Podcast

Developing Unshakable Confidence in God after Heartbreak. Julie Sunne

[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: Hey guys. I’m so glad you’re here. In my opening segment, I always ask the question, how do we trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking hours? One of the reasons I started this podcast is that the stories of other people have brought me so much hope over the decades when I have felt discouraged and overwhelmed.

Even if their particular circumstances were quite different than mine, I [00:01:00] saw God’s faithfulness in their stories. And that helped me stand firm in my faith and believe that God loved me and was with me that very day in my own hard story. My guest today, Julie Sonny has learned something about how to address these hard faith questions when she encountered profound life challenges that led her into an intense crisis of faith and a dark pit of depression for a time. She lost multiple children through miscarriages. She has parented a household of children, several with special needs, and she has one adult daughter with ongoing significant special needs. Julie invites us to step into deeper intimacy with the God we know and yet so easily forget when our world falls apart.

Her devotional book is called Sometimes I Forget. 60 Reminders of Hope for Your Hard Days. And she guides us through this book to find rest and hope in the one whose very [00:02:00] nature promises hope. I know you’re going to find this conversation very encouraging. So Julie, I just want to welcome you to this show.

Thanks so much for joining me and sharing your story today.

Julie: Thank you. It’s so wonderful to be here, Kelly.

Kelly: And I am so happy to learn that your last name is pronounced Sonny, Julie Sonny, s U N N E. I was pronouncing it soon, but Sonny is , much better.

Julie: That’s all right. It gets mispronounced a lot.

Kelly: I bet it does. Well, I’d love for you to give us an overview of your family and just briefly describe the losses that you’ve endured.

Julie: Yeah. I guess I always start at the kind of the very beginning because it’s important, I think, to set up where I was emotionally, spiritually, I had a very good childhood.

My parents were devoted to us. I was raised on a dairy farm, which in my opinion, my humble opinion is the best place to be raised. There was, I had five siblings, so there [00:03:00] was enough of us to play ball and, wrestle with each other and Cause havoc, I guess. And so kind of had a built in playmates.

I know my parents had some tough times, I know financially they, they had it tough and things like that, but that was never something I was exposed to. So I just had a really good childhood and we did attend church every Sunday that was important to our family.

Julie: But for me faith was much more of a Sunday thing. And I really didn’t. I knew the Lord as the creator and I had amazing respect for him, but I really didn’t know him in a real personal way, I would say back then. Yeah. And I guess attribute a little bit of that is because I didn’t feel like I maybe even needed to I, everything was just going so good and I was married, went through college was married, and then it was a few years into our marriage when we had decided we wanted to start a family.

And. That’s when my trials began in earnest our first pregnancy [00:04:00] ended in a miscarriage and that first miscarriage really sent me spiraling. It was like I ran into a brick wall in many ways. I couldn’t move beyond it. I was very despondent, very deep into depression. It was our first kind of trial as a couple and I, we weren’t really dealing with it together, so to speak.

We’re kind of dealing with it separately, I think, in our own ways. And that caused some more lonely feelings for me, I think and I won’t speak for my husband cause that’s his story to tell and not mine. But I was very lonely in my grief . We had wonderful family on both sides, but nobody that we knew of had experienced a miscarriage.

They tried to be supportive, but they really didn’t know what to say. And so, so that was a time of deep despair and within an eight year, I’ll just kind of jump to the crux of things within an eight year time span, I had five miscarriages and four live births. So it was a very, [00:05:00] roller coaster season for me.

And the first miscarriage was really the hinge that the Lord used to get ahold of me and to shake me up enough so he could. He could start to be my strength and it wasn’t just a flip of a switch, but it was the beginning. And within that as well, we had out of our five, our four babies that were born alive, my oldest son and my firstborn then had a disabled arm.

and was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit within hours of his birth and was in there for a week. And so that was a very traumatic experience. Another one of my sons has had some learning disabilities that we’ve had to work through. So it’s been a difficult journey both with My children who are living and then as well as my miscarriages and our daughter, our only daughter, our third child who was born she has significant intellectual disabilities as well as some [00:06:00] physical, but the intellectual is what really causes her to be so needy and requires full caregiving.

She’ll never be able to live independently, barring a miracle. So she’s continues to live with us at age 20. I think she’ll be 26 here this June. I always have to do the math as they grow, figure out how old they are. And she continues to live with us. So that first miscarriage was really the beginning of. Of a, an earnest search for who this God is and actually kind of running away from him, a pushing away from him. Kelly, I was of the mindset. Like I said, I, my faith was very much of a Sunday type of, I know that as a creator, I never doubted there was a God out there, but I doubted that he was a God for me, that his promises were for me, especially.

When the trials hit, I didn’t have a relationship with the Lord. I didn’t know him well enough to know that just because my circumstances didn’t look good,, I didn’t realize he was still good. Everything was [00:07:00] based on a very reciprocal agreement that I had. concocted in my brain and in my heart with God.

If I did the right things, I was this good person. I would put in my little coins and he would spit back these good blessings. Right. Yeah. And so when when I did not, Bring home my first pregnancy, my first child that threw that whole concept out the window and I didn’t know him and I didn’t know what to expect from him.

And so my expectations were shattered, and I had to start pretty much over and I wasn’t even sure at that time Kelly if I wanted to, I was so angry with him, and such an. in a dark place that, that because I didn’t know him and I didn’t know how good he still was, I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I can handle this on my own.

And I think the Lord knew exactly what it, no, I know the Lord knew exactly what I needed.

Kelly: Yeah.

Julie: And he provided everything I needed [00:08:00] to learn how to surrender my strength because I feel like I’m a strong woman. And that can be good and that can be very bad for us in our faith because we can put that above our trust in the Lord.

And so it was really important that he continued to show his presence to me, but also allow the things in my life. And now it was incredibly difficult and still is to some extent in many ways, actually, as I look into the future with my daughter. But. It’s exactly what I needed to get to know him better.

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had on this podcast that have said that same thing about their an understanding of who God was based on a transactional theology that if I do good things, then God will do good things to me. And God is always good. He never changes. And so there was quite a lot of wrestling that had to take place.

To be able to realize, Oh, I don’t [00:09:00] judge God’s character by my circumstances. I can look at him, fall in love with him. And then he is my lens through which I view my circumstances.

Julie: Exactly.

Kelly: I love that your devotional focuses so much on God’s character. That is what frames. Everything that’s what frames everything that he is our hope.

And that I just, before we even go back to your story, because there’s a beautiful story, I wanted, I want you to share about how the Lord so tenderly rescued your heart from a place of. Absolute despair. But I want to read this quote from your book. You’re talking about God’s sovereignty. And in this particular chapter, you’re lamenting about your 26 year old daughter’s future.

Rachel is her name, right? Yes, it is. Okay. You don’t know what’s going to happen when y’all are gone, but you write this life gets chaotic and hard and amnesia wipes hope from this [00:10:00] finite mind of mine. Hope may disappear for a time, but the closer I draw to you, Lord, the less I need to see hope to know it’s here because you are hope and you never leave us.

So powerful. I love that. Yeah.

Julie: Yeah. That was so important for me to realize that, that, in his character lies the hope that we all need. So when we learn who he is. then we aren’t going to be on board. I mean, sure. We’re going to have, we’re going to bend a little bit and our faith is going to be tested.

Satan isn’t going to give up that easily. I can guarantee that. Yeah. But really he, as you said, he’s unchanging. He’s immutable. He does not change. And so he’s the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And so that hope doesn’t wane and it isn’t it. It isn’t only for certain people, which, it’s easy to think it’s easy to look at others and say, well, wow, he’s favoring them,

Kelly: yeah.

Julie: No, [00:11:00] his love and his blessings and his glory, everything is perfect with God. So he, he doesn’t, Favor one person more than another, or give out more love at a certain time than he does another time. Or isn’t, he isn’t more loving than he is righteous, honestly. They’re, they all work together.

His whole character works together perfectly for us. And that is the hope that we can stand on.

Kelly: Yes, absolutely. Our core need is knowing that God is not only with us, but he’s also for us. And that’s what kind of brings him from this general, God is good to a personal God is for me. God loves me.

Julie: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Julie: Yeah, it’s so important that we understand that he’s transcendent. Yes. He’s above all. He’s otherworldly, and that’s where the problem lies sometimes because we think we can understand him. Well, no, if we could understand him, what kind of God would he be? Not very, not a very big one, but then he’s also, it’s also, It’s equally important.

We understand another [00:12:00] characteristic of him, which is his eminence, which means he’s close to us. He’s near to us. He’s near to each one of us. And those work perfectly together. It’s so incredibly difficult to describe when I wrote this book, it was so difficult to really understand the attributes because you can’t really separate them.

They’re all who God is, but to try to make it understandable for people, I was trying to give them an idea of how each attribute. Is important in our real lives as well, how meaningful that is.

Kelly: Right. You did that so beautifully. . Let’s go back to how the Lord met you in that, in the deepest despair, that first miscarriage just rocked your world and sent you spiraling into a deep, dark tunnel. But the Lord so tenderly rescued you. Can you please share that story?

Julie: Yeah, I’m probably gonna tear up while I tell this one choke up about it.

But it was, I’m not a person who says I hear I don’t hear audibly from God. I know some people do. I do [00:13:00] not. But, and I rarely get it. real amazing in your face signs. I often say, God, you should just hit me over the two by four, make it a very plain message because I need that. But this was a very plain message in a very mysterious and miraculous way.

I was as Kelly, as you said, I was in a very deep. Deep hole. And I’m not sure what would have really shaken me out of it, but the Lord knew exactly what it would take. And I was just curled up in bed and I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t want to, I just despaired of everything really.

My, my life, I guess I wrote at one point, my life was very black and white at that point. It lost so much of its color and it took the Lord’s intervention to get that color back. And what he did was in my dream, he sent me. a beautiful he sent me an actual image of my daughter. And like I said, nothing audible, but it was very much in my spirit.

And he sent me a picture of her an image of her and he, someone was holding her. I assume maybe it was him. I’m not sure. And I [00:14:00] couldn’t really see the person in the background, but I could see her face and she was beautiful. She was a few months old. It looked like to me and just a perfectly formed, beautiful little girl.

And of course, I lost the baby so early, I didn’t know for sure if it was a boy or a girl, but in my spirit, I sensed it was a girl. And that was confirmed in the dream. And then, and he said, here is your daughter, your beautiful Sarah. And I have her and she is fine. Now you need to get up and live. And what’s amazing is I didn’t tell anybody that I was going to name her Sarah.

My husband did not even know that.

Kelly: Oh, I didn’t realize that.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. And he called her by name. He showed me her. I know. It’s just, I know. I know. And he gave me just what I needed to realize that there was hope in life and she was lost to me, but she wasn’t lost. She was exactly where she needed to be home with him.

She never, and I started to realize she would never have to suffer what I was just experiencing. She would never have to go through sorrow ever. Ever. [00:15:00] She was completely spared of that. And that’s such a beautiful thing to hold on to. And it wasn’t an immediate, Oh, okay, Lord, you’re wonderful. And I’m gonna, and I’m, and everything is perfect again.

No, it wasn’t that I was still very much in grief and still having a very difficult time with it. But what changed was a, I knew she was fine. Without a doubt. I sensed that anyway, because I knew God was creator, but that was so important to me. And the second thing was that he hadn’t, I had left him in a way he hadn’t left me.

He wasn’t, he showed it right then. I mean, I was so angry at him that he could have, I could have, it would have been perfectly justified for him to say, Hey, the heck with you. There’s other people that, are willing and open. But he didn’t he stayed with me and continued to, you To woo me, I guess you could say,

Kelly: yes, such a beautiful picture and an accurate description of God’s heart.

He’s always pursuing us. He is good. And Romans eight, the [00:16:00] end of Romans eight reminds us that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love and that when we are faithless, he remains faithful. And so it’s such a beautiful picture. And the way he called her by name, he called her by the name. That you had given her so personal and

Julie: names are so important.

That’s the personal God we have.

Kelly: Yeah.

Julie: That’s the personal God we serve as he, her names are important to him.

Yes, he knows us intimately, personally,

Kelly: I know this was a slow transformation in your life.

Like you said, you didn’t just suddenly jump up and go, well, who my God is good. I’m all well and healed. Because your story continued and you had four more miscarriages and you also had children born with immediate needs and then a daughter born with special needs that unfolded over time. And so I’d like for you to unfold that story for us.

Julie: Sure. Sure. Well, one of the problems I say with my, with being a strong woman and what I needed was it goes back [00:17:00] to, to I think it’s Psalm is at 46, 10 that says, be still and know that I am God. I have a real difficulty being still and sitting before the Lord. I just.

and waiting. I’m not a super patient person. And so he knew exactly what I needed. And he knew to need knew that one single trial was not going to help me know him the way he wanted me to know him. And so he allowed things in my life. The more miscarriages. And then my daughter was born.

And when she was born, So again, I already mentioned she was a third of our children. So I already had two boys. I, they were young, but I knew what developmental milestones look like. And so when Rachel was born, it looked like things initially were just fine, and we were of course, elated to have a little girl.

And I remember picking up the phone and I talked to my mom and I said, mom, we have our little girl and she is just perfect, except for one little hole. And the soft palate of the top of her mouth and the [00:18:00] very soft palate. So it wasn’t a cleft that you could see on the lips that a lot of times children may have maybe born with babies, maybe born with clefts where you can actually, where it’s obvious our doctor, it took him a little while to find it.

But when he was doing his exam, he noticed she had this small hole in the roof of her mouth in the way back. And basically all that. Caused. It was a big deal at the time because I really wanted to nurse and she couldn’t create suction because she had this extra hole that she couldn’t close off. So it was difficult to nurse.

It was difficult to get her the nutrition she needed, but there’s enough clefts out there that they had special bottles. And I worked with lactation specialists to be able to nurse her some and then pump and give her breast milk and things like that. So, So that was a pretty minor thing.

And that’s how we viewed it to we like, otherwise she’s perfect. Absolutely. Perfect. And so we went on our merry way and at six weeks, she quit breathing on us. And I had gotten up heard her kind of a gurgling in her bedroom and went in thinking she was just kind of crying and needed to be fed again.

And so I went in the middle of the night to. To see and [00:19:00] it was a very scary site. She was struggling to breathe starting to change color. I picked her up. My husband was a law enfor in law enforcement, a park ranger for the state park. So he knew CPR and knew, some of the first response things to do.

So I quickly and panicked, handed them up. Do something. No. And and he was groggy to wake up and, was trying to struggle to understand what I was even saying. And she had started to turn blue and we went back and forth. Do we, cause she would quit breathing and then she would gasp and kind of start breathing again.

And then she would quit and then she started to, her lips were starting to get blue. And so we’re going back and forth, what’s going on, and finally he’s like, we just need to call. So we called and got the ambulance coming. They were very close. To us, a small town near us and so she was taken her and I went by ambulance to our local hospital and we were thinking it was going to be something with her heart, some very severe heart condition or something.

That’s just what’s in the back of our mind that she was stabilized and she was breathing [00:20:00] in the ambulance. So that the. very critical first minutes, had passed the critical point, but trying to figure out what was going on with her. And she was eventually transferred down to teaching hospital, university of Iowa.

And they did a lot of tests and realized that her, it wasn’t necessarily her heart, although she did have some anomalies in her heart. She had a couple of holes that were not closed yet. That usually club babies do have. Holes in the heart, they close the for a mental valley. And there’s another one that, that they do close as the baby’s born.

Well, Rachel’s did not close yet, but that was the minor thing. They found out that what she had was called gastroesophageal reflux or GERD, a lot of people call it. And for her, it was. It was just, it was coming up, it was scorching her throat and then her throat would involuntarily just close off and stop her from breathing.

And so they assured us, which wasn’t super comforting, but they assured us that if she quit breathing and passed out, she would start again. So I mean, it’s comforting in a way, but at the same time, who wants your baby to be [00:21:00] passing out? Yeah. Go home and your baby

Kelly: may stop breathing, but don’t worry, it’ll be fine.

Julie: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But what we were starting to see, Kelly, was a pattern of. Central line issues and that when they start to see that, when the doctors start to see that they, become very suspicious of a syndrome of some sort of a genetic syndrome. And that’s exactly what we were facing after a bunch of genetic tests, we had different tests run with Rachel to see what was going on.

And what we were left with is diagnosis of velocardiofacial syndrome. It’s also called Sprint’s and syndrome. It’s a doctor in New York at that time who had named the syndrome, recognized it and named it. And , I just felt like it wasn’t, that was not the right diagnosis.

Like I said, I’m a strong woman. I’m a very, I like control. So I had to do all my research and see and there was, It just didn’t fit. The pattern didn’t fit. So I emailed everything to the doctor, pictures of her and everything. And it didn’t take him more than a couple of days, amazingly to get back to me.

And he said, she doesn’t have it. So we were left [00:22:00] without a diagnosis. I told you that she did not have that. That was not the diagnosis she had. And we did a few more genetic testing and we ended up coming away with, without a diagnosis. And we still do not have a diagnosis. We don’t know what syndrome she has.

We don’t know what. Genetic condition is causing what chromosome may be missing or or extra or a part of it missing. We don’t know any of that. And so at first it was an incredibly difficult time because I wanted a roadmap. I wanted to know the things I needed to do to look out for and to make her better.

And I wasn’t given that. And again, I think the Lord knew that if I can fix it, then I don’t need him so much. Right. So yeah, I think he wanted to, that he w he knew what I needed. And so we did pursue some interventions for her through different programs to try to help her to become the best version of Rachel [00:23:00] there is.

And that was not just for her. It was. incredibly important for me. We went to a program out in Massachusetts that was life changing for me and for my, my relationship with Rachel. She was about four. She didn’t have any words at that time. She wasn’t really walking. And We went to, it’s an autistic treatment program is what it is, but she was not, we knew she wasn’t autistic, but it was very much to start bringing out the child to learn how to relate to the child and who they are and to bring out their best and to help them become more interactive.

Which is something that she needed. And I figured it certainly wasn’t going to hurt. And it was just life changing for me right from the start, honestly, because it helped me to really embrace Rachel as the whole person. And it was not Christian based at all, but that’s exactly what it did. It was just pointed to the perfection of God’s creation in her and that he created her as the whole as this beautiful little girl, not maybe my, the version I would have [00:24:00] created of her but perfect in just the way she is.

And I, I always have to share this cause it’s such a beautiful testament to that exact point right there is I asked my boys when they were older and we did have another boy after Rachel. So he was three years younger than Rachel. . And so I asked them when they get old enough to really understand, I said, would you have ever wanted, would you want Rachel to be?

So called normal, for a sister and they kind of looked at me like I had lost one eye or something, I don’t know, or had grow to grow another head or something. But they looked at me and they said, mom, we wouldn’t want her. She, we wouldn’t want her any different than she already is because she’s who she is.

She wouldn’t be Rachel if she was different and she would be a pain for a sister too. So it was such a, it was such a reinforcement of this is who she is and the boys knew it.

I don’t know why it took me so long to do, know it, but this is who she was. And God made her just a very, just the beautiful person that she is [00:25:00] now, there’s things of course, that we continue because every time your child is has different needs, you grieve what could be or grieve some of the things we don’t have.

There’s a lot of things that Rachel and I won’t enjoy, like a lot of mothers and daughters do. But there’s a lot of other things that we also are blessed with in it. And you have to hold on to those things.

Kelly: Yes. Oh, that’s so beautiful. There’s so much about that story that I can relate to.

So I just want to share a little bit. Yes, please. When my oldest daughter was diagnosed, she was diagnosed with profound deafness. There would turn out that there was also learning disabilities, ADHD, sensory. Issues and other things, but so she was kind of hard, she was so creative and had all these language delays and was kind of hard.

And as a physical therapist, that’s how I’m trained. I, I relied on my self sufficiency too. And so as a physical therapist you notice you put together a problem list. Okay. These are the weaknesses we need to work on. Here is our treatment [00:26:00] plan. And we’re going to, everything needs to be fixed, finished and settled and solved.

But God thankfully rescued me from this place by sending a book my way called A Mother’s Heart by Jean Fleming. It’s actually way out of print. But the one thing I got out of that Is pray that God would open your eyes to the unique person he created and notice her strengths. Notice who she is.

And as I sat in that and sat with the Lord, I was transformed as a mother and God was teaching me. She is not a problem to be solved. Kelly. She is a beautiful gift to you to be loved and enjoyed and nurtured. And it changed everything.

Julie: I love that. I love that. That’s exactly right.

Yeah. He gives us such beautiful gifts in our children, each one. And they’re so unique, but they’re, it’s a beautiful gift in our children.

Kelly: Yes. Another thing you mentioned was the normal. At one [00:27:00] point when my daughters, all my kids were older, they were teenagers graduating from high school and college and all of this.

And I thought, Oh, this is the year where everybody’s going to launch. Yay. And I’ll, move toward empty nest, which we still aren’t in. And God just began to reveal to me that there was more wrong with our daughters. They also had chronic Lyme disease. And one of, I became a full time caregiver at this point in my life.

And and God is working and moving and they are healing. And one of, but one of my daughters still requires care. Some care. And so, what God, I was with a writing coach actually. And my writing coach is just such an anointed, beautiful woman of God. And as we were worshiping before we started working, she said to me, Kelly God is revealing to me that you have an idol in your life.

And it I’m seeing in my mind, this idol with. Normalcy stamped on its forehead and you need, God is just saying you need to surrender that idol. And boy, we prayed [00:28:00] and worshiped and it was, I was messy, crying, sobbing mess, but God rid me of that. Idol. And I suddenly just realized, yeah, I mean, I am still waiting for things to get normal.

But what God said to me is, why do you want normal when I am giving you my beautiful and the story I am writing is so much more beautiful than anything you could imagine.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. We have no idea. We have no clue. That’s where his incomparable, immeasurable, unfathomable nature comes in. We don’t have a clue.

We cannot understand this mysterious, miraculous being. called God. We can’t understand what he’s doing in our lives. We don’t know what he’s doing with the thing with the pieces of our story. We can’t possibly know. And so it’s not even, it’s not even something to be feel bad about. We can’t possibly know.

Yes, he does reveal certain things in his word. He [00:29:00] reveals stuff to us about his character. Absolutely. That’s the only way I could write this book, by the way, but exactly. But there’s so much that’s going to remain mysterious as it should be, because otherwise, again, what kind of God would we be serving if we could understand him?

Kelly: Right. He wouldn’t

Julie: be worth our time, honestly.

Kelly: Right. Isaiah 55, 8, 9 is a great comfort for both of us. I know that his thoughts and ways are way higher than ours. If God were to open our eyes to even show us what he’s up to, I think we’d be speechless. Couldn’t even put it into words. It’s so beyond our comprehension.

Julie: Absolutely. And that’s exactly why he doesn’t do it. We can’t comprehend it. We just can’t. And we have to come to that point in our lives. And that doesn’t mean everything is, we just accept everything rosy, and never have sadness or grief again. That certainly doesn’t mean that because The Lord gave us emotions and he knows we’re going to experience those emotions and stuff hurts.

And, pain is there and grief is there. And this world isn’t roll [00:30:00] out the way it should be. It’s not, when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, it changed everything. It’s, this is not the world that God wanted us to live in. And it’s not the world that we have, that we will remain in.

What is it? So, so that’s beautiful as well.

Kelly: Hallelujah. Yes. Thankfully. So thankful for the promise of eternity with him in perfection.

I know Julie that for both of us, our stories are not resolved.

We are still waiting. We’re still wondering. And I know there are certain parts of your story. That cause worry and panic when you consider what’s going to happen to your daughter And when y’all pass away, and so where do you find comfort in the lord today? And how do you process that you’re I love how beautifully you process All of these hurts with the lord.

Julie: Yeah. Thank you kelly it’s been a long path, but you know the thing That gives me so much comfort really is knowing just knowing without a doubt the sovereignty of God [00:31:00] that he’s sovereign of over all of it. He’s not just sovereign over the things that we think are going well or that we think are good.

He’s sovereign over everything and everything that comes to me. He either orchestrates or he allows and it’s it’s Not necessarily for my happiness or even my peace sometimes. It may be for that future. It’s maybe for the other person that needs to have a word. Maybe it’s maybe it’s so that because I need to be refined more I don’t always know that stuff, but because I know the one who wrote this.

I know the one who inspired this because I know him more. I can take comfort in that. That’s his sovereignty. Now, before I really knew the Lord, his sovereignty was not a comfort. I knew him as creator and, of everything. And, Before my first miscarriage, but I didn’t take, I didn’t get comfort from that at that time because

I didn’t know him in the sense that all of his character [00:32:00] is so unchanging and trustworthy. The whole of the whole nature of God makes it impossible for him not to be trustworthy and faithful and knowing that. It’s the greatest comfort of all, because nothing I am going to experience is going to be a shock to him.

Nothing surprises the Lord. Nothing comes as a shock to him. And so he has to have a purpose in it then, right? And that is the comfort. So his word gives me comfort. One thing that, that is. Very instrumental when I really, cause I can really beat myself up with interior dialogue. And one of the things that, that really helps me, even when I can’t dig into the word, even when I just don’t have the strength to that, it’s just to put on some hymns, some worship music.

And the hymns are so healing to me because they speak so much truth and so much scripture and that can immediately give me comfort. And [00:33:00] just help me to be in a better place so that I can come back and find gratitude and find, dig back into the word and see that a verse that is so comforting to me.

That I just love. And it’s all about just being anchored into who the Lord was. This is from Jeremiah 17, seven through eight. . It says the person who trusts in the Lord.And this next part is the part that means so much to me, whose confidence indeed is the Lord. not just trusting in the Lord, but my confidence is anchored in who the Lord is blessed. He will be like a tree planted by water. It sends its roots out toward a stream. It doesn’t fear when heat comes and its foliage remains green.

It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit. In other words, our lives will be fruitful. Even in those difficult times, because the, if the Lord is our hope, if our trust is in him and in his character, basically confidence in the Lord, not just [00:34:00] in, not just placed in him, but in who he is in the character of him, not just what he does.

continue. Our lives will continue to bear fruit and they will glorify him. And that’s why we’re here.

Kelly: That’s so beautiful. I love that scripture. I just quoted that at the women’s retreat. I just came back from where I was speaking. . We will flourish

and be fruitful, an unhindered by fears and worry when when our confidence is the Lord. I love how you defined that.

Julie: And when I lose sight of that’s, That’s when, yes, we will continue. We are still in the flesh here on earth. So yes, we will continue to have those times, but that’s when we need to go back and remind ourselves. And that’s exactly why I wrote the book.

I wrote the book. Sometimes I forget because I forget all the time, his sovereignty his glorious nature, his beauty, his immeasurability, his infinity. I forget those things. And that makes all the difference in the world right there. Who he is [00:35:00] makes all the difference.

Kelly: Yes, it makes all the difference in every situation that we might be walking through.

I highly recommend this devotional to anyone. I because Julie does such a beautiful job of just focusing on the character of God. She uses story to draw you in, but everything she teaches, every scripture, every truth relates to. All of us in all of our situations.

It’s so beautiful. So Julie, tell us again, we can find you at juliesunny. com spell your name for us.

Julie: Yeah. J U L I E S U N N E. You can find it there. So sometimes I forget 60 reminders of hope for your hard days and it’s published by BNH publishing and they actually, there is a dedicated, page. Sometimes I forget. Dot com that if that’s easier for you to find them by name, but I would love for you to come to my website as well.

I’m on all the social places and I do, I have a freebie vault, . So I have printables and ebook [00:36:00] and different things like that available. If you want to follow me and we’ll just journey this difficult life, but it’s also a beautiful life. We can journey together. Continue to remind each other of that hope.

Kelly: Yes. This devotional brings healing in so many ways for people have been hurt by their life, by their disappointments, because just seeing how much God loves you and who he is, walks us into a place of hope. More of his love, and we’re able to heal from those deep places of hurt. So Julie, thank you for your work, for this book, for faithfully seeking the Lord through all of this hard, this has been such an encouragement.

Julie: Thanks Kelly. It means a lot. It’s been a blessing.

Kelly: 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, kellyhall. org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks [00:37:00] for listening to the Unshakable Hope Podcast.