Podcast

A Deeper Faith in the Journey. LisaGranger

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kellie 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: Well, hey guys. I’m so glad you’re here today. You’re going to meet my friend, Lisa Granger. She’s been in radio for many years and she’s now a podcast host as well.

Lisa brings encouragement and wisdom through her show called A Woman’s Heart. One of the things I love about Lisa is authenticity. She walks in freedom and hands people the freedom to be the awesome, unique. [00:01:00] Person God created them to be.

Lisa’s going to be sharing different parts of her faith journey, how it was deepened over the years from how God led her into her ministry, how he gave her the freedom to yell at him when her heart was broken, and how he set her free from trying to be super mom.

Kelly: Lisa. I’m so glad you could be here. Welcome to the show

Lisa: Well, thank you. And thank you for those kind words. I really appreciate it that touches my heart. Thank you

Kelly: that was something I noticed about you right off the bat we want to hear about you and something that brings joy to your soul.

Lisa: Well, I grew up in North Carolina. And for those who are ACC basketball fans, they will understand. I grew up in the heart of the ACC down in Durham, North Carolina,

I know March is a big month for that. I met my current husband in college and we. Fell in love we got married and he grew up here in Williamsburg, which is where I’ve been ever since we [00:02:00] got married. We have 3 grown children now and 2 fur babies of our own plus 2 grand dogs. It gets rather rambunctious.

And right now we are. waY blessed to have all 3 of our kids living in town with their significant others. It’s amazing. It is so cool. They’ve kind of scattered and had a chance to go to school and live elsewhere. And currently they are all here. In town, 1 of the things that brings joy to my heart is having the whole family together.

And we have dinner and a movie and we’ll watch a classic movie or something like that. And that just really that’s a lot of fun. And having time with my girlfriends, having a cup of coffee with some friends. So that brings a smile to my face as well. So that’s a little bit about me.

Kelly: I am so jealous that your kids and their spouses live there. How fun.

Lisa: Yeah, it really is. I keep telling myself I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Kelly: Yeah, no kidding. [00:03:00] Well, I want to hear about your journey into radio and into podcasting. I think it’s really fun to hear how God leads people, how he speaks to us in unique ways.

And so I always love to highlight that in people’s stories.

Lisa: Well, it’s, it’s a very long and convoluted story. Actually, getting into radio was my very 1st job. When I 1st moved to Williamsburg, I was a newly wed didn’t have a job. I was just, you know, straightening things out kind of wondering. Okay.

What’s next? What’s going to happen here? And my father in law owned the local radio station W. M. B. G. A. M. 740. It was an A. M. only station at the time and they had a D. J. that was on vacation and they basically called and said, what are you doing next week?

Can you fill in on the air? And I went, what? I’ve never been on the air. I’ve never been a D. J. I don’t know how to do this. What are you talking about? And they said, no, it’s okay. We’ll show you what to do. You can just play music most of the [00:04:00] time. And I’m like, okay, I’ll go. I will go and I will help out.

So, I went and by the end of the week, I would actually go on the air and speak a little bit, and introduce the songs and to give you a frame of reference on the technology. When I did this 30 years ago, we were using cassette tapes. And carts for our commercials, which looked like eight track tapes.

And in order to cue up a song, I would have to listen for it, pop the cassette tape out, stick a pencil in it, rewind it just a little bit, just to go back. So I’d start at the beginning of the song when I hit play, and that’s the kind of thing, and I did that for a week. And at the end of the week they said.

But we still need some more help in the office, too, and I ended up kind of starting out there to doing a lot of the stuff in the office. And so I learned some more about the behind the scenes in the radio and I worked there for about a year and a half and some different things happen.

And I felt [00:05:00] like , I needed to not be. There anymore, and so I left became a travel agent, and then I got pregnant with my 1st child. And as much as I love being a travel agent, you’re not the 1 doing all the traveling. You’re just letting everybody else go. Then I just, I decided to stay at home and raise the kids.

. And then about 2018, the youngest had went off to college and my husband in the station. He bought the station from his dad in about 2000, and he had some other people. And we had a key person leave the station, and my husband said, help, I need you to come in and help. And I’m like, okay, so both feet in full time was helping to do everything.

And he knew that I had a desire to write and speak. And I’d done little writings here and there, and I. Been in women’s ministry, with the MOPS group and I wasn’t a stranger necessarily to speaking or being on stage. I’ve sung and performed on stage. [00:06:00] So he said, there’s time on Sunday morning.

Why don’t you do a Sunday morning show? Okay, so I would play Christian, contemporary music and speak in between and finally, I started speaking more and then I asked a friend of mine to have a conversation with me about the more we know, the less we feel we know, and I really enjoyed the conversation. And that, was when the light bulb went on. I want to do more conversations

I had a couple of years where I was just doing it on our station. And I’m like, I have all of this amazing content. I have been able to speak to some incredible people. I want more people to be able to hear this, not just here in Williamsburg on the station . So that’s when I launched the podcast last year. I also have 2 other stations in Virginia. I’ve been involved in the Virginia Association of broadcasters.

And then it is as a podcast on all the podcast platforms as A Woman’s Heart with Lisa Granger. It’s grown from there. I’ve done a [00:07:00] few monologues, which I enjoy because there’ll be a message that’s really speaking to me that I feel like I want to share, but I really enjoy the conversations that I have with women.

Kelly: That’s awesome. I love hearing that whole journey. Wow.

Lisa: And it is. It’s quite the journey.

I’ve learned so much.

I know you’ve talked about your faith journey on the podcast before. Can you share some of that?.

 

Lisa: I remember asking one person about their faith journey and they mentioned podcast has been a huge Part of that, because I grew up in a Christian home.

We would go to church and I always thought, oh, those, you know, the people that talked about being saved and Jesus is Lord of their life. Oh, okay. Well, I’m happy for you. That was a little too extreme for me growing up and. Finally, in college, I remember going to a couple of different events and talking to people and kind of going, oh, wait a minute.

There’s a real difference between religion and a [00:08:00] relationship, believing that there is a God and believing that there is a Jesus is different than actually having a relationship with him. That was a light bulb for me along my faith journey in college when I really realized there’s a difference between religion going to church checking the box.

1 of my favorite lines from Joyce Meyer is going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than sitting in the garage makes you a car. You can sit there in the pew, and you can kind of know who he is. I know who the president is, and I believe he’s the president but the president has no idea who I am.

I don’t have a relationship with him so really big as far as my faith journey and, then other little steps along the way, different milestones. And then having done the podcast and talking to all the different women and all of their stories and where they started, [00:09:00] what they went through, what they learned and where they are now.

It’s just so hard for me to not believe because without Jesus and the hope that he has given, I can’t see where so many people would have made the journeys that they’ve been able to make and come out on the other side. So much stronger. And just, I mean, just amazing. Amazing stories of where people started and where they are now.

Obviously, to me, that has been a big part of my more recent faith journey , so the podcast alone is just , a huge part of that in building up my belief and my trust and looking at all the other stories.

Kelly: Yeah, that’s so cool. Wow. You’ve experienced the reality of a living God, our powerful savior, who actually speaks to us. He knows us inside and out. He knows how to speak to us in a way we can hear him. I love how God has even been [00:10:00] building your faith recently through the stories of others. You were talking about sitting in church and really knowing Jesus, really experiencing Him and discovering He really is an everpresent help in times of trouble. I know you’ve had times when you were feeling at the absolute end of yourself and he met you there as well.

Lisa: Yeah. It really is cool. The other thing that I have come to know about God and about Jesus is. In the midst of those dark places, it was almost like God was saying, it’s okay. I know you’re angry. I know you have some doubts. I know you really think this is really just stinky.

And I know that and it’s okay and you can be angry at me and you can yell at me and you can question me. Just keep talking to me. And I really just had the sense. He’s like, I can take it. I can take it. I’m not a wimp. I can handle it.

I can handle your extreme sadness. I can handle your rage. [00:11:00] I can handle any and all emotions to whatever degree they are. And you’re never going to be too needy for me either. And that was huge when I finally got that still working on it sometimes too, but that was just, that was really big for me.

Kelly: Yeah. That’s huge. Telling God the truth, and that’s where we find freedom and that’s where we experience, his goodness

Lisa: yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

Kelly: I’d love for you to share a personal story. We’ve been talking about trusting God, so I’d love for you to tell a story where you had to wrestle through a part, you know, that you didn’t necessarily want and how God met you there. I love to hear those stories from people.

Lisa: When I was first married, my husband and I were in youth ministry and here I am, I’m newly married. I’m all happy. I’m a youth minister. I’ve learned that there’s a difference between a relationship and religion and oh, , aren’t I such a good Christian. And then I had a 10 year old cousin who she and I were the only granddaughters and she was killed in a car [00:12:00] accident.

I remember getting the phone call, they’ve been an accident and my cousin was in the hospital I just remember going. Okay. Lord, I’m going to believe I’m going to trust.

She’s going to be healed. She is going to be fine. I called people and we were going to pray and, you know, the. Okay. The faith of a mustard seed and don’t doubt and really believe and I just I’m like, I am going to believe I’m going to believe wholeheartedly that she is going to be okay. She’s going to be healed.

And then the next day they said, nope, she’s brain dead and they took her off the machines and she passed away. And honestly, I’m still getting a little choked up and I haven’t talked about it in a while, but it really, to me, it ripped every fiber of my faith out from underneath me, because I really just kind of was like, and this is when I talked about it was okay to rage at God, because I was angry.

I was so angry. And you hear a lot of [00:13:00] platitudes. I really didn’t like Romans 828. all things work for good. And I’m like, I don’t see anything good coming out of this. This is just a really big mess. This hurts. My aunt is crushed , she was the only other granddaughter right before the accident happened.

She had visited. And asked if I was, pregnant. I was like, no, and she said, well, if you have a daughter, I want your daughter to be my flower girl, because she was my flower girl in my wedding.

It was very hard for me and I really suffered with a lot of depression after that. Really just kind of searched I remember praying was like, yeah, I feel nothing. I don’t even know what kind of a God are you? I would just rage against him.

I read Lee Strobel’s case for Christ. thAt was a huge help for me. But I remember coming to a point and writing in my journal that Stephanie was too sweet for her death to have been in vain and that really I needed to get out of the way that God could still use it.

But I had to [00:14:00] cooperate and so that was really deepening my faith because I think I had a much more shallow faith at that point, because then when I didn’t get my way, and the answer was no, it was like, well, wait a minute. What kind of a God are you? And it’s a lot easier when someone else goes through something.

To be able to, you know, slap a Bible verse on it or say different things and then when you go through it and grief is very different for different people in different relationships. But I also found that it’s different. I’d lost a great grandparent. I’d lost a grandparent, but I’d never lost child in our family.

I’m like, oh, this is very different. And this is very different because you think of everything they didn’t get to do. And so, for me, that was 1 of the parts of my story that every now and again, I still go, okay, God, thank you for the lessons that I’ve learned and the empathy and everything else.

But couldn’t you have taught me that lesson some other way? I [00:15:00] do know that my faith is a lot deeper. And a lot less shallow, but I wouldn’t choose that at all in any way. And I still every now and again, I still think about her because I actually had my daughter about 10….10 and a half months later.

And so her middle name is after my cousin. So then when her brother got married and had my daughter as a flower girl, that was a moment where I , your heart just kind of goes twist and stuff. So that would definitely be a moment where I struggled. And came out on the other side, still kind of going.

Yeah, I’m not I don’t like that part, but there have been some beautiful things that have come out of it. I mean, there’s a scholarship in her name and her brothers are married with kids and everything else. So, yeah, that would be 1 that wouldn’t have chosen.

Kelly: Yes, of course. I love that y’all started a foundation in her name. A friend of mine who lost her husband, we were married, we were in physical therapy school together.[00:16:00]

She lost her husband just before their 25th wedding anniversary. And she said what I tell people is they need to do something that memorializestheir loved ones so that you’re continuing to remember, continuing to honor him. And that way it brings a lot of healing.

Lisa: Yeah. It really does. So that has brought some healing.

Kelly: Thank you for sharing that.

Lisa: Oh, you’re very welcome.

Kelly: You know, you’ve heard so many stories over the years from a bunch of your different guests. I would love if you can think of 1 of your favorite stories that really impacted you when maybe it’s 1, you still think about today when you are needing to trust God more deeply.

Lisa: That’s the 1 question Kelly. I didn’t really want you to ask. I feel like I’m picking amongst my children. They’re all so good. I got to speak with Erica Wiggenhorn and I loved her book about Moses and God being enough because that’s 1 of the things that I have struggled with is feeling like I’m either too much or not enough and that with God, it’s enough. You know, we’re never on our own[00:17:00]

Kelly: Oh, that’s a powerful truth. So good I know you could spend all day telling us your favorite memories from your interviews, but I also know you’ve spent some time thinking about hope. So what has the Lord revealed to you

Lisa: My word last year was hope. And I started out the year going, Oh, what is hope? And, oh, you have to put your hope in God and God alone. And that’s all well and good. And yes, it’s true.

But by the end of the year, I’m going, Oh, my gosh, it was like praying for patience.. I didn’t exactly get a download of hope. I got opportunities to choose hope in the middle of situations that I thought were hopeless and being able to hold them both being able to hold the hope and the heartache or hope and the pain at the same time.

And the only way you do that is to put your hope in God and not a person or a situation

Kelly: yeah. So the message you’re getting is my God is sovereign. He can be trusted no matter what.

A Bible study I’m doing. Can I Borrow a Cup of Hope by Amy [00:18:00] Lively. She was on my podcast before and our Bible study is doing this book right now.

It’s on first Peter, trusting God in hard times. And one of the quotes she wrote is : hope isn’t a baseless claim. It’s a battle plan. And I loved that you described a battle plan. Our hope is a very real living God who is always sovereign, who can always be trusted. And when you’re struggling, you can talk to him about anything that was part of your battle plan.

You mentioned. Yeah. And you continue to hold on. You continue to fight for hope because, know, it’s not a baseless claim.

Lisa: Yeah, and it doesn’t always just spring 4th either. 1 of the verse that I had for last year taped on my refrigerator was Romans 1513 and that said, may the God of hope.

Fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. [00:19:00] And when you really look at that there’s so much in there. But it’s just the hope is so many times is that fuel. That keeps you going and gives you the energy to persevere in a situation that doesn’t look very hopeful at all. There’s a joy and a peace that comes with that as well. And I love the idea of just overflowing that when you really. Give it to God, and you let the Holy Spirit flow through you. You can overflow with that hope, even if it doesn’t make any sense, because I have I’ve been in some situations where I’m kind of going. Okay. Why? Why am I not more upset about this? And it’s really because.

God has placed that hope and peace there that even though this is really uncomfortable he can still work something out. Even if it doesn’t look like what I originally wanted, he can still work it out. And maybe it’s even better. Oh, my gosh. Maybe it’s even [00:20:00] better than I could ever ask or imagine.

Because his plan is usually a lot better than our plan.

Kelly: Yes, absolutely. I story that came to mind as you were talking was that it was about a week after we found out that our twins were also profoundly deaf. So we had a 5 year old. Profoundly deaf. We had a son who was two and, then newborn twins.

And we discovered when they were two weeks old, they were deaf. And so we convinced, it was pretty overwhelming just having four little kids, , and twins in the mix. So, but we just to help us cope, we, convinced our two older kids. Older is relative terms, the 2 year old and the 5 year old.

Lisa: Well, they were older than the twins.

Kelly: Yeah, we convinced them that their bedtime was 630. so we would do the whole bedtime routine close all the blinds and, and they would go to bed early and then we, would be with our twin babies I remember it was just right after we had found [00:21:00] out they were deaf, but we were.

Just watching their identical little faces and bodies just, moving around on the floor and it was so sweet and so cute. And my husband said, don’t you think we should be more depressed? And I said, yes. And we knew in that moment that God had answered our prayer. Because the one thing I prayed that day when we found out was please don’t let it hurt as much as it did.

The 1st time we received.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, and as parents we have dreams. We have desires for our kids. When you see a loved 1 going through something that you wish they didn’t have to go through, sometimes it’s almost harder. Because until you have that helpless, I can’t fix it.

And we want to fix it. And it’s so hard. And yet when we give it over and we have that peace that, okay, this isn’t looking the way I want it, but it can still be beautiful. There’s an amazing power and hope and peace in [00:22:00] that.

Kelly: Yeah, that was 1 of the things the Lord said to me along the way is why.

Why are you so hung up on normal, Kelly? I want to do a new, beautiful thing in their lives. I feel like he was inviting me into this idea. Open your mind up to the beautiful, impossible, outrageous, unique, gorgeous things that I want to do in their lives and let go of your vision of what normal should look like.

Lisa: Yeah,

Lisa, I know you enjoy talking to moms groups about how God rescued you from perfectionism as a young mom. You exhausted yourself trying to be super mom. So I’d love for you to talk about that .

Lisa: Yeah, I did a talk and I asked people said, so do you remember the commercial about the woman who falls down and she says, help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up I tell people I’m more like help. I’m super mom and I’m tangled up in my cape.

I remember there was so much involved, being a stay at home mom and I’d [00:23:00] always wanted to be a mom and I have 3 beautiful children and I’m able to raise them and all of this. And yet I feel there’s so many things that I’m not doing, or that I’m not measuring up and it’s like, oh, if the house was dirty, or the kids wore mismatched clothes. Oh, that’s reflecting on me. Well, that was with the 1st, 2, then by the 3rd, 1 that comes around.

Kelly: Yeah, they didn’t run out of the house naked like my twins did when they were two.

Lisa: Yes. So there’s just the expectations of how women are supposed to be able to have this amazing high powered career and raise kids and have the perfect house.

And they’re supposed to look amazing while they do it. And that’s it’s such an impossible expectation that I was driving myself crazy and probably driving my husband and my kids crazy, too, because I was trying to meet this unrealistic expectation of having everyone and [00:24:00] everything looking great all the time.

Well, because I’m a stay at home mom. I don’t have an outside job. So therefore. The house must be perfect. The kids must be perfect. I finally realized I was like, it doesn’t matter. This is still a job I don’t get paid time off. I don’t get sickleave. It’s just an impossible expectation to think of that.

And I finally had to let it go. I really had the image of being just tangled up. I mean, I’m trying to fly and I would try to fly, but yet I go in another direction and I just get all tangled up in either the expectations or the lies that I had in my own head and the fears that I had from whether it’s growing up or things that were said or things that had been done that.

You just get so wrapped up and all of that and also the different roles. I’m a wife and I’m a mom and I’m a daughter and I’m a friend and then I’m [00:25:00] trying to cook and clean and drive and be a 1st responder and a counselor. And, you just add up all the different things that moms do, whether you work outside the home or not.

, all of those, it gets to be really heavy. And I remember getting that image a while ago and thinking, yep, this is how I feel.

I’m just constantly putting on different capes or trying to wear 10 of them at the same time. And then, when you go to do something, you’re just you’re so tangled up. You can’t even hardly do anything or concentrate. Until you really come and go, okay. 1 tape at a time, and let’s walk in 1 direction.

You take off the perfection and you stop tangling yourself up in these unrealistic expectations. Life usually goes much better for you and everyone else around you.

Kelly: Yes, that’s so true. Yes, I told my son one time that he and my oldest daughter were sharing an apartment when they were in college and he was complaining to me about her.

And I said, you [00:26:00] know, you really should be thankful about your older sister, because she’s the 1 who beat perfectionism right out of me and saved you from 30 years of counseling.

Lisa: Yes. my kids will still talk about different things. We’ve had multiple exchange students throughout the years.

So I’ve looked at my oldest daughter and I was like, aren’t you grateful that we had this many exchange students to practice on. So that you had got the benefit of some of that practice and she’s like, oh, yeah, I’m so grateful we got to practice on them and then they could go home and we can only do, but so much damage.

Kelly: Yes that’s perfect. Well, as we’re closing Lisa, this has been so much fun, but I would love for you to tell about your show a woman’s heart. I want to know where the idea came from where you came up with a purpose and the name.

Lisa: I gave a little bit of the backstory of how it came about, and it didn’t even have a name for a while. It was just whatever my Sunday morning show was [00:27:00] and I came up with a woman’s heart because I figured

I’m sharing what is on my heart and then what is on the heart of, any of my guests, whoever they may be. But I really had a vision that God has placed a very precious and powerful purpose in every woman’s heart.

There’s so much involved in us. Untangling from those lies and fears and whatever else that’s holding us back from stepping into that. Through the stories and the people that I speak with want to explore that what is it that, you would say to encourage because we never know what we’re going to hear from somebody and it may be a story that we think is completely unrelated to ours, but something they say may touch us.

And we go, oh. That’s what I needed. That’s what I needed to hear to either go ahead and step out, or maybe it’s to persevere, or maybe it’s to [00:28:00] clarify what it is. They do want to do and they go. Oh, so that’s what God’s been trying to tell me. I really think it’s very powerful when we share our stories, because it then gives permission to other people to step out and do their stories and not play so small.

I think so many times as women, for whatever reasons, we play small a lot of the times, because we’re worried about what other people are going to think and the people pleasing.

We can’t base all of our decisions on that. If God’s really told us to do something and if he’s called us to do it, he will give us what we need because so often we go, but I don’t have what that takes.

And I’m still struggling with kind of don’t have enough time in the day. And he’s like, you have the same amount of time as everybody else. There’s just always something that we can learn and another step that we can take. But I really do think that God has placed something precious in every woman’s heart.

And there’s things that we can learn from 1 another through each other stories to be encouraged to actually step out [00:29:00] and do that thing. It is such a sweet spot to be able to go. Yes, I am doing what God wants me to do.

Kelly: Yeah, I so agree with that. Thank you. Well, people can connect with you at lisagranger. com.

Lisa: Yes, if you go to lisagranger. com, there’s free Hope verses, there’s eight verses on a really pretty piece of paper that you can print out. Those were some of the verses that

that I found that were really special to me, and then also there’s more information about me more information about all of the podcasts and you can find a woman’s heart with Lisa Granger on all of the major podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, and all of that. I’m also on the. 3 radio stations here in Virginia, and you can find me on Facebook at Lisa Granger, a woman’s heart

Kelly: sure. Okay, well, thank you for being here today. Lisa.

Lisa: Yeah, I very much appreciate you having me on Kelly. Thank you.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, [00:30:00] 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, kellyhall. org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope Podcast.