Podcast

God Redeems our Stories. Pam Fields

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable whole podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these conversations.

Kelly: Well, hey friends. I am so glad you’re here. I’m releasing this podcast just a few days after Easter where we just celebrated the truth that jesus walked outta that grave. Jesus is alive. I pray your hearts are filled with the hope of his resurrection and that even in the heartaches that you might be walking through, you’re reminded how deeply, and how powerfully you’re loved by the one who [00:01:00] created you. He is with you. He is for you. And that same power exerted when Christ was raised from the dead is at work right now on your behalf. I pray you’re encouraged today in the truth of who God is and who you are in Christ.

Well, I wanna welcome you to the conversation today. Pam Fields is my guest. She is a wife, a mom to nine and gaga to a bunch. What I love so much about Pam is she has one of these beautiful, authentic hearts.

She has trusted God for hard things and God has not wasted her pain. But as Pam tells her story, you may notice some disconnects as she has just in the last few years, been able to use the word abuse to describe some aspects of her childhood. You’re gonna hear the surprising ways that Jesus met her and has brought so much healing.

She has a beautiful redemption story. She has a heart for encouraging moms in their faith and in [00:02:00] the challenges they face as they parent their little ones. She does this through her online communities and through her podcast.

She is the host of The Mom Next Door. Stories of Faith. I love this podcast. I’ve been on it as a guest and I’ve actually found a few of my guests from her podcast, so I’m thankful for that as well. She’s a contributing writer for a couple of books. One of them is Life in the Estrogen Free Zone.

Pam, welcome to the show.

Pam: Thank you so much. I’m, I’m so excited to get this opportunity to share with you, and I just pray that it blesses those who are listening. Oh,

Kelly: absolutely. I know it will. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about your family right now.

You are a busy mom, so kind of lay that out for us.

Pam: Yeah, I, I think I’ve always been a busy mom. You know, the early years I was busy because I was learning what it was like to be a mom how. Just practical functioning as a mom. Those are busy years, [00:03:00] even if you just have one, you know, just, just sincing that all together.

And then comes the second. And then my number three came with his brother at the same day. So I have twins born on April Fool’s Day. They are 24 years old now. Then we have, those are my oldest four that I kind of mentioned, and then our youngest five live with us now, still the oldest 20, youngest is 11, and we’ve recently brought my mom to live with us.

And so, oh, it’s just, it’s a busy house. And my daughter, her husband and four grandchildren live very close. And so whenever we can, we have a little party, you know, Saturday, Saturday family dinner. It’s, it’s just a good time. Always busy.

Kelly: Oh, that’s fun. And you homeschool these kids too. Have you done that the whole time?

Pam: We have with about a three month break for my oldest. He was in kindergarten and I thought, I just can’t do this. It’s too much. And so at the time he was kindergarten, my [00:04:00] daughter was preschool. The twins were just learning to walk. I put him in school for three months and he came home and he said. I don’t wanna play with them.

They’re babies and I don’t wanna play with her. She’s a girl and I don’t have to listen to you. ’cause my teacher said she knows the way to do this and I’m gonna do it. And I thought, okay, we’re done. We’re, we’re gonna go back to homeschooling for a while and we can revisit this, you know, in another year or two.

And we, we just never stopped. We’re about 23 years in.

Kelly: Okay, wonderful. Yeah, what do you do to refresh your soul in the busyness of everyday life?

Pam: You know, I have struggled with the word rest, but what I find really, I. Refreshes me. Maybe it’s not restful for others, but talking I love just sitting down with people, talking on the phone, doing Marco Polos with friends, going to coffee

I just, that connection [00:05:00] I think just I, I, God created me for that type of connection and that is what refreshes me more so than any hobby.

Kelly: Yeah. I love that so much. I am an introvert. However, I am charged by intimate conversations with friends. I love it. That’s why I love this podcast so much.

Yeah. Well, I want us to walk into your story. You grew up as a missionary kid, and what I found so interesting is that even though you’re a missionary kid, there were really big disconnects in faith.

So take us back into your story and we’ll go from there.

Pam: Okay, so I, I dunno how far to go back, but I guess I could start with that. My parents met at a Christian summer camp. He was the lifeguard, she was the camp nurse.

They fell in love and they intended to do ministry together for forever. Specifically they were drawn to Native American Indians and doing ministry on. [00:06:00] Reservations and close to where the American Indians lived. So when I was little, we traveled around. We lived a lot of different places on or near reservations and at, at one point I.

They started, they, they were able to purchase a property and there started, what my parents called Shamahwa Chapel.

It was a halfway house, runaway center and, and kind of created as a place of respite. So yes, we did some ministry as missionaries around, but then we finally put down roots and had this ministry center where we lived. We had residents lived in the basement. The middle level was common area with,

kitchen, dining room, living room. We had a VHS player, which was a big deal in the eighties. Yeah. And then our family lived on the upper level and a door that was between them, a door that could lock [00:07:00] so that we could have, you know, also family time and, and be protected in a little bit in that way.

Mm-hmm. That’s kind of a start. Take me back to where you want to go from here.

Kelly: Okay. What is so hard for me to wrap my mind around is your parents were doing ministry in the name of Christ, they met at a Christian camp, right? They were doing it to serve him, but yet there was no prayer in your house.

There were no Bibles in your house. There were no Bible teachings. In your house. Right? It was not a part of your life. You never saw faith lived out, right. Growing up in this ministry. So I’m just wondering if you’ve ever been able to make sense of what was going on?

You know, I, I probably will be challenged until my death to know exactly what happened and what went on.

Right.

Okay. Yeah.

Pam: I do think a lot of it was a. Quietness, the secretiveness and my dad’s lack of accountability. [00:08:00] Mm-hmm. I think maybe in the nature of doing a lot of itinerant work, moving from place to place, just filling in here and there, there was a level of not needing to be accountable to someone as far as his ministry.

And I think that probably went into our family and, you know, I, if we did read the Bible or pray. I don’t remember it. We did have, some children’s Christian music.

And I remember going to my grandma’s house and next to her telephone was this little piece of paper and it said, tell me a story. And it was Child Evangelism Fellowship had this little. Dial on the rotary phone and when they picked up at the other end, there was a recording and it would tell you stories about Jesus.

Mm-hmm. So I did have access to Bible, Bible life and Bible story. But I don’t know if it was, I think one verse that my parents talked about, particularly my dad, is to. [00:09:00] When you pray, you go in your closet and pray. Do not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. So it was almost like, it was almost like my parents’ Christianity was a secret.

Mm-hmm. It was like. We knew that they did things to help other people. We knew that we were in ministry and that we were to serve other people. And we saw their needs, like our parents taught us. There’s so many people out there that are needy and we need to love them. We need to help them. We need to welcome them in.

Very much a heart of hospitality and a heart for the gospel. Yeah, but I think some of the disconnect is never. Putting those words into why we did the things we did and, and yes. No prayer in the home. No. Not even talking about prayer, you know, like, we wanna pray for this person, or they’re going through this.

It was, it was just kind of like a silent faith, uh, where we were expected to assimilate that. [00:10:00] Ourselves. In addition, I do remember my, my dad being a strong proponent saying My parents forced me to go to church when I was a child, and I had to go, and I’m not gonna force my children. I want them to have full liberty to make the decision to follow Christ on their own.

Therefore, I’m not going to take them and try to influence them. To be that because I didn’t like it when I was forced into it. And so I think that might have factored in as well into some of this wishy-washy. We’ll just let them do it if they feel like it kind of thing.

Kelly: You, you experienced the heart of hospitality and yet you didn’t know Jesus and until later in your life. And then later your dad would be charged with some crimes, which probably links back to the lack of accountability in his life. But tell us about how you came to know Jesus.

Pam: Well, my grandma was very big in my life. [00:11:00] She loved on me. If I was sick from school, she would come pick me up and take me to her house. I always spent time around my grandma and. A few summers.

She sent me to Christian summer camp when I was 14. She sent me and it was fun, you know, I went and had the camp experience. It was great. I had so much fun with my friend. And then the next summer I had a different friend. Grandma sent me back to summer camp and when I was 15 I looked around at everybody around me, the things we were learning, the camp counselors.

And I sat on the deck with one of the youth leaders and I just remember crying and saying. I don’t want my life, I don’t like my life. I want what everybody else here has. It was definitely that point when I was 15 where I really said.

Jesus, I want you to lead my life. I wanna follow you. I wanna do things different. I wanna know your word. And that was, that was [00:12:00] definitely the changing point. I went home after camp and, and this friend, we both went and said, well, we’re gonna start going to church. We’re kind of like picking it out of the phone book.

Like, where do we go? I’m not sure. Where should we go to church? She wasn’t grow, wasn’t raised in the church. But that next weekend we went camping with her family. My friend and I and at this campground, we were teenagers. We were 15. Yeah. And there were these really cute guys with a boat and they were like hanging out.

They started talking to us. They invited us back to the campfire with them and we’re like, wow, this is cool. we go back to this campfire. It’s a youth group from a church. Oh. Oh, wow. And, and we thought, oh, okay, well we’re gonna start going to church anyway, so that’s neat. And then I came to find out that that youth group was from my grandmother’s church, and it was just like.

Perfect. So, uh, I [00:13:00] started spending Saturday night with my grandma so that I could go to church with her on Sunday. And so, , it just, it was so great. And so that was kind of my introduction to the household of faith, really. Mm-hmm. And once there, my youth pastor and his wife and the youth leaders, they just, they really took me under.

Their wing, they discipled me. Uh, they, they never took me out of my home physically, but in practical ways. They, they covered me. They, they looked out for me and guided me, and it, it was a beautiful thing. The church responded very well.

Kelly: Mm. You mention the fact that the youth leader from this new church, that they never took you out of your home?

I had mentioned your dad was charged with a crime,

I know you’re just beginning to understand and heal , from some of your childhood traumas, so I’m wondering if you could just talk to us about how that unfolded.

Pam: Well, you know, at the time I knew [00:14:00] our family was different, but I don’t think I realized how different it was. And I’m still friends with my youth pastor and, and his wife, oh, you know, all these years.

30 some years later, I, I am still connected with them and we text and chat and. So they have told me now in my adulthood, Pam, we had positioned ourselves to prepare to remove you. Mm-hmm. We were watching and, and we did not feel it was quite time to make that happen, but we were prepared and, at the time I didn’t know that.

I had no idea. But. To go back, you did mention my dad was arrested and that happened between my eighth grade and ninth grade year. This halfway house and runaway center that we were running, that we lived in one day when my sister and I were driving home from school and her little orange VW bug on the [00:15:00] side of the road, there was a woman waving her arms.

Flagging us down and she on the side of the road said, don’t go home. Go somewhere safe, call in to your grandma’s house and she’ll give you the next instructions. And from where we were parked, we looked over and we could see that there was a police raid on our home. There were police cars everywhere.

Wow. And we did go directly to someone. My sister knew we stayed at their house. I have no recollection of where we slept that night or. Really the days thereafter, right around there. But we never went back to that house. I don’t know how our clothing and our personal items were removed from it. Anything.

So my dad was arrested that day on charges of furnishing alcohol to minors. I. Furnishing pornography to minors and sodomy [00:16:00] with a minor. And at the time, you know, he said, the police are just after me. They just wanna shut down our ministry because we’re doing the Lord’s work. And, and so they’re out to get me.

They’re out to get this ministry. And as a child, that made sense. It, of course, I didn’t really know what was at hand Now as an adult looking back. This was eighth and ninth grade-ish, and I now, you know, remember back to my childhood in second grade and our family name game night was a Ouija board. Uh, my dad brought out alcohol and gave it to us as children.

He brought out pornography and. Forced us to look at that. And I remember in all those situations, I, you know, fi saying, I don’t want to look at that. I don’t want to put my hand on that device. , my dad had his hand over my hand on that [00:17:00] Ouija board device thing, and I remember trying to pull my arm back and he was forcing my hand onto it and I.

I just had no interest. I, I was scared of it. And so when I look back and I take some of that information. Also in our halfway house in runaway Center there were youth that would have parties and he would go out and purchase alcohol for their parties. And I knew that as a child, he would tell us, there’s gonna be a party here and there’s alcohol out there.

the exchange was, I will buy you alcohol if you give me your car keys. Because I feel that it’s dangerous. This was my dad talking. It’s dangerous for these kids to be behind the wheel after they’ve drank. And I know they’re gonna drink anyway, so I want them under my roof doing it. So he would provide the alcohol, they’d give him their keys, and you know, so, so now later as an adult, [00:18:00] uh, in the later years, I’m like, those charges.

Absolutely makes sense. I saw it happen. I lived it. Right, right. But as a child, it, it didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t make sense that none of my friends were allowed to play at my house. It didn’t make sense that I didn’t have birthday parties. No one was allowed to sleep over. I always thought it was because my birthday always fell on spring break.

Um mm-hmm. It, you know, the pieces just come together later in life and. We have this understanding every family’s different, every family’s unique. It’s all good. It, it wasn’t until, you know, close to 50 years old. Well, or, or maybe even when I became a mom, I knew I wanna do my life different than my parents did my training and teaching as a child, I, I didn’t get into counseling till I was close to 50.

But

Pam: I, you know, just incrementally learning little pieces of my life, putting that puzzle back [00:19:00] together. I may still be doing it for another 20 years. Really?

Kelly: Yeah. How has counseling helped you sort through this? What was the result in your heart?

Pam: Well, I think, uh, one thing is I’m always very active.

I’m busy, busy, busy. I do have nine kids. I homeschool them. I’m volunteering for this. I’m, you know, I’m like keeping all the things. In the air. I’m juggling a lot. And it wasn’t until I went to counseling and I I, my very first appointment I went to prove my doctor wrong. Uh, I was losing words. I couldn’t complete some sentences and I’m starting to think maybe I have early onset Alzheimer’s or something and my doctor said.

You need to go to a counselor and deal with your PTSD because I don’t think that these are medical issues. I think you need to work on that. And I said, I don’t need to go to a counselor. Why? She, she said, just go. Just go and let me know. And so I really [00:20:00] went to prove her wrong. And uh, when I got there, the counselor said, tell me about the stress in your life.

I said, I don’t have any stress. I have a beautiful life. It’s so great. You know, things are busy, but they’re not stressful. And then she said, okay, well tell me about some of the trauma that you’ve had in your life. And I’m like, I don’t have any, I can’t think of any trauma in my life. You know, I mean, it was different.

I knew my family was different. I knew I was raised different, but there’s no trauma there. And I think I had seen the word trauma as. You know, maybe something violent or something you know, just catastrophic in a different way. Right. And I did not recognize in my own life what trauma was, uh, what had transpired in my past.

Yeah. And so, you know, she said. You are, are really, have become a master of disassociation to just like, keep things going so that you don’t have to think about that. But I’m gonna spend [00:21:00] some time and we’re gonna throw out the anchor and, uh, you are busy, but I want you to spend some time really thinking through some of these things and, and we’re gonna work through that.

Healing. Healing of your brain. Your brain is so full and kind of stuck in some of that fight, flight protection mode. Yeah. That I think we need to work on that

Kelly: for a little bit. Oh, that makes sense. That’s so interesting that, and I’ve read stories where childhood trauma, that didn’t seem like trauma to the person going through it.

It doesn’t really emerge until they start having their own families and it comes out in different ways. Maybe addictive things, maybe self-medicating ways. But for you, it came out in. You were busy. It came out in mental ways. Like you were dropping words, you couldn’t complete sentences. Yeah. So you started to notice there was something going on in your brain that wasn’t quite right.

Things were starting to fall apart.

Pam: [00:22:00] Right, right. And I had been, I. Highly functioning for a very long time, and I thought I’m starting, I’m getting to that point. My youngest, well, he is 11 now, so a little bit younger, and I thought I’m finally getting to that point where I can start to read books. I have more time in my schedule.

I can start writing. I. My brain is so foggy, I don’t understand what I’m reading. I don’t understand what I’m writing, or, you know, and by then I had started podcasting as well. So I’m like, my life is becoming words and stories and it just doesn’t make sense.

Mm-hmm.

Kelly: Wow. So tell me if you don’t mind, whatever you wanna share about the process of you were disassociating.

And that was causing issues in your life. How did counseling help you reconnect with what was true about God and your story?

Pam: Hmm, I just had this conversation with a friend yesterday and she asked me a similar question and I. [00:23:00] One thing that the counselor had me do was to close my eyes and, and basically put myself back in, in a situation in a room where some bad things happened to me.

Mm-hmm. And she said, where was Jesus? You know, , what does the room look like? And she’s having me describe it, and I am, I’m picturing this with my eyes closed. And she said, can you see Jesus? Where was Jesus in this time? I, I saw him there with me, watching over me in a protective really looking out for me comforting and, with compassion.

And then he put his arms out to me and like he was asking me for something and I was describing to her, you know, kind of. And this was so new to me, like in my mind’s eye and my, is this, my imagination? Is this real? So, but I, you know, praying through this, I, I see the Lord put his hands out to me [00:24:00] and he asks me to hand something to him, like all of it, like the, feelings that I had and the discomfort and shame and overwhelmingness and all that.

And I couldn’t give it to him. Hmm. I just couldn’t. And then all of a sudden he reached around me and picked up this box or whatever it was, you know, this thing. And he reached around and took it from me. And then I felt a peace and. Relaxing.

Kelly: Jesus pursues our hearts, and this is true throughout scripture. . Jesus is the healer. He’s the prince of peace. He draws near.

He speaks to us in ways we can hear him. And I love that you opened up your mind and he showed you this beautiful picture of his invitation to step into what was true and also his invitation [00:25:00] just to give him everything that, all the trauma and let him take it off your shoulders and take it out of your life so that you could have peace.

Pam: Well, and I didn’t even have words for what it was. Yeah. It, it was just feelings. Right. I, I could not articulate it. I just knew it was something that was overwhelming and heavy and it had to go. Yeah. You know, how many times can we not recognize that? It’s just, I can’t put my finger on it. There’s just something, there’s something.

Kelly: Right, right. This is the heart of God. We don’t have to be able to explain what’s going on inside of us. He can just meet us in these deep places of pain and he rescues us.

It’s so powerful. I remember one time when I was in a great deal of grief and heartache , and the Lord just brought a book into my life I’m reading all of these losses that someone has experienced, and I started to weep from a place [00:26:00] so deep inside of myself. It was too deep for words, and it was almost a, a disassociated. Experience the Lord just reached in to these deep places in my soul and my heart, my mind, and brought healing through his spirit in ways I can’t even explain. But he helped me through His spirit process, the grief without

Pam: words., I was just reading in Luke 15, it’s got the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the lost Coin and the Parable of the Prodigal son, and I was listening to a speaker and she said, you know what is right here it is.

Something was lost. Something gets found and something is brought home. But the lost thing never is the one that brings itself home. Mm-hmm. The action is always taken by the one who’s finding and looking. That other is always the one that looks and redeems. And I believe it was Christie McClellan that was [00:27:00] talking about that if I credit her.

But I, I thought that’s so profound. I had never thought about that before. A coin. Is an inanimate object. It sits there. How can it get, how can it process through? Like, find me, find me. Right? I’m, I’m just laying here like, right. And, and in the same way, like the sheep when the sheep. Goes astray. It’s just, it’s there waiting.

And it may be in distress, may know it’s in distress. It may not know it’s in distress, but it’s lost. Right? And it takes the action of the shepherd going to find the sheep and the action of the, the woman who went to find her last coin and then even the prodigal son, he came back. But that. Dad was active to go out and, and meet him and bring him home.

And I, I think that a lot of us can think about our salvation story in that I didn’t know I was lost. I didn’t know what I was living in. I didn’t know that what, you know, my [00:28:00] life I was. Troubled, uh, I didn’t know I was a troubled or at risk youth. Right. And then here I find out decades later that my youth pastor and his wife were watching me and watching the situation.

And, and truly this was the eighties. And I think if this whole story took place now, I would’ve been removed from my home. But I, I think things just happened a little differently back then. And I trust God’s sovereignty in that and the things that he has. Taught me and, and grown me in, you know, anything that makes me cry out for God and learn more about him.

You know, that’s a blessing. Yeah. And so I feel that, you know, but, but wow. He had his hand on me. He was watching me

I wanted to add onto that parable. I remember when Christine McClellan talked about this parable in her Bible study.

Kelly: Jesus and Women. . And she said the parable of the prodigal son really should be called the [00:29:00] Parable of the Running Father, because all three of those parables have to do with Jesus is the one who rescues us. Our Father God is the one who is pursuing our hearts at all times.

Pam: Yes. Yes. She has different names for each one of those. Yeah. And she said like in the Middle Eastern lens, you know, they would’ve just titled it differently. And so I wrote ’em on in each of those spots on my Bible because Wow, that’s perspective.

Kelly: What were the other titles for those different parables? So the Parable of the Lost coin, she titled it

Pam: The Parable of the Good Woman.

The one who went and did the looking right and then the parable of the lost sheep was the parable of the Good Shepherd who went out and looked for the sheep. Right?

I love that.

Kelly: Yes. Your story just portrays that so beautifully you didn’t even know you needed rescue. And then just a beautiful way Jesus met you in the counselor’s office. How are you seeing changes  where counseling [00:30:00] helped you reconnect to your story and reconnect to the truth of God’s heart.

Pam: Yeah, I mean, I was pretty near 50 years old when I was told that was abuse. there, there definitely was.

 And again, at the time I didn’t have the words that it was sexual abuse. I didn’t know it. And, and really all the way into my married life, like decades in. I, again, I knew my life was different. I knew my childhood was different, but I had never connected some of the touching, and the inappropriate behavior that happened in my home as sexual abuse.

Kelly: Hmm. I’m so sorry, Pam. Wow. I’m so thankful for the, for the ways that God met you and began to heal you. I know that after you were married, some of the trauma came out and which is normal as we’ve talked about.

Yeah.

Pam: Yes. I am so thankful for the Lord’s healing and continual pursuing and, [00:31:00] um, covering me I think sometimes when we understand our past a little bit more, I, I’m, I have more grace for myself. I, I tend to be this perfectionist, overachiever all doing all the things and. I’m also aware now more that performance is also, adult children of alcoholics seem to have, a lot of those tendencies too. You know, I’m trying to fix everything for everybody and the Lord is teaching me that it’s okay to be still. , and that’s probably in conjunction the, the counselor’s telling me, it’s okay to be still right. You know, it’s okay to rest. It’s okay to take care of yourself.

And she’s done a great job of. Showing me in scripture, you know, Jesus took time to rest. Jesus had other people rest, and fellowship and all these things. And so, I’m just learning to manage things differently in my day-to-day life. It also probably affects my parenting. I have this wide range of children.

My oldest is [00:32:00] 28, my youngest is 11, and. I think whenever you have that wide of a range, the older set of children have a little bit different set of parents than the younger Right. Children do. Yeah. , we hear that all the time. Like, what you’re letting them do that. I didn’t get to do that until I was whatever age, you know?

So, but it’s not just, , like practically I’ve learned. To be a mom. And I have some mothering skills that I gained through those early years with those older ones, and I don’t have to, , work on honing those as well.

But the Lord is using this time to really rework my heart and remold my heart. And it’s kind of been a season where he’s like. , who are you? , and he’s telling me who I am. He’s showing me who I am. Another thing, I, I never really had any dreams, you know, like, what do you dream about? Well, really nothing.

I just wanna make sure I’m efficient and get things done, you know? What do you wanna do with your [00:33:00] life? Eh, I’m pretty much just about productivity. You know, like, it’s just in a, it’s just a new phase where the Lord’s opening up, like. He’s showing me like, I have other purposes for you. You’ve been in a building, you’ve been in a, growing your, your story.

I’ve been writing your story and you know, it’s, it’s interesting recently going back to that scenario where I was that little girl and he reached around me and he took something from my hands. That counselor said at the same time. Is he handing you anything? Is he giving you anything back? And I couldn’t see it, you know, I’m like, no, I don’t know.

And, and she perhaps asked me that a little more recently, so it was fresh in my mind and I was sleeping and I, I just was back there in that same place and I saw the Lord again and he was handing me something. He was stand handing me a great big stack of papers. I wasn’t asleep. I was listening to a [00:34:00] podcast.

That’s what I was doing. I was walking, I listened to so many podcasts. But so I was walking, I was listening to a podcast and the gal says, I want you to close your eyes and talk to Jesus. Ask him what he has for you, what he wants to give you. And just close your eyes and ask him and. I saw him hand me this great big stack of papers and at the same time then she started saying, God has given you your story. He’s given you your story, and he is the author and perfecter of your story, so don’t be afraid to share your story.

I was floored. I was like. Yeah, there, he’s been writing my story the whole time. He’s the author of my story and he’s been collecting the pages until such a time as this, as I am now to share it. You know, I was just like, oh, thank [00:35:00] you Jesus, for showing me that, that, you know, your hand was with me. You were, you guided me.

And you’ve been collecting the pages. Taking care of them.

Kelly: Yeah. That is so beautiful. And you have not been sharing your story. You’ve been doing this wonderful podcast where really you’re handing women things that you didn’t have growing up, you’re trying to equip women with. With tools and strategies and the love of Jesus that was not shared publicly with you as you grew up.

And then you’re seeing God inviting you into this new season where he’s asking you to share your story.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah. People probably get little glimpses of my life when I interview other women, . But I think probably having a podcast where I listen to other people has been a very safe place. But it has also reminded me, you know, so many times in Psalms 71 78, I think it’s like. Tell your story, tell of what the Lord has done. You know, I will [00:36:00] step up and declare what the Lord has done to the next generation until I am old and gray.

I will speak the truth. I will testify to what God has done. And, and that’s where I am right now. And I think sometimes my words don’t have perfect clarity, but I am, I’m ready. Like, Lord, I want to speak and, and to encourage moms. In the places that they are. Oh, that’s

Kelly: beautiful.

My heart just celebrates all the ways that God has met you. And I know when you were little before some of this trauma happened, you had this idea in your mind that you were gonna write, but yet this is what happens in trauma.

Our dreams get squashed. We don’t have the brain space to dream. About the future. And we’d start the dissociation thing. I’ve read that. That’s what happens. And so I love that as God has been connecting, healing your soul. He’s also reconnecting you to dreams that he put in you from the time that you [00:37:00] were created in your mother’s womb.

And that’s just one thing. I want so much for every listener to pay attention. To today, what are the dreams God has put in your heart? What? What are the things that he’s called you to do? Pay attention to those things because they’re not your imagination. Go to the Lord. Hold out your life and just ask him, what is it that you have for me in this space?

Pam: Yeah, I, I think you’re right. Like some of those things that were absent in my life then I recognize now, and I would love to provide for other people, and I have the podcast because we all need encouragement and hearing other people’s stories of faith that.

That just revs me up. I’m like, wow, God did this most amazing thing, and you know what? We know if he does it for us or if he’s doing it for other people, he can do it in our lives too. So it just gets me jazzed up. So I’m, I’m really excited about that. Right. Yeah. And then I have a mommy’s group on Facebook.

It’s called Tending [00:38:00] Fields Mom’s Group, and their. We are a community of women that pray for one another and share resources because all of our situations are different, right? Mm-hmm. I can’t speak to what somebody else has gone through ’cause I haven’t gone through it, but I know somebody, I have a friend.

I have a friend, and she’s there. And so it’s, it’s become a place of camaraderie from motherhood. Sometimes we talk about like really practical things. Some of those skills we never learned, right? Yeah. So we’re talking about practical things. We’re praying for each other, we’re sharing resources. And that is, you’ll find me on Facebook a lot because of that.

And so I, I just pray that that will help women who have maybe been unmothered or unparented to have somebody who can walk with them on their parenting journey. And so you can find me there. And then also I’m on Instagram as tending fields. Okay. That’s

Kelly: wonderful. I will put those links in the show notes so [00:39:00] you can connect with Pam and she has all kinds of wonderful resources

Well, Pam, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. I am honored that you, that I’m one of the first places where your story has been publicly shared.

Kelly: Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to God be the glory.

Amen.

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