Beauty in the Brokenness- Christian Women (Bible Study, Faith, Sexuality, Freedom from Shame)
Welcome to Beauty in the Brokenness—where we have honest conversations about the Bible, our real-life struggles, and the hope God brings for healing. This podcast is hosted by Teresa Whiting, an author, Bible teacher, and trauma-informed life coach, but mostly, a friend and fellow struggler. No matter who you are, or where you’ve been, you're invited to encounter the God of rescue, redemption, and restoration—The God who is still creating beauty— right in the midst of your brokenness. To learn more visit: https://teresawhiting.com/listen
Beauty in the Brokenness- Christian Women (Bible Study, Faith, Sexuality, Freedom from Shame)
Finding Your Worth When You Feel Overlooked with Whitney Akin (SEEN SERIES)
On today’s episode, Whitney Akin shares her beautiful heart for serving women and her lifelong struggle with living seen. Through the story of Hagar and other biblical characters, Whitney has discovered the relentless heart of God in pursuit of His daughters. She is a kindred spirit whose life work includes sharing this good news with women through her writing, speaking, and podcast.
For those feeling overlooked, Whitney offers hope and practical steps toward living seen. Listen in and find, in Whitney, another kindred spirit whose words are a balm for the lonely soul.
Click here for show notes and to connect with Whitney Akin.
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And so I just think, like when she's sitting at the edge of the wilderness and she's going back toward Egypt, god could just let her go, like it would have been such an easy out. He didn't have to stop her there, he didn't have to find her, he didn't have to call her name, but he did. And so for me, what Hagar does is it shows me the beautiful character of God.
Speaker 2:Hi, friend, if you've ever wondered how God's Word connects with the messy, broken parts of your story, you're in the right place. Welcome to Beauty in the Brokenness, where we have honest conversations about the Bible, our real-life struggles and the hope God brings for healing. I'm your host, teresa Whiting, an author, bible teacher and trauma-informed life coach, but mostly a friend and fellow struggler. No matter who you are or where you've been, I'm inviting you to encounter the God of rescue, redemption and restoration, the God who is still creating beauty right in the midst of your brokenness. Beauty right in the midst of your brokenness. Well, welcome, friends.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today, whitney Akin. Whitney is a speaker, podcast host, bible teacher and author of Overlooked Finding your Worth when you Feel All Alone. Whitney's heart is to equip the average Christian to know God, study His Word and fall in love with Jesus, which I think are pretty awesome goals, if you ask me. Whitney lives near Atlanta, georgia, with her high school sweetheart, eli, and their three crazy beautiful kids. So welcome, whitney. I'm so glad you're here. I would love it if you would tell the listeners a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to be here with you. Yeah, I love God's Word and I think that's sort of the catalyst behind all the things that have sprouted from that. I've really loved God's Word since I was probably 13 or so and really kind of got into studying it, and it's been a journey of growing in it along the way. I also love to be able to speak and minister to women, which is not actually always been something that I love to do, but it's a desire God has developed in me, and so being an author goes along with that.
Speaker 1:Being able to speak and share through my words publicly, but then my words in writing, is such a gift and a blessing to be able to do. I speak in my book a lot about just meeting women in a place where they might feel unseen, and so that's a big theme of my ministry and what I talk about. And then I host a podcast where we study a book of the Bible together in each season, and so that's a big theme of my ministry and what I talk about. And then I host a podcast where we study a book of the Bible together in each season, and so that's fun and kind of personally challenging for me, because it means I have to keep up with studying for myself, and so that's fun. I am a mom to three kids. I homeschool them, and so we just started our homeschool year. I have a sixth grader, a fourth grader and a first grader. This year.
Speaker 1:So middle school and just starting elementary, so that keeps me very busy. And then my husband and I run a nonprofit ministry together called M25 Barbecue and we serve all over in and around Atlanta. We serve underserved communities free meals and while we feed them we connect with the local church to share the gospel with them and give them resources to connect to a church near them, and so we're out at a different location every week doing that. So that's such a blessing and a privilege to be able to do as well.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing. I didn't realize you had that ministry. That is beautiful. What a neat way to minister to people and kind of meet their physical needs and open the door, hopefully, for spiritual conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly that's really neat.
Speaker 2:I love that. Well, as you mentioned, and I mentioned too, you are an author of this book which I'm holding up for anybody on YouTube, and the book is called Overlooked Finding your Worth when you Feel All Alone. And I have been reading and enjoying it. I've been devouring it. I got it a few days ago and I'm already halfway through. So tell me, tell the listeners actually what's the heart behind your book? Why did you write that? You mentioned a little bit of your heartbeat, which goes perfectly by the way with this series, because we are in what we were calling the scene series. It's all about being seen.
Speaker 2:So tell me and tell us about your heart.
Speaker 1:Well, there was a point I guess it was in 2019, 2020, where I really felt like the Lord was laying on my heart to write for Him. I had been a writer a technical writer, and a freelance writer for a while, but never writing my own stuff and never really Christian material. And though I was a Christian, I just was working in a professional capacity. And so I was like, well, what in the world am I going to write? And they say write what you know. And so the first thing that I began to think about was this feeling that I had struggled with for my whole life, and I really didn't know what to like, how to put words to it. But it was this feeling of being unseen.
Speaker 1:Some of it is, you know, personality. I'm an introvert. As a child I was very shy, but as I began to think about, it really wasn't just a personality thing. It was through different seasons. When I went through a season of infertility and I was really suffering, I felt the same feeling of being unseen. It had nothing to do with my personality, this was just a situation. And just even in early motherhood, because God did bless me with children, I felt that sort of, you know, feeling of being unseen in a totally different way, because now I'm this new mom and I'm isolated, and so I just thought how all of these things were like a thread in my life, that was a common theme, and I really wanted to like nail it down and ask the question why do I feel this way? What even is this, and what does the Bible have to say about this thing that I felt my whole life this?
Speaker 2:And what does? The Bible have to say about this thing that I felt my whole life. Yes, yes, Tell us a little bit about how you came to that title Overlooked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, in my search to really name it, I was like, well, it's being unseen or maybe unnoticed, and I was going through all these words and, like a total writing nerd, I like to look through thesaurus online and so I was just, you know, scrolling through the thesaurus one day and looking up different words and that word overlooked just came up on a list of you know who knows how I got there of different searches and when I saw it I started crying like immediately it was just like an instant recognition, like like that's the word, and I knew that.
Speaker 1:That was the feeling that I had felt sort of all the different seasons, in all the different ways I had felt overlooked and I initially had put that down on my book proposal and in the very first draft and it went through lots of iterations and usually publishers change titles but amazingly it made it all the way through to the end, because I really do think it captures the feeling that I'm trying to talk about in the book and I think giving it a name is actually really important because we don't talk about it a lot as women, but all women are experiencing this in some capacity.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I think it's so common I've had women say to me nobody would even know if I disappeared. You know I just I feel invisible and I know that in in your book you talk about that. You talk about that feeling. Could you share a story, maybe, of a time in your life where you felt invisible or unseen?
Speaker 1:Oh, I could share a lot with you, teresa. One I share in the book was, ironically, a story where I was called invisible, which I don't think most people are actually called that, but it was. My husband, before we had this nonprofit, was in ministry where he traveled with his family and sang all over the Southeast, and so I would go with him on these events and feel very much like I wanted to kind of disappear, because it was social and I had to meet all these people and I just felt like I did not fill the role as like minister's wife very well, and so I tried. But we were at a particular church for a week-long revival, as they called it, and he would sing, you know, every day. We had been there for the whole week and I had been there too.
Speaker 1:And then the last night we went to someone's house for dinner and they were saying goodbye to everyone and we were all kind of lined up and they were going through the line and just giving hugs and saying bye after this great week of ministry and the host stopped with me and he said oh, you're just invisible back there, aren't you? And he was not meaning anything. Wonderful, nice man, but it was like I hadn't been there all week. He looked at me like he'd never seen me before and I thought, wow, that's that feeling that you just described.
Speaker 1:I thought I could have just never been here all week and it wouldn't have made any difference to anybody at this church, to anybody in this ministry. And I felt so deeply hurt by it and so I went back. We were staying at this house with all these people and I just went in the bathroom, locked the door and just cried and I thought about it for weeks after that and I thought I know he didn't mean it, but that moment made me question why does this hurt so badly? And it's because it gets to the heart of this longing that we really we really want to be seen and known, and so to be called invisible is the opposite of all that we really long for, and so I hope none of your listeners have actually experienced being called invisible in life. But it is a great story to sort of get at the heart of what I have experienced and what I've learned so many other women have as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just want to press into one of the things that you mentioned. You know you talked about how badly that hurt and you went and you were crying, and which is so good and appropriate. But what I love is that you didn't just cry and then walk away from the situation. You stopped and you said why does this hurt so much? And that's a scary question. I think a lot of us have hurts, we have pain, and we don't want to investigate. Why is this so painful to me? And so I just want to point that out as something that I think you did really well, and even to the listeners, who maybe feel pain points or experience tears or experience grief, and it's easier to just be like, okay, well, that's over, that's done, let's just get on, let's get past this. But when you stop and you say, wait, why is this hurt so much, that's where growth occurs, that's where you can look at the source of that pain. Or you can look at God's word and say, oh, this is something that God addresses in his word, and on the podcast, we have been talking about different women in scripture.
Speaker 2:Actually, we're right at the beginning of the series and the first woman that we're talking about is Hagar, and Hagar's story, I know, resonates with yours. I don't remember how you and I got connected, but anytime I read your work I'm like, oh yes, this is, this is a woman I need to speak to and have on the podcast, because we have a similar heartbeat of you. Know, she experienced such a profound invisibility. You know she was a slave, she was a foreigner, she was a woman All of these things that happened to her, and then she was an outcast, and if anybody in scripture would have been or would have felt invisible, it would have been Hagar, and I know you speak about her as well. So I'd love to hear just kind of your perspective and maybe how you resonate with Hagar's story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. If anyone in the Bible felt invisible, it was Hagar. And yet she's the one who gives God the name. You are the God who sees. So how beautiful is that? That gives me chills. You know, hagar's story and my story are nothing alike. I can't relate to her story in so many ways, but yet I can relate to her story in so many ways.
Speaker 1:And I think the thing that really resonates with me about Hagar's story is that when she flees Sarah's household and she hasn't done everything right either the Bible is really clear about the messiness of the story between Sarah and Hagar. But when she flees and she's going back to Egypt, she's on this trajectory back home and she sits down at the spring of water on the edge of the wilderness. In that moment in Scripture she's not searching for God, she's not calling out to him, she's not asking for help, she's not saying why did you do that? She's just going home and the scripture says that God found her and he called her by name, which is so beautiful, because in the passage, abraham and Sarah only called her the slave or the servant. And God calls her by name and then he gives her a command to return and submit, which feels like how dare you make her go back to that abusive situation? But in this moment, he gives her this prophecy which, when you read it in scripture, sounds weird, but there's some really key things. He gives her the gender of her baby, the name of her baby, which is directly tied to this Hebrew God, and then he gives this prophecy of her son that he's going to have authority and he's going to have freedom, which are things that Hagar has never had before, and so in this moment, god is so personally meeting her in her situation and seeing her for who she is, that her response is situation and seeing her for who she is, that her response is you are God of seeing. And okay, god, I will go back to Sarah and submit to her, and we know, if we read on Genesis, that their relationship was still rough and she ends up being kicked out again from the household, and so it's not even that the story is tied up with a pretty bow.
Speaker 1:But what I love about Hagar is that she is not the main character, she's not the mother of the covenant son. She's really, by all accounts, she's a mistake. She is this moment that Sarah had a lack of faith and took Hagar and said okay, you have the child. Sarah wasn't supposed to do that, that wasn't part of God's plan for her. Hagar gets involved in this, but not by her own choice, she's forced for her. Hagar gets involved in this, but not by her own choice, she's forced into it.
Speaker 1:And so I just think, like when she's sitting at the edge of the wilderness and she's going back toward Egypt, god could have just let her go, like it would have been such an easy out.
Speaker 1:He didn't have to stop her there, he didn't have to find her, he didn't have to call her name, but he did. And so for me, what Hagar does is it shows me the beautiful character of God that he sees. He's not just concerned with the main players, he loves them too. He loves the Abrahams and the Sarahs, but he's seeing the outcast and the ones that aren't going to be the main characters, and he's saying I love you, I see you and I want to call you back into my plan. Even though you might not be the mother of the covenant son, I'm going to call you back into this story. And so I think that Hagar reveals so much about the merciful, personal, loving character of who God is and when she gives him that name. It just makes it all that much more meaningful that it's coming from her. It just makes it all that much more meaningful that it's coming from her.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I had goosebumps through your whole story. I love her story, I love all those aspects of it. And you mentioned Ishmael. You know that God gave him that name and you know, we know, el Royi means God sees and Ishmael means God hears. Yeah, el Royi means God sees and Ishmael means God hears. So it's like every time she would call his name, she would remember that God heard her weeping, he heard her, he saw her. I mean it's just, it's so amazing and I think you know, in scripture she's definitely that person who we would look at and say she was overlooked.
Speaker 2:We look at around us, at the world today. We know women who feel this way. We ourselves, at times, have felt this way of just feeling like what I'm doing it doesn't matter. Even if you're not a shy person like you can be out in front of everybody and still feel like, when you're all alone at the end of the day, feel like it doesn't even matter, I don't matter, what I'm saying doesn't matter. And then we compound that with the world that we live in and the absolute insanity of the insane amount of opportunities we have to be seen and known and which then brings it with it. You know, the same ample amount of opportunity to feel overlooked. So I know you. This is kind of one of your passions, it's one of mine. I talk about this a lot on the podcast um. So talk about the the world that we live in and how it makes women feel even more overlooked than they ever have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, women have felt this way since you know ancient Egypt I mean ancient Israel, with Hagar right. So we're talking about something that's always been true, but in the last 20 years it's become different for us because the world has gotten so much smaller in so many ways, so where we maybe could only compare or feel overlooked in our families or in our churches or in our communities. Now we have the opportunity to feel overlooked or to be seen on this grand scale, and I'm obviously referring mostly to social media, but also to just the way that we communicate as a whole is a part of this. Social media is probably the most obvious way, and so on social media, the promise is that you can be seen, and it's really touching on this deep desire that a lot of us haven't even really admitted that we have or want to admit that we have or even really know that we have. But it's hitting on this desire, and so we're going to these places in social media for this idea that we can be seen and known, and in the meantime, we're seeing and knowing other people.
Speaker 1:I was just reading a comment today and it said here I go crying about a stranger's life again, and I'm like that's the crux of social media. It's like we don't know them, but we know them, and so we feel this connection and we long for the same thing. And social media promises this on such a grand scale that you could be seen by millions. And you don't have to be anybody to really accomplish that. You can just be a stay at home mom or you can just film cooking or cleaning or your life or whatever, and you can be seen on this grand scale. And so there's this temptation to meet this need that keeps coming up. But the dark side of it is, like you said, as much as there's this promise that you'll be seen and connected and known, there's the flip side, that actually more people are lonely than ever before, more people are feeling overlooked, and so when you look at statistics of social media going up like this, loneliness is like right here.
Speaker 1:And it's increasing, and statistics are saying one in three Americans are lonely on a regular basis, and the highest group is women. And so we're sort of going toward a false promise that just keeps delivering us the opposite of what it promises.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's obvious why social media is growing because there's that innate need, there's that desire to be seen and known, and so social media promises that and so, like you said, it doesn't deliver, but it just keeps. It's like maybe this post, maybe maybe this will go viral, maybe this will be the next thing and and people will comment or like, and and it's just it's I have strong feelings about it, I'm not going to talk about it right now.
Speaker 2:I would love to talk a little bit about the idea in your book of living seen, because that's not a sin. I mean, that's a God-given desire. I think last week I was talking to Kurt Thompson on the podcast and he was talking about like we were made for this. This is how God wired our brains and our bodies was to be seen. So when you talk about living seen, what do you mean by that? Tell us what you mean and what that looks like in real life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just to go off of what you're just saying, attention, which we immediately have a connotation that's negative when we hear the word attention, like that's bad. But attention wasn't meant to be like good or bad. Attention is a need that people have and when you really look into, like how psychologists define needs biological human needs love and belonging is one of those needs and attention healthy attention is one of those needs. We know that, like with children, we get that. We know children need healthy attention for their development, but somewhere along the way we think that that ends as adults and we no longer really need that and we're selfish if we want that. But that's not true. It's still this biological need and so if you're hungry, you eat right, and if you need attention, what do you do? And so what we're doing is we're eating a diet of like candy by going to social media. But what we really need is a balanced diet and we're not sure where to look for that when we're trying to fill this need of attention. And that's where a living scene comes in and the idea of that, it's the idea number one. You're not wrong for desiring that, because you have a creator who made that biological need within you because he can meet it, he's able to meet it.
Speaker 1:And so I went throughout scripture and looked at different accounts of people who encounter God in like the seeing God in a really specific way, and I go through four different people in the book. I go through Hagar and then Moses and Paul, and I even include Jesus, although his story is a little different because he's God himself. Moses and Paul and I even include Jesus, although his story is a little different because he's God himself. And I talk about some things that happened in their life after the moment that they realized, oh wow, god sees me. Because it didn't stop with that realization, it really went on to transform how they interacted in the world around them. And so I talk about four things. I talk about obedience, confidence, meekness and a gospel perspective, and really those things are sort of the living out, the active lifestyle of living seen.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like walking around with something in your back pocket that's just a reminder, like I might feel really overlooked and I might feel really misunderstood in this situation and I might feel like nobody cares. But and I might feel like nobody cares, but I have this truth that God sees me and because of that. It can change the way I view the situation and this person and this moment where I feel really hurt, because I have the truth that's never going to change, that God cannot overlook me. By his very nature he cannot, though people always will. That's just part of human nature. He does not.
Speaker 1:And if I can cling to that truth, I can live differently. Instead of, you know, like something that I've tended to do, instead of, you know, crumbling with self-consciousness, I can walk with confidence, and instead of feeling like I need to justify myself because I'm misunderstood, I can walk in meekness. Instead of feeling like people are just something that I need to validate me, I can look at them with a gospel perspective and see them more as souls who need a Savior than people who give me validation, and so it really begins to change our perspective all the way through, and that's really what I mean by living seen.
Speaker 2:I love that. That is so good. It's so good. Obviously, god's word is really important to you. It's central, it's central to your writing, it's central to your podcast, it's central to your life. And so how does scripture and you've already talked quite a bit about scripture, but how does it give you the comfort and the strength and the peace, like, practically? Like give us some, give us some hands on, like it's nice to know God sees us and yes, I have that fact tucked in my back pocket. But like, what does that look like when I'm on the pickleball court or grocery shopping or, you know, in the shower and I'm crying because of whatever is happening in my life? You know, what does God's word do in those moments for us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, god's word is like an anchor back to reality, and for me I mean real talk. Just the other day I was really struggling with this exact you know, you write a book about it and you're like I'm over it, and then you're totally not over it. And I was struggling with this exact thing and I opened up scripture because I just felt lost and I just felt frustrated with myself that I was struggling with this again, and so I just opened it to this familiar passage, psalm 40. And I love that scripture and I just started reading it and it's just like it does something to bring a dose of reality back to our minds when our feelings have overwhelmed us or when we just feel confusion and we don't know, kind of how to get out of where we're feeling, or we feel frustrated or angry. And so I started reading. You know, I waited patiently for the Lord and he heard my cry and he lifted me out of the pit, set my feet on a rock and gave me a new song and by the end of Psalm 40, I'm like crying, you know, and then I just went about my day, but I kept thinking on that verse, and the Holy Spirit does something with scripture. When we come back to it over and over, it's like, even if we're not reading it a hundred times, like he's working in our hearts with it.
Speaker 1:And so for me you know the beginning of my journey, with all of this kind of longing to be seen one of the big questions was really grasping God's love. For me which I think a lot of people who grew up in church like I did they know God loves them. Like they know in their head but like in their heart. It's a really it's really hard to get it down to their heart. And so for me, that was a big struggle in the very beginning, and I remember reading Psalm 139, just like over and over and over again, just getting it into my heart. It's almost like our heart has to catch up with our mind and scripture allows us to do that.
Speaker 1:And so for me and this theme of Overlooked, what I found is all these verses about God's love and all these verses about crying out to the Lord. And I think I get to Hebrews, and I get to Hebrews, chapter four. That's kind of where it all comes to this pinnacle moment, because Hebrews 4.13 has this part where it says we are naked and exposed before the God to whom we must give an account. I think it kind of sums up like all these verses about the God who sees, because he sees the good but he also sees all the bad and all the ugly. And it's a bit terrifying when we really think about how much God actually sees us. There are parts we kind of would maybe like to hide from Him and we're in this place of total exposure.
Speaker 1:And then the next verse in Hebrews 4.14 says Therefore, with confidence, let us draw near to the throne of God, and he's going to give us grace and mercy that we desperately need.
Speaker 1:And I think for me, that verse I go back to that all the time because it sums up this idea that scripture is teaching all throughout that God sees all of it and he should be disgusted by it. He should turn away from me, he should treat me like everybody else has that's overlooked me, and yet his response is totally different. His response is come near because of Jesus. Come near and get what you need Get your mercy, get your grace. I want more of you, even though I see all of who you are. I love you and I want more of you because Jesus has covered you, and I think, um, I don't think I would know that truth apart from reading it over and over in Scripture. I don't think that's intuitive, because it's so opposite of what humanity does and thinks. We are not that way, and so Scripture tells us the reality that grounds us back to the truth.
Speaker 2:Yes, you talked about how the Holy Spirit takes His Word and does something in us, how the Holy Spirit takes His Word and does something in us, and I just want to point out which I think it's also in Hebrews, where it tells us that the Word of God is alive and active, and I think it might be that same passage, hebrews 4,. Yeah, sharper than any two-edged sword which divides. You know, it's right before that passage you were talking about. That's what lays us bare, like that's what cuts us open and lays us bare before God is his word. And it's different, like you said, it's not like any other book. It's not like you know those things that people say in the morning, like you look in the mirror and you say those positive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which are fine, but they don't have the power to change our hearts and our minds like the Word of God. So you know, if the listener is saying you know I do these positive affirmations every morning, which is great and fine, but if you only have time for one or the other, I would say read a psalm, read a passage of Scripture, start going through the Old Testament or the New Testament or choose. You know, this year I got a chronological Bible and I love it because I don't have to flip around back and forth. It's just you just open to that day and it and it gives you the Bible in chronological order and I've really been enjoying it. So I'm just saying all these things to encourage the reader to stay in God's Word. Just soak in it, bathe in it.
Speaker 2:And if you're a young mom and you've got little kids, just little bite-sized snacks like a three-by-five card, and put it on your kitchen windowsill because we all know you're going to be doing dishes Just put it somewhere where you're going to see it over and over. Make a screensaver on your phone so that you're getting God's word into your heart and into your mind and into your life. Absolutely, I was going to ask you if there was a particular passage that was close to your heart. Is it the Hebrews 4, or is there another one that you find?
Speaker 1:I do love Hebrews 4. I think Psalm 40 will always have a special place in my heart. I don't even know what it is about that verse, but it's like the page in my Bible that holds the most teardrops, because I keep going back to it and just weeping over it and relate to it so much and I think when we find passages like that they are just like familiar friends, they just become like this place of comfort and so, yeah, absolutely those two are some of them.
Speaker 2:I have lots, but those two are some of them. Yes, I love that. The page in your Bible that has the most tear spots, I think. For me, that's Psalm 63. I go to that one so often. I love it. So what, speaking of your book again, what hope does it offer to those who feel overlooked, like what somebody who feels is resonating with this conversation? I say, man, I know exactly what that feels like. What kind of hope does your book offer them?
Speaker 1:I hope that it offers them first and foremost, the opportunity to know that they're not alone, because that feeling makes us immediately feel isolated because we don't talk about it all that much.
Speaker 1:I hope the book offers them an opportunity to name something that might feel kind of elusive and to really put words and thoughts behind that experience, no matter what it looks like for the person reading.
Speaker 1:And then, once they're identifying with that and knowing that they're not alone in that, I hope that the book gives them a framework to process through the reality of the need and then the way that God has provided in His Word and in just practical ways of living. Like we talked about those four different traits of combating that feeling of being overlooked, and I think so many of us are longing to be seen and longing for the worth and the affirmation that we get very caught up in that. I certainly have been there and we almost miss that. There's something more beyond finding that and I think if we can find that and be assured of that, god has a lot for us after that assurance that we're empowered to do, and so that's what I hope the book is able to do is sort of meet readers where they are, encourage them, help them name it and then help them move past that thought into wow, if God sees me and I have the assurance of my worth, there's so much now I can do in that confidence space after it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that you kind of don't just end the story with that pinnacle point of like, okay, god sees me, but then real life takes place after that moment. And it's like that for us, I think, when we have a moment with God where you know we feel like His Word is meeting us, meeting us, a really deep need in our heart, but then the laundry still has to get done, we still have to do the next thing and there's still that looming struggle or the circular problem that we face over and over again. But now we're taking with us the assurance that we're not alone. You know, I think about Hagar going back to Abraham and Sarah. But she wasn't going alone, she was going. She was taking this God who sees her with her. She was not going to be just facing that struggle on her own. So I love that thought that that's just the beginning point, and then God has so much more for us. Whitney, where can people connect with you? Get a hold of your book, find out your speaking schedule, connect with your podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the best place is on my website, just WhitneyAkincom. They can find my speaking information and links to my book. They can find my book on Amazon or really anywhere online where books are sold. They can find my podcast. It's called Hanging on Every Word and it's on all the podcast platforms out there, and I also have a newsletter on my website. That's a great way to stay in touch. I can connect with people personally there and respond to people, and so I also on Instagram. I'm on there pretty frequently, and so I love to connect with people and would love to meet any listeners who resonate with this.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that and of course, of course I will have all that information in the show notes and also, listener, if you are not on my email list, every week I send out a podcast update and that will have all these links that Whitney's talking about. It'll have her information, it'll have links to her book and all the ways that you can connect with the guests. So if you're not on that list, go ahead and jump on there and then, in closing, if you would, Whitney, just speak directly to that listener, to the woman who is listening and says this is me. I feel overlooked, I feel invisible. What would you say to encourage her?
Speaker 1:I would say I feel overlooked, I feel invisible. What would you say to encourage her? I would say I feel that way too so often, and you're not alone and you're not selfish or a narcissist for feeling that way. That's a valid feeling. But where you're searching for that attention, where you're searching for that feeling of being known and understood, really, really matters.
Speaker 1:And I would encourage her to go to the Lord with the feeling of being overlooked and go to God's Word and start there, start with some of the verses we've talked about on this podcast, and just test the Lord and let the Holy Spirit work those verses into her heart. But also, I would just say it's hard feeling and it's okay that it hurts, and God has the ability to pull us out of that place of sorrow and to remind us that he really does see. He's done it for me, he's done it for so many women that I've heard testimonies from, and he can do it for you too, if you're listening and it feels kind of impossible, he can do it. And so give him an opportunity, invite him into your invisibility, into your situation where you feel overlooked.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here and have this conversation well, thank you so much for having me thanks for hanging out with me today on beauty in the brokenness.
Speaker 2:to find anything I mentioned on the episode, go to theresawitingcom slash listen to find all the show notes. That's where I'll have all the links to Whitney and her resources. Have you signed up for my weekly podcast updates? Each week I send a short email with all the details about how to connect with my guests, with all of their resources and all the fun information that you don't want to miss. If you haven't signed up yet for that, you can use the link in the show notes. The other thing I want to invite you to do is if you are following my sub stack, which is really just like getting my newsletter At the end of each episode.
Speaker 2:I have a couple of questions for personal reflection and also for discussion. I'd love to see you come over to the beauty in the brokenness community and share your thoughts with us. I pray that you have eyes to see the beautiful redemptive work of Jesus in the midst of your broken life. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from Numbers 6, 24-26. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.