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The Weight Of Watching · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

• 0:10
  Welcome to The Voice. We're breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
• 0:17
  I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy you're here.
• 0:21
  This podcast is for people who are navigating the beautiful and messy middle of life.
• 0:29
  Because life isn't linear, neither is healing, and sometimes our greatest growth
• 0:35
  comes from seasons we never would have chosen for ourselves.
• 0:38
  So grab your coffee or espresso martini, settle in, and let's have a conversation.
• 0:45
  I think one of the hardest parts of being human is in our own suffering.
• 0:50
  It's watching the people we love suffer while realizing we cannot save them from it.
• 0:56
  Some of the hardest conversations that I've ever had with God came from those moments.
• 1:01
  Not during my own disappointments or my own heartbreak, but while standing on
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  the sidelines watching the people I loved walk through pain that I would have
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  carried for them if I could have.
• 1:14
  Because eventually, every one of us finds ourselves there, don't we?
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  Watching, praying, waiting, hoping, asking God why.
• 1:25
  For those of you who don't know me, my sister Ashley was attacked with acid
• 1:30
  in Savannah, Georgia on December 10th of last year.
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  And I'll never forget the moment I learned of what happened.
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  I was walking out of my front door on my way to a holiday luncheon,
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  the first one of the season, when I got the call.
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  And standing there, so many miles away, listening on the other end of that phone,
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  I felt completely paralyzed.
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  I mean, helpless in a way I don't think I had ever experienced before.
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  My nephews were suddenly being forced
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  into adult situations no son and honestly no
• 2:07
  human being should ever have to navigate and in
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  that moment i thought it was the most helpless feeling
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  a person could experience but what i've learned over the months that have followed
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  is something even harder than hearing about trauma is watching someone you deeply
• 2:26
  love live through the aftermath of it because surviving something traumatic is one thing,
• 2:32
  but watching someone you love survive it is another kind of heartbreak entirely.
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  Recovery isn't just physical, it's emotional, spiritual, mental.
• 2:45
  Trauma lingers in ways that cameras don't always capture and headlines could never explain.
• 2:52
  And while Ashley has handled all of this with more courage than I can put into
• 2:57
  words, There has also been grief in watching someone you love carry pain you
• 3:03
  cannot remove from them.
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  I can feel it with her in ways only sisters sometimes can.
• 3:09
  The fear, the exhaustion, the emotional weight of rebuilding after something life-altering.
• 3:16
  And that experience cracked open a much bigger question in me about suffering itself.
• 3:23
  Over the years i'm sure much like some of you i've watched friends and family
• 3:29
  suffer in a variety of ways through challenging family situations cancer addiction
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  death betrayal heartbreak,
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  mental illness, the loss of children, and the slow unraveling of entire families.
• 3:47
  And one of the hardest parts of loving people deeply is realizing there's some
• 3:52
  kinds of pain you simply can't fix.
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  The death of my father immediately comes to mind for me, from receiving the
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  call that no one had seen him for days, to learning he had been lying on the floor alone,
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  to driving through a hurricane just to get to his bedside, and eventually sitting
• 4:11
  beside him in the ICU as he was dying.
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  Those moments never leave you. You can pray and show up and sit beside someone,
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  and you can even love them with everything you have.
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  But sometimes you still have to watch the people you care about suffer through
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  things that feel impossible to explain.
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  And eventually you begin asking God some version of why.
• 4:36
  Why them? Why now? Why didn't you stop it? Why don't you fix it?
• 4:43
  Why does suffering have to exist at all? Many years before I became an entrepreneur
• 4:49
  and Pilates instructor, I was an ICU nurse, standing on the front lines of some
• 4:54
  of the most painful moments people will ever experience.
• 4:58
  As a nurse, you never forget your first patients.
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  My nursing school patient was an older gentleman with cancer.
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  I remember walking into his room feeling completely unprepared.
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  But somewhere, during that interaction, in his own dying way,
• 5:17
  he let me know I belonged there.
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  And I think that's when I became a nurse.
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  After graduation, one of my first ICU patients was a 14-year-old boy who had
• 5:30
  suffered a tragic head injury just at the bus stop that morning,
• 5:36
  horsing around with some friends.
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  And less than 24 hours later, he was dying.
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  And I still remember his family surrounding him, praying, begging God to heal
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  him, holding on to hope as they said goodbye.
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  And that's the thing people don't always understand about nursing.
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  You don't just witness illness, you witness humanity.
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  You witness fear and peace, faith and doubt, hope and grief,
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  love and loss, all in the same room.
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  And somewhere along the way, it changes you.
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  And early in my career, my father, he was always famous for giving me books.
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  But he handed me a book that was not like any book that he had ever given me
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  before. It was called Embraced by satellite.
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  And it was a book that was written by Betty Eady. It's her personal account
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  of a near-death experience and what she believed she encountered beyond this life.
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  And whether you agree with every aspect of her experience isn't really the point.
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  The point is what it stirred in me, especially in my career as a nurse.
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  One message in particular stayed with me. Love, not achievement,
• 6:56
  success, status, or perfection is what matters most.
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  The book also gave me a different perspective on suffering.
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  Not that suffering is good or that God causes tragedy, but that pain is never
• 7:13
  meaningless in God's hands.
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  And over the years, I watched suffering transform people and families. They became stronger.
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  I watched faith deepen and compassion grow.
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  Sometimes it was the person suffering that was being transformed and sometimes
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  the people surrounding them were.
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  But often it was both.
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  And watching people suffer has taught me that there are no perfect answers to pain.
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  There's only earned wisdom.
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  So I've learned that faith and grief, trust and questioning,
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  hope and heartbreak, they all can coexist.
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  I've learned that God can handle our questions, our doubts, our uncertainty.
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  He can handle our anger and our grief.
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  And maybe one reason faith matters so much in suffering is that it reminds us
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  this world is not the end of the story.
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  As believers, we live with the hope of eternity.
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  Now, that doesn't make suffering easier, but it reminds us that suffering is
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  not the final destination.
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  There's a story in the Bible I've thought about often through the years,
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  and it's the story of Hagar in Genesis 21.
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  Hagar finds herself in the wilderness with her son. She's exhausted, grieving, desperate.
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  She's convinced they're going to die.
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  And as a mother, I can't even imagine that level of helplessness.
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  It says that she eventually places her son under a bush because she cannot bear
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  to watch him suffer anymore.
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  And honestly, I think many of us,
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  have experienced some version of that emotionally, watching someone we love
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  hurt while feeling powerless to stop it.
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  And in that moment, Hagar believes there is no hope left, no future, and no way through.
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  But then the Bible says something remarkable.
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  God opened her eyes, and she saw the well.
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  The provision had been there all along. She just couldn't see it through the
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  grief, fear, and exhaustion.
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  And I think suffering can do that to us, right?
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  Pain narrows our vision, and grief convinces us we're abandoned.
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  Heartbreak makes us believe hope is gone.
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  Meanwhile, God may still be surrounding us with strength, provision,
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  people, grace, and purpose, but suffering can temporarily blind us to it.
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  Maybe faith is trusting that the well is still there even before we can see it.
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  Before we go, if there's one thing this episode has taught me, it's this.
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  We spend so much of our lives trying to find the right words for people who
• 10:14
  are suffering, the right thing to say, the right prayer, the right answer.
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  But after watching my sister fight her way through recovery,
• 10:24
  after sitting beside my father in his final days, and after years of standing
• 10:29
  in ICU rooms with families facing
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  the unimaginable, I've learned that most people don't need our answers.
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  They need our presence. Someone willing to sit beside them in the uncertainty.
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  Willing to stay when things get uncomfortable.
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  Someone willing to pray when there are no easy solutions.
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  So this week, I want to encourage you to do one thing.
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  Show up. Make the call. Send the text. Visit the hospital. Go to the funeral.
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  Pray for the person who is struggling. and if you're the one carrying the burden
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  right now, I hope you remember Hagar.
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  I hope you remember that sometimes grief, fear, and exhaustion can make it difficult
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  to see the well God has already placed before you.
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  And I hope you remember that just because you cannot see His provision yet,
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  it doesn't mean it isn't there.
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  Because suffering may be part of the journey, but it's not the end of the story.
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  If you're watching someone you love suffer right now, I know how helpless that can feel.
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  I know how badly you want to fix it, and I know how many prayers you've prayed.
• 11:47
  I know how many questions you've asked. But maybe love was never about having
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  the power to save everyone.
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  Maybe sometimes love looks like staying, praying, and showing up,
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  holding hope for people when they temporarily cannot hold it themselves.
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  And maybe faith isn't the absence of questions. Maybe faith is choosing to trust
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  God gently through them.
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  If you're in a season of breaking, please remember this. Believing is coming,
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  and becoming, it's already happening.
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  I'll see you next time, and until then, take care of yourself,
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  keep showing up, keep loving well, and keep becoming.