150 Episodes: A Peek Behind the Scenes (SEEN SERIES)

Episode 150 marks the close of the Seen series — and Teresa gets personal. She shares what God has been teaching her heart through writing this Bible study, how she personally identified with each of the six women in Seen, the rejections and wilderness seasons she navigated along the way. Plus a real life update and a peek at what's coming next for Beauty in the Brokenness.

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Transcript

150 Episodes And Series Finale

Teresa Whiting 0:00

Well, welcome in friends. Today is an exciting episode because it marks 150 episodes on Beauty and the Brokenness. Formerly Find Hope here. On this episode, we are gonna wrap up the scene series. I'm gonna give you a little peek behind the scenes, what's been happening in my heart as I've been writing this book, and what's been happening in my life, practically speaking, and what's coming up for Beauty and the Brokenness. Hi, friend, welcome to Beauty and 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 Whitey, 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 who is still creating beauty right in the midst of your brokenness. So this episode marks the closing of the scene series. We have been at this since last August. We've done 27 scene series episodes, and we have talked to some amazing guests like Dr. Kurt Thompson, Lisa Saruga, Leslie Vernick, Darina Gilmore, and others. We have looked at psalms of comfort, of hope, lament, and praise. As you may know, scene is the second in a series of Bible studies that I am writing. The first one is Graced. So it was like disgraced with the discrossed out, how God redeems and restores the broken. It was stories of six women in scripture that God rescued, redeemed, and restored from sexual brokenness. This study, seen, is like unseen with the uncrossed out. And this one is about six more women in scripture. Women whose lives were kind of on the margins, women who were overlooked, rejected, ostracized, or oppressed. I want to give you a little peek into my heart as I have been writing this study and just the things that God has been teaching me. First of all, I have sort of a confession. When I started this book, I wrote it really for you. I wrote it for all the women out there who had told me that they felt invisible and overlooked and unseen. What I didn't realize when I started was how much I needed the stories of these women, was how much my heart longs to be seen and known. And how devastating it is to chase being seen and known by anyone but Jesus. While we all shout and clamor and wave our proverbial arms saying, See me, notice me. God is inviting us into an embrace so strong and true that if we could believe it and live in it, we would find so much freedom. Those deep longings of the human heart, they're not just out there in you, they're right here, beating in my own chest, pulsing through my veins. There is the longing to know that my work matters, that what I'm doing is making a difference. I have so identified with Hagar's wilderness, with Leah's unfulfilled longings, with Tamar's lament, with Elizabeth's fruitlessness, with the bleeding woman's isolation, and with the bent woman's spiritual oppression. I've wandered, questioned my calling, begged God for answers, and resigned myself to relative obscurity. As we've had conversations on the podcast with guests, as I've worked through scene with a group of women, I have realized that these are universal longings. Our hearts haven't changed since the dawn of creation. And God's word addresses the longings of our hearts so vividly and beautifully. I mentioned that I identified with Hagar's wilderness over the past uh couple years as I've been writing this. We have moved three separate times into three different locations, all in the same area. But still, there is an uncertainty when it comes to moving. You kind of lose your footing. It's a feeling of just like, where am I and where do I belong? And how do I fit now in this place? It has been a season for me to try to find my footing. I think what I love most about Hagar's story is that while she's there in that wilderness, while she's feeling really alone and unseen, God comes to her and he calls her by name and he says, Hagar, I see you. She's the one who said, You are the God who sees me. And so as I have navigated, going from place to place and changing dynamics in my life, all through it, I can hold on to that truth that God sees me. He knows. And he sees you, my friend. Wherever you are, whatever life transition you're in, whatever wilderness season you're in, you are not alone. God sees you there. He's come looking for you. He's calling you by name just like he did with Hagar. Oh, I think all of us can relate to Leah's unfulfilled longings. Her mantra of maybe this time, maybe this time, I I've mentioned in the past what some of my maybe this times are. But there was something else in Leah's story that resonated with me so deeply. It's just so cool how when you're working on a project and digging deep into God's word, he doesn't just let you study it. He's like, okay, and now you're gonna live it. As I was studying and working through Leah's chapter, now remember who Leah is. She's the one that was married to Jacob, who completely rejected her. Jacob rejected Leah in favor of her beautiful sister, Rachel. She lived her whole married life as the one that wasn't wanted. And right in the midst of me working on Leah's story, God allowed me to experience not one, not two, but three rejections in a row from a literary agent, a publishing house, and a ministry that I highly admired. Within just a couple weeks, I got three letters saying, Thank you very much. You're a lovely writer, but we are not wanting to work with you. You know those red stamps, like rejected, right? I felt like I could have taken one of those stamps and just put it right on my forehead, rejected. But in God's kindness, I was working right through Leah's chapter. And you know what her tagline is? God chooses those that the world rejects. Jacob said, Leah, I reject you. You are not the one I want. And all the while, God said, Leah, I choose you. Of all the sons that were born to Jacob, God chose Leah's son, Judah, to carry on the line of Jesus. We see in her story all those maybe this times, maybe this times, eventually when she bears Judah, and she doesn't know. She doesn't know that he's gonna be the one that carries on the line of the Messiah, but her heart says, This time I will praise the Lord. Like I know I'm not gonna get Jacob's love, I know I'm the rejected one, and yet I also know that God sees me, He hears me, and He loves me. No matter what anyone else in this world says of me, do you know that? Do you believe that in the depths of your heart, that no matter what rejection other people have stamped on your forehead, that God says, I choose you, I love you, I see you, I know you. I hope so, friend. That is the passion behind scene. Then we get to Tamar. Oh, Tamar's story was a tough one. She was raped by her older half-brother, her full brother silenced her, her father ignored her. Here is a woman who experienced deep sexual brokenness. And really, there's not any kind of resolution to her story. Like when you look for a happy ending, a bow on Tamar's story, you are not gonna find one. What you do find is a model of lament. You find a woman who cried out against the injustice that was being committed against her. And in her story, we learn to lament. We learn that it's okay to cry out, to tear your robes, to put ashes on your head, to be loud, to let all of that pain within us come out. It's a healing process. The other thing that I learn and take away from Tamar's story is that even though everybody around her silenced her, ignored her, God said, Tamar, I see you. I know what you've been through, and I'm gonna write this story down for all the world to read. Tamar is a lot like the women in Graced. She was sexually violated. In her story, we see what is so, so common. Okay, statistics now are one in two women have experienced sexual violence. So when we read stories of these women, these are not just, oh, those Bible women out there. This is us. This is our sisters and our best friends and our daughters and our mothers. These stories are written in scripture because these are the lives that are being lived all around us. It's so common for women to keep that a secret, to stay hidden in shame. But pain that is not named will not heal. So I want to encourage you, if you're a woman who has experienced sexual brokenness, to move toward a place of healing. Maybe get graced and go through that with a couple friends, or go see a counselor, or just find a safe person where you can tell your story and start the healing process. Then we get to the New Testament women and we start with Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a woman who in her old age was barren and had endured a lifetime of shame. So here she is, she and Zechariah, both old, and God says, now it's time to act. And he answers their prayer in such a beautiful way by giving them a child, John the Baptist, who is the forerunner of the Messiah. God used Elizabeth in her old age. And what that story says to me, aside from God's power to lift us out of shame, his delight in lifting us out of shame, is Elizabeth reminded me, Teresa, you're not too late. God doesn't live on your timeline. He's not restricted by your age, by how many gray hairs you have, by the fact that maybe you should have started sooner. God used Elizabeth to remind me that it's never too late to follow God's calling. It's never too late for him to use you in the way that he has planned, which honestly, we don't even know what that is. I'm sure Elizabeth and Zechariah had long since given up hope of ever bearing a child. Wasn't too hard for God. As a writer in my 50s, I feel like I'm so far behind all the others. I feel like I should have started sooner. What am I doing? There's already so much out there. And God says, You're not too late. You're on my timeline. And my timeline doesn't match up with the world's. We talked about the bleeding woman. Oh my goodness, the bleeding woman. I love her story, her story that's within a story. You've got Jesus going to the home of an important ruler, Jairus, on his way to heal Jairus' daughter, who's lying ill, and he's stopped by this woman who really comes out of the shadows, this woman who didn't belong in a crowd, who would have been ostracized. And if they knew she was there, they would have pushed her away, saying, Unclean, unclean, you don't belong here. And when she touches Jesus' robe and believes in faith that he's going to heal her, you know what he does? He stops. He turns toward her, he looks at her and he says, Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. This woman had tried everything. She had exhausted every measure for healing. And when Jesus healed her, it wasn't just, I'm gonna heal your body, and you can go on without, you know, this issue of blood. No. You can go on being known and seen and being identified as my daughter. You belong. Does her story resonate with you in any way? Do you need to know that Jesus is looking at you and calling you daughter and saying, you belong here. No matter what other people might think, no matter what they say, you're one of mine. I love you. I see you. I'm for your healing. And then finally, the hunched woman or the bent woman. Most of the people who I tell I'm writing this study to don't even know who this woman is. Her story is so obscure. She was obscure. She would have been completely unknown and unnoticed. She was a woman who was hunched over because she was spiritually oppressed for 18 years, but Jesus noticed her. Jesus saw her. He called her forward and brought healing to her life, not just physically, but spiritually. He set her free. And friends, Jesus is for our healing. He's for our freedom. He also calls this woman daughter. He reminds the indignant religious leader who was angry that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, that she's a daughter of Abraham. She's part of our family. She belongs here. And it was necessary for me to set her free on this Sabbath day. We talked about the Sabbath and the importance of it and the beauty of rest and restoration and how God designed us to live and what a gift Sabbath is. I'm curious to know how you celebrate Sabbath. Is it something you do regularly? How do you fight your spiritual battles? Are you even aware that what's happening to your body and your mind aren't isolated events, but they're fully intertwined with what is happening in your spiritual life. You know, when you're writing a Bible study that is designed to draw women closer to the heart of Jesus, we have spiritual enemies who don't want this study out in the world. I might as well put a big red target on the top of my head and say, um, this is where the fiery darts go. But as we talked about last week, we have a shield of faith to protect us from those fiery darts. But I just want to say that there are so many times through the writing of this study, through this podcast series, when I have just been like, forget it. I just want to burn it all down. I want to, I want to shut down the podcast, stop the writing, just do something that seems a lot simpler and might have some more immediate results. But God keeps reminding me, no, Teresa, this is what I've asked you to do. This is what I have called you to do right now in this season. Okay, I'm gonna be really honest with you here because you're my friends and I can do that. I've been writing scene for a while now. I've been producing the podcast, I've been putting emails out on Substack, and I honestly care way too much about who's looking at this stuff, who's listening. I was telling my podcasting friends, I'm like, scene is not being seen. And I care way too much about that. And God sent me a messenger. Literally, God sent me a little bird. Here's what happened. One day, right as I was starting my edits, I went outside and I sat down and this little bird came. And you know how birds are, right? They flit around, they're here and they're there. They don't, they never stay in one place for more than like five seconds. This little bird came and perched on the roof right in my line of sight, like just a few feet away from me. He wasn't far. And I was watching this little bird, and he sat there for probably five to ten minutes singing his little heart out. That bird was tweeting and chirping and gurgling. And if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have thought it was a whole flock of birds. I was like, oh my goodness, this bird is so talented. It has so many songs it can sing. And it was a little bird, like a bird I could hold in my hands. And I felt like God was speaking to me, saying, Teresa, do you see that little bird? Do you see it singing its heart out? Nobody notices it. Nobody cares. Nobody's liking, posting, sharing, retweeting, ironically. It's just doing what I made it to do. Teresa, just do what you were made to do. So often I ask God, like, God, what do you want me to do? And I was thinking, how silly would it be for that bird to wring its little hands and be like, God, what do you want me to do? God's like, tweet, chirp, sing, eat worms, make baby birds. I don't know. I know for me, I can get so caught up in what I'm doing, and does it matter? And does anybody see it? And I felt like through that little bird, God was like, Teresa, just sing for me. I hear you, I see you, and that's what matters. You know, as I share these things, I hope you understand that I am coming to you, not from some mountaintop, like, hey, all of you down there, let's let's bring you up and show you how it is up here. No, no. I am right in the trenches with you. When I say fellow struggler, I mean it. I'm the one who's looking to my right and to my left, looking for a shoulder to lean on. I'm the one alternately lifting my voice in praise and lament. Sometimes I feel like God is silent. And sometimes I feel so embraced by Him and seen and known. And I think that's just life. I think it's all of the things. I think it's the easy and the hard, it's the joy and the pain, it's the beauty and the brokenness. That is normal. That's life. I'm not sure if that is a disappointment to you. I hope not. I hope it just helps you realize you're not alone and we are all in this together. The beauty of these stories is that they remind us that we have so much in common with one another, with the women in Scripture. And just like them, God is still writing our stories. Friends, we are known. We are loved and we are seen. So that was just a little peek into what's been going on in my heart. And I'd love to tell you a little bit about what's been going on in my life as I've been writing this series. Over the past couple years, my husband and I have been at the same ministry, but we are moving into, we've been moving from house to house. I think we're at our last stop. Um, we have been hosting lots of people. When you move to Florida, people want to visit you, and it's wonderful and it's exhausting. And if you have been one of my visitors, um, just know that I loved having you here and you are welcome back. Another thing that I've been doing is I have been leading two groups through Graced. Um, you might have remembered me talking about the Graced cohort that was running through the church hub, and that just ended. And let me tell you, we did 13 weeks. It reminded me how much I love taking women through scripture. Like personally, not just over a podcast, but in the same space together where we get to talk about and share what God is doing in our lives. I love that. I want this to be a two-way conversation. When you get my newsletters, send a comment, email me back. I want to know what God is doing in your life. And you don't have to wait till you get a newsletter. Just reach out. I love hearing from you. I also took a pilot group through scene. So these women, they were amazing. Okay. They helped me to refine, to work through, to say, okay, what's working here? What isn't working? Let's look at these um stories in scripture. And really, what I took away. From that is just how relatable these women in scripture are. Like I kind of knew it, but then I know that I relate to them. But then when I hear other people saying, Oh my goodness, this story resonated with me in this way. I saw myself in Elizabeth. I saw myself in Tamar. I saw my story in Leah. That makes it so worthwhile. It helps keep me going. It helps me say, okay, this is important work and I'm gonna keep doing it. Over the past couple years, we've hosted three lament workshops. I partner with my friend Brenda Stewart, who is an amazing, gentle, sweet, talented therapist. And she and I have worked together to help women learn what it means to lament, to repair that little hole in our healing that's missing. When we think we just have to get over things or just get through things, lament gives us a pathway through our pain. And we actually have started offering those quarterly because they've been so powerful. If that's something that you've missed and you've been like, I want to get in on one of those, I'll have a link to the upcoming Lament workshop in the show notes. I've also been keeping this podcast going, obviously, for the last 27 weeks. And on top of all of this is just real life, like maintaining a daily walk with God, connecting with my husband and my kids, being available for my family, being involved in my church community, taking care of my body, like trying to eat real food and exercise and get enough sleep. And somebody has to buy the groceries and pay the bills and clean the toilets. And so Scene has been being birthed in the midst of all of that real life stuff. And you know what I'm talking about because you have your own stuff. So all of that leads to what is next for beauty in the brokenness? And the most honest answer is, I don't know. I have so many ideas rolling around in my head. One of the books I've recently read is called Essentialism by Greg McEwen. Oh my goodness, this book has been a game changer for me. Seriously. Basically, his he has this little diagram where he's like, you can put your energy in a million directions and it'll go out like a millimeter, or you can put your energy in one direction, the one essential thing that you're made for. And you can start saying no to all these millions of other things. Now, if you've been following along for a while and you know me, um, you know that my hand has been in a million things. But now that we're settled in our home, I feel like God is saying, okay, Teresa, it's time for you to focus on what is most important. And when I ask God what that is, aside from all the non-negotiables, like the real life stuff that you can't escape, I really feel like sharing the message of beauty and the brokenness. Helping people understand that there is beauty in the midst of our broken stories. And doing that through studying and teaching the Word of God. That's my passion. So I do that through writing and through speaking. At the moment, that still includes this podcast. And also, I need time to pray and discern what exactly that looks like moving forward. So I'm actually gonna take a couple weeks off the podcast. Greg and I are gonna go visit my mom and our daughter and our friends in Texas, and we are super excited about that. So you will just have to stay tuned to find out what's coming up on Beauty and the Brokenness. What I suggest is that you hit that little subscribe or follow button. Sometimes it's a heart, sometimes it says follow, sometimes there's a plus sign. It seems like every podcast platform does it differently. But make sure you're following the show so that when the next episode drops, you will have it in your feed. Thanks for hanging out with me today on Beauty and the Brokenness. To find anything I mentioned on the episode, go to TeresaWiting.com slash episode dash one five zero to find all the show notes. Friends, this scene series has been a journey, so thank you for sticking with me through it. And as I mentioned, don't forget to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from number six, 24 to 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.