Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 9, 2017 | Expresso - Rochelle Walsh

Transcript

May 9, 2017 | Expresso - Rochelle Walsh · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Rochelle, as she's mentioned, and my husband Jim and I moved to Topeka in 2008 from Kansas City and started going to TBC there then at that point.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been a Christian all of my life.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can't hear?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't gonna be as eloquent as Kelly's because I didn't write it all out.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I've been a Christian all my life, and I can you hear me now?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I said I we moved to speak in 2008 and began going to TBC then.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: My husband Jim and I actually said we've been married 21 years and have three kids.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I am from a family of three.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: My parents, Marlene and Alan Kenyon.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um we were raised mostly in Kansas, but grew up the majority, I was born in Kansas and grew up the majority of time in Missouri, and I have a brother two years younger and a brother 11 years younger.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were Christians, my mom was Methodist and my dad Catholic, so I was raised in the Methodist church, and um being a counselor, I know that my childhood is not um normal in the way in the way that I would look at it and say I got really lucky.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't ever feel I have very healthy adults in my life, so felt very loved by my parents.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have extended family close, but when we go to Kansas for holidays, aunts and uncles, um, I loved church, and because the adults in my life were so healthy and taught me about Jesus, I always felt loved.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was really easy to accept God's grace and love.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't remember ever not knowing him by middle school.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's birth order, nature, nurture, but I was a strong people pleaser.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, pleasing teachers and Sunday school teachers and vacation Bible school teachers and camp counselors was all pretty natural for me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a lot of safety and security in the church.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my dad didn't go with us, he was Catholic, so he would go to mass, and so as a result of that, we didn't have a lot of talk in our home about faith or God, but it was it was always a priority for us to go and be a part of those things, and I really found a lot of comfort there and a great sense of belonging.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have just wonderful memories of some very close uh Sunday school teachers that were really influential in my life.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um by the time I was, and this continued, I was very involved when I was in uh elementary school in junior high, but by high school, um, and I really always thought that people pleasing was like please God, please people, because they're kind of the same thing.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like you do what God likes and your parents are happy and you obey your teachers and God's happy with you.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I really um I really always wanted to do the right thing until I really wanted to please boys.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um one in particular, who I'm now married to, and somehow it's less fun to please him now, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not in that way.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just I don't mean that badly, but I just mean I met my husband in eighth grade, um, the same age as my son is now, who happens to be the one who asked Connie today whether or not boobs give off milk.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So and I'm a counselor, I talk to him about all kinds of stuff, so I'm sure we'll have a discussion about that later.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so that's when I met my husband, was in eighth grade, and by high school, our relationship was full of a great deal of tumultuousness, um, just really, really unhealthy in a lot of different ways.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, he's a good he's a good he's a good person, um, but we were teenagers and very um immature and suffered a lot of consequences throughout those years from a result of our decisions.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had dropped out of honors, academics had always been really important, but I was really just preoccupied on the outside.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was everything looked good.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think my parents really had a clue.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I dropped out, I did drop out of honors so that I could have more time to socialize, um, but I still was getting straight A's.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was a cheerleader.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I went to young life camp two summers in a row, but I dropped out of my Bible study group.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I I probably started, you know, having a lot of guilt at the beginning of that relationship, knowing that I was walking away from my parents had always been really good about um, you know, just no drugs or alcohol.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just really grew up with no drama.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I they also did a really good job of monitoring what we could watch.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I not only couldn't watch Love Boat and Three's Company, but I knew exactly why I couldn't watch them and why that was wrong and immoral.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I had the foundational things.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just you know, I just chose to not.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I would go to uh kind of camp and I would have these spiritual highs, and then I would come back and I would just be completely, you know, just enthralled with the relationship and um but but not happy.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I remember like getting my Bible at night and thinking, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray about this, but I didn't really didn't even know how to start reading it.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I also was raised in a very faith um or very grace-based church, which was great.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I but it was kind of like you know, I know I'm doing wrong, but please forgive me.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I knew Jesus would forgive me and I knew I was saved, but I really didn't understand the consequences of what I was doing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now I would as a counselor would call them somatic symptoms, but I had stomach aches all the time, and I was really just very a lot of insecurity and a lack of confidence and just feeling like a hypocrite.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um by my senior year of high school, that relationship had really stabilized and was you know good.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was still crazy about him, but my parents um closer to them, and my parents moved to Iowa and I was in St.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Joe, Missouri, and so I decided to follow them to go to school at the University of Iowa.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, my boyfriend said, if you leave, it's over, and so but turns out it wasn't that far a drive.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we continued our relationship in college, but it took on a really different dynamic because we had the separation, and so our relationship began to mature and deepen, and our trust grow, and um it started to change in a lot of positive ways.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I was taking a religion class at the University of Iowa, and I don't remember the scripture, I just remember it was Old Testament and some scary stuff in the Old Testament, and I really started just kind of everything that how I had just lived apart in that you know desert season of my life, I just began to realize, you know, the consequences of that, and I didn't make any immediate changes in my life, but I did um know then that I wanted a different relationship with the Lord and that I wanted to have healthier, um healthier dynamics, and I just wanted to follow him more closely.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, two years later, my parents moved again, so I followed them to southern Missouri, and my husband, boyfriend, um, transferred down there.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving it away.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: We ended up getting married, and um, so he came down there, and by God's providence, I was feeling really lonely.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I transferred schools, and I, you know, I didn't have any friends, and I went to college and found out I was quite shy, always had the same group of friends in junior high and high school, and um and my mom said, You know, Reverend Ammel, he's at a church in Spr in Springfield.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he had been my childhood pastor, and I called, and he was right down the street.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to church that Sunday with them.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: They met me after church and they took me out to eat.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the first time I'd probably been to church since I was with my parents in high school.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they prayed over the meal, and I just felt this overwhelming sense of like, you know, like I need to be, you know, it felt like home, like I need to be in church, I need to be connected with the Lord.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And their prayers just reminded me of just the security of my home growing up.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so my husband started going to church with me.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were juniors and seniors in college.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, we end up getting married, moved to Columbia, Missouri.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was in graduate school a couple years later.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I graduated and I started counseling.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that I love, love, love.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: My job, my clients.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just, it's the biggest blessing in my life.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it started to open my eyes to all the kinds of things that people have walked through in their lives, things that I couldn't have even begun to imagine having the background that I had.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all of my emotional consequences and things that come as a result of my own choices.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now I was working with people, you know, I was working with kids and adolescents and you know, people who'd been severely abused and traumatized, and not only for my own life, but I just I you know I'd sit with kids who'd been terribly abused and um molested, and then I'd sit with mothers who, you know, and privately was doing private practice at night who um had you know watched their children die in front of them, and I just like I have nothing to offer them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so not only for my own self, but I started to feel this real need to just know God's word and have his wisdom in my life because I had felt such an enormous sense of accountability when um meeting with people.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um at this time things were at kind of um at a high.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I loved, I was just so passionate about my job.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my husband and I's marriage was good.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: We had moved to Kansas City, and it it felt like just a euphoric experience when I found out my parents were moving to Kansas City because I'd grown up away from all my relatives, and I had seen those families sitting in church in the pews, you know, with the grandparents and the parents and the kids, and I just always wanted that, never had that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were moving to Kansas City at the same time we were, and my best friend from childhood moved like two blocks away.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: We bought our own house.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was so happy.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but then you know, just like everybody's seasons of life, think good things happen and hard things happen, and such is life, and some hard things started to happen that were different, you know.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: After in that time of my life, I started thinking, well, I'm following closely to God now, so I'm not gonna feel the pain of what I felt before because now I know that this is the life I want, and these are the things I want to do.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my husband came from a great family, and um so we were in our late 20s, and his mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um the day that she had her surgery, you know, to see how extensive it was, it came out and they said it was, you know, it was stage four and it shouldn't have long.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um the next day I was 11 weeks pregnant.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had a miscarriage, and uh his business was just starting his business, and you know, we had financial pressures there, and so things began to start to feel kind of like real life troubles that I hadn't had before.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I I hesitate even talking about trials because I like I said, it's like you know, I know people that have had so much worse, it's like this is a hangnail.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: But so to be in my twenties and just start experiencing these kinds of trials, I know is just a blessing.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um so but what happened was there was a disciple Bible study starting my church, and I never studied the Bible, and I thought, you know, this is a good time.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was struggling with the miscarriage and wanting to be pregnant.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: My best friend was pregnant at the same time, and two of my best friends and my sister-in-law and my cousin were all pregnant at the same time, and so you know, I was struggling with that, even though I knew it was common to have miscarriages.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I started this disciple Bible study, and it really changed my life.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never really read the Bible like that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd heard the same, I'd I was familiar with a lot of the Bible just from going to church all those years I knew about Daniel and David and Noah and all of those things that have been those stories over and over again, but just really reading the Bible from front to back and seeing the um seeing the Lord's faithfulness and the Old Testament prophecies played out in the New Testament, uh, looking at, you know, the Israelites and all this time of trial and then God's great plan for redemption, it just really blew my mind and it was the perfect time because of all the things that were happening in our life.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I did get pregnant the next year.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my mother-in-law continued to get really sick, so we'd spend Sundays there um with her, and um you know, his family was great, that things were hard.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I got pregnant again, that was a blessing.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: My husband, I think, was probably depressed at the time, just business, and just again his mom.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he hadn't yet brought home a paycheck because his business was new.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was working two jobs, and um and then I was 15 weeks pregnant, and um a client came in and she was a pharmaceutical sales rep, and she said, You need to change doctors.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Really?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Yeah, you do.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I love my doctor.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so she gave me another doctor's name.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, there's just God's providence.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But like the next week, you know, I had a placental tear.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, like I went in on bed rest at 27 weeks, went to the hospital of labor, and then was on bed rest for five weeks, answering his office phone from my bed rest.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have no money, no insurance, no vacation, no sick days.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know we did have insurance, we didn't have vacation or sick pay, we didn't have insurance paid for by an employer.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were both self-employed.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he just provided.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I look back and I don't know how and we say, How did that happen?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: He my son was born two months early.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was supposed to be, he was born, he was not breathing, he was on a ventilator, they took him off, he was back on a ventilator.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: The people from the uh church were there praying with us, and I just had this enormous sense of peace.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that the situation should be really stressful, and yet I just really felt God's peace through that whole season.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um the next, so my son came home very early, it was like 17 days, he was healthy, there were no problems there.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and about a year later, my brother moved back, and he and again, this is gonna just people that grew up with this.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, this is in my adult life, so I should have had a lot better bearings by then, but I didn't.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And my brother was addict, told me he was addicted to drugs.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And again, our world just kind of I became completely enmeshed.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was heavy narcotics, and so the next few years were um, you know, multiple visits to the emergency room, um, you know, middle of the night phone calls, me making appointments, and I became completely enmeshed.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had two little kids, so thankful for them, and so happy on one hand, and my marriage was good, but my mother-in-law's dying, and my brother's dying, and it just was a season of a lot of unrest in my life.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but I had been through this really, that really powerful season of Bible study, and I had a new grip.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so Philippians 4, 6 through 7, be anxious about nothing, you know, but it through Thanksgiving with prayer and petition, take everything to the Lord, and the peace of God will come to guard your heart and your mind.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that over and over again in the middle of the night, and I would found find that it just put me to sleep.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd be like, you know, and I would pray that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but it was really years until I was able to, and and through God's providence, again, just moving us here to get a little bit of distance from that situation, um, and and then knowing and really just show seeing what God was teaching me through that is that, you know, while in the middle of the night, I would hand things over to him because there were no calls I could make and no appointments I could set up and no rehabs I could find.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in the day that I really wasn't turning over anything to him.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very uh, yeah, I was thankful I had friends, I had great friends, I had great Christian friends, um, I had great counselors, you know, who were my colleagues who were really helpful to me that time.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But really just um accepting the fact that um he was likely gonna die.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um there was not a lot I could do.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: We'd offered to take his then um little son.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had another baby, but things were uh stable in my life, my current life, you know.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had jobs and I had my husband, and yet I was in a lot of turmoil.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I just through that situation, I think what I started learning was um, I don't even remember who told me to read the boundaries book, and now I tell everybody to read it because I think it's such a great book on just because I really started to struggle with what it looked like to be a Christian.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I was overwhelmed and I knew that you know going home didn't feel the same because there was a lot of chaos and never knowing what was going to happen, and I started to feel really um bad about what my kids were maybe being exposed to.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I I started feeling like God was giving me clarity.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was searching, searching, searching for discernment, discernment.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a Christian.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: What did it mean to be forgiving in that situation?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: What did it mean to be grace-filled?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew I had such sin in my life.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: How could I judge him?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I try to talk to people who were closer to God than I was.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I called Patty Delaberto and I called Hank.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about this?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And is it okay?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is it okay?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I read the boundaries book and I read it again, and I prayed, and and there was a Bethmore study, and she was talking about discernment, and I was like, that's what I need.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need discernment.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the discernment was if you're in the if you're in the word of God and you're praying to God, then the Holy Spirit, He activates the Holy Spirit in you, and you can trust those nudges you get.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I felt like I was getting clarity, like I had accepted that my brother probably wouldn't live long.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: He'd had periods of sobriety, but then it would be a, you know, like a terrible crash, and there was always chaos.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and that I could make decisions and that it was okay for me to make decisions, and it didn't mean I was being unloving.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the really hard thing came is I thought that once I had this clarity that everybody would agree with me.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: That I would tell my parents, look, we've been enabling, and this is, you know, if we just do this different, then he'll get well and everything can be, you know, good again.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they didn't see it that way.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they didn't ever say a mean thing to me.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it was just really hard.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, my family and I started spending holidays alone when only not to punish, but only when it looked like there was gonna be a high level of conflict, and it just wasn't going to go well.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really painful for me because like back to the people pleasing, I just to disappoint somebody, to make somebody unhappy was completely destabilizing for me.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's embarrassing to say because I, you know, I should know better, but it really was.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was hard to know that I was disappointing them and that I was letting them down.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so God really started to teach me about my character through that, that I had always been too concerned about what people thought, um, even at times where what other people thought, you know, I was I could be living kind of outside of his will.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if people thought I was okay, then I was okay.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if I was doing something that I clearly felt like in this situation, God was leading me and strengthening me to do, that I wasn't okay with the fact that maybe someone else didn't agree.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And again, my parents were loving people, they weren't judgmental about my decision, um, but they did kind of let me know they were disappointed, and that was really painful for me.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but I really and then I started to he started to show me my own need to maybe control the situation, and he started to really show me that my walk with him didn't have to look like theirs, and that not only was he discerning things for me, but he was moving through them too, and that what he maybe called them to do in that situation was different than what he was calling me to do, and that was okay.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I really I don't know, I again through a lot of listening ears, um, my friend Melissa here, again, God's providence, her one of her good friends from junior high was my office mate in Kansas City.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I hooked up with her, and she was a great support to me, as well as my other Christian friends.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and my husband, you know, our marriage grew through that situation because what what I was learning is that my security had not only been in, you know, my um things going well, but my family had almost been kind of a god to me in terms of providing my safety and security, and that it was okay to have that dynamic look a little bit different.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but that God is able, and I wasn't really trusting him to be able to fix it, and so my own efforts would be spent trying to control the situation or you know, have something be different.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So m you know, about a year and a half ago, um, my brother, it was I thought probably that I wouldn't see him again because it had been seven or eight months since he'd been completely awry, and we stayed home um from Christmas, and things happened and it was a very chaotic time for all of them.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yet three years three days later he went into rehab and he's been in that program, it's a Christian based program for since then.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So sixteen, seventeen months now.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, but but that last time before he Went into rehab.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: What I found was that things on that in that situation were as dire as they had ever been.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt okay about it.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not okay not okay about the situation, but I had God's peace.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like he had kind of released me from that situation.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And those are things that trusting him, it's not just through that situation, but I, you know, I've just been learning throughout my adult life and my walk with him.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it's been several years now.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's I think I it's been probably 15 years since I really started doing Bible studies, and I've been pretty consistent with that since then.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But he keeps revealing more and more to me about my my need for him and his greatness in my life.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just made a few notes about some things that he's shown me.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And some of this may be really repetitive because, like I said, I didn't write it all out.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote notes and then I haven't followed him at all.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I you know, one thing I've learned is the need for the Lord is universal.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I've often, as I've just expressed here tonight, felt bad for feeling bad because I compare myself to so many other people who've had such greater struggles.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so being counselor is a great thing because you always have perspective that life is full of trials and you are not alone in your trials, and so I don't ever feel like I get stuck in a pity party because I'm like I am in good company with some miraculous, wonderful people who've had far harder to deal with.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but on the flip side of that, sometimes I would hesitate pulling, I'd pull back, you know, and not really pour out my heart to God because I would start to, and then I'd think of 15 other people that I should pray for first that had it harder than me.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I really he really started to show me that that was kind of a form of pride, that um just because I'd had a stable upbringing didn't in any way lessen my need for him, you know, that I was in no way better off.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was no more, um, no more grounded, no more higher on the totem pole in terms of my stability or my spirituality or my human independence, that I really that there was this dire need and that it was okay to confess that and to know that even though I'd had all these good formative years, that um I was just really, you know, we just can't do it of our own strength, regardless of, you know, our finances or our education or who's in our life.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think also another thing he's shown me is that um, you know, the difference between pleasing him, and I kind of touched on that, pleasing him and pleasing other people, is that, you know, I really began to try to challenge myself to live in the boldness he wanted me to live in and look to him and look for his nudges and follow him and um be in tune to that and and really notice my propensity towards just looking out and seeing if I had the approval of other people and then basing what I was doing on how they were receiving me or how they were looking at me, and really start to think about what he wants for my life and um and then respect what he wants others to do in their life, and that you know, his plan for each of us is so unique and individual, and that you know, God is God and I am me, and our thoughts are nowhere near the same thing, and that apart from him, you know, we have no real wisdom, and that we really we can't be good enough.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'd always looked at that season in high school and go, wow, I was such a sinner, and um thank goodness for him, and I do think that, and I'll always hate that time and think, you know, what a mess I was and how displeasing that was.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what he really started to show me was you were always really a sinner, and you're not any, you're not any, you might be doing better and you might be pleasing me more now when you're walking with me, and of course he loves that, but it's not like that is it's not like I didn't need him before then, you know.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't that was the glaring evidence that I wasn't capable of being good enough, and I just keep need to keep reminding myself of that over and over again, and that he's faithful.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can look back and see just the timing of everything.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: I use EMDR a lot in my practice, and I think I do that because my son needed PTSD, he had PTSD after we were in a car accident where he saw fatality, and I took him to get help, and how that's transferred, and how, you know, during that season of my mother-in-law dying, we got invited to be invited into a Camino Christian experience, and my heart, my husband's heart was really, I think, open to, I think that was a pivotal time, you know, where he could have just never gone to church with me again, and because he really wasn't that excited about it anyway.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it opened some doors for that to be a part of our life.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I can just look at countless other situations where God has put just the right person at just the right time in a situation that maybe I thought was really hopeless, you know, turns out to be one of the greatest blessings.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I try to remind myself of that during the trials that he is working, he is working, he is working, and he's always working and he always has a plan that's greater and bigger than ours.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last thing I wasn't really um oh, I put security, security and nothing else.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost security financially, I lost security with family, I've lost security with all the things that I thought, you know, um could give it, and he's the only thing that doesn't fail.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, those things are great things, and he gives us those blessings, but um, none of them are steadfast as he is.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing I'm gonna share, I you know, I wasn't even gonna share it because it's about my daughter, and she does not like me to talk about it, but she she didn't know I was doing this, and Sunday she said, What do you, what's that thing you're doing they announced in church?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, it's just a talk about kind of I don't know, your walk your walk with the Lord and how he's shown up in your life.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, What are you gonna say?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know, I haven't done it yet.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I worked on it that day.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day she said, I forgot all my pictures.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's my husband, those are my kids.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I can't see your husband there and other people.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's him.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to my kids.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's them last year.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, my daughter.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So she said that going to bed that night, she said, Are you gonna talk about my allergies?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, I wasn't planning to because you don't like me talking about that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, you can if you want.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, what would you say about your allergies?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I would say he answered my prayers, and I wish it'd been a few years earlier, and I wish it was a different answer.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: But she said it smiling, and the story behind that is that you know, she had, and again, you say allergies like people are dying of cancer, and she's got allergies, but starting in first or second grade, she gives terrible headaches.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, allergies.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: They say she's allergic to everything.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: We do shots, we take her to Kansas City for balloons up her nose and cranial adjustments and alternative treatments and anti-inflammatories and steroids for years, and her headaches get so bad she can't play outside, she can't go to recess.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: People that would see her would think she was normal, but they didn't see that she'd come home after school and lay with an ice pack for three hours and wake up in the middle of the night crying.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my husband would go to his office and get his laser and come home and try to treat her and give her some relief, and that she was really giving up hope.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And every night we would pray, God, please, I know you can heal her.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Please heal her, please just give us answers, and that would be our prayer.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to me one night, you know, he's never gonna take away my headaches.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really getting scary.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: We'd had her to um an immunologist, a neurologist, her ET.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'd had the MRI and the CAT scan they'd recommended, and we had an appointment for her at Mayo Clinic last September because we had gone away last summer to Colorado and it was just terrible.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but about three months before that, people had been saying it's probably your food.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: A couple people had said that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, yeah, I don't want I don't want it to be your food.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, long story short, I again the people pleasing, I know this makes me sound crazy, so I didn't really want to share it for that reason as well.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: We took her off all the food, and about three months later, I mean off of corn and soy and gluten and milk and eggs, and it felt awful.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: It felt awful to have to do that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but three months later, her headaches start going away, and about two months before, or two weeks before we go to Mayo Clinic, she says, I don't want to go.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Why?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And she had begged us to go to doctors before.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she said, I think they're getting better.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, a year later, you know, she's running track, she's playing volleyball, she can do gymnastics, she can be normal.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, she still doesn't eat normal, but she can be normal, and we have not had to police it one bit because she just knows she feels better.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that's odd, and it's not the answer for a lot of people, but it was for her.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And but what really stood out to me is um last summer I came home and she'd been doing art and I found this on the bar area, and it was a cardboard thing she cut out and she'd made.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I as she said that she wished she hadn't had to wait several years.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought about what God does during the wait because it was during the wait that, you know, we were praying, and it was during the wait that she was developing dependence.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was looking back after she said that, thinking about, you know, if it had been the first thing, if she had gotten allergies and we'd just give her the Allegra, she would have never said, you know, are you gonna talk about the Allegra in your talk tomorrow night?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but so he's faithful and he gives answers, and so I was just thinking about that too the course of my life when I look at the things that stretched out and the things that took a long time to resolve and the things that seemed like they wouldn't go away, that he was there and the weight wasn't just his, you know, inattention because my problems weren't as big as someone else's, that they were his, what he was doing in our lives, and how he was increasing our faith.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the end of my talk.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: I but um and the verse that I um love is Psalms 119 10.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: I seek you with all my heart, do not let me stray from your commands.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've hidden your word in my heart that I may not sin against you.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love that verse because, you know, we know his word and we put it in our heart and he helps guide us, and we don't have to trust on our good intentions or our good behavior.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: We can just trust that he's leading us and that he's faithful and that we have a good king who always wants what's best for us, even if he works that out in difficult circumstances.
• 33:10
  unknown: So