Transcript
TG Ep. 9 – Stuck in the refining fire? Me too.
00:00:46 Speaker: Okay, well, I guess we are gonna just launch right into today’s bite sized Bible cast. Uh, full disclosure, I am having a heck of a time. So if you are someone who is seemingly in an endless refining fire, uh, or life is just more chaotic than you would like, or you’re struggling to see God in the midst of all of the absolute chaos that is going on. You are in very good company, my friend. Um, I flipped open my journal when I was planning to record a couple podcasts right now, and this verse jumped out at me. So a little background I do listening prayer almost every day as part of my quiet time where I will read a verse, I will write down the verse, and then I will just sit and listen for what God has for me on that particular verse that day. we will read some scripture together and then talk about it a little bit. And if it’s something that I have, you know, done listening prayer on for my quiet time, um, sometimes I might share what God said to me if I feel like it’s something that could be helpful to other people. Um, but yeah, let’s just jump right in. So the verse that I have today is actually one that I had done listening prayer on back in March of this year. And it is Jeremiah seventeen seven. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. Now I love when God kind of brings Scripture to mind. That’s very topical to what you’re dealing with at that exact moment, because today has been a doozy. my husband is in the process of losing his job. Uh, he’s worked at Google for almost ten years and has been laid off, and that came in the middle of him being on short term disability on leave, uh, for short term disability for medical reasons. Uh, he has brain cancer. And when they scooped out the tumor, they also scooped out some of the parts that made him good at his job. Uh, and so the last couple years, uh, it’ll be three years tomorrow since he had his seizure, which is how they found the tumor. Uh, I did not know him then, but tomorrow will be three years, uh, since his entire life completely flipped upside down. And so as a result of the cancer and cancer treatment, he’s no longer able to perform his job and was in the process of transitioning to long term disability when he was laid off due to a reorganization. And we found out today that the insurance company who processes long term disability claims is trying to deny the claim. So it’s been it’s been a very long season of refinement for both of us. It’s been going on since before we met. Um, for me pretty much ever since probably the summer of twenty twenty one, I feel like I have just been running and running ragged. Um, I suddenly became a single mom quite literally overnight. Um, in October of twenty twenty one. my son was four months old. And like I said, literally overnight I went from having what I thought was this stable home life. I had a house that I loved. I had just had my first baby. My husband and I were talking about another baby, and then boom, suddenly I couldn’t go back to my house and I was dealing with lawyers and divorce papers and being a new mom and realizing that my life was going to look very, very different from anything that I had planned. And the next couple years were filled with absolutely bitter legal battles on multiple fronts. the people that claimed that they loved me completely abandoned me and then tried to get me thrown in jail. And when that didn’t work, sued me for thirty thousand dollars. and when I met Cameron, my husband, my now husband. This is not something I ever thought I would be able to say. If someone had told, like, sixteen year old me that I would be having to clarify at, at a, at a young sub thirty age that, uh, that I have to clarify which of my husbands I’m talking about. Am I talking about my ex-husband or my current husband? Life just has this really funny way of surprising you. But the point of all of this is that I’ve just been running ever since the summer that my son was born. Really, even from the moment he was born, because he almost died in the hospital. or I should say, we brought him home, and then he almost died the night that we brought him home. And so he spent the first week of his life in the hospital. And really, ever since then, I just feel like I have been running ragged. I feel I don’t feel I have moved normally every couple months, but the longest I’ve stayed anywhere since I left my parents house to get married is like two and a half years, and other than that, I’ve moved typically once a year, sometimes multiple times in a year. And so between that and then my husband dealing with cancer, he was in the process of going through chemo and had just finished radiation when we met. And then two months into our marriage, he was diagnosed with a second form of cancer. Fortunately, this one was very treatable. It just required surgery. But he underwent surgery for his second cancer before being done with chemo for his first form of cancer. And now we are dealing with the fallout of the effects of treatment and surgery from the first cancer. And so today especially, is just one of those days where you look at your situation and you go, okay, I’ve got two choices here. I can either completely fall apart and be really angry at God and go, you know, I was promised a light burden and an easy yoke, and I don’t see that anywhere. Or we can have the attitude of going, okay, I do not see where this is going, but I trust that you know better than I do. my husband, uh, Cameron, when we had before we had actually met, we met on a dating app. And so while we were still, um, you know, waiting to meet because I was very cautious at first, I told him I’m not dating anyone exclusively. And when I do date exclusively, it’ll be for at least a year before I even get engaged. Yeah, we were married less than six months later. Um, but in those early days, we were talking on the phone and he broke down in tears to me, explaining how he had had to come to terms with the fact that he might not live to see his kids next couple birthdays. there was a point in time where he didn’t think he was going to make it to age thirty two. he was diagnosed with cancer right before he turned thirty one. And so. He was explaining to me that he had to realize that if God chose to take him from this earth, that it would be the best path for his kids. That for some reason, him still being here wouldn’t be as good. And I mean God’s definition of good, not our definition of good, which is a very important distinction. But he had to come to terms with the fact and trust God, that God was good enough that cam being taken from this earth, if that were to be the case, is the best possible thing for his kids. And so whatever God allowed to happen, if cam was fully surrendered, that would be what is best for his children. Now, of course, I’m a little biased. I’m very glad he’s still here. I’m very glad that God saw fit to spare his life. so far anyways, the cancer will likely be back at some point. Uh, but that’s that’s a bridge we’re just gonna save for another day until we have to cross it. But that really struck me, realizing, okay, if God allows this hardship to continue or this terrible thing to happen, I have to trust that it’s because it allows his purposes to be accomplished in the best way, and that whatever ends up happening is the best path forward, and that any other paths other than the one he’s chosen to allow me to walk through for whatever reason, of course, we’re never going to know why they were not going to be as good as this difficult path that I’m walking down. It reminds me of, uh, there’s a scene in I believe It’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I’m a huge Narnia nerd. I use Narnia scenes for a lot of explanations, and I’m currently reading My Son, The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe, and every night when I have him with me, because he spends half his time at my house, half his time at his dad’s house. Every time we finish a chapter and it’s bedtime, he’s like, mom, just one more chapter. And it just it brings such a light to my eyes. I love it so much. But there’s a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Lucy is in this like, it’s like a wizard or like an enchanter. Enchantress is a female wizard. But I don’t know. There’s not really, like, an enchantress, like a male form of enchantress. I can’t think of the word that I’m that I’m trying to use here, but basically this, like Wizard’s house, and there’s this big book with spells and all of these things. And it’s been a hot minute since I’ve read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so bear with me. I might be botching some details, But essentially Lucy’s talking to Aslan, and and I don’t remember the exact details of the scenario, but she’s wondering if she had made a different choice. Would things be different? And Aslan says to her something along the lines of dear heart, we can never know. No one can know what could have been, only what will be. And I know I absolutely botched that, but it just. It sticks with me. Because we’re never we’re never gonna know. Okay, well, if this other thing had happened, what would that have led to? You know, then you kind of. My husband and I are watching all the Marvel movies right now. We’re going back and rewatching those, and we’re finally in, like, the multiverse stuff. And that’s both fascinating and, like, really bugs the living daylights out of me because I’m like, I have a lot of questions about this whole multiverse thing. But anyways, so there’s just there’s no way to know, okay, if this path had been taken, if this choice had been made, if things had played out differently, what would have happened? And that can be both really good and really difficult, especially, you know, as someone who’s been in this just absolute season of refining fire Obviously, a lot of the problems that I’m dealing with are still very much first world problems. Like, I am not having to worry about my house being bombed, or whether or not my kids and I are going to be able to eat tomorrow. So on one hand, I do feel a bit silly, like, oh man, my husband lost his really well-paying job and now we’re not one hundred percent sure what our future’s gonna look like. But also, both sets of our parents live nearby and we have food on the table. It just. It feels very silly in comparison to what a lot of people are dealing with in the world right now. But at the same time, I do try to have grace for myself. That okay, just because someone else has a broken leg doesn’t mean my sprained ankle doesn’t hurt. And just because I have a sprained ankle doesn’t mean someone else’s papercut doesn’t hurt. Like pain is very relative and I do try to give myself grace there, but. It has very much been a long, long season of refining fire and what feels like intense trial by fire, like it’s it’s kind of been one thing after another. And like, big stuff for the last four years, you know, my son almost dying at birth, my husband almost dying, being in multiple legal battles with people that I loved more than I love myself, and just constant rejection and separation and uncertainty. And at one point, I was on public assistance And it just it’s been very much a season of humbling. There’s been a lot of joy in this time. Cameron is my best friend in the entire world. If I believed in soulmates, I like to say that I don’t believe in soulmates, but if I did, he would be mine. Um, and just the way that the Lord brought us together and has confirmed our relationship and grown us together and sewn our hearts together and allowed us to just blossom in him together, it’s wonderful. We have the most wonderful kiddos, we’ve got this sweet little blended family and I just I wouldn’t trade any of it, but at the same time, it is exhausting. It is absolutely Exhausting, and it just feels like I have been running and running and running for four and a half years. And something that God has actually laid on my heart lately is to ask for stability. And so that’s something that I’m praying on quite a bit right now. the book Crafted Prayers by Graham Cooke. I want to say, is absolutely fantastic. Cam and I have read it recently and have been working on crafting prayers for the different areas of our lives. So I very, very strongly recommend that. And so God has kind of walked me through the process of asking for stability and what he wants that to look like. And so it’s it’s kind of one of those things where, okay, the roller coaster keeps going and we seem to be at the top of yet another very steep hill, just starting to kind of crest the top there and start plunging down again. And so it goes. So it goes. You know, we were promised hardship, we were promised struggles. But really the beautiful thing about faith in Christ is knowing that there is purpose in the pain. And it very much helps on those days, like today, where quite honestly, I just want to put my head in my hands, cry for a while, and then go scroll on my phone and eat some snacks until I forget about everything that’s going on. But instead, I know that my strength comes from my Savior. I know that his plans for me are good, that they will be better than anything I can come up with. And his definition of good? Not my short sighted definition. And like our verse says Jeremiah seventeen seven, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. So I want to read to you some of the things that God showed me when I did listening prayer on this verse several months ago. About five months ago. At this point, I typically ask after I write out the verse for the day, and a lot of times I’ll look on Blue Letter Bible and do some googling and see, okay, like, what’s the original Greek here? Is there any context that’s important? I really highly recommend Blue Letter Bible, by the way. It’s a free app and it’s I’ve tried a couple different apps for like commentaries and looking at the original text and things like that. Blue Letter Bible I think is my favorite. Um, but so I’ll do that. And then I typically start with the question, father, What do you want me to know? Today and back in March, when I did listening prayer on this verse. Basically, what I heard from God is not to numb myself, to actually experience the drought, not pretend it’s not happening because numbing keeps me from seeing the difference that having roots down deep to the source makes. So I am someone you know I have anxiety. I was clinically diagnosed with anxiety when I was seven. I am on medications to manage it along with lifestyle and and I yeah, I’m a very anxious person. And so one of the ways that I’ve coped is with just numbing myself. Social media, you know, going out with friends, diving into books even typically it’s it’s social media. I’ll be very honest with you. Social media and I can tend to be a bit of an emotional eater on the right days of the month, but that is something that I have used to survive the last couple of years. And so to be reminded of God telling me, hey, yeah, I know there’s a drought going on and I know it’s really uncomfortable, but I need you to feel it because that is the only way you are going to know what being connected to me feels like in comparison. That is the only way you are going to know what it feels like to be going through a drought, be experiencing all these negative things happening around you, but knowing that your roots go down deep to the source and you are sustained that way. The environment around you does not impact how nourished you are. It does not impact how stable you are. It doesn’t impact how okay you are. I control that. And so I’m giving myself a pep talk right now as I’m talking to you. And I hope you can tell from my voice that this is this is truly a very real and raw episode. I truly I didn’t prepare an outline or anything. I literally just got in my car, checked with my husband to make sure he was cool, hanging out with the kids for a minute, and I am sitting in my driveway and it is raining a little bit, and I’m just sitting here with my notebook talking to you. So I am as much talking to myself right now as I am to you. But I do want to encourage you, and this is something that I’m going to be working on as well today. Don’t numb yourself to the drought. If you are walking through that as well, ask God for the strength and stability and peace to go through it and feel it. Don’t just numb yourself and what that can look like is being aware of the different ways that you typically numb yourself. For me, YouTube videos, social media, that is a very, very big one. A lot of times I will shut off the noise in my brain by listening to YouTubers, read Reddit stories and the latest drama video. I love just like petty drama videos. It’s it’s really it’s not great for my heart or my mind or my soul. I know that I’m working on it, but that’s something that I turn to because hearing another human voice talking about stuff that doesn’t matter, helps shut down the voices in my head that are just going and the thoughts that are spinning. And I like to say that I have like seventy two tabs open in my brain at all times. Thank you so much, ADHD. Um, my husband is just walked by making goofy faces at me. I love this man so incredibly much. And this this right now in real time is just an example of. Of, uh, of God’s providence and the fact that he is here even in the harshest of droughts. And my husband, my marriage. Those are roots that run deep, and those are roots that reach nourishment from the Lord. And it is. Well, I’m gonna I’m getting a little choked up. Oh, it is things like that that sustain us. So I want to encourage you join me today. Whatever it is that you normally turn to, to shut off the noise and the chaos and the drought, numb yourself to the drought, whatever that is for you. I want to encourage you to be mindful about it today. I personally have found that shutting everything down and going cold turkey with stuff just doesn’t really work for how my brain works. Maybe it does for you, it does for my husband, but not for me. And so what that can look like for me is, okay, I’m going to listen to. For example, I really love the Bible Project. If you haven’t checked out the Bible Project, they are a podcast, they have video resources, they have all of these amazing things. It’s run by some Bible scholars who just dig into the Word of God and make it so accessible, and they dig into the original meaning of the text and the culture and the different interpretations. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s way more scholastic than I can get in my Bible studies. I highly recommend it. So for me, choosing not to just completely numb the drought can look like, okay, while I’m doing dishes instead of just completely shutting my brain off with a silly video on YouTube, I am going to listen to an episode of The Bible Project and ponder that before I start listening to just a silly video. That’s fluffy, because sometimes it is really nice to just turn your brain off. And honestly, sometimes it’s necessary. Um, a lot of the time I can’t sleep at night if I’m not listening to The Office. And yes, I have listened to the entirety of the office probably twenty times if I absolutely had to guess. But it just like I said it, hearing a human voice talking about things that don’t matter really helps shut my brain off and help it stop spinning. Um, and so I forget why I even brought that up. so that is an example of a mindful choice that I can make, uh, because what I’m listening to oftentimes is something that I can use to numb. So whatever that looks like for you, maybe that’s food, maybe that’s alcohol, maybe that’s running away from your problems, going out, spending time with friends. Maybe it’s romantic companionship and attention from guys. I have been there. That has also been a struggle of mine throughout my life that I’ve had to work very hard on. But whatever that is, I really want to encourage you not to just numb the drought, feel it, because that is what’s going to allow you to feel how deep your roots go and how connected to the source of life and strength and hope and peace you are. I absolutely understand what it’s like going through what feels like an endless season of questioning and struggling and doubting and wondering why. I get it. And I’m here as a resource. If you want to talk to someone who understands. Please feel free to shoot me an email. My email is Rachel. Rachel. Com. You can just shoot me an email. I try to check it decently, regularly. I’ve really been making an effort to have, you know, like content creation as a ministry be something that takes up more space in my life and in my brain. so while it’s not perfect and things will not ever be perfect or perfectly regular, um, I am here as a resource. So feel free to shoot me an email. I am happy to get on a virtual coffee chat and just kind of talk and pray together. Um, I’m looking at putting together some community resources. Horses. I would really love to do like a community of women who can, you know, meet virtually and spend time together and pray together and engage in fellowship and things. So I’m looking at some different avenues, uh, some different things that I want to do with fall and school starting. It’s going to be a lot easier, uh, to kind of get into a rhythm. That’s a big push that I have right now is just getting into a rhythm, finding rhythms. I don’t do well with routines. I do well with them. They just feel like a absolute straitjacket. Uh, so I am working on implementing rhythms in my life right now, but I’m working on a couple different avenues for really cultivating community and fellowship. So I will land this plane here. As my pastor likes to say, this, uh, yeah, this was supposed to be about five to ten minutes, and it ended up very much not being a bite sized Bible cast. So there will be actual bite sized Bible casts in the future, I pinky promise. Um, but apparently I just needed a verbal process a little bit. And, uh, I hope it was helpful to you, um, and that, you know, you were encouraged or at the very least, know that someone is out here commiserating with you. Things are hard. Things are very hard. But this earth is not our home. And to quote Narnia again, further up and further in. So let’s keep going. Make sure you subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening on. if you know of someone who could use some encouragement or who you think this would be helpful to, please share it with them. even just share it on your own social media. that would be helpful to me and hopefully helpful to those who are going to listen. So all right, I hope to see you in an episode soon. Bye.
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