Where Is God in My Worst-Case Scenario?

After a two-year hiatus, Hope Unyielding is back! In today's episode, Samantha Vocarte interviews Hope about how she has grown and changed over the past few years as she faced a personal worst-case scenario and what her vision is for the upcoming season of the podcast.

Transcript

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Samantha Vocarte: Hi, Hope, how are you doing? I'm doing well, Samantha, thanks so much for interviewing me today. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm so glad we get to do this. It has been several years since you and I sat down and did the initial interview.
I think that that was 2020 that we were last in together. 

Hope Johnson: Yeah, it was October 2020. I was just thinking about how it's been so long and just the pandemic time just isn't the same as regular time. It doesn't feel like it was all that long ago at all. 

Samantha Vocarte: Well, hope we were actually wondering if you could introduce yourself for those who haven't listened for the first time. They have not been with us since the beginning, and share. Why, you initially started your podcast back in 2020.

Hope Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So I wear a lot of hats. I am a freelance editor. I'm a Nanny, I'm a teacher trainer. And I also love to write. And most importantly, I'm a follower of Jesus. I started this podcast 4 years ago, actually, at the height of the pandemic. When I just really needed some encouragement myself and the goal of the podcast hope, unyielding was to share personal stories of people from all walks of life who had experienced God's faithfulness in a really dark or difficult time. And it I had never thought I would start a podcast. Samantha actually encouraged me to do it, because I did have a bunch of essays compiled from several women that I had thought of putting together in a book. But it was going to work better in podcast format. So that's when I started Hope Unyielding, and it really took off. And I loved loved hearing so many different perspectives of people who have walked with Jesus for a long time and have gone through some pretty crazy things, but they've come out on other side with even a deeper belief in God's goodness and faithfulness.

Samantha Vocarte: Well, that is, that is such of II think I forgot in the beginning that you had actually had all of those stories compiled. I think that I just remember us sitting in your closet doing the first recording, and then to see where you are now, and how much content and how many stories you've told. And there are stories that I've absolutely blessed my life. There's some that I listen to multiple times. But you know, it has been 2 years since your last episode. What led you to put the podcast on hold.

Hope Johnson: So I actually went through a really difficult season with my mental health. I had initially, I had taken a new job and I thought, I'll need a little bit of time to get adjusted. But it was around that time that I started to struggle with depression, and I have in the past. But a lot of my job responsibilities and the pressure I was facing and different areas of my life just really, really negatively affected me. And so the struggle got worse and worse and worse, until around January, December, January of last year, December 22, January 23. I really had a mental breakdown. I was more severely depressed than I ever had been in my entire life, and it was a place that I had hoped I would never be and God was really amazingly faithful, and saved me from that, and took me out of that. And about a year later. Now I'm healed and I'm hopeful. But I would have never been able to picture being where I am right now. And that's that's part of the reason. I do want to start the podcast up again is because now I've gone through one of these really dark and difficult times, and although I'm not going to share my whole story today, I will over the course of the season, and I just wanna hear other people's stories again, because I know how encouraging they've been to me, and I know how encouraging they've been to others.

Samantha Vocarte: It has been really both beautiful and inspiring to see you walk out of that that dark time with the Lord, and to hear your testimony and little bits as you were beginning to share it, so could you share with us how you've grown spiritually and emotionally through the challenges you faced in the last few years, just for people who weren't didn't have the the honor of walking, you know, in community with you.

Hope Johnson: I would first say that I had to face my greatest fear, and God showed me that He would act on my behalf. Sometimes trusting God is only built through having to go through those really difficult things. So for so long, I was so afraid of falling into a deep depression that I really barricaded my life in certain areas. I put up really strict boundaries, and so many of the things that I did were out of fear that I was gonna go there again, and despite my best efforts, I did, and I was absolutely desperate. But God, through some really miraculous circumstances, took me out of that, and one of the passages in Scripture that really ministered to me during that time was about King Jehoshaphat, and when he was getting the reports of the army that was going to be coming against them, and they were taunting him, and he prayed, and he said, Lord, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you, and I just clung to that because I had no idea what to do. I know I had no idea how to get out of that situation, and God acted so. That is one of the big ways I've grown emotionally is, and spiritually is, just in seeing how God acts tangibly on our behalf, and I really want to keep pressing deeper into that. I haven't gotten there yet, and a lot of areas of my life, but I have that as a milestone to look back on and say, Okay, Lord, you are trustworthy, you are who you say you are, and I'm so thankful that I'm yours.

Samantha Vocarte: Hmm, Amen. Hope! Could you share, you know? Are there some things that you're still working through, even having coming out of that dark season?And you've grown so much in this past year. But is there? Are there things that you're still working through with the Lord?

Hope Johnson: So a big part of my life that I've wrestled with the Lord for several years is the desire to fall in love. Have a husband and a family, and that's just one area of my life where that's not something I've received yet, even though I've really sought it out, and I think I'm still wrestling with the Lord along with a lot of my friends who are in similar places, just wrestling with what we thought our lives would look like, and the fact that they look different now, and how God isn't good despite that. But God is good in that, and that He truly does know what is is best for me. I think something I'm working through is giving God advice and saying like, it makes me think of when God basically said No, after he had had Ishmael, God was like, no, you're going to have a son from Sarah, and he's like, Oh, but couldn't Ishmael have your blessing? And Abram was so so dead set on the way he thought things should go, and even when God promised him something different. He said, No, no, no! Can't we go with my original plan? So I think of that. And I think about how Abraham was giving God advice and how I do the same. So that's something I'm definitely still working through. But there's so much godly encouragement in my life and so many good things, and I know I'm not alone, and that's I feel feel like I'm in a very safe place as I wrestle with that. 

Samantha Vocarte: So how has your personal journey helped form your vision for season, 2 of hope unyielding because we we are here for the second season. Right? Right? So the theme of the second season is, where is God. In my worst case, scenario.

Hope Johnson: hope unyielding has always focused on really dark and difficult situations. So we we talked with a mom whose daughter got cancer. We talked with a man who found Jesus when he was in prison. There are just so many extreme situations we've talked about. But this was a case this past year, where I faced my worst case scenario, and it was in that worst case scenario that I saw God met me even there, and in that place. So I'm going to be interviewing different people who have had their own worst case scenario, but who have really found God to be faithful. I'm not going to shy away from the difficulty of it. How it can be messy, how it's not a cliche neatly tied up in a bow, and then we lived happily ever after. But how do we cling to God's goodness and character while we're living in a really broken world? And I really wanna have an eternal perspective with each episode, and to just dive into our worst case scenarios and see how? How did God meet us here, and what is he doing?

Samantha Vocarte: And who are you looking to really reach with these stories? I know that they're universal and that the stories of hope are basically for everyone. But is there a specific group or audience that you hope to encourage?

Hope Johnson: There are 2 groups, I would say. I would say, first, those who are facing one of their worst case scenarios who are right in the middle of something, and they just need some encouragement. They need to hear that someone has been there and God took them through. I know in my life podcasts have been a huge ministry to me. I have have just felt like, someone was there with me, talking with me over a cup of coffee about the specific thing I was struggling with with so many wonderful podcasts. And I was just talking to a friend who said, You know, I'm not a podcast girly, but during the pandemic I was feeling really lonely, and I really didn't have anything going on. And I just felt the Holy Spirit say, listen to this podcast and she just said it. God used it to shift my perspective to comfort me. And I just think that podcast can be so powerful in that way. So that would be the first group out would be people who are facing their worst case scenario. The second would be those who are fearing their worst case scenario, which was the situation I was in before it happened. So like I said, I had built my life with boundaries and actions and ways of thinking that would supposedly prevent me from going to this dark place, and I still ended up going there. And I think, looking back.
I must have thought if I go there, maybe God's not fully going to go with me. So I think, along with that fear and that self preservation probably may have been a bit of distrust. Not that I completely didn't trust God, but going through that situation and coming through the other side, I trust God so much more now. So I want to encourage those who maybe are afraid of a certain situation, and are really trying to prevent that, that they would just be comforted, that whatever happens, God is with them, and they have hope.

Samantha Vocarte: This is just me being curious. It's a question that came up for me while you were just sharing that you know what is something within the past, let's say, since the beginning of the year. So we're in March now since January that has encouraged you. It could be a conversation with a friend, a passage of Scripture, or just you know the fact that it's daylight savings time. And now we have sunshine, something that has just kind of lightened, you know the day-to-day heaviness.

Hope Johnson: oh, so many things, so many things. So I'll share a few then. So I would say one is so. We have a mutual friend, Corinne, and she's amazing. So Corinne and I meet up at least once a month, and I can always share whatever is on my heart with her, and she shares whatever's on her heart with me, and I always go away from those meetings just so encouraged. So I would say, I just have some really, really wonderful, lovely, deep friends, and they they just make my life so beautiful, so so she's one of the friends that II really, after I talk with her, I feel so much better, no matter what I've gone through that week. And then I would say, podcast. I listen to that. I loved. It was John Mark Comer. I haven't listened to a ton of his stuff. But I had been hearing from everyone. You gotta listen to his stuff. You gotta listen to his stuff and his podcast episode I listened to was actually on suffering, but he gave such a beautiful perspective on suffering as a Christian, and on having an eternal perspective that just really really helped me shift my own perspective. So I'd say definitely, check out, check out all of his stuff. And then, Farrah! Who's the girl I, Nanny, for? She brings me joy all the time she is 2 and a half years old, and she is a bundle of energy. Her name actually means joy in Arabic, which is wonderful, because my year, at my word for the year. I always choose a word for the year. This past year was joy, because I knew I was going to have to fight for joy, and I believe that's what God really wanted for me, and I didn't know when I started working for their family in February, that that's what her name meant. And then, just kind of casually, I was talking with her mom and her mom said, Oh, yeah, her. Her name means joy in Arabic. And I was like, oh, Lord, like the Lord is bringing me joy through this through this little girl. So so I'd say, those are 3 things that have brought me a lot of encouragement this year.


Samantha Vocarte: That is fantastic hope. I am so excited personally to start to hear this. The stories that are going to come out from this podcast. I know that season. One like I said at the beginning, has stories that I play again and again, I think I've listened to to Dan and Fatin's story multiple times because of just how powerful God was through that situation. I've listened to your personal story many times. There's so much on there. So if people have not experience, season one, or even if you have and need a reminder, I would. I would encourage you to go back. But we are very excited for season 2 and I just, you know, bless you and Jesus name, and we're so excited to see what comes out of this year.

Hope Johnson: Oh, thank you so much, Samantha