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Running Toward Healing: Willow Weston on Colliding With Jesus in Our Pain! · Anchored by the Sword

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Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Anchor by the
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Sword podcast. I pray that today's episode will
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leave you encouraged and also challenged in your faith.
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And I pray that. You would take.
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The stories that are talked about here today and share them
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with other people. Thank you so much for joining me
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and enjoy today's episode. Hey guys, welcome to this
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episode, the Anchor by the Sword podcast.
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I am here today with Willow Weston.
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She had a book come out today, March 10th, that's called
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collide, running into healing when life hands you hurt.
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So I can't wait to hear her story, more about her, the book
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and just all of the things. Willow, thank you for joining me
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today. Thanks for having me on, Gina.
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Absolutely. And I will say that of all the
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episodes I've had, you're the very first Willow to be on my
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podcast. I bet I don't hear that name a
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lot, at least not growing up, but it seems like there are some
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people who are starting to name their kids Willow.
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I'm starting to see a little bit of that.
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That's awesome. I know what with my name, Gina,
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when I was in school, in middle school, there was a Gina that
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was spelled JEANAA, Gina GENA, and then me Gina.
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And it was really weird. Yeah, yeah.
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I think that I think all the parents at that time watched the
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soap opera because that's where the name came from.
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Oh really? Which soap opera it was?
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General Hospital, I believe it was a character Gina was on
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there because my name was going to be Mandy Lynn because my mom
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loved Barry Manilow. Oh, gotcha.
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Cool. I love it.
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Well, are you glad you're Gina and not Mandy Lynn?
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I am. Do you wish you were Mandy Lynn?
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No, I'm good with Gina. Cool.
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I'm good. I'm good with it.
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I was like, OK, I'm glad they watched the soap opera that day.
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Yeah, for sure. I used to hate my name as a kid,
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but now I've grown to like the uniqueness of it.
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But as a kid I wanted to be Christy and Jenny and all the
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kind of like trending names that all my friends had and.
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And now I'm like, no, like Willow's me.
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I'm good with it. Yeah, and I, I think growing up,
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we were all kind of like that where we wanted to have
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somebody, either somebody else's identity or somebody else's
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name, because I was the same way.
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I wanted to be a Jennifer or, you know, the very common names
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at that time back in the early 90s where, you know, they were,
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it was Jennifer, it was Michelle, Melissa, those were
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the names I wanted. But.
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Yeah, for sure. So can you tell my listeners a
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little bit about yourself? Yeah, I mean, heck, where to
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start? I am a wife.
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I've been married almost 30 years and which is crazy to say
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'cause I still feel like I'm I, I feel like I'm younger than 30,
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but I'm not. And I have two kiddos, young
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adults, so a 23 year old son and a 20 year old daughter.
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And I lead a ministry that that God started that I didn't try to
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start. And that's been in the works for
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almost probably 12 years. And it's called Collide.
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And I'm just now putting, as you mentioned, my book out.
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It's releasing on March 10th and today.
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And so I'm, I'm super excited to see what the Lord does with this
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message and with this story and how he brings hope and healing
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to people who who read it. So that's a little bit about me.
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I'm sure I could tell you 1000 other things, but it hit me with
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all your questions. That's awesome.
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So what does it say on your cup collide?
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That's so cool. It actually, yeah, it actually
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matches my book. Yeah, it does.
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That's so cool. I love it.
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Thank you. So let's talk about your
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personal freedom journey. Yeah, I did not grow up in the
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church. I didn't grow up even hearing
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the gospel. I didn't know the story of
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Jesus. I was completely an irreligious
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kid. And there's so much to my story,
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and a lot of it is in my book. But grew up with a single mom
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and she was an alcoholic. And I actually had to move when
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I was 15 years old and a family across the state took me in and
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they left Jesus and they would tell me about him and I wanted
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nothing to do with him. And I had so much pain and so
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much hurt, and the pain in her were kind of coming out sideways
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and hurting my life and hurting other people's lives.
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And I went off to college and I started being crazy and partying
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and sleeping around and just finally kind of came to the end
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of myself where I couldn't go to class anymore.
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I was breaking down. I had 20 years of secrets and
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pain that I had never told anybody.
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And I didn't really want to be here anymore.
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I didn't feel I had a sense of purpose and the Lord used my
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landlord, which is absolutely crazy.
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She was what I considered this crazy Christian lady.
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And what made it made her crazy was that she was Christian.
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And she just invited me up into her home and would serve me
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coffee and lunch and invite me to her dinner table and to hang
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out with her kids. And she took me on errands and
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sat with me and asked me to share my story.
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And as I began to share my story, that was the first time
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that I really started opening up to someone about what I had gone
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through as a child. And she began to speak Jesus
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into my story. And it was almost like the Lord
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was picking up a needle and thread and just beginning to
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stitch me up using this woman named Cindy.
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And I ended up really starting to question, is there someone
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bigger than me? Is there a creator?
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Is there a divine being? Not even Jesus, Just like is
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there a God? And I began to experience him
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around every corner. And then I started looking at
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the life of Jesus. And Cindy and her husband Steve
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would have me to their small group and I would hear about how
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beautiful Jesus was. And one day I was with Cindy and
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a bunch of her church friends, which was crazy.
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I was in college and I would have never hung out with a bunch
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of Christian ladies. But because Cindy asked me, I
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said yes. And one of the ladies asked me
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what I was waiting for. Like, why?
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What was I waiting for as far as Jesus?
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And I, in that moment, I needed her to ask me that question
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because I realized I wasn't waiting for anything, that I
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wanted him and I wanted to give him my life.
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And in that room, I just remember raising my hands up and
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giving Jesus everything. My pain, my past, my present, my
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future, my body, my dreams, my heartache.
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And yeah, I surrendered my life to Jesus when I was 21 years
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old, and he just radically changed my life.
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I like to say he wrecked my life in a good way and totally turned
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it upside down. It was this crazy conversion and
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ever since then I have gotten such such a great privilege of
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being able to follow him and know him and grow in him and
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serve him and experience him. I love that so much.
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Thank you for sharing your story.
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I it's so funny when you were calling them crazy Christian
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ladies, I just thought that was so that was funny and that it
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was those crazy Christian ladies that are like calling you out
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and up. I love that.
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So how? I mean, Cindy, this woman was so
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bold. I think she she was also really
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real. She was hilarious.
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She had a sense of humor and she would joke around a lot.
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She was an amazing Hostess and so hospitable and so loving to
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me. And she became like family to
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me. And in that she, she really like
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because of who she was, I, I landed my ear to her.
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I would listen to what she had to say about Jesus because it
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was her, you know? So we do have opportunities as
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Christians, even if people think we're crazy, to be able to speak
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into people's lives and have influence when we love them and
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when we embrace them and bring them into our life and our
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family, we build a trust where we can speak into people's hurt
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and people's need. For Jesus, Absolutely.
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So how have you seen God? Use your story.
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Oh wow. Well, I mean, I think God,
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that's what God uses. God uses our story, uses our
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experiences. He uses our past, our pain, our
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our weaknesses, right. Like Scripture says, my power is
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made perfect in weakness, that it's actually me sharing my
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story of pain, my experience with neglect and abandonment,
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and my need for God. That's the story he's used to
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help bring healing to other people who are hurt, for sure.
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So that's how Collide started. I mean, the ministry I lead, it
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started out of a place of pain. And I just had this this
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epiphany that I was so wounded because I've collided with
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wounded parents and they wounded me and I was going to wound my
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kids and I needed healing. And this young girl asked me to
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mentor her. And I was like, I'm not really
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in the best place to mentor you. But if you want to look at the
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life of Jesus and how he collides with people in the New
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Testament, and when he does, they're left more whole than
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broken. Like I need him to heal me.
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If you want to come, we can. We can look at him together and
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she showed up with 25 friends and that has turned into a
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ministry where now we minister to thousands of women a year.
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But it really started out of a place of pain, and I think
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that's what God does. He purposes our pain and uses it
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to help bring healing to other people.
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Yeah, that's what he's done with this whole ministry as well with
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Anchored by the Sword. It started out as a ministry
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that came out of A13 week freedom journey that I had and
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then it progressed to the podcast, to a book and now to
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speaking. So, you know, it's, it's just
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that those steps that he just takes us to each next step to
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where he knows that our story can be used most effectively.
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Yeah, I think a lot of times as women, we and men do it too, but
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we think, I don't, I'm not like her.
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I don't have status, I don't have a platform.
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I don't have any special gifts. I'm, I'm not this.
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I'm not that. And we spend a lot of time
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thinking about what we don't have or what we're not.
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And I always think about the passage in Scripture in John 6
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where there's 5000 hangry people coming, you know, coming at
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Jesus and his disciples. And who does Jesus use?
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He uses what this little boy had, like this little boy, he
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had some bread and some fish, just like a little boy with his
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lunch. And I was just think God uses
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what you have. You don't have to go out and be
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someone else. You don't have to go out and get
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something else like God will use you right now with what you have
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right now. And sometimes all you have is
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grief. Sometimes all you have is a
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story of five miscarriages and no kid.
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Sometimes all you have is a dysfunctional family of origin
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and a hunger for Jesus, and those are the things that
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actually God can use. I think we think we have to go
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be super cool, but God actually uses our weaknesses for his like
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to show off his power. So I love that that's your
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story, Gina, that that's how God has been growing and building
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the ministry that you're a part of.
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And it rings so true to the Jesus that I've experienced too.
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Amen. Absolutely.
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So when you were thinking about the book, what what made you
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write it? And also what made you know that
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this was the time to bring it out?
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I've known that I was supposed to write this book for, jeez, so
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long, probably 20 years, if if not longer.
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But I think there's an element to it that I knew I was supposed
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to write it, but there was also parts of the story that I still
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hadn't lived yet, and I didn't know that at the time.
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When the Lord gave me the vision for the book, He told me to show
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up to the blank pages. I did.
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I showed up to the blank pages. And that's all any of us can do
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if God gives us a vision of what he's calling us to.
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We have to just show up little by little when we can be
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faithful to the vision, even when it's not a reality.
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But there was a huge part of this book where there were so
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many things that he wanted me to experience that I hadn't yet
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experienced. I mean, when I first started on
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the book. And so now it's had like 25
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different reiterations, but you know, there are family members
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that are now no longer here that were here.
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There were people who hurt me as a child that I hadn't forgiven
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yet. And I had to go through a
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forgiveness, real hard forgiveness process with.
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There are things that triggered past wounds and I had to have
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those really hurtful experiences and go to therapy and then be
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able to talk about it. And so there definitely was an
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element of almost like dancing with Jesus to get here where he
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was like, OK, like you just experienced this and I want you
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to actually write about this pain and how I'm bringing
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healing to this in the next chapter.
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And so it's been, it's been a process with the Lord for sure.
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I love that and how you talk about that.
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It's just the next thing like how you're writing it out of a
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place of working through or you're healing and not just word
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vomit on a page because that could be.
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And I mean when we're when we're writing or when we're speaking
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and stuff, if we are not healed in that area, then it just, you
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know, it can actually be a detriment to other people.
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But walking through it and writing it from a place of
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healing and, you know, doing the work, it just shows that, you
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know, therapy is needed and shouldn't be looked down upon,
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and also that the continuing process of the fact that we're
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healed and we're healing. Well, I'm definitely still
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healing. I mean, I think I'll always be
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in process on this side of the perfect place.
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But you know, I think that's part of the message of the book
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is God invites us to say yes to the healing that we long for and
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that he wants to do in our life, and we actually have to
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participate. And it might be that there's
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something coming up for you today and that's your best, yes.
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Like what's this pain that's coming out sideways in my life
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or in a relationship today and being able to go, I want to heal
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that, Lord, and I want you to heal that.
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And So what do I need to do to participate?
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But then also we might work through that and then something
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else comes up in three months and it's now it's almost like I
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sort of liken it to letting got into all the messy rooms of our
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house. And I think a lot of us let him
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into like the living room, like, oh, the living rooms kind of
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cleaned up, but we maybe don't let him into like the bedroom or
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that catch all room that we throw all our junk in or
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whatever. And God wants to come in and
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heal every space in US, every part in US, the parts that are
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bitter, the parts that are bleeding out, the parts that are
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making us do weird things in relationships.
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He wants to get into all those spaces, but it's really hard.
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I think we think he's going to wave a magic wand and heal the
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whole thing. But I, I actually think the way
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he works is he wants to not flood us and overwhelm us with,
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oh man, there's so much that needs to be healed.
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He wants to start with something and we get to participate in
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that. And then maybe he'll move into
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another room and invite us into it and we get to say yes.
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And he's so gracious to us in the process.
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Yeah. And So what are some common
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misconceptions that healing and faith are addressed in your
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book? Well, I mean, one of them I just
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sort of spoke to, but I, I think about the, the man who's waiting
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at the waters and he's been waiting at the waters for so
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long. In the stirring waters, it was
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believed there was a superstition that the first
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person down to the stirring waters would be healed.
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And Jesus shows up on this guy scene.
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He's so stuck. He's he's so stuck.
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He just is hoping this one thing will heal him.
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And here's the healer standing right in front of him, and he
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doesn't once ask the healer to heal him.
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He's still putting his hope in the waters.
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And Jesus asked him this profound question.
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He says, do you want to get well?
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And the word want is the word thelo.
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And it actually doesn't mean that you just want it.
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It means that you press on to action.
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So you want it so much that you're willing to do the work.
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And you notice in this passage that Jesus actually asks the man
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to pick up his mat. And this is a guy who doesn't
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move. He's been stuck in this
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paralyzed position for years. And Jesus says, pick up your
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mat. Imagine this guy is probably
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like, duh. Did you not get the memo, Jesus?
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Like I'm the guy who doesn't move right?
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And Jesus is saying I want you to want your healing as much as
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you want me to want your healing, right?
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I think we pray and we ask God to heal us.
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It's kind of like, and I can use this as an example for myself,
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like, oh, I want to look so great in a bathing suit in July,
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but I'm like, you know, if I'm like eating nachos and like
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gorging on ice cream and gin and tonics every night, like I'm not
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participating in the thing I say I long for.
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And so I think we have a God who's like, hey, I want to help
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you get unstuck, but you have to participate.
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You can't just hope that you're going to wake up on a Wednesday
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and you're going to be healed. And so that's one of the things
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I tackle in the book. One of the other things is that
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we've all been taught how to deal with pain, whether we
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realized it or not. And a lot of the things that
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we've been taught are actually causing more pain.
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You know, we've been taught be strong, you know, pick yourself
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up by the bootstraps or someone slapped a Band-Aid on it and
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expected us to stop crying. Or people have told us, chin up,
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buttercup. And we knew that meant, you
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know, smile and act like you're not sad.
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Some of us have been told you have God, you're good, even
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though we don't feel good. And so a lot of our parents,
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teachers, coaches, mentors, spiritual influencers have sort
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of invited us to avoid pain, just kind of like move on from
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pain. But the truth is, is that we
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don't actually move on from pain.
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We move with pain unless God actually heals a pain.
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And it doesn't matter how big it is, it could be traumatic.
20:06
It could be, you know, dealing with addiction or trauma in your
20:11
childhood home, but it could also be something that we file
20:15
away as small. It could be a passive aggressive
20:18
comment. Our spouse continuing.
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Makes to us or a hurtful way a friend left us out last week and
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we can go oh I'm good I'm just going to sweep it under the rug
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I'll be fine. But what happens to little hurts
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if they're not healed? They layer and layer and layer.
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And next thing you know, we have serious bitterness in our
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marriage. We feel really isolated from our
20:40
friends and we start acting really funky and weird in our
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friendships because we feel like our friends are leaving us out.
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And now we've started to develop a deep seated insecurity that
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falls on one that we already had.
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And so God wants to heal the big things and the small things, and
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he wants us to participate in that healing.
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And instead of avoiding pain, the case that I kind of make in
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this book is that actually instead of avoiding the pain and
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sin and mess and brokenness that we usually run from, we have to
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run towards it with Jesus in order to experience the hope and
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healing and transformation we long for.
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So that's asking people to do something that they've been told
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not to do, right? We've been told to run as far as
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we can away from pain. But when you look at Jesus in
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the New Testament, he runs right into pain all the time.
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He ran to the man with a shriveled hand.
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He meets the woman at the well who feels like she's so Dang
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thirsty and everything she turns to to quench her thirst keeps
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causing more and more thirst. He stands with the woman caught
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in the act of adultery. He.
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He, you know, eats with the outcast.
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He heals the blind like he he runs into the tombs where where
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the guy lives who's cutting himself and he's demon
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possessed. I mean, Jesus is literally out
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here chasing down pain. He doesn't avoid pain at all.
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And we are the biggest pain avoiders ever.
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Like, and we think that's going to make our pain go away.
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But the truth is, is avoidance of pain actually causes more
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pain. So what would you say to
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somebody who is listening right now and they're thinking about
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all the things that they've been through and thinking about how
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much they've avoided it and not wanted to address it, but
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they're starting to feel tugged that they need to?
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Oh man, it's so hard because if you've experienced hurt, you're
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afraid to go there because you feel like it's going to hurt
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even more. And I totally understand.
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I totally understand that feeling.
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But if you don't get healing, your unresolved pain is going to
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wreak havoc on your life. It's going to it's going to be
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passed down to your kids. They're going to inherit your
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pain and pass it on to their kids.
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Your pain and your hurt is going to wreck your dreams that you
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have for your life. It's actually going to have
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consequences to your physical body.
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There's so many things that unresolved pain can do.
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And I think Jesus shows up today and just like the man with the
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shriveled hand that I mentioned a little while ago, Jesus showed
23:34
up to that guy on the Sabbath. And on the Sabbath, you weren't
23:38
allowed to even carry anything as much as two figs.
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Like you weren't allowed to do anything.
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You couldn't shop, you couldn't have sex with your spouse, you
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couldn't lift anything. So actually just even stretching
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was like you would be pummeled for that.
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And it was believed in those times that if if you were
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attacked on the Sabbath, you weren't even supposed to defend
24:00
yourself. You're just supposed to let you
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and your family die. Like that's how intense some of
24:04
the Sabbath rules that were added.
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The man made rules were added that made it so extreme.
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So Jesus saying to this man who has a shriveled hand, stretch
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your hand. This guy has every reason to
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push restoration off. And Jesus is asking him to do it
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and knowing that it's going to have consequences for the man
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and for himself. And actually we see that by
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Jesus when the man reaches out and stretches his hand.
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And I think in, in a lot of ways Jesus is asking us, he's saying
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you are worthy of healing today. I don't want to put it off.
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Yes, I could put it off and do it tomorrow.
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It's just a shriveled hand. And we say that about a lot of
24:46
things. It's just a little fight.
24:48
It's just a pill. It's just diabetes.
24:50
Whatever we we sort of minimize our pain.
24:54
It's just a shriveled hand until it's a shriveled capacity or
24:57
shriveled self esteem. And Jesus is like, no, I want
25:01
you to stretch towards me right now.
25:04
And we're going to heal this today.
25:06
You see, in scripture, the man stretches his hand towards Jesus
25:09
and it was fully restored. And Scripture says that that
25:13
actually caused the religious zealots to set out to kill
25:19
Jesus. And Jesus knew, he knew that by
25:22
healing this man and by saying you're worthy of healing today,
25:26
that that would actually cause him pain.
25:28
And he did it anyways. And so if your Lord would
25:33
literally say you healing is worth the risk of me dying, then
25:40
why are you putting off to tomorrow what God wants to do in
25:43
your life today? You keep rain checking your
25:45
restoration. I think we have a God who loves
25:48
us so much. He's like, do not rain check
25:50
your own healing, big or small. Say yes, right now, right here,
25:55
today. Amen, Amen.
25:58
That is so good. And oh gosh, I just, I just love
26:02
it because, you know, just brings me back to my own journey
26:07
and the journey I continue to be on.
26:08
And as we all are, like you said, on the side of heaven.
26:11
And just to make you think that, you know, it starts with one
26:15
step. It starts with the saying yes,
26:19
and then between you and God, figuring out what that next step
26:22
looks like. And we've talked so much on this
26:27
podcast about mental health issues because it's a big issue
26:32
in my family, both personally and with the women in my family.
26:37
And just how much therapy has has helped in the past.
26:43
And, you know, acknowledging that you are not good and that
26:50
it's OK to acknowledge that you're not good at this point,
26:53
that there's something going on in that you need help.
26:56
So I think that's so important for anyone out there today who's
26:59
listening to this podcast that the things that Willow was
27:02
saying and the things that I've said is so true that you don't
27:06
want to continue living in a place of pain.
27:10
Because when you live in a place of pain, you can't go forward
27:14
and start with a trusted person. You know, you find that that
27:20
person that you can talk to about the stuff that's going on,
27:23
like how you found Cindy and you go from there and see see where
27:27
God's going to take you because he's got such a bigger plan for
27:30
you than what you're going through right now.
27:34
He wants to use it. Absolutely.
27:37
And I think if there's someone listening who doesn't have a
27:40
trusted person, that's where calling a doctor is a good first
27:46
step. Calling a therapist is a good
27:48
first step. Calling your pastor, you know,
27:53
sometimes people feel like, well, I don't have any good
27:56
friends right now, or I move to a new city and you know, where
28:00
would I start? And I think there's always a
28:02
place to start. There's always a space, A next
28:05
step you can take. When God says move, he's asking
28:10
you. When he says stretch, he's
28:11
asking you to take a risk for your own healing.
28:15
Yeah, absolutely. I know one thing for me was
28:21
girlfriends when I was younger girls were girls were rough like
28:28
in middle school and stuff like caddy and vicious like middle
28:33
school was not fun. I don't think for most people
28:36
middle school has been fun and now I'm mentoring 6th grade
28:39
girls so here we go. But it took a long time to have
28:45
girlfriends that I could trust and then I lost one.
28:50
She betrayed me and we've since reconciled, but in doing so, God
28:56
has blessed me with so many good girlfriends, including like 4
29:01
that are my ride or dies. And it was so hard.
29:04
It's so hard to be that vulnerable with people,
29:08
especially when you've been hurt in the past.
29:11
And that goes for anybody that's hurt you, whether it's a church
29:13
person, whether it's a family member or whether it's a friend,
29:16
spouse, whatever that it, it's really hard, Yeah.
29:20
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy because people hurt us.
29:25
And what's wild is that God actually uses people to heal us.
29:34
And and that's a really interesting idea.
29:37
I mean, if you look at Galatians where it says the law of Christ
29:40
is carrying each other's burdens, he's actually saying
29:43
like the law of Christ isn't all the other things we make it to
29:46
be going to church every week or the law of it doesn't say the
29:50
law of Christ is reading your Bible every day.
29:52
The law of Christ is, you know, journaling and prayer.
29:57
The law of Christ is, I don't know, wearing a turtleneck and
30:01
covering up your cleavage. Like the law of Christ,
30:03
Scripture says, is to carry each other's burdens.
30:07
And that also means that you have to let other people carry
30:09
yours. And that's a fascinating idea
30:13
because a lot of our burdens were caused by people.
30:17
Now you want me to let people carry, carry me to you.
30:22
But if you look at the the story in the New Testament where Jesus
30:26
collides, he's at, he's at a house party.
30:29
The house is completely full. And you see these four friends,
30:31
they're carrying a guy and we don't know their relationship.
30:35
We don't know if they're acquaintances.
30:36
We don't know if they were strangers.
30:38
We don't know if they're friends.
30:39
But these four guys carry this guy who's not OK.
30:43
He clearly allowed them to carry him, recognizing himself that
30:48
he's not OK and that he needed someone bigger than himself.
30:51
And his friends carry him to the house party where Jesus is
30:55
because they think Jesus can do something about it.
30:58
And they can't get in because the party is so packed.
31:01
And scripture says they unroof the roof.
31:04
Like that's crazy. Like they climb up, they unroof
31:06
the roof. Most of us would be like, oh,
31:08
this isn't going to work out. You know, they unroof the roof
31:12
and they drop this guy down and below in front of Jesus at this
31:17
party, and Jesus stops in the middle of the party for this
31:20
guy. And I think it's so fascinating
31:23
because Scripture says Jesus saw their faith, not just the faith
31:30
of the four guys that carried him.
31:31
It does take faith to carry people who are heavy burdens.
31:35
It takes faith to walk them to Jesus.
31:37
It takes faith to feed them and care for them and pray for them
31:41
and listen to their story when they need to process over and
31:44
over again. All those things take faith.
31:47
But Jesus saw also the faith that it took to allow other
31:53
people to carry him and lower him down and be exposed in this
31:58
vulnerable moment that takes faith to go, you know what?
32:02
I do need Jesus and I, if it means people carrying me to him
32:07
till, till I can get to him and he can, he can heal me, that's
32:12
going to take incredible faith. So they all had faith, both the
32:16
burden carriers and the one who is being carried.
32:20
And that's wild because a lot of us have been so hurt.
32:24
We don't want to be dropped again.
32:28
We don't want to be hurt again. You don't, you don't want to
32:32
make a new girlfriend and then feel betrayed again like you
32:36
were before. And so a lot of times we self
32:39
protect because we don't know what else to do.
32:43
So we we think I've been too hurt.
32:45
So I'm going to go into self protection mode and what I found
32:48
out, at least from my own experiences, a lot of the ways
32:52
that I self protect actually create more harm than they do
32:56
help me, especially in relationships.
32:59
I think you're absolutely right that we have to find trusted
33:01
people. And and I have a therapist
33:04
friend and she taught me and I think it's so interesting.
33:07
She goes test people out if you can trust them with your threes
33:11
and your fours. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, if
33:14
you can trust someone with your threes and fours, maybe you can
33:17
try out what they do with one of your fives and your sixes.
33:20
But don't go giving someone A9 and A10 when you don't know if
33:23
you can trust them with your 3. So I think over time you kind of
33:28
see, is someone trustworthy? Are they safe?
33:31
Like if I share this, what do they do with that?
33:34
And then, you know, you can eventually get to a place where
33:36
like this person can carry me when I need to be carried and
33:40
vice versa. That's so good.
33:43
And that's, that's such a great way to put developing
33:48
relationships because we need community, we need each other.
33:54
And we were created for that. And I think that's definitely
33:59
going to speak to someone today who's been self preserving and
34:05
just trying to, you know, just protect themselves from other
34:10
people, other people from even them.
34:13
You know, they think that they're not worthy of it and
34:15
that they have to keep themselves in a bubble so that
34:18
that way other people aren't negatively affected by them.
34:22
And so today's the day to start that journey.
34:28
Absolutely. So just a couple quick questions
34:31
and ending. What Bible verse or verses help
34:34
to keep you anchored? Well, I, you mentioned you were
34:38
going to ask me that and I'm not, I'm not one of these chicks
34:42
that's like, I have a favorite verse.
34:44
Like I just absolutely love the Bible.
34:46
I absolutely love God and who he's been throughout history
34:52
with humanity in the Bible. And there's just, I mean, I just
34:56
eat up the whole story And I love that we have a father who
35:00
comes and he sees how hurt we are and he just is all out on a
35:07
reckless love pursuit to rescue us and, and he lays down his own
35:13
life to show us how love we are. I just love the whole story.
35:16
But in Deuteronomy 3330 verse 3, and I don't think I have the
35:24
right version open right now, but I love it so much.
35:28
The Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have
35:30
compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where
35:34
you've been scattered. Even if you've been banished,
35:36
the most distant land under the heavens, From there the Lord
35:39
your God will gather you and bring you back.
35:41
He will bring you to the land that belong to your ancestors
35:44
and you will take possession of it.
35:46
He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your
35:48
ancestors. On it goes.
35:51
It just talks about this idea that like in the ways that you
35:56
have been scattered and broken, He will restore you back to
36:01
full. And that's been such a hopeful,
36:04
hopeful verse for me with the pain I experienced as a child
36:10
and in my family and just how good the Lord has been to me and
36:14
how he's built a beautiful life and a redeemed life and a, and I
36:20
have family now, a beautiful family.
36:24
And I'm just so, I'm so grateful that God is so good.
36:29
Amen. Amen.
36:31
So, Willow, where can people find you and where can they get
36:34
copies of your book? Yeah, totally.
36:37
Well, I would love to follow along with people and also if
36:41
you need to process or you need ideas on what a next step might
36:45
be for you in the midst of you wanted to say yes to healing.
36:51
I'm always available to chat on Instagram.
36:54
You can message me. I'm at I'm on there at Willow in
36:57
Weston and then you can grab my book at most places.
37:01
Books are sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or you can head to my
37:06
website at Willow weston.com. That's how some I'll put links
37:11
to all of that in today's show notes.
37:13
What is the last piece of encouragement for someone today?
37:20
No matter how big or small your hurt feels, you're worthy of
37:27
healing today. Amen.
37:30
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Willow, for
37:32
joining me today. You guys go out and get yourself
37:35
a copy of Collide. Get it for your friends.
37:39
Just share it around because it's something that we all need
37:42
today is to learn how to walk into our healing and not run
37:48
away from our pain. So I will talk to you guys next
37:51
episode. Have a great rest of the day.
37:54
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode, the Anchor by
37:57
the Sword podcast. I pray that the story that you
37:59
heard today will encourage your faith, challenge your faith, and
38:03
also help you as you walk in your daily life.
38:07
If this episode has done that, please feel free to leave a five
38:10
star rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast so
38:14
that others can find it and grow as well.
38:17
Have a blessed week and I'll talk to you next episode.