Sips from the Fountain
Learning to drink from Jesus, the Fountain of Living Water, isn’t as hard as I thought, especially when you just start with sips, and those will change everything.
Sips from the Fountain
The Big "Cancer" Word: Where the True Battle is Won
The unexpected diagnosis of cancer at age 21 forced Brooke Lovingood to confront mortality in ways most young adults never imagine. What began as a seemingly benign thyroid nodule evolved into a life-altering journey through multiple surgeries, radioactive isolation, and the haunting uncertainty of whether cancer had spread.
Yet as Brooke shares with raw authenticity, the most challenging part wasn't during treatment but afterward—when survival mode ended and emotional processing began. This counterintuitive reality mirrors what many experience during significant trauma; we often don't have the luxury of processing emotions until immediate danger passes. From this valley emerged a transformative understanding that now shapes Brooke's ministry as Women's Ministry Director: "We are not victims to our thoughts."
This powerful conversation explores how suffering shapes character in ways prosperity never could. Brooke offers practical wisdom about managing anxiety through physical movement before attempting to engage spiritual truth—recognizing our integrated nature as body, mind, and spirit beings. She introduces the freeing concept of holding "the good and the hard" in tension, acknowledging that while nothing post-Fall is fully good, nothing post-Cross is entirely bad either.
Most compelling is Brooke's insight on weakness. In a culture obsessed with strength and self-sufficiency, she found liberation in 2 Corinthians' counter-cultural message that weakness becomes the very platform upon which God's strength is displayed. Her testimony challenges listeners to examine their response to suffering: Will you choose victimhood or victory? Will blessings become burdens by focusing only on challenges? Can you trust that specific grace awaits for whatever suffering appears in your story?
Whether you're currently navigating illness, recovering from trauma, or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers hope that transcends circumstances and reveals how life's darkest moments often forge our deepest purpose.
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too, and it's okay. My name's Martha Gannot, and in this podcast we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. Sometimes it'll be just you and me, sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about. Hey, hey, hey, everybody, and welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:We are in the midst of our series. Life Wasn't Supposed to Be Like this, and boy have I loved interacting with you guys, as you've listened to different stories, even as you've posted on topic ideas, and if there was one that popped up an awful lot, I would say it's the topic that we're going to be addressing today, and that is the presence of profound illness in the life of someone, and so I have actually a dear friend on today. I'm so excited. This is Brooke Lovingood Brooke, what's your official title?
Speaker 2:where you work. I am, first off, very happy to be here, thank, you. And second off. My official title is Groups and Women's Ministry. Director at Watkinsville, first Baptist. Okay, we love.
Speaker 1:Watkinsville First Baptist. So also, I learned when I got to know you that you had had a profound struggle earlier in your life before I met you. You that you had had a profound struggle earlier in your life before I met you but just the person that you are, I knew that I had to hear that story and that other people needed to hear it as well. So your story is definitely one where you went from being a victim into being a victor. But it was a struggle and a journey and I appreciate your willingness to be transparent so that other people can hear what is normal when life is hard and take hope. Whether this is the exact situation that you have or not.
Speaker 1:My hope is that, as you listen to what Brooke has to share with us and as we talk through these ideas, that you're going to be able to hear some things that may bring some breakthrough in your own situation, in your own life. So I'm really grateful that you're going to be able to hear some things that may bring some breakthrough in your own situation, in your own life. So I'm really grateful that you're here. So why don't you just start us off first of all with the story, set the context and tell us what happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my senior year of college. It was the first semester of that year, so I don't know. I think I was 21 maybe, and I had had a good bit of weight loss. I was feeling I described how I felt during that time as like I drink a ton of coffee in the morning and then I did not eat all day, like I felt amped. And one day I was actually at coffee with a friend and I was just sitting there had my hand like on my you know, kind of like propped up on my chin and I just felt this lump at the bottom of my neck and I'm already before. This scenario was a hypochondriac meaning like I blow things out of proportion at times.
Speaker 2:You know I have to stay off Google. And so I immediately was like, oh man, what is that? I'm sure I'm, you know, overthinking this, kind of talked myself down, went to my primary care. They said, yeah, that's something on your thyroid, and he sent me to a specialist. The specialist was pretty confident that it wasn't anything serious A lot of young women have these types of things on their thyroid and so he biopsied it and it came back benign and he kind of just said let's monitor it, keep on keeping on with your life. So I went through my senior year at UGA, continued to lose weight, continued to have all these symptoms and the lump grew and grew and grew to where it was visible Like you could see it on my neck, and so I went back and just said, hey, more than I mean, we could just call this a cosmetic surgery.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a lump on my neck neck, like I feel like we need to readdress this. So they did, still very confident, was benign, and so I had surgery, um, in 2020, uh, 2019, that December, to remove it. And with they were just going to remove half of my thyroid. Just because I was so young, they didn't want me to have to be on a lot of medicine and just have my whole life ahead of me.
Speaker 2:And they biopsy everything just to make sure when they do surgery, and so they took it, biopsied it, and I'll never forget my surgeon, dr Browning. He called me the next day. I was laying on the couch. This feels like this out-of-body experience for me, but I was laying on the couch and my at the time boyfriend who's now my husband was in the recliner next to me. I mean, I was just very freshly recovering from the surgery and I sat up and I answered the phone and he said hey, is this Brooke? I said yeah. He said this is Dr Browning.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry to let you know, but this is actually cancer and we think that the biopsy was wrong a year ago. We think that this has been cancer the whole time and we need you to come back in and we need to remove the rest of this. And I mean, keep in mind like I have this massive incision on my neck. At the time, the thought of the embryo, I mean it just sounded terrible on top of processing cancer, um, and even like what does that even mean? You know what kind of cancer is this? I knew nothing about thyroid cancer. He told me it was a kind called follicular thyroid cancer, which isn't the most common, and so I really didn't have much information, we go back in, we actually. So that was my surgeon. But we went back into my endocrinologist to kind of talk through things and I'll never forget they're all amazing doctors. But he said to me you know, brooke, we won't know, probably for a few more months, if this has spread.
Speaker 1:Oh, my word.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to do the other surgery and then you're going to have to do a form of radiation before we can have an effective scan of knowing if it's in your body.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And he did say the prognosis for this is normally very good thyroid cancer. He called it the best kind of cancer to have. That's an interesting thing, yay. So he was positive in that sense, but he did go through. Hey, there's a real chance here that it's spread to your bones your brain or your lungs? He gave me those three.
Speaker 2:I remember very specifically those three areas and just said we're going to have to wait months, like three months. So I have another surgery, brutal surgery. A lot went into that, as far as just reopening the same incision that's a day old. It's just tough on your body and I literally yeah, it was a lot and then I waited, probably about a month to a month and a half, before radiation. They just wanted my body to calm down and keep in mind. So that's 2019 December. So now we're in 2020, january.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I go in for radiation. Now, radiation with this type of cancer. They use something called radioactive iodine, which is just a pill, so it's not like basically every other cancer. They're literally radiating a spot. Your thyroid has iodine in it and so this pill gets in your body and just attacks any cell with iodine, which is your thyroid cells, and kills them. But the trick part of that is it's a great form of treatment in that it's not super invasive, but you're completely isolated for 10 days. So I took it at the hospital and then I drove myself home Because of the radioactivity, because I was radioactive you were radioactive Wow.
Speaker 2:And so it was dangerous for anyone else to be around me, and I went to my parents' home and lived on the top floor for 10 days alone. Goodness gracious. And again, keep in mind, I'm still not sure if the cancer has spread. Wow, this is in that time period of just not knowing.
Speaker 2:And so there really weren't a ton of symptoms with radioactive iodine. It just was sad to be alone. And the end of those 10 days we did the scan that showed that, thank God, it had not spread and it's funny, it really wasn't until I remember sitting there, them coming and telling me the results. I'd gotten this all clear Cancer's good, it's not spread. You know, you're not, you're not on and we don't have to keep treating you. And it was like that moment you would expect that to be relieving and it was, of course.
Speaker 2:But that was the moment where I feel like I began to just struggle because I think until that point I had had survival mentality Next surgery, next treatment, next appointment, scans, scans, ultrasounds. We got to get your thyroid levels normal on synthetic hormones, and so it just wasn't until that moment where they were like you're free to go and we'll do a follow-up in six months, do some more scans and you'll follow up for the rest of your life. But right now you live like normal. I just remember like driving back to Athens, coming back to my job, and just being like I feel like I just got hit by a train, picked up, told to keep walking and I need some space and time. And then about the time, covid Wow.
Speaker 1:You got plenty of space and time there but isolation.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a really important point, brooke, because I think sometimes we only give ourselves permission to process things in a certain way. Permission to process things in a certain way, and so when you're surprised by something like I should be relieved and happy and glad this is over now, and then it hits. You just know that all kinds of reactions are in the realm of normal, it's okay, and you deal with it as it comes, because I could think you know, I could see people I could see. You know you mentioned when we were talking earlier. I loved the verbiage that you described this. You know just that when you're young and you find that you have that cancer journey, it's shocking and it's like you're emotionally in a car accident and then everything looks okay and your body's fine and you move on, but that's not normal. You're just now experiencing the impact of it. So I think that's really important to recognize and I'm grateful that you pointed that out.
Speaker 2:So, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that what began to unfold when I got back to my home and normal life was just this sense of my emotions catching up to what my body had gone through. And then it's funny you don't always at least maybe when you have your first big bout of a suffering season like that, you don't know how. At least, maybe when you have your first big bout of like a suffering season like that, you don't know how you're going to respond and you're not even logically thinking how to respond, you're kind of just trying to make it. And so my response was to I almost felt silly for being shocked by the cancer Like. I felt, like I was so caught off guard that hearing that cancer word at 21, that my brain and my body said to me hey, you're not going to be shocked by anything else, so live in a state of constantly thinking through things, thinking worst case scenarios. Oh boy, avoid that feeling of shock, try to protect yourself from that feeling of shock. And again, I couldn't have worded this in the moment.
Speaker 2:Looking back, that's what I started to do. It was like waiting for the next shoe to drop. I experienced a shoe drop, so now I was like I will not let that happen again to me without me seeing it coming. Well, you can imagine when you live like the shoe's going to drop. You live in a state of panic and I just lost complete control of my thoughts and my brain and how I felt joy and peace in life. And it just took really me hitting some rock bottom with anxiety and panic for me to rebuild and remember like, hey, god is not asking me to live like that and that's not how we're made to live. And then just the power of a renewed mind that because of the spirit in me, I had the ability. I have the ability to stop my thoughts, like I'm not a victim to my thoughts.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, can you say that?
Speaker 1:again we are not victims to our thoughts and that's very counterculture right now. You know you touched on anxiety and I do want to revisit that at some point in the future with a different episode on that topic. But you know, anxiety right now has become almost like we are completely out of control of it. Now there are actually psychiatric diagnoses of anxiety, but it's actually an incredibly small percentage of the population and the rest of us just experience anxiety at what, to be honest, is in the normal realm of human experience, but we're being told that something's wrong with us. We're never going to recover from it. We're going to be the victims of it. I even, you know, hear people reference my anxiety like it's a pet and I'm like there's a way of empowering it and there's a way of actually choosing to walk out of it. I want to say that with all due respect to people who have profound struggles with it, but you're one of those people and I love that. Your testimony here today is say that sentence one more time. What did you say?
Speaker 2:We are not victims to our thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can do something about it. Yeah, so, wow. So you decided you were going to control everything in life to keep the bad things from happening. How'd that work out for you?
Speaker 2:It didn't. It didn't. It led to a horrible, dark few years. But at the same time I look back and I'm like, oh man, it was just such a rebuilding season for me. I can look at the season of Cancer Young and feel annoyed and frustrated that that was my story. Still like still today, there's still side effects of that, like I could name a few health issues. I still struggle with because I don't have a thyroid and I have a nice pretty scar that the lady at Kroger will ask me about every blue moon the lady at Kroger will ask me about every blue moon, you know.
Speaker 2:And so I can still look back with regret and sadness and disappointment that that was my story. If I'm not walking in the spirit. When I'm walking in the spirit I can look back and I say what a gift, what a gift that at 21, I got to wrestle with death Because thyroid cancer. Nothing's good about cancer. Thyroid cancer typically is treatable. But when you hear that word cancer-.
Speaker 1:And they could have spread to places where-. Oh, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it had been undiagnosed for more than a year. And so there was so much in those few months that I just think a lot of 21-year-olds aren't faced with, and most of us would say that's a good thing. But I choose to look back and see God's kindness and that being a gift to me, giving me perspective, giving me faith, giving me the ability to endure hard things, giving me so many new truths to cling to, and we can talk about some of those. But I do think you're suffering. You have to frame it through the lens of God and not through the lens of the enemy or not through the lens of other people around you.
Speaker 2:That's a huge thing in suffering. Is you compare? Why is nobody else going through this? Why doesn't my 21-year-old friends have beautiful, healthy lives? And I'm sitting here isolated for 10 days wondering if this is in my lungs, or I can say God allowed this in my life to build things in me that are going to be eternal and steadfast and used for His glory. And it's going to come with pain, it's going to come with disappointment, but I can say now, several years down the road, what a profound gift that season was, even still holding the tension, that it was really hard and some days I wish it didn't happen.
Speaker 1:Of course, and we talked about that when we were thinking about this episode the both and. Will you share that? You talked about Catherine Wolfe and kind of what her perspective is on this. I'd love for you to share that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So she talks about this idea of the good and the hard. I think that's maybe even her podcast name, but I have been so encouraged by this truth I could even get emotional about it, because I kind of feel like this is the key to life is nothing post the fall, nothing post Genesis 3 is fully good anymore? Everything? Everything was tainted and touched and broken by sin and the enemy and darkness everything. But also, because of God's profound grace, nothing post the fall and post the cross is fully bad. God's kindness is in everything, and so I think life is literally living in that tension of everybody listening to this. You and me could all name parts of our stories. We wish we could fix, change, rewrite, make different and we can stay there and we can focus on that.
Speaker 2:But you also, if I pressed, you could easily name about a thousand gifts you have too, and even some of those hard parts, the goodness in them. And so I think, when you grasp the concept of not living as a victim to the hard and refusing to see the good, but holding both intention, not being blindly naive, that life is perfect, right, or that it's not difficult, right.
Speaker 2:But not being pummeled by the hard, I think. I literally think that's like the key to contentment in Christianity. It's just seeing that until we're face to face with Jesus, we are going to have this tension, that until we're face-to-face with Jesus.
Speaker 1:We are going to have this tension and I think in our culture, even coming at Christianity, as Westerners, maybe even as Americans, we have this idea of the American dream that we all have the right to pursue life, liberty, happiness, and we've almost gone a little too far with that where we I don't know. I just feel like we almost in myself and maybe even culture-wide we have this entitlement mentality toward happiness and if I'm a Christian and following God, then he should bring me the things that I've listed, all these circumstances and these are the things that are going to bring me happiness. Which? Number one, God's not that vending machine, it's not transactional. Number two that's a lie. It's a lie that the circumstances are the things that are going to bring me happiness and that the thing that really is going to bring that contentment is having that character that you've had formed in you. You've had it forged like just what you've shared. We can see that God's forged a character in you that wasn't present before this really difficult thing, and that character is what's going to enable you to go through all of life circumstances and go yeah, this isn't where my contentment is, this isn't where my happiness is. I knew good and bad are both going to come, and so I'm not going to hang my hat on the circumstances.
Speaker 1:You know we talked about that scripture. I need to look up the reference. One day, when I'm a grown up podcast person, I'll look up the references for everything before I share them. But it's that scripture where he says in you know, in every, everywhere, in every season and always, I'm content that he's content in whatever circumstance he's in. And I've always looked at that with like one eyebrow cocked, going that's Paul, for you he's such a holy man. No, he had learned the lesson that you'd learned at 21 years old that it's not your circumstances that define your contentment. Yeah, you referenced other things that you learned through the process. What were some?
Speaker 2:of those other things. I think that God gives grace to every person for the specific thing he allows them to walk through and I think that's probably really big to even say on this podcast, as people are hearing these stories is that we're meant to hear each other's stories and not necessarily put ourselves in their shoes and kind of let that unlock a new fear of oh no what if I get cancer?
Speaker 2:What if my child dies? What if I have a? Whatever the story is you're hearing, I don't think the details of our stories are necessarily the point. I think the point is you look at other people walking through these things and you build faith that your God, their God, the same God got them through that and so, whatever you're going to walk through, he is going to supply the grace and the mercy and the means to get through it, and so you don't have to live like a shoe is going to drop. Wow, you don't.
Speaker 2:You're meant to hear these stories walk in peace and know, even if the worst thing I could come up with happened, to me just like God got this person through this horrific moment and season.
Speaker 2:He's going to do it for you. He's going to do it for you, and that was such a profound truth. I think my brain was tempted to unlock new fears because I tasted suffering and I was like, oh no, this can all go bad. And I just think I have had to really fight that and take a step back and see God's kindness to just get us all through whatever we walk through, and he's with us in our details, but details don't have to scare us Wow.
Speaker 1:And that if the enemy, going back to that, if he could have gotten you to live in your fears of what was possible we talked about this earlier too that the idea that fear is actually faith in the enemy's plan for your life. And when I engage in fear, fear is to the enemy what faith is to the Father, it like partners with it in my life and it's actually believing that the enemy's plan is greater than God's plan. And so if the enemy could have gotten you sidetracked into fear, he would have shut you down, brooke, he'd have shut down your identity, your purpose, your destiny on the earth and he would have stopped the free flow of how you're created in the image of God into the earth as a testimony to the earth that God is for us and that he sent his son to die and restore life to us. So I think that when I heard that, teaching that fear is faith in the enemy's plan, at that point I was like, all right, I've had it, because I think we all deal with anxiety and indulging those thoughts and feeling like the thoughts run away with us and how do we take every thought captive. But when I heard that, there was something that clicked in me and I was like I will absolutely not empower the enemy's plan in my life. I will not do it. And I found a new courage to get control of my thoughts and my emotions. So I know we talk about that concept.
Speaker 1:Practically speaking, what did that look like for you? So let's say that let's go back to that place. Practically speaking, what did that look like for you? So let's say that let's go back to that place where you were, where you were literally being eaten alive by fear of all the infinite terrible possibilities that could happen in your life, the determination to control them. So it didn't happen to you, or at least you didn't get surprised by it. What did that look like practically, like, on a daily, moment-by-moment basis, to walk out of that fear and anxiety and into I'm going to live in the life side of the situation and not in the shadow side, I guess, yeah, john Mark Comer calls it.
Speaker 2:I love it so a big piece that I think maybe the Christian world doesn't do a great job acknowledging is Bless us. It's that we are like a body, so part of my anxiety was that my thyroid levels were gone and that took time and I wish it's funny. Martha, you and I have talked about. I have a 15 month old and I felt some anxiety again when I was pregnant and I came to you, we were talking through this.
Speaker 1:everybody, let Martha be your anxiety person, oh gosh, I'm about to make you everybody's anxiety person, sorry.
Speaker 2:You said that. You said to me the truth that I learned in the cancer season, but I'd forgotten. You said, hey, some of this for sure can be real fear you're dealing with, but some of this might just be that you have an eight pound human inside of you and your body is going crazy. Your hormones are crazy, and so I want to just say that out loud and say that when you are in a dark, hard, panicked season, take a look at your physical health and do things that help. That. I mean walking, I mean eating, I mean drinking water, I mean going to get some blood work done. I am not a doctor, I'm not prescribing anything. I'm just saying it's ignorant of us to think I've got to get my emotions in line when my body is really struggling, and that was a huge part, especially if part of your story is some sort of illness. Do not discount how that illness can affect how you feel emotionally. We're connected.
Speaker 1:And I also love the Lord's faithfulness. I didn't know that was a thing that you had learned back in your thyroid cancer season, but the Lord drops it to people to remind you of the thing you already knew, out of His kindness to go hey, remember this Brooke. Remember this Brooke, you're going to be okay. I'm right here walking this with you. Let's take a look at this. Just His kindness.
Speaker 2:Even in current days, like when I feel anxiety or worry or fear, typically my natural reaction is to go for a walk. So I don't just sit on the ground and guilt myself and say you're not supposed to worry, don't be anxious, and try and snap my brain out of it. I try and move my body, I try and do something that helps me calm down and then I'm typically really able to speak truth and see the situation logically. So it's like I learned in that season hey, you're kind of at level 10 emotionally and how you're feeling, do something to bring that down physically.
Speaker 2:And to me that's just been some form of movement of my body and then after that bring God's truth in. Then you're able to hear and receive God's word and you just get better at renewing your mind. I don't know how else to say it, but the more you feed the spirit inside of you, the more strength the spirit grows to help your brain and your mind. It becomes louder than the flesh, versus if you're feeding your flesh that grows and grows and grows, and it's louder than the voice of the spirit in you, and so I think, know too.
Speaker 2:It might be really hard. You might have an area. Maybe you have a lot of fear around your children or your marriage, or your safety or your health. If that area is hard at first, to try and renew your mind, I would encourage you just keep going. Notice what you're thinking about, take note what occupies my mind, think about what you're thinking about and then begin to speak truth to those thoughts and not just be a victim and let them come in and flood you.
Speaker 1:It's really good, yeah, and you find the things that work for you. And I think also there's a space where you can say, lord, you see this struggle, I want to change what my mind's doing. Will you send me a podcast, a specific? I mean, how many times have we, the Lord, sent us a worship song and we just play it on repeat? I mean, there have been times I have been in my living room screaming worship songs until it started sinking in, or even specific scriptures that I would just like declare it over and over, and over and over again, almost like I'm like taking a shovel and just digging the junk out, like almost physically dealing with what's happening mentally and emotionally with the word and with worship.
Speaker 1:And I'm the same on physical activity, if I can get, because I think nature is also a part of where we see the testimony of the father, right Like the word and worship. And it feeds our spirits. And you know, if we were feeding our bodies McDonald's all the time, then it's going to. You know it's going to impact us. And so if we're feeding our spirits fear and terror and the dark side of possibilities all the time, then that's going to be an impact as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think with a truth I really learned in asking for practical steps is specifically with health, especially in the culture we live in, we're really being preached at that. We can control our health and you can in a lot of ways. You can impact it. You can impact it, yeah, but there has to be a correct theology too in your mind around the reality that we live in a broken world and that things happen to good people, bad things happen to good people, hard things, tragic things, and that we are people who are going to die, we're people who are going to age, we're people who are going to get weaker and weaker in some ways, and instead of buying the lie that culture says the newest product, the newest grocery store, this and that, and that I'm not saying don't be good stewards, but you got to hold that thing in its rightful place that I felt a lot of anxiety of what did I do at such a young age to cause cancer and the culture is telling us you're doing stuff.
Speaker 2:You know that I can't necessarily name what it is, but you can prevent suffering is the underlying message, and I think I would just say guard against that a little, Steward your body and your life well, but in this world you will have trouble. That is a promise from Jesus. But take heart, I've overcome the world, he says, and so I think that's a practical step. Once you're able to see suffering is a part of the kingdom of God, it's just part of it. It helps you get through it.
Speaker 1:And I think also that just the concept too that you mentioned of what did I do, what did I do to cause this I think that just your willingness to share and be open with your story is a way of us saying, hey, actually nothing's wrong with you, you didn't do something wrong, you're not off the chart, you weren't whacked out, this is just normal. So not to instill fear of, hey, bad things are coming in your life. This is to instill confidence and faith that when bad things do come because they are going to come it's you're not weird, you're not alone, you're not isolated. This is a normal part of the human experiences. Take heart, there's hope for you, you can make it, you can partner with a father. He will walk with you through it, whatever it is, and that's the message.
Speaker 1:I think that's so powerful and also I just really don't like it that the enemy would beat you up with that. That makes me a little bit mad, right here, right, and it's implying he's saying to you did God really say that Jesus paid the full price for shame or anything? And I take confidence and in my experience with the Lord has been even the things I mess up. He redeems all of it. He redeems all of it. So the point isn't us or what we did, how we performed. The point is the brokenness of the planet, my own brokenness and that he comes in to redeem what we've messed up.
Speaker 2:It's a deep, deep trust in God's sovereignty. It's a deep trust in a good God that has complete control and we can just lean and rest. In that and suffering. We don't have to figure out the root.
Speaker 1:That is not very American of you, Right? We want to know why we want to like you said we want to prevent it.
Speaker 1:We want to fix why we want to. Like you said, we want to prevent it, we want to fix it. We can. We're used to getting what we want in this country and that faith when you don't understand what's happening, I think that just builds that trust in the father. And the truth is we actually can trust him. He actually is. That trust is the responsible thing to do, even if it doesn't make sense to us, and that's the nature of faith. And, boy, that's such a life-giving place because I'm assuming that you've come out of that dark place of fear and terror. Constantly, you're always in fight or flight. That's really bad for your adrenals and your thyroid too, by the way, right, yes, I learned. Constantly in fight or flight that's really bad for your adrenals and your thyroid too. By the way, right, yes, I learned.
Speaker 2:Constantly in fight or flight it like washes chemicals across your brain that I mean it's crazy what it does to you physically, and it's funny you know we're talking about like a very pointed season of my life. But these things that God teaches you, he gives you a chance over and over again to keep practicing them, like that season is over in some ways. But there's new things in my life that require these same truths and I'm thankful God forged it in me. And when I'm walking in the Spirit, I'm thankful God keeps giving me opportunity to learn it and practice it and use it, and so I would say that too, it's not just like you get out of the suffering season and you're good to go. It's like your life is hard and it's beautiful all in one Right.
Speaker 1:And what a gift. I think we have you ever looked at like a really an older person in the faith and you're like man. She or he has been through so much and they're so incredible. Like how did they even become like that? Here it is, yeah, Right here, Like what you learned at 21,. Now you're empowered for the future.
Speaker 1:Struggles that you have to not get the snot beat out of you and get an assault of fear. Or when you do have an assault of fear come against you, you're going to be like oh, I recognize this, I know exactly what's going on here, and it's not that you're going to be perfect and walk it powerfully every time, but it's a muscle that you are building. And then by the time we're old men and women, then we're saints of the faith and people, young ones look at us and go how did you even get there? This is the process, this is what it looks like, and I think I mean I, you know, one of the things you mentioned was don't let your blessings become a burdens, and I think that is a powerful perspective, because who you, who you have become because of that focus, is going to change how you walk through future good, bad ugly things, all of them. Do you care to like expound on that a little?
Speaker 1:bit your blessings become your burden.
Speaker 2:I think that it's easy when you go through something hard. Just back to what I was saying I just, for for a while, took on a very negative perspective and just felt like everything's hard. It's that victim mindset. My story is so much worse than these other stories Comparison, feeling sorry for yourself on and on.
Speaker 2:And I do think Jesus gives you time to grieve and mourn and be disappointed. He's a kind, caring God, his burden is light and his yoke is easy and he wants us to come to him for rest. So I'm not discounting that at all, but I do think there is a way to see the things that God's given you as the things that have become so hard in your life and see literally see the blessings that he's given you as a burden to you. So I think about my job, I think about my husband, I think about my baby and all of those things this is a good word right here All of those things come with their own hardship and their own overwhelm and their own intensity, own hardship and their own overwhelm and their own intensity.
Speaker 2:But if I could speak to myself five years ago and I could look at my life and see, you have a beautiful baby girl. It has not been perfect with her but, you have a beautiful baby girl. You have a deeply kind, loyal, generous, godly husband who is attractive as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Jesus.
Speaker 2:And you have an amazing job at a wonderful church that's healthy and vibrant. And the days when I'm tempted to feel the overwhelming parts of those blessings and start naming those and seeing them as burdens, I just recently this is very fresh feel like God is just shouting to me these are your blessings, they're your blessings. Don't let the hardship take away the blessing of this and name that before you name the burden side of this. See that before you name the burden and be thankful and grateful and live out of that perspective and, I think, suffering. You can go one or two ways. You can begin to see real blessings in your life or you can begin to see burdens more than the blessings and I think you've got to fight to see those blessings you do.
Speaker 1:And I was sitting with some friends recently and it I think we all probably know friends like this. Hang with me while I tell this quick snippet. But it was everything was negative, it was every. They were mad at everyone, they were judging everything, everything was negative.
Speaker 1:And I was processing that interaction with another very close one of my closest friends after that and she said to me hey, you know, a lot of times you know that scripture where you see the splinter in someone else's eye but you have a log in your own eye and she's like you know that principle, like you can go down that slippery slope so quickly. I think people who live like that didn't even see it coming. And so her point to me was hey, where is that in you? Because if you don't want to go there, you better repent of judging them, get the log out of your own eye, because here I am judging and being negative and critical of people who are judging and being negative and critical.
Speaker 1:Hello, so it's such a slippery slope and it is based on what are you going to choose, where are you going to live? And you're going to go down that road. It's also, it's a pattern that is in the scripture we were talking about. You were sharing with me. You know you guys at Watkinsville just finished women's just finished studying 1 and 2 Samuel and what the Lord showed you about the nature of everyday life it was in the scripture you want to share that piece?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just if you've ever studied the Old Testament, but specifically 1 and 2 Samuel.
Speaker 1:I have some questions about the Old Testament when I get there. Well, that's a different podcast.
Speaker 2:It's like you feel like you're literally on a roller coaster because you're. You know these beautiful promises of the Messiah coming and this anointed king and David, and at first you think the king that's going to save everyone is Saul, and then you think it's David and both of them are utter disappointments, honestly. But you see God's faithfulness. But there's hard, horrible stuff in these stories too. It's a picture of humanity. There's death and murder and abuse and just really tough stuff. And so when we read it as a women's ministry, I felt like it almost felt laughable. We would come and we would read it, we'd be encouraged, and then the next week we were just like, oh, my goodness, this is awful. And it just dawned on me halfway through.
Speaker 2:This is life. This is life the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows and you can choose to be a victim. Or you can choose to see how God is still moving His kingdom forward. He's still faithful to His covenant. He's still going to come back and rescue us all and make all things right. You can choose that. Or you can choose to see the negative and you can choose to see the hard every day and live like you're a victim to that and I think the Word of God spoke to that so much for me this past fall and spring, and I think my experience with cancer has spoken to that, and God's just slowly tried to get in my heart, my mind, brooke, choose to see the good that I'm doing, even in the heart. It doesn't negate the heart, but it just gives you hope and joy in the heart. And so, first and second, samuel spoke a lot of that to me this semester.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so present all the time is the darkness and brokenness and the kingdom of God. They're present all the time, both, and we get to choose where we're going to tabernacle, build our house and where we're going to live, and that's going to determine whether we're going to stay in victimhood or whether we function as a victor and then move into that identity and purpose and calling and destiny that the Father has for us. The enemy just wants to shut down how we bear the image of God into the earth. That's what he's trying to do.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, amazing Any other scriptures that you wanted to pop out for us. I know that you had some that you said had been meaningful to you here in this journey too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably the biggest would be 1 Corinthians. Let me find this really quick. It is, oh, I'm sorry, 2 Corinthians. Okay, so 2 Corinthians. This is where Paul is talking about this thorn in his flesh and how he's prayed three times that God would take this thorn right, and you just can imagine, just let yourself think what could that have been. Was it family, illness, relationship? I mean just so much, right. And he says this three times.
Speaker 2:I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, this is the key. I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ. Then I am content with weakness, insults, hardship, persecution and calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Speaker 2:Okay, this was a moment for me in the cancer journey where I felt like I remember praying to God. Just make I literally remember saying the words, make me feel strong again, make me feel vibrant and healthy. I'm so sick of feeling weak and down, and it's like the Holy Spirit just brought this scripture and said weakness is not the enemy in the kingdom of God. It's actually the platform on which my glory and my strength is displayed. So if you are listening to this and you feel weak, don't despise that. That's where God comes and works and uses what's weak in you to display His strength and His glory, and that changed the journey for me. So that scripture is really, really dear to me, wow.
Speaker 1:Brooke, that's amazing. I feel like I could chew on your last five sentences for a year or two. Just amazing. Thank you so much for sharing the deep parts of your story and I know it's not easy to put that out there, especially when you occupy a public position.
Speaker 1:So I know that Revelation 19.10 teaches us that the testimony of Jesus, which is what he did in you, is the spirit of prophecy, which means he's willing and able to do it again and again, and again and again. What we're saying he's willing to do the miracle, that he's willing to work. We're not promising it's a specific kind or nature of miracle, but what we can promise is that he is willing to do the miracle of meeting you in the darkest places in your heart, of walking with you, of being with you, of flipping the evil in your life that's been done to you for good in the earth. Those things we can say with confidence. He is willing to do those miracles in your heart if you'll let Him. And so you're in a perfect example, an amazing example of allowing God to do that in your life, and I honor you. Thank you for telling your story.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I love you. Thanks for letting me come. I love you too.
Speaker 1:All right. Thanks you guys so much for joining us. I hope that today's Sip from the Fountain blessed you and we will see you next time. Hey you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you got some refreshment from this Sip from the Fountain. If you're curious to hear more, or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to yours or follow our Instagram account, sips from the Fountain or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for Cover Art Photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much. Love y'all you Thank you.