isaiah. How could that God that did all that just leave you stuck in your grief situation and walk away and say, “That’s it.
Amy: It’s over.” Or for you to be like, “Forget it. I’m walking away.” You could be the smartest person in the world combined with [00:34:00] the smartest brains, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, you name them all, Steve Jobs. We still would not have the wisdom collectively that God has and to see the beginning from the end. And so I do not
Amy: You know, like that verse, “Some trust in horses. Some trust in chariots, but I will trust in the name of the Lord my God.”
Kelly: Mm. ‘
Amy: Cause He knows perfectly what happened to you. He’ll take care. If you feel like you need justice, He says, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay.” And, you know, He understands our anger, our grief.
Amy: We can tell Him all about it. That’s the thing, too. I mean, we don’t have to be a saint and pretend it didn’t bother us. Tell Him. Write it out. Talk it out. You know, seek justice. Whatever you need to do to heal, He wants us to, but to trust Him ultimately that He’s not done writing your story yet.
Amy: I always say grief is not the end of your story. It’s the launching pad to your new beginning.
Kelly: Oh, that’s so true. God is doing a new thing we don’t want to go to those grief places because it seems like it’d be too painful. But then after we do go there and we work through it, we’re on the other side, and [00:35:00] we’re like, “Wow, I should have done this earlier.
Kelly: This is- I know … so much better than where I was. Thank you, God.” Yeah.
Amy: I agree totally.
Amy: I would say Romans 8:18, “If you suffer with Him, you will be glorified with Him.”
Kelly: So good. I love the fact one of the things you mentioned about God’s attributes is that He is eternal, unchanging, and that is one of the things that has meant so much to me over the years when life was crumbling around me, when everything was changing, when when I would become so disappointed by a new diagnosis for my girls who already had so many difficult diagnoses.
Kelly: I would have to remember He is unchanging even though life is crumbling around me. He is sovereign. He is good. He is faithful. And I’ve shared this on the podcast many times, but Psalm 27, I would have to just declare out loud, I know I’m gonna see your goodness here in the land of the living, so I’m gonna be strong and courageous.
Kelly: I’m gonna wait for it. I’m gonna look for it, and I’m gonna stand here with [00:36:00] hopeful anticipation knowing that you will show up and I will see your hand of goodness and blessing in my life.
Amy: Amen. Amen. That’s beautiful. I love that verse too. Psalm 27 that you shared. Yes, I will see His goodness in the land of the living.
Amy: And we have to declare it out loud. He’s really challenged me to stand on the word and declare it out loud.
Kelly: That is so helpful. I have , some verses that I will pray frequently throughout my house and when we are moving and declaring truth, Lord, right now I’m just confused about all the pain in my life and I’m being defeated by the things coming against me.
Kelly: So I’m gonna walk around my house and declare everything I know that’s true, and it is empowering, and you are moved from a place of tentative doubt to a place of strong, courageous faith.
Amy: Yes. Yes. And even to pray that, I even recently there’s been some really hard things that happened and I was like, “God, I have this deep disappointment.
Amy: Would you please heal me of this?” You know? , The deep disappointment, the doubt, the unbelief. Like, even just going [00:37:00] to get prayer recently, you know, meeting with Pastor Angie and with, with some other prayer warriors earlier this week. Like, hey, just being honest. You know, it says confess your sin. It may not be a sin but, hey, I’m stuck in this doubt.
Amy: I’m stuck in this fear, this unbelief. Some really devastating news just came my way or whatever happened, you know? And asking people to pray with you. Such power in community, such power in numbers. You know, He says if you come together, whatever you two agree on Earth, it will be done in Heaven. And so I would encourage people that are listening, even if you can find one trusted person right now, ’cause it’s really hard to trust when you’ve been through a lot of hurt and grief, but one person that you can reach out to and say, “Will you pray with me?”
Amy: So powerful. It’s like a lifesaver, a lifeline.
Kelly: Yes. Well, as you have talked about your grief journey, you’ve given us many practical things that have worked for you, you’ve brought out is we can tell the Lord anything. Just pour it out and talk about our pain, lament, tell the truth.
Kelly: And we talk about that a lot on this podcast, and that is the most helpful thing we can do. We can lament, and, he’s a God who’s gonna [00:38:00] walk us into healing. And you’ve talked about how the Lord sustained you when the grief felt very heavy, and he’s used community, he’s used his word, he’s used beautiful times of his Spirit meeting you and giving you visions of his presence with you.
Kelly: I, I’m so grateful for the Lord for that. So I’m wondering if you would just talk to the person who may be grieving right now and wondering what to do.
Amy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. God gave me an acronym. I’ll try to go through it quickly, but it’s called LEAPS, so you’re not stuck in grief. He wants you to leap forward, and it’s not one time, it’s several times.
Amy: So L is lean into it. Don’t run from it. Lean into Jesus. Lean into the grief. A, ask for help. So I forgot E. E, express your emotions. Hello, I’m dyslexic. E, express your emotions and express your feelings, like whether it’s writing, whether it’s talking, whether it’s crying, lamenting. And then A, ask for help.
Amy: So ask one person, or if help is offered to you, receive that help. [00:39:00] So that’s really been amazing for me. P, I say pray, pray, pray. And the reason why is, like, pray in a new way. So maybe you pray, like we said, scriptures. You pray them out loud. Maybe you pray a listening prayer, you know, like where you just get quiet in his presence, and you pour out your heart and then just listen.
Amy: What is he saying? You know, write it down or just take it in. And then look for creative ways to pray with others. And you might, maybe you just moved across the country like we did. That was very hard. “Okay, we don’t really know anyone.” Pray over text. Pray over the phone. Pray on Zoom. So find that creative way.
Amy: And then S is to surrender everything to Jesus and ask him for the next right step.
Kelly: That’s so good. You’ve given us examples of when you’ve done that. Thank you so much, Amy, for everything you have brought to us today. I’m thankful for your ministry and for the journey you’ve walked on, and so thankful for our Lord, who is always faithful to walk us into healing.
Amy: Yes. You’re [00:40:00] welcome, and thank you for having me, Kelly. It’s just been a blessing to be with you.
Kelly: Just tell us your website for our listeners so they can check out more about you.
Amy: Sure. So you can find me at my website, amyjob.com. It’s A-M-Y-J-O-B.com.
Kelly: Perfect. All right. I encourage our listeners to go check her out, and the book. Several of your books. I haven’t read your first two, but they also look very good. Thanks for being with us, Amy.
Amy: Yes, thank you so much, Kelly. Have a blessed day, everyone.
If you were encouraged in your faith today, if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kellyhall.org, and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope podcast