Podcast

How do I Heal When I’m Mad at God? Hannah Bowman

[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.

Hey, friends, I want to welcome you to the kickoff of our summer Bible story series.. I love teaching God’s word, but I really love to pull out stories of the Bible and discover everything we can about God’s heart and how our lives can be transformed when we actually come to believe that God really is who he says he is. This series is called Redemptive Wrestling, and the subtitle is Freed to Trust God’s Heart [00:01:00] When His Ways and Delays Break Ours. I’m going to be joined by three very passionate Bible teachers this summer, and I love teaching the Bible with them. We are going to have so much fun. I also want to mention that along the way, we will just have a podcast where they share their story before we dive into different Bible stories. So today Hannah Baldwin is going to be sharing her story and how she wrestled through her deep anger at God.

Kelly: Hannah Baldwin is an author, speaker, podcaster, but her favorite label is Child of God. She is married to her college sweetheart, Andrew, and she is a mom to four amazing kids. Three of these kids, she has the joy and honor of raising on this side of heaven, and her other child is fully alive with Jesus.

Her first ministry is her family, and she also runs Living from the Overflow, a ministry that puts out resources to equip, [00:02:00] inspire, and encourage others in their walk with God. You can find out more about Hannah by visiting living from the overflow.com. I am so glad to have you, Hannah. Welcome to the show.

Hannah: Thank you for having me, Kelly. It’s an honor to be here.

Kelly: Well, I am so glad that we met. We were connected through a mutual friend and what a blessing it has been. Today I am going to have her share her story with us. And we’re also going to spend some time in the Psalms as we learn from David about how to wrestle effectively through these hard things and land in a place of deeper trust. in God.

So Hannah I don’t know where you want to start with your story,

Hannah: yeah, I know. I was like, Oh, where do I start? But yeah, . Just a little bit of a backstory. I come from a large family. My parents have eight kids, so I am one of eight. I’m right in the middle of these.

Seven amazing siblings I have on either side of me and from a very young age, even though I grew up in a [00:03:00] loving home, a safe home, a biblically based home, a home where the word of God was preached, a home where worship music was on more often than it was not, this is the environment I grew up in, right?

But the enemy had an assignment for me and from a very young age, I struggled immensely with a spirit of insecurity and a spirit of fear. And I remember setting my most ridiculous goal I’ve ever set in my life at the very tender age of, 11, 10 or 11. My, my goal for the summer was to lose five pounds. And I had seen at a friend’s house, I had seen a magazine, like a preteen magazine about losing weight for the summer and getting your summer body.

And at the time I was really struggling with relationships. And because I already was wrestling with insecurity, something clicked inside of me that, well, maybe I’ll get confidence if I can just be smaller. And I was not somebody who needed to lose weight. I grew up on a dairy farm. We were a very active, very healthy family.

And so just from the very beginning of my life, just to kind of [00:04:00] set the stage for where my mentality was at and where my perspective was at and my outlook on life was that it just wasn’t good enough anywhere I went. And so that ridiculous goal for me to set, I say it’s ridiculous not to like shame myself, but like ridiculous of the enemy to send this my way.

And I believed it hook, line and sinker. And so fast forward. I Struggled with a full blown eating disorder for seven years of my life. And then as a result, I struggled with depression, anxiety, obsessive, looping in my mind and ruminating and really struggled in a lot of relationships as a result, because when you’re trying to hide something that everybody can see, you’re also walking in a very manipulative and controlling manner, even if it’s not your heart, it’s just kind of like the way the whole game goes.

And so that. That was into my early college years. The Lord radically set me free through a summer of being biblically counseled through the Bible. So God’s word, he used his Holy spirit and his word to [00:05:00] set me free from that incredibly toxic cycle that almost took me out. And then, you know, I get married to my college sweetheart.

We have kids right away. Things are going great. And I start to struggle with some weird things with my health, but I just kind of chalk it up to. You know, post pregnancy hormones and like your body is changing so much. I wasn’t really paying attention.

Kelly: So at this stage in your life, are you married and you have kids or where, how old are you?

Hannah: Yep. I’m married and I have kids and we, I’m in my mid twenties at this point and I’m starting to have some weird things happen with my health.

Kelly: Can I step back into your story? , what type of Bible study were you a part of ? …where you gained some freedom?

Hannah: Yep. So I actually spent a summer being biblically counseled by a pastor’s wife, by two pastor’s wives. I actually lived with one of the pastor’s families and every morning his wife and I would meet for an hour or two and we would go through the word and then I had another [00:06:00] pastor’s wife who she and I would get together a couple of times a week.I mean, like I was being inundated.

Kelly: Wow. That is such a gift. Yes.

Hannah: They have this whole beautiful ministry now where like families can go and they can live in this ministry center and they can receive whatever kind of help they need from the word. And so, you know, this portion of my story, we could probably spend a whole, an entire episode unpacking, and so, so after this, I’m in my, I’m still in my early twenties when this happens, my husband and I get married and then we start having kids and we start growing our family. And so I’m in my mid twenties and then we get pregnant with our fourth child and it’s literally a miracle pregnancy.

We were medically not supposed to be able to get pregnant. Again, and we get pregnant with him. I’m like, I’m elated. I’m like, yes, I’ve always wanted four kids. I’m so excited about this. My husband’s recovering from the shock because we were not supposed to be able to get pregnant [00:07:00] again. And everything’s going great.

I make it past that first trimester mark. And then some weird things start happening with my body. And so I go in. And my doctor couldn’t see me right away, but he’s like, go to this ultrasound clinic. And through this ultrasound clinic, we found out that our son had already been born fully alive into heaven with Jesus.

And so it just really rocked me. Immensely, as you can imagine, to go from thinking you can never have kids again, to feeling like, wow, maybe this is how Mary felt, like, highly blessed, favored, like, I’m getting, this best present ever from God, He knew my heart, He saw my heart, I’m getting the fourth child I always wanted.

And then halfway through my pregnancy with him, I find out that I don’t actually get to raise this child. He’s in heaven. And

Kelly: I’m so sorry. That’s just crushing.

Hannah: Yeah, it really crushed me. My oldest at the time was five and she was [00:08:00] taking care of me. She was Running the house, basically, while my husband was at work.

I really sunk deeply. And I don’t really know. I didn’t really believe I could come back from that. And this is the part of my story. I really want to sit in today. There’s a lot more to my story, but just to give some perspective that like this still wasn’t it for me.

A year after this, I was working at a grocery store. My husband and I were doing the Dave Ramsey thing. And so we were just paying off all of our debt, student loans and otherwise.And I hit my head on a shopping cart and I hit my head and the most fragile spot a person could hit their head. I was loading the bottom of their cart for them. And I stood up and I smoked my head on the edge of this cart. And I just, you know, I’m a farm girl, so I just shook it off and I just went about the rest of my shift and I got home and I was telling my husband, I was like, man, I just have a really bad headache.

He was like, well, you know, just sleep it off. And I was like, okay. And then the next morning I woke up and I was like, something is not right. I [00:09:00] literally felt like I had gotten ran over by a semi truck and backed up on again, and that launched us down a year long journey of me recovering from a mild.

traumatic brain injury. I was in therapy. I was in physical therapy. I was in speech therapy. I was in all these kinds of therapies to get my brain back to where it was. And that was just also the Lord did a lot of work in me and that season. And still yet, this is not really where my health has reached its peak here.

After that, about a year after that, I got diagnosed with Lyme disease. And all of these random health issues that I had started experiencing in my early 20s started to make sense. And that was a very challenging season to navigate. I was about 20 pounds underweight, incredibly malnourished.

Like, it just, it was just, It was not a good season for me, and then we found out I also had mold toxicity and heavy metal poisoning. And so, this was my journey for, I think [00:10:00] about, well, if you include in my early 20s, when all of these symptoms started, to when I finally started down a journey towards sustainable healing, it was well over 10 years.

And how the Lord actually set me free from all of this was through a biblically based brain rewiring program. So again, the word, like the Lord used the word to lead me and guide me out of this incredible miry pit that I had found myself in. And so, you know, you can imagine, so this was my life from like my early twenties to my very early thirties, and just constant trial after trial and challenge after challenge.

Kelly: I’m going to interrupt you for one second, just for our listeners to understand. So, when you have Lyme disease, mold toxicity and heavy metal poisoning all mixed together or even just lime. One of the things that happens is your gut gets very badly damaged. And this happened [00:11:00] to two of our girls. Our girls, they weren’t even able to absorb nutrition. Yeah. So all their testing wasn’t looking good. Like their cells weren’t responding as they should. And so you weren’t losing weight because you had an eating disorder, as you mentioned previously, right? Losing weight because your digestive system was no longer functioning.

Hannah: I actually had lab work that came back. That was like, she’s failure to thrive. Like my body quit building essential. Amino acids, I quit building the building blocks, like I couldn’t even absorb anything. Like I literally was dying.

Wow. And so that was a very like, Oh my word, how am I going to navigate this? And I just want to give a shout out to Susie Larson and her book, Fully Alive, because that came to me at just the right time. I just cannot. Emphasize enough that our perspective really does make a really big difference on what it is that we walk through.

Kelly: I didn’t [00:12:00] fully realize that I’m sorry, that book fully alive by Susie Larson is so powerful. Susie Larson has been on this program before, and I will link to that episode as well in the show notes. Yeah. But if you are walking through a chronic illness fully alive is a good place to start.

Hannah: Yeah. It’s where I really began to the lesson that the Lord imparted to me after we had lost our son. That he, I shouldn’t say lesson, maybe the concept that he made very real to me after we lost our son. It took root in a very different and a much deeper way after I read Fully Alive and it enabled me to walk through several years more of extreme chronic health issues and autoimmune issues that rose up as a result. And so truly, I echo what you’re saying in that if you’re walking through any chronic illness or autoimmune issue of any kind, and you’re really struggling to feel hope or what would a God honoring perspective in this be like, [00:13:00] you got to check that book out.

It’s phenomenal. Yes. So where I feel led to sit in my story today is My kind of the aftermath of losing a child with my midterm pregnancy loss, you know, with that, you know, Kelly and I, we’ve talked about this before it’s not that I just lost a child. I lost a dream. I lost a future. I lost what I thought my family was going to look like my kids.

They lost a sibling and the enemy he’s so ruthless. He even got to my kids through this loss, you know? And so it’s, I just. I just can’t emphasize enough that because of all I lost in that season, I don’t feel this way anymore. But at the time I was so mad at God.

Kelly: Yeah, because everything that comes into our lives is filtered through his sovereign fingers of love. You knew the truth that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. And you [00:14:00] understood the sovereignty of God in the suffering, right? Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah. And so I did understand the sovereignty, but I was upset about it.

Kelly: I think, many of us have been mad at God.

Hannah: yes, I, well, at first it was the Lord protected me in this little Jesus bubble, right? Yeah. I was like, God allowed it. There’s a purpose. I know he has good plans for me. He’s good. Like he’s my strength and my shield. And I actually developed a sense of pride of like, I’m fine.

Like, I’m good. I don’t know why people struggle with this, you know, but I, God is very gracious to us in that after trauma, we don’t really experience the full weight of what happened right away. It’s a very protective thing he does for our hearts because I really do not believe we could physically withstand it.

And so little by little, I started being like, you know what, I actually don’t, I don’t feel okay with what happened. And little by little, I was like, I think I’m actually mad at you. And then little by little, I was like. You gotta be kidding me, right? Like I’ve [00:15:00] been following you since I was three years old.

How could you allow this to happen to me? And so my little by little became this really big snowball that launched me to a point of like, I don’t even believe you’re good. I don’t even believe you’re faithful. I definitely do not believe you love me. And I for sure know you do not favor me. Like, how could you, when you allowed this to happen?

And it actually brought me to one of my favorite wrestling seasons with the Lord, where, you know,

Kelly: I’m sorry. Can you repeat that again? Your favorite wrestling season?

Hannah: My favorite wrestling season with the Lord, because I had never struggled quite to the degree I did where I had to look at my faith. Face value or something had been ripped away from me is what it felt like and I had to decide do I believe the word Of God is true, or do I believe my feelings?

more. Yes. And so I was like, all right, here’s the deal. David’s very honest with you in the psalms, so I’m going to be honest with you. I’m mad. [00:16:00] I feel like I got the short end of the stick here and that you played some sick trick on me. That’s how I feel. However, I’m pretty sure your word is true, even though my feelings are saying otherwise.

So you know what? Prove it. I’m just sitting back here talking to God this way, like it’s no big deal. And I’m like, prove to me you’re good. Prove to me you’re faithful. Prove to me you love me. And when you do I’ll acknowledge it. And I’ll give you thanks, but like, if you, I literally was like, if you want to be in relationship with me, you got to show me that you want to be in relationship with me.

You need to somehow help me make sense of this. Like, I’m giving him this laundry list of things my heart needs from him. Cause I’m like, David did it. Right. So I can do it.

Kelly: Yeah. So you felt the freedom to tell God the truth because this was the truth that was on your heart. And earlier I did say that many of us, I think I said many of us get mad at God, but maybe we don’t get mad at God, but we just get our feelings deeply hurt.

We [00:17:00] feel betrayed. We feel abandoned. Yes. And also feel neglected. I think that’s where I was at one point during a faith crisis with my girls. I just felt like he was neglecting them and I knew it wasn’t true. I had to have God prove to me it wasn’t true. So I love that you worded it that way.

So you kind of laid out an ultimatum in a way.

Hannah: I did. Prove to me you’re good or I’m out. And so this is probably about Oh, goodness, like eight months post losing David, our child. And then a month later, this ministry comes to town and comes to the church that we were at the time.

And somebody on that ministry team caught wind of my story because simultaneously, not knowing I had Lyme, I was struggling with a lot of food issues. I had so many restrictions. And when this ministry team came to our church, we did meal after meal after meal. And I was just always the person that brought my own food because I was like, I know I don’t [00:18:00] react to this.

And so I just, I want to enjoy the evening. So I’m going to eat my own food. And they’re like, why’d you bring your own food? I was like, it’s just what I can eat. Like it’s, please don’t make a big deal out of it. And they’re like, well, you probably need inner healing. And that was the first time I’d ever heard the phrase inner healing.

And I was like, say what now I’m fine. I am a Midwest farm girl. I am fine. And he was like, no, I really think that part of your like your food intolerances. Are related to some deep heart woundings and you would probably benefit to pray with our lead ministry member and I was like I’m not sure about that and I’m pretty sure they asked me, are you carrying around a grief and I just lost it and I was like, well, I lost my son.

About nine months ago, and I can you, will you please consider doing a session with his name’s Ray with Ray? And I was like, I’ll think about it and I was on the coffee team for this event Our church was hosting and so I’m out cleaning up the coffee. I’m like, I’m not meeting with this person. I’m mad at God. And Ray comes out of the [00:19:00] sanctuary looking For me.

And they’re like, Hey, is your name Hannah? And I was like, yes, I’m Ray. They told me I could find you back here. And I was like, oh, hi.

Kelly: Oh, I like, okay. For those who are listening you should have seen the look on Hannah’s face. It was a look of I don’t know, pure disgust. Yeah.

Hannah: Disgust and like, oh, great.Like you’re going to make me talk. I’ve got out. Like, I’m not talking to God anymore at this point, and after, even after my little, like, proved to me you’re good and I’ll acknowledge you and Ray’s like, come sit at this table with me. I want to hear more of your story. I, at the time, was a chronic people pleaser, and so even though I’m sure my face said, like you saw, I do not want to meet with you, I do not want to talk to you, I’m a people pleaser, and At the time, I’m like, fine, I’ll just go appease you, but I’ll come up with some excuse in the moment why whatever time you give me isn’t going to work.

Well, the Lord just has a way of honoring even, honoring obedience even with impure motives, because I was like, I’m just going to people please my way out of this, but really I was obeying the Lord. [00:20:00] And Ray sits down with me and hears bits and pieces of my story. And he’s like, I would really like to pray with you.

And I was like, fine. what do you got? He literally gives me a time that works for me. And he’s like, and I’ll bring a woman in from my team. And so like, it’ll be this safe environment. And usually those sessions are about an hour and he took two hours with me because the first hour we spent getting my perspective of God, the father, correct.

And my theology, correct. That when our hearts break, god’s heart breaks as well. And that

Kelly: I am going to interrupt you for just a minute, that makes me cry. That’s  powerful truth.

Hannah: It is. And because here I was just ticked off at God. Like you broke my heart. Yeah you broke me and I’m blaming him for all of my suffering and anything else I can find at this point in my life.

And. The truth is that when my heart broke because of the injustice that happened to me. God’s heart [00:21:00] broke as well. And the truth is that even though it hurts at times, and even though it’s, it can be really hard to wrap our minds around because God wants relationship with us and doesn’t want us to just be these like perfect little robots that do everything he commands us to do.

I, there has to be an allowance for the sin and the ways of the enemy and just the injustices that can happen in our lives. At times, because if we can’t be open to that, we can’t be open to his mercy and his love and relationship and learning and growing and all the beautiful aspects.

And so it’s a, on this side of heaven, it’s a really challenging dissonance to make sense of. But again, I’m pretty sure it was Susie Larson who said this. It’s like, why would we blame the very one that can help us through? Our hardships and our trials and like why did we turn against the very one who wants to help us walk it out and walk through it in a way where we become stronger and more healed [00:22:00] as a result?

Yes. You know, and so that for me was a very pivotal moment in, in healing from the devastating loss. of my miracle child.

Kelly: Yes. I love how Jesus steps in so full of compassion he pursues our broken hearts to heal our broken hearts. I always Stunned by how much he loves us and how much he pursues our freedom and our healing.

And I love in Isaiah 61, it says he binds up the broken hearted near the broken hearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit and that’s what he was doing for you.

Hannah: Yeah. It’s so true. , I’ve had a lot of inner healing sessions if you’re not familiar with that term.  It is a type of prayer where we’re inviting the Lord in on our pain and we’re asking him for his perspective and we’re asking him for what his truth is and what lies we believed along the way and what wounds came into our heart as a result of walking [00:23:00] in. The lies of the enemy instead of the truth of the Father.

And so they’re very profound and very healing sessions. But in one of them, the Lord gave me this picture of Father God carrying, literally carrying me and like running urgently to a hospital and like placing me on a hospital bed and doing surgery on my heart and just like being so attentive and so caring.

And it’s like, he really is. the surgeon of our hearts. He’s not the cause of our wounds. And so I think that the more We can cling to that truth, even if our feelings rise up and tempt us otherwise. The truth is that the Lord is the one that pulls us out of the pit. He’s the one that sets our feet on steady ground.

He’s the one that helps us. He’s a shield around us and we need to be clinging to these truths. Like our lives depend on it because our lives actually depend on it. Do

Kelly: yes. Oh, that is so powerful. . And unless we run to him with our questions, and this is what has rescued me [00:24:00] from weariness and from the lies about who God is and who I am is just asking God.

What do you want to say about this? Because my heart is breaking and this event, this huge pile of hardship on top of an already large pile, it does not seem to be consistent with your heart of goodness and love. So I need you to speak to me. And when you ask a question like that, it opens our heart to actually hear from him,

Hannah: right? Yes. Yeah. as you were saying that, I just feel prompted to share. Okay, so I have this amazing experience and inner healing surrounding the death of my son, but things are still like kind of messy for me. So I just want, I want to encourage people who might still be in the mess and might be thinking how could I ever be in this place where Hannah and Kelly are like talking about how redemptive God is and how good God is.

I just kind of want to show you, share through a conversation I had with my mom so you can really see how broken I [00:25:00] was but that When we continue to turn to the Lord, and we can look at David and the Psalms as an example, to keep our hearts open and ask God questions, you really could take us from where I’m about to share with you, where I was, to Where I am now.

So my mom and I are having this conversation. Okay. My mom’s been a believer her whole life. I’ve been a believer my whole life. My mom grew up in a biblically based home. I grew up in a biblically based home. We know our Bible pretty well as a result. And I’m so thankful for the women that have poured into me along the way.

But my mom, I’m like crying because I’m missing David and I’m just upset. David was the name of my son. Sorry. Yes. David James. And so I’m talking to my mom about David and I’m sad and we’re doing dishes together in my kitchen and she just turns to me and she goes, you know, honey, The Lord might really use this to reach the hearts of other women who will walk through what you’ve walked through.

And I just looked at my mom and I said, that’s fine. I just want my baby back. You know, like I was just still like, I’m in this messy, like you call it, the wrestling of the Lord is actively healing my [00:26:00] heart. And I’m still having all these feelings and I’m still struggling with bitterness and even like a sense of entitlement, and just like, Oh, I know that’s true mom, but this is how I feel.

My mom held a lot of space for my feelings and I know she prayerfully considered any word of exhortation or truth that she spoke at me to me in that season. I’m just so grateful for Her spirit led prayer life, but I’m just, I just wanted to encourage people like I was not in a good place.

I was incredibly broken, but God and I were working this out and he can handle that

Kelly: yeah

Hannah: You can handle me being like, yeah, I know that’s the truth and like be flippant about it. But like, this is how I feel. I just want my child back. Like, I just want my 4 kids, you know, Yeah, my mom says she just gave me a hug to just rub my back.  I know, honey,

Kelly: yes, and it’s just when you were struggling with the loss and I love how wise your mom was, but if people are just coming at you in the, you know, the. Deep depths of this heartbreak and saying, well, God’s going to work it all out for good. It [00:27:00] just dismisses your pain.

It isolates you. You feel misunderstood and it just rewounds your heart.

Hannah: It is very rewounding. I had a lot of people out of a good place in their heart. Say really damaging things to me. And the Lord gave me He just helped me. I really feel like he gave me a grace. He shielded me. And he’s like, Hannah, they mean well, Hannah, their hearts in a good place.

Hannah, they love you. And so it was like, honestly, even though like hurt somehow, even in like, I mean, look at how good God is I’m here. I’m ticked at the world. I’m ticked at him. So sarcastic. And like, Just not in a good place and he’s still choosing to shield me.

Kelly: I love that he protected you from deeper bitterness and grounded your heart with a perspective of love towards those people. Yeah, only he could do that. Only he could do that. Yeah. Well, why don’t you take us [00:28:00] to David, to the Psalms? Take us to the Psalms and show us how God rescued your heart,

Hannah: yeah. So I love Psalm 118. It’s seen me through a lot of trials. Verses 13 and 14 specifically became a truth that I held to even when my feelings were suggesting otherwise. And it says, I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength. And my defense, he has become my salvation.

And so for me, I just was like, okay, I’ve been pushed back. I reverted very far back to a place in my faith emotionally. I’ve never been before. And I really feel like I’m about to fall off this ledge. Like I told the Lord, I’m like, you want me to be in relationship with you? You want to be in relationship with me?

Prove it. Like I’m teetering off this edge here. Like I’m about to fall off the edge of this cliff. And not be walking in faith or relationship with you anymore. And what did he do? He helped me. [00:29:00] Like, within a month of praying that prayer, he brought someone into my life. To do facilitate heart surgery on me and he put people in my lives who spoke truth to me and who weren’t intimidated by how strong my emotions were, you know, he put people in my life who helped me come up with really good strategies to keep my mind fixed on truth when my feelings were about to run the show, you know, and the Lord really became my strength and he became my defense against the temptation that comes with grief, which it’s not wrong to grieve.

But I feel like there are a lot of temptations that surround grief, which can be to wallow in it, to let it become a part of who you are, to let grief dictate your perspective and your outlook on life, and even how you start to view your worth. And the Lord became my defense against all of that and truly became my salvation.

He saved me. From the miry clay, you know, where we’re stuck and we can’t even like trudge forward. We’re like rooted [00:30:00] in this sticky mud. And the Lord’s like, I’m going to save you from that. And I’m going to put you over here. I just need you to focus on my truth.

Be honest with where you’re at. But also keep reminding yourself of truth. Yeah.

That is so good. That’s the rescue. That’s how God rescues us. That’s how he sets our captive hearts free. And I’m just so grateful that he does because yes. Grief and difficult circumstances, they diminish our view of God and they wound us so deeply that we end up with a wrong view of God, a wrong view of ourselves.

Kelly: We have, like you were saying, it affects, it creates a lens through which we see everything in life, right? Yeah.

Hannah: It really does.

Kelly: So powerful.

Hannah: Yeah, the lens that God actually gave me. So he upgraded my prescription , my spiritual prescription in that season. And I now, I don’t execute this perfectly. And I really think perfection is just an idea we [00:31:00] all make up in our own heads anyways,

Kelly: Yeah, I like that.

Hannah: But now my prescription he’s given me is that my circumstances don’t dictate God’s goodness. Yeah. But I can see my circumstances through the lens that God is good, because He is. His character doesn’t change. It’s impossible for God to lie. It’s impossible for Him to go back on what He said He would do.

And so if that’s the truth, I can filter all of my feelings through that instead of allowing my feelings to be the filter for truth. And so just watching David and I’m so like, I, I think the Psalms were all I read for about a year because it was like, okay, I can be honest about my feelings and I can turn to truth.

It’s the both and so another Psalm I really like that saw me through that season is Psalm chapter 18. Yeah. And just starting at verse one, it says, I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call to the [00:32:00] Lord who is worthy of praise and I have been saved from my enemies. The cords of death entangled me. The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted me. And I’m like, yep, that’s what it felt like. I feel strangled by the death of my son.

I feel entangled about it all. I feel all entangled in it. I feel overwhelmed by it. I feel like it’s all that’s in front of me. Everything I see is through this perspective and so just reading through this is like, okay, well, I know David’s talking about physical war enemies, but I’m like, my grief became an enemy to me and I needed to wrestle through.

How can this be something that actually opens up the door? For the Lord to breathe hope into me, and it’s a doorway for the Lord instead of an avenue of death for me. And David just gives us so many clues. He just right away, before he starts talking about how he feels, he’s like, God is this. God is [00:33:00] that.

God is this. Yeah. And so I just love that he’s housing his feelings and his fears and his overwhelm. He’s sandwiching it in between who God is. And so it just became, it became a strategy. For me of like, God’s this, I feel this, but I can trust God because he is this.

And it’s just so dangerous to only talk to God about our feelings. We can’t just stay there. We do need to be honest, but we also have to be very mindful and intentional and dictating truth. That’s why David was called a man after God’s own heart, because David kept his heart open before the Lord, but he always pursued more of the Lord and he always declared who the Lord really was and who the Lord really was.

Through him. And so in that season, that’s just kind of what my quiet times looks like. You know, while I’m raising a five year old, a three year old, a one year old and processing deep grief. Like this is what I did to not just survive that season but thrive and make it through on the other side.

[00:34:00] Stronger And with my head on straight, you know, yes,

Kelly: I guess that’s so beautiful. Your story. So parallels. Mine. God was so gracious to me early on. He gave me such a strong foundation when I was young and as a teenager. Yeah. Yeah. To know beyond a shadow with a doubt that God’s word is true and that he is good and that he is trustworthy.

And that was my prayer, even at 14, God, I know this is true about you. And I want to walk through something hard so people can see it’s true about you. And if I would have seen, I mean, I had no idea.

Hannah: yeah

Kelly: even then that’s exactly where God took me into the Psalms and I began to see very clearly that we are not at the mercy of our circumstances, that the character of God is the lens that we can trust God’s heart more than we trust what we see and what we feel.

Hannah: Oh yeah. I mean, the heart is deceptive beyond all measure who can fully [00:35:00] understand it. Only God, that’s the answer. Right, right. You know, and so it’s like, it’s fine to have feelings. It’s fine to even feel overwhelmed by our feelings, but we gotta be really careful that we’re not being deceived by our feelings.

That we’re taking all of that to God, because He’s the one who created us. He knit us together in our mother’s wombs. He’s never surprised. By any thought we have or any feeling we feel. He’s like, yep, that makes sense to me why you would feel that way. And he understands.

Kelly: Yes. And he’s never surprised by our hardship either.

He saw it coming and he was already there. And the fact that God, that was. I felt like God had betrayed me when we first found out our daughter was profoundly deaf because I, we had been thanking him for 15 months for this baby and she’s healthy and we were so excited and it’s, and then we were so, I was so heartbroken and I . I felt like God tricked me and he suddenly unveiled the truth about some very, some serious things that were [00:36:00] wrong with her. And so I’m very thankful that the Lord meets us in those places. And what he spoke to me was so similar to what he spoke to you. He doesn’t waste our pain.

And he gave me a sense of anticipation of the redemptive day. Beautiful story that he was going to work in and through our daughter’s life through our family’s life. And he just, he told me up front, your family’s going to be very blessed. And this is going to be good. And miraculously, only God, He filled me with a sense of anticipation of the good.

I was going to see just a few hours after my heart had been broken. So there that’s where we discover that grief and hope can reside side by side in the same heart.

Hannah: Yes, absolutely. It honestly makes me think lately I’ve been sitting in the story of Esther. I just finished a study with some women at my church.

We were in a study together and I believe the lie for the longest time [00:37:00] that because of my hardships, I was not favored. By God, you know, but like you’re saying grief and hope go hand in hand, but so do hardship and favor like God’s favor is not dependent on our circumstances. But if we take a cue from Genesis 50, 20, you know, or Joseph is telling his brothers, you intended to harm me, you intended evil, but what you God intended to use it for good.

And so he’s the master. Redeemer or any anything evil that comes into our lives when we surrender it and we put it in our Redeemer’s hands What does he do? He does the good work and he can do a work that’s highly favored and anointed and just propels us into deeper Hope and peace and joy and i’m a firm believer.

I’m like My entire life, for the longest time, I believed I wasn’t favored by God, but now I’m seeing like, well, actually, look what he did in this hard situation, look what he did in this hard situation, look what he did in this hard situation. It’s like, favor, not because I’ve been exempt from hard things, but because of the way he’s poured out his love and has always revealed a depth [00:38:00] of him I hadn’t yet understood through these hard situations.

Yes.

Kelly: Yes.. So our focus today was looking at David and the Psalms and how we can learn how to wrestle Through the things that are breaking our hearts and land in a place of deeper trust . We land in a place of deeper assurance that we are loved by God. He is with us and for us in all of his power and love at all times he has never stopped working for our best and for his glory.

And that the good that he is working it’s going to blow our minds , I love the phrase you use. God upgraded your prescription. He sure did. And that is beautiful. So thank you for being here today. Hannah. This was wonderful. So encouraging.

Hannah: Oh, well, thank you so much for having me and for sharing truth as well.

It’s been a joy..

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word [00:39:00] 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.