Podcast

Finding Courage Through the Heartache of a Husband’s Porn Addiction and Divorce: Jody Allen

Jody: [00:00:00] And even though, it was at all time low emotionally, and just struggled in so many ways. God’s presence was really at an all time high in my life, and I don’t wanna dismiss the fact that it was an extremely hard season, but God’s presence was so, so real, and I had never experienced him in such a profound way.
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 conversations.
kelly: Hey friends. I’m always so thankful for each of you who choose to join me for these [00:01:00] conversations. I always pray that God would renew our hope in him and cultivate a fresh understanding of his goodness that he’s actively pouring out right now in every area that concerns our hearts.
I’m so thankful that he fights for us, that he is on our side and that he loves us more than we can imagine. Suffering can make us doubt God’s love is true for us, and in fact, that’s a question my guest asked in her suffering, if that’s something that you’ve ever wondered about.
I’d love for you to check out the free devotional on my website. It’s beautifully illustrated and contained stories from 31 writers around the country who explain how God’s love rescued their hearts
during their personal wilderness seasons of suffering, of fear and of shame, you can download Held in the Wilderness for [email protected]. Today we’re gonna talk about
how God’s faithful love and power met and rescued [00:02:00] my guest and her children’s hearts during a time of deep heartache and loss.
kelly: Our topic is a hard one, but we’re seeking to explore the question, how do we trust God through the disappointments of porn addiction and a failed marriage?
kelly: My guest is Jodi Allen. She is a writer speaker, a women’s ministry leader who isn’t afraid to talk about the hard stuff After her marriage ended, following years of her husband’s struggle with pornography, Jodi found herself navigating heartbreak, questions, and a story that she never would’ve asked for.
kelly: Instead of keeping it hidden. She chose to speak up so other women wouldn’t feel so alone. Her debut book, Hidden Heartache: Finding Courage When Your Husband Struggles with Pornography, offers Honest hope-filled Support to women facing similar Battles. Jodi lives in North Carolina. She works on staff at her church.
kelly: She’s a fan of a good mystery, Sunday naps, and chunky ice cream, which is my favorite. [00:03:00] She believes that even when life doesn’t turn out the way she hoped it can still lead somewhere. Good. Amen and amen. Jody, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the podcast.
Jody: Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here.
kelly: Your title, hidden Heartache, and then the beginning of the subtitle, finding Courage really speaks to how hard it must have been coming out with your story. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Jody: Oh yeah. When something like that happens, I feel like in general, all things sexual in nature just tend to, make you wanna hide.
Jody: And I, and then that means that we need courage to come outta hiding. So it was a really hard battle to move out of that.
kelly: Yeah. I know you didn’t want to, but God was pretty persistent.
Jody: He is. He is. And you know, it’s funny, I used to say he’s a little bossy like that.
kelly: Oh those are the exact words that I have used so many times.
kelly: Yes. I so agree. Well, I’m wondering if you can walk us through your [00:04:00] story. And I know this is not what you wanted, and I just wanna say, I’m so sorry this is your story, but would you lay it out for us?
Jody: So my husband and I, well now ex-husband, we met on a blind date.
Jody: We dated the four, all four seasons like you’re supposed to date. And then we were active in our church and we led a marriage bible study. He led a men’s group and I was active in women’s ministry and we were on the drama team together. We. Did mission trips, we did anniversary trips. We had kids, we were just a normal, what we felt like normal Christian family was.
Jody: And then one Sunday, noon after church, he sat me down the couch and he said, well, I’m, I’m struggling with pornography. And you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right? And this was back in the. Late 19 hundreds because that sounds like a long time ago. And there wasn’t a lot of conversation about pornography, and so I just assumed he had a men’s group and he could go to counseling and all those things.
Jody: Uh, that would all be taken care of. [00:05:00] And, so we just went about our, our marriage and, and pornography surfaced several times in our marriage after that. And we would, I would discover it and we would go to counseling and do all the things that we knew to fix it. But then we kind of settled into this, just disconnection.
Jody: And we had some, we had times where we were connected, but we kinda sort of settled into this living, like roommates. And then in 2013 when pornography surfaced again, I just, I just chose a different way because I. I needed, there needs to be something different. So he moved out in 2013 and that took us on a long, painful two year journey.
Jody: Very dark journey where he went to a treatment center, we did counseling, and eventually took us to the road of divorce, which is where we are now. Mm-hmm.
kelly: Yeah, I’m just so sorry. I know there was a lot of shame attached to this, and not only the pornography, but also the divorce. And you brought up the woman at the well and how she was living in shame and you [00:06:00] resonated with that.
kelly: Can you talk about how that story ministered some healing to your heart?
Jody: Yeah, so I think shame is really all about an inconsistency. An inconsistent between our values, what we say we believe, and and, and our reality, what we’re actually living.
Jody: So we, if we aren’t. If we aren’t living or our lives aren’t reflecting what we say we value, then that shame can creep in and it just is really heavy weight. And so I carried that weight of shame and just didn’t tell anybody for a long time that my husband struggled with pornography. And then at that last discovery, when he moved out, uh, I really just wanted to crawl under a rock because I valued marriage and I knew what God’s word said about marriage but my life just wasn’t adding up.
Jody: Shame just really crept in and, and just like the woman at the, well, I just wanted to hide because I was afraid that people were gonna judge me. And I wondered what people think about me and how could she allow pornography in her house? ’cause she has kids. And I, I remember walking into school one day to pick up my kids.
Jody: They were in. Elementary school, I [00:07:00] think. And I just feel like everybody was staring at me, staring at me, and I, they probably weren’t. It was just my own condemnation. But I, I think that after being in counseling and after spending a lot of time in the word, because that’s where the truth is, right? I mean, spending time in the word is where we.
Jody: Is where we understand what the truth is. I realized that I had to face my shame if I wanted to be free from it and normalizing my situation because sadly, it is normal even in the church because 75% of Christian men view pornography. And it’s sad, but it’s normal. It’s just that people aren’t talking about it.
Jody: But normalizing it really helped me realize that I’m not alone. And it gave me the courage to talk about it because hiding wasn’t helping, hiding wasn’t helping. It was only fueling the shame. And so one time when I told my story. It set me free. And so I told it again and I told him again, and that shame eventually lessened.
Jody: And the woman, and the woman at the well, when she encountered [00:08:00] Jesus, now she moved outta shame really fast. So she just she told the whole town about Jesus. I was a little slower to come around and it’s still a process. But it is, it is a process to move outta shame.
Jody: I have a story to tell about that. Can I tell it about moving outta shame?
kelly: Yeah.
Jody: A few months ago, I actually went on a women’s retreat and we were sitting and worshiping, we’re singing that song by Josh Baldwin titled Made For More. And there is, there’s a, a line in there that said, why would I make a bed in my shame when a fountain of grace is running my way?
kelly: Oh, I love that.
Jody: I know. And I just felt like God said to me, Jodi, shame is a choice. You do not, you do not have to keep living in shame. And I, I just felt like God said. You can be free from that.
kelly: Hmm. That’s so powerful.
Jody: Yeah. Gosh.
kelly: Well, I think telling your story really does help normalize it, and we do receive healing, a lot of healing in community with the Lord as we’re sharing the story and we see acceptance in other people’s [00:09:00] eyes and some empathy and compassion.
kelly: It brings a lot of healing to those areas of our life. Gosh, I love that story. . We don’t have to live trapped in shame. Thank you for sharing that. Another thing that I think is so powerful is just to know as we have walked through so many different types of crises, it was such a comfort to know that God is a God who fights for us.
kelly: Because so often we feel like we have to fix it. We have to fix the people in our circle. We have to fix. The broken. But to remember that God is the only one who can fix the broken and he is fighting for us is a great comfort. So can you just talk about how that truth and maybe share some scriptures, how that truth really helped walk you out of some of the wilderness seasons in your life?
Jody: Yeah. So it would be nice to be able to change people, wouldn’t it? Yeah. But unfortunately we are the only person we can change.
kelly: Yeah.
Jody: But when my husband was at the treatment center, and even though, it was at all time low emotionally, and just struggled in so many ways. [00:10:00] God’s presence was really at an all time high in my life, and I don’t wanna dismiss the fact that it was an extremely hard season, but God’s presence was so, so real, and I had never experienced him in such a profound way.
Jody: During that season, but, you know, when we walk through hard season, I mean, God is so gracious to give us the people to walk with us and we definitely had a, a good support system ’cause we don’t wanna walk alone and the body of Christ is such a gift. I don’t know how people do life without church. I just, I don’t know how people endure hard things without the church, but people supported us in so many ways.
Jody: They were picking up my kids and fixing things and I had a friend who. She really was Jesus with skin on. She would take me to lunch and there were so many things I needed to do and she would say, Jodi, these are the three things that you need to do this week. And I would do those three things and then we would go back and have lunch.
Jody: And she just really helped me keep moving forward. So God really just allowed people in my life. And there, that’s why we have all those one another [00:11:00] verses in the Bible, right? Because we are, yeah, to do life together with one another. But another way that God helped me walk through that season was just through counseling.
Jody: And I am such a. Such a fan of counseling, and I felt so blessed. I had a Christian counselor who helped guide me biblically, but then I had a certified sex addiction therapist, which I highly recommend because they have a different perspective. And I think a lot of women would say, oh,
Jody: I don’t think I need to see one of those because my husband is the one that has the issue, and I can understand that. But what a CSAT does is what they’re called a csat, they. Just come at it from a completely different perspective. And I found that to be very, very helpful. She’s able to speak in specific areas that my biblical counselor, my Christian counselor, couldn’t do.
Jody: , So that was really a another way that God helped me kinda walk outta that wilderness. And then really, his word was an anchor in all of that. His word. I’m a fan of praying scripture and so I, I’ve been really diligent about doing [00:12:00] that. And , because sometimes when we’re. When we’re emotionally distraught, it’s just hard to come up with words.
Jody: So why not use God’s words?
kelly: Yeah,
Jody: maybe I’m just lazy, but I like to think it’s resourceful, but just to use God’s words. And I was just so desperate. Like I remember some nights that I would go to bed with my Bible laying next to me. And I don’t know if Osmosis Kelly is a real thing, but I was like, if God wants to give me something, I don’t wanna miss it, so I’m gonna lay here with my Bible open.
Jody: But that was such a huge anchor for me just walking through that season, just having people and having God’s words kinda walked me through that dark season.
kelly: Absolutely. Well, reading the word all day long, praying the word, having the Bible beside you as his physical reminder and even the invitation. I mean, God says in the Bible, he counsels us in our sleep.
kelly: There are several verses that talk about that, and so his spirit just speaks to us. Even while we’re sleeping.
Jody: Yeah.
kelly: Can you just share some specific verses that have encouraged you? You share so many in your book, but what are some that just really helped fill your mind with courage as you were in the darkest season?
Jody: Well, [00:13:00] I think that uh, Romans eight, one, there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That one, that’s the cheerleader verse for me. Like I don’t have to live in that condemnation. And then Proverbs three, five, which is trust in the Lord. And lean not on your own understanding because. We could never understand why the world the way it is, yeah.
Jody: Is the way it is. Why my children had to walk through a broken family or why pornography makes so much money in our culture. We could never understand that. So just leaning on God’s understanding. And I had never, I mean, I had heard that verse, you memorized that verse, but until I walked through that and realized what it actually meant, I didn’t understand that verse, but that one, that was a pivotal verse for me.
kelly: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s one of my favorites too early on.
kelly: One thing I know is that when we’re living in crisis, when things feel out of control, we feel so scared because everything is uncertain and we struggle to sleep and we [00:14:00] struggle to find peace. And the fear and the anxiety just seem like they’re always rising up inside of us threatening to just drown us.
kelly: So I’m wondering how you found courage and help in those kind of places. You were disappointed with God, you were disappointed with yourself, with your husband, and there were many things that you did that are so helpful when we’re in those places of just dire need and desperation.
Jody: When I think about anxiety, because that’s a huge part of it.
Jody: And we’re living in crisis and we’re feeling outta control. And I just really struggled to shut my mind off. I’m really kind of an overthinker anyway, Kelly. But I would go to sleep at night and then I would wake up in the middle of the night and be awake for two hours and rehashing conversations or scenarios or just questioning whether I should have said this or done that.
Jody: And I think sometimes when we, go to bed at night. Something that’s really helpful to do is maybe even journal before you go to bed or I’m also a fan of praying on your face, like nose to the carpet, Kelly, just in complete [00:15:00] surrender. And so I, I would do that sometimes, but when I would wake up in the middle of the night.
Jody: One thing that I would do is just do some deep breathing, and this is funny, but I would also count backwards. I would start at 500 and count backwards, and hopefully by the time you get to zero, you’re back to sleep again. I know that’s an odd one, but that actually is one that I did pretty often. And then actually, I’ve just realized this in the last couple weeks, when you’re just tossing and turning, sometimes you just need to turn on the light and just journal.
Jody: And humming or singing a worship song. And, I always keep paper by my bedside so that I can write out my thoughts and just kind of clear my head for sleeping. But I think some people use weighted blankets or they use white noise or they spray lavender. One year I did decide to do a thankful journal, and I just wrote down three things every night just to gimme a different perspective before I went to bed.
Jody: Three things that I was thankful for, and then in the daytime. This was very helpful for me. Some people when they walk in their house, they turn on their tv or they’re turning their radio just to have noise, and I’m just not one of those people. But when we were [00:16:00] walking through that season, every morning when I got up, I would turn worship music on and I would just let it play all day long, even if I wasn’t in the house, just to kind of keep me focused. And then of course, praying scripture because coming up with words to say can be really stressful when you’re already emotionally distraught. And Hebrews 12, I mean, four 12 says that God’s word is alive and active and can divide the soul and spirit well, if it’s a powerful enough, if it is powerful enough and sharp enough for that, then I, then it can take the edge off worry and anxiety.
kelly: Absolutely. I’m a big fan of that, big fan of nose to the carpet, surrender. And also, like you were saying, it’s difficult to come up with prayers when you’re in a crisis.
Jody: Yeah.
kelly: But if you have scripture written down like Romans Day 37, we are more than conquerors and the all of verses.
kelly: That talk about God is fighting for us, the battle is the Lord’s. And one John four, four, the one that is in us, is greater than the one who is in the world. And we all know Jeremiah 29 11, you know, his plans for us are for good. They’re not for calamity, they’re for good. To give us a purpose and [00:17:00] hope. And so what I did during, gosh, the biggest crisis of my life was I had all these verses written out and I’d read ’em every day, but I prayed them and
kelly: praying these truths to the Lord God. You say, you say this is true, right? Yeah. And that really helped build courage in me and it helped me believe the truth that God really was with me and fighting for me. And at night, Jodi, one of the things I did that helped me is I would just play the Psalms.
kelly: I wake up in the middle of the night, all these thoughts, I cannot shut ’em off. And I would just put earbuds on and. Listen to the Psalms…
Jody: yeah. And you know, I think it’s neat , when my husband was at the treatment center, they actually gave us, I think, five verses. And so me and my kids would get around the ottoman at night and we would just pray those five verses. So it wasn’t just for me, it was for them as well.
kelly: I really wanna talk about the kids, how did the Lord show you? How to minister to their needs. They’re living through a crisis of their own. Right. So how [00:18:00] did God minister to them during this time?
Jody: Well, God just provided the same Christian counselor that I had saw my children.
Jody: She was amazing. Her name was Mona. We loved her. And she came complete with Play-Doh. So my daughter loved it, and we were pretty plugged in in our church and they had moved kind of into middle school when things were actually getting super hard. And we had a really strong youth group and in particular my daughter, her small group leader, started with her in first grade and then moved up with her every year.
Jody: And not just her, but just her group of small group.
kelly: Yeah.
Jody: Until she graduated from high school. Wow. So she had the same small group leader the whole time. And even now, her small group leader when my daughter comes home or when she was at college, she would go see her at college. So it’s been, it was such a neat experience.
Jody: And so we saw, her name is Becky and so we saw God use Becky in her life in, in a really neat way. So they had a really strong support system. And when my husband was away at the treatment center, he was gone from. October to [00:19:00] January and you know, big things fall in there. There’s Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and that sort of thing.
Jody: And during that time we had some, it was our student pastor and his family, and then another family at our church. We started doing trick or treating together and then we did New Year’s Eve together and then we did, the Super Bowl party together. And we did that for 10 years. 10 years we did that And.
Jody: They, my children are still the best of friends with their children, so God just really brought, brought people into our lives for not just for me, but for my kids. And it was relief for me to not have to be the person that had all the answers, and I wasn’t the one that had to figure it all out.
Jody: Yeah. And. And you know, I remember one night, when we were going to bed and one of my kids asked a what if question followed by another what if question? And so what we did one night is we just, what IFD it until the end? What if this, what if that? And then we, we finally settled on that. It might [00:20:00] be hard and it might not look the way we hope, but in the end, we are gonna be okay because we serve a big God.
kelly: Yeah.
Jody: And , that was a really helpful exercise for us. And being a mom is not for the faint at heart, especially when your kids are hurting. ’cause you, you hate to see your kids hurt and you, you wanna make it go away. But just like God uses the hard things in our lives, he does the same in theirs with Satan meant for evil in their lives.
Jody: God, can use for good in their lives, not just in our lives.
kelly: Yes, absolutely.
kelly: So I’m
kelly: my heart aches for the one who is still addicted and has struggled with addiction for so long. And my husband works with people who are addicted just like kind of in a support group and helps support them.
kelly: Wow. Is there anything you wanna say about it.
Jody: Well, I try not to say too much about his story, but what I, what I will say is he and I, we co-parent very well together.
Jody: When my son has a soccer game, we ride together.
Jody: I mean it, when my cousin got married, he was invited to the wedding, so we [00:21:00] co-parent fine and he is very active in Celebrate Hope, which is kinda like celebrate recovery at, at church. He doesn’t go to our church anymore, but he still does celebrate Hope at our church. So he, he is in a pretty good place.
Jody: He’s got a great support system and my kids have a great relationship with him. I mean, truly it is the best that it possibly could be.
kelly: I never give up on God doing the impossible because we have still so many impossible places in our story. So one of the things I pray all the time is God unleash your possible in the landscape of our impossible.
kelly: Yeah, and that’s what I’m gonna continue to pray for your husband, for your family, and you know, for my family. Because I cannot look at an impossible story and not believe that there’s gonna be more of God’s goodness poured out in a way that will surprise us.
Jody: Right? Because God says he can do impossible things,
kelly: right?
Jody: Everything is possible with him.
kelly: Yes. So that’s where I just have to sit with your story and with, our ongoing difficulties. Well, one of the [00:22:00] things that I know, because this is where I live too. Is that when you live in all this pain and loss and heartache, it’s not what you would’ve wanted and it’s not what you asked for.
kelly: How do you continue to cultivate hope in all this heartache? And how do you find purpose in it? How do you find purpose in this heartache?
Jody: That’s a good question.
Jody: Well, we can never make sense of things that don’t make sense, right?
Jody: Because we talk about that, the Proverbs three, five, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding because we can never make sense of that. And when we went through that season, I had to wrestle with my faith. And because I had to just really go through, does God really love me?
Jody: And I know that the Bible says that God is good and the Bible says that I can trust him, but can I really trust him? So I just really had to walk through that whole thing and, and after wrestling and after crying and after submitting, I could finally honestly say that God loves me. That he’s good and I can trust [00:23:00] him.
Jody: And even if I don’t understand that and I, I can’t say that I think about those things every day, but when something hard comes up, I have to kind of remind myself of that. But as far as hope you know, we talked about Jeremiah 29 11 and that was an anchor verse for me when, I remember when he moved out, probably that very next week, I was wandering around Hobby Lobby.
Jody: With tears in my eyes looking for anything that had Jeremiah 29 11 on. And I know a lot of people say, well, that’s taken outta context that wasn’t written to us and it wasn’t written to us, but it is for us. Yes. ’cause God does have hope for us. I mean, he wants to give us hope. And I, when I think about hope I, I just want women to know that they don’t have to squeak by because they don’t have to just survive this, that when the days are hard.
Jody: We can remember that we can get to the other side of this and flourish because pornography does not have to win because we serve a God of hope. And when the Israelites left Egypt after all those years of [00:24:00] captivity, they did not leave empty handed because Exodus 1236 says that the Israelites took with them the best things of Egypt.
Jody: They took gold, they took silver, they took clothes, and we can get. We can take with us the best things from our time and this suffering or this pain. It is probably not cold or silver. It might be a new perspective or a new friendship or new skills or just a fresh start. We can take those things if we know Jesus and get through this pain and this heartache can be whole and happy on the other side of it, even if it isn’t turn out the way we hoped.
kelly: Amen. Yes. And one of the things you write is we never have to be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. We know he’s good. We know he is gonna bring good out of our circumstances, and we know that He wants to cultivate hope in our lives. He wants us to live in hope.
Jody: Yeah, he does.
kelly: I would like you to spend a couple minutes just telling us about how God provided financially for your family. ’cause it was tough. Like, how are you gonna be a single mom and support your [00:25:00] family? What were some things that God did? I know he just did some miraculous things in that space.
Jody: Listen, I love this question so much because not a lot of people talk about the financial implications of addiction or really any trauma. Any trauma, but because God has been so generous to us, I, I just feel like it’s worth talking about.
Jody: And because if God provided for my family, I know that he can do that for other people. ’cause i’m not the special case. And sometimes God provides it and it doesn’t seem logical and the money may not show up till right till the last minute. But God is capable of really capable of meeting our financial needs.
Jody: And one of those needs was a treatment center. My husband had already done week to week counseling, and so he went away to a treatment center. Well, at that time it was $14,000 just to show up on the doorstep. Oh wow. It is, I know. It is so much more expensive now. But we had money in our savings account, which.
Jody: Shocks me really, that we had money in our savings account, but we did. And so we paid for half of that and somebody else paid for the other half of that.
kelly: Wow.
Jody: And which was such an amazing [00:26:00] gift. And then what a gift. I know. And I remember one day we were coming home and he was at the treatment center and there was a car parked outside our house and it was a lady that had worked with my husband and she just came and just gave us a thousand dollars in cash.
Jody: It wasn’t from their boss, it was just from her personally. And then this is, this is really cool. There were. We used to get gift cards in the mail probably two or three times a year from somebody anonymous, and that went on for probably five years. They would just show, it would be like a Walmart gift card or a Target gift card, and I still don’t even know who that’s from.
Jody: But that was really cool, not just for me to see that God was meeting our needs, but it was really cool for my kids to see that too, because a lot of times they would check them out. Uh, so that was just really, that was just really neat. Um, and. We went through all of this, Kelly, I, I don’t, I can’t explain it and did not have debt.
Jody: Wow. I don’t, I can’t explain it. After all the counseling and the treatment center and all that thing. And on top of that [00:27:00] my church offered me a job during that thing. And so I still work at my church 11 years later. So God was so, so generous to us financially during that process.
kelly: Wow, that’s just amazing.
kelly: Thank you. God, I love hearing miracle stories like that. Well, what have you discovered about God? Maybe you discovered something about him that just more deeply resonated in your heart. What have you discovered about him that you didn’t know before all this happened?
Jody: I think that God is deeply present when we are deeply hurt because I experienced his presence in such a profound way. And then again, what I said about just God being a generous provider, that we saw him give and give so generously to us. Yeah. But I think that I also discover that God is really kind and he’s really gentle.
Jody: I have heard that God loves me and, and all those things, but. Part of God’s kindness, really, even if it didn’t [00:28:00] seem that way at the time, was just dealing with my own trauma and looking in the mirror at the things in my life that I needed to deal with and I needed to change. And it, you know, it wasn’t always comfortable, but it was just very kind of him because God invites us to change.
Jody: So there are lives and our relationships can look better and be different and be more Christ-like.
kelly: I love that so much. I’m gonna tell you that in, I would say in the last 5, 6, 7 years, that is what rescued our hearts so much in this particular season that we were walking through, is that God is kind like I, I knew he was.
kelly: Sovereign knew he fought for me. I knew he loved me. I knew that he was good. But the kindness, just the tender gifts and the presence and the tangible ways that God ministered to our family and fresh heartache as we just, treated our girls with the chronic Lyme disease and the hardship that we weren’t expecting.
kelly: That’s what I would say, like I was so surprised. By the [00:29:00] tenderness and kindness of God. And I read a book at that time, gentle and Lowly by Dane Orland, that really emphasized the kindness of God, that it was just so beautiful for my heart.
Jody: Yeah. And I, I love the fact that God loves us where we are, but he loves us enough to not let us stay where we are.
kelly: I do too. I love that so much. He loves us too much to allow us to stay stuck in our current pain, and he is always doing a new thing. And one of those new things is always deeper soul healing and a deeper awareness of who he is in our lives.
kelly: Well, Jody,
I know you have some really cool freebies on your website, so let us know about that.
Jody: You can visit my [email protected] and on the freebie page I have the first four chapters of my book. I also have a praying scripture sheet that you can just fill in the blank. You can put your name in there or your husband’s name or somebody else’s name.
Jody: And then I also have a feelings wheel ’cause I’m a big fan of just clarifying how we feel and a feelings will was very helpful for me in the process. So [00:30:00] those are on my websites.
kelly: Oh, that’s awesome. I wish I would’ve had a feelings will when I was parenting my kids. Sometimes I wanna go back and reparent and say, let’s figure out what you’re feeling so you can learn how to process everything.
Jody: You know, it’s funny, when my kids were little, especially my son, if he was going through something, I would say, well, let me, I would, wouldn’t even get outta my mouth. He said, no, don’t go get that feelings
Jody: That is
kelly: so funny.
kelly: Well, Jody, I can’t thank you enough for being here today. This was a wonderful conversation, so encouraging to me.
Jody: Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.
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 Unshakable Hope podcast.