God Met Me at Rock Bottom | The Myth of Bouncing Back with Charaia Rush

For anyone who’s ever been knocked down and told to “bounce back,” only to find themselves back on the floor again, this episode is for you.

Dr. Mo and Dr. Jo sit down with author Charaia Rush to discuss her new book The Myth of Bouncing Back and the deeper truth about resilience, grief, disappointment, and starting over. From personal experiences that led Charaia to write the book, to navigating seasons where life doesn’t go the way you planned, this conversation is honest, healing, and full of wisdom for anyone carrying the weight of the call while trying to keep showing up.

What does it really look like to start over? How do you keep moving when everything around you feels uncertain? And what is God teaching us in seasons where we feel like we’ve hit rock bottom?

Charaia opens up about losing her church job, the lessons she learned in one of the lowest seasons of her life, and why “bouncing back” was never the goal.

Charaia Rush is a writer and speaker who is passionate about telling the story of the gospel and watching how it softens the hardened corners of our hearts and illuminates the dark rooms of our spirits. She has written for outlets such as ChristianParenting.com and She Reads Truth. She is the author of Courageously Soft and resides in Colorado with her two lovely children.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We often try to avoid failure so much so that we miss the blessing of actually being stripped of everything. We miss the blessing of being at the true end of ourselves. The moment that you surrender to the rock bottom that God has waiting for you is the moment that you get to receive the gift of being redeemed and reformed in ways that you couldn't if you keep like kind of circling the pit.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

You guys, we're super excited today. We have a very special guest with us, Sherea Rush. She just had a new book come out in April called The Myth of Bouncing Back, Ditching the Lies of Resilience and Learning How to Rise for Real. We've been talking all month, the last couple of months, about resilience and what it looks like to bounce back. And so we're very excited to have this conversation from an informed space that balances that scripture and coming from that spiritual space. For those of you guys that aren't familiar, Sharea Rush is a writer and a speaker who is passionate about telling the story of the gospel and watching how it softens the hardened corners of our hearts and illuminates the dark rooms of our spirits. She has written for outlets such as ChristianParenting.com and she reads Truth. And she's also the author of Courageously Soft. Um, and she resides in Colorado with her two children. Um so Shereya, thank you. We're so excited to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. So excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Wish I was on your coast because it's it's cold over here.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Yeah, it's starting to actually get warm over here, which is super nice. We're actually we're in a beach city, so we're prepping for beach season, um, which is and our bit starts at Memorial Day. So it literally just started for us, um, which is super exciting. Our kids are prepped and ready. Um so it's been an honor for us, I think, to sit with your book and the content of it as mental health professionals and as Christians, women, um, especially because for us, we're taught that um resilience is um your ability to be able to grow and to bounce back in the face of adversity, chronic stress, trauma, things like that. And so that little phrase bounce back is something that I love that your book is kind of challenging. What does that bounce back look like? And so um, as you were preparing to write this um this particular book, can you walk us through what personal experiences drove you to write this and what bounce back means for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah, so I relocated back to Colorado. This is where I'm originally from, um, probably four years ago. And it was after my marriage had officially ended. It was slightly and it ended for a portion of time. We separated, and then it really ended. And I was in the season where I was rebuilding my life. I had to find a job. I was a single parent. I was rebuilding my community. And I remember just feeling this constant call to like be strong and bounce back and act as if nothing was phasing me. And I think that that was my understanding of resilience, was not necessarily like getting through things with the Lord or like being formed through, you know, the hard situations. It was more just like bounce back in this idea of like every time I get down, I have to get back up the same way. I have to look like I don't look like what I've been through. I have to just like put on this brave, strong face and kind of wear my suffering as this badge of honor when inside, like and deep at night, I was like, I'm unwell. And I actually am resenting the Lord for even making me do this stuff again and again. And so I wrote this book after my first book. Um, and it was like a year or so after, and I think in my head, I was like, okay, the first book's gonna come out and my whole life is gonna change. Like, God may bring me a husband. Who knows? Like, I could just, I like everything could be new. And I think I just, at least for me, thought that this like redemptive story was gonna look a specific way in year one past, year two past, and my life was still relatively hard. And so when I was presented with the opportunity to write on this subject, I didn't want to because I'm like, I'm a quitter. One thing about me, I will quit. Um, and I don't want to be the spokesperson of again because I'm tired of it and I'm having to deal with the Lord about that. And so that's kind of where I was at when I wrote this book. So it was definitely an in process. I think most authors aren't experts of on the topics that they write about. And so you just are going through the motions and trying to figure out while you write it. And so that's kind of where I was when I wrote when I wrote this book. And so there was a lot of healing that happened for me in the writing of this book, even yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Can can you talk about the that process of how it feels to because when the book comes out, you know, there is this view. We often say we're not sages from the stage, but we're guides from the side. Yeah. So you can just can you talk a little bit about what it feels like in the process that to be writing something that's gonna bless other people while you're trying to pace through it yourself. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Uh, my best friend would say, I was not, I was complaining. I was like, this book is gonna suck. I don't even want to write this book. Like, why, why is God doing this? I it was one of those things where I think that I think a lot of times we as women in the faith, when we look at the call of God on our life, we expect it to arrive when we're ready, when we're willing, um, and when we feel prepared for it. And it is often is not that way. Um, a lot of times we are carrying things that we are like, actually, I prefer to carry that over there. Or I prefer to carry nothing. And I don't think we do enough, we have enough discussion about what it looks like when your call doesn't feel like how you want it to feel. Because I think we we feel like, okay, when God gives us a call, it's gonna like the heavens are gonna open, we're gonna feel extremely equipped for it, we're gonna want to do it. And a lot of times we're actually called in our seasons of darkness and and hardship and suffering because that is when it's like the stuff is fresh and we're able to speak on it. And I think that there's like a balance of like, okay, am I making sure I'm not bleeding all over people because I'm still going through it? But am I also able to give people the testimony of the in-between, which we don't get a lot of? And so I think for me, that has been a lot of my work is been just like that testimony of the in-between, not the I bit I was there and I'm not there anymore. Like, what does it look like to talk about God when you're in the middle of something? And so that's kind of what it was. It was a lot of contending and a lot of I'm gonna do it anyways because you told me so, but you know, my attitude wasn't always the greatest. I was the greatest.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

No, I love that. No, I love the authenticity of that and the and the the realness of like, you know, I think a lot of us don't show up because we can't show up perfect. Um, or we feel like the Lord can't use us because we're not in this place of perfection. And the Lord's been dealing with me on that a lot recently of like, how do I show up? Like I feel called to do this thing, but sometimes I struggle to show up because it's all the pieces aren't in the right spaces, or I feel like maybe I should be farther than I than I am, or I'm continuing to struggle with something that I felt like the Lord had already brought me through. And so for you to sit and say, I'm gonna write something, not from the angle of I've got it all together, but from the angle of actually, these are the things I've learned in the messy middle with the Lord. And as I've learned them, I can help now you to walk through it and not necessarily wait for the bounce back to be this like I'm all, we like to say in our family, all new better. All new better, it's all perfect. Um, and so I'm not all new better, but I am, you know, going from grace to grace and faith to faith, and I'm growing in the Lord. And I love that. In your book, you talk about, and I I I loved this concept. We've been talking all year about um the weight of carrying, trying to carry things on our own. Um, and so there's a phrase in your book that talks about the weight of again. Um, and when I first read it, I was like, oh, okay, like this is something that I think resonates with so many people that have had to start over, and not just start over once, but maybe have had to start over a lot of times. Can you walk us through, I guess, what you meant by the weight of again and and also what does it look like for us to navigate that weight?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah. So the book is based off of the verse, you know, the righteous man falls seven times and gets up again. And I think for me, when I read that, it on the surface, it's very encouraging. Like, we're gonna get up again. But when you sit with it, it's like it's actually seven times. And I think of like when the disciples were like, How often do I have to forgive? And God's like, 70 times seven. And it's like, whoa, that's the concept is not the number, it's the principle of you're not gonna actually know when the end is, you're not gonna actually know when the seventh fall is gonna be, or when you know, your eighth rise is gonna be. And so for me, I was sitting with that and I'm like, you know, I think when we fall the first time or the second time, or you know, we have the first huge falls in our lives, getting up, you know, we get the energy. And it feels like, okay, we did it, like God showed up, we were able to get back on our feet. And then it's like the second time we're like, okay, I'm a little tired, but I'm gonna do it again because I've seen God show up before. But once we get to the fourth and the fifth and the sixth time, it that call of again starts to feel cruel. And if we're not careful, we can call the commandments of calling the commandments of God cruel can actually turn our heart to resent Him. And so for me, that weight of again is like, okay, it actually is this call of resilience is weighty because it's not just this reaction to the to the world. It's actually a response based on what we believe to be true about God and what we believe to be true about who we are as disciples in Him. And so this idea of resilience within the faith context, it's not just like this glow up, you know, I went through the most traumatic thing ever, and now I'm up and I look amazing, and you know, like I can post all these reels and show everybody like that I'm not what I went through. It's actually this very private, very messy, very complicated movement and rhythm that we find ourselves in as beladers, or where it's like, I'm on my face again, whether it's because of something I did or the choices of someone else. And it's weighty to know that I have to get back up. Like I have to get back up. That is actually my portion as a believer is to get back up. So, what do we do when there are people in the church that know the call is perseverance? They know the call is to get back up, they know we can't stay down and out, but they're tired. Where do we meet them? And I think we meet them by acknowledging the weariness and still upholding the standard. And I think that we have that, that's why it's weighty. That's that middle space, that's why it's weighty. Because the only way to acknowledge and allow people to grieve the fact that they're on their faces and grieve the fact that they're tired and also continue forward on the mark that God has called us, the race that God has called us to, is to understand that this is a weight, a weightiness in the same way that our savior carried his cross, it's a weightiness. And I think for me, it's like that means we don't have all the answers. That means it's not going to look or feel a certain way. That means it's actually not gonna be this formula. Everybody's weight is different. And so that's kind of what I was trying to work through in that book is I I know I can't take away the call. Like I can't say you're never gonna have to get up again. Like that's not gonna help you to give you a book that's gonna give you false promises. Um, but I can acknowledge that you're tired and also say, hey, the call is still the call. Um and you have to keep going. And so that's that's the weight that you feel. That's the the friction that you're experiencing with this whole idea of again.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

And and as you talk about that too, I think about what we do because the call to get the message of the integration of uh faith and even behavior health, what we do is there. And trust me, the Lord chose this way to do it. We didn't, you know, and so we find ourselves here. So the weight of being mental health professionals, um, the super cape um type of syndrome for African American women, and then the constant perseverance of faith, and the if you intersect all those things, um, I appreciate the book so much because it allows us to be able to have humanity because it's almost like the Lord called you to do this, and I heard you say, uh this is the way I registered it in my brain. I've gotta get up. Like this is my call, so I need to do that. And so to come across your book at this time, we're in this space where the Lord called us was just so like instantly healing or brought us in that way. Because I'm like, Lord, how are we gonna get up? And you're requiring us to do this every week, every two weeks, and some platforms every day, and like a live type of thing, but I still have to live the human experience. And so the regular way of looking at resilience and uh through the flexibility, you know, the adaptability, especially the growth part of it, can almost feel like I have to always be on, or I have to always show up. So where you said, like in the middle, so where is that middle where I can say to people, look, the Lord called me to say to you that you could be triumphant, that you can live past, but I'm also human. So where do you find the balance in the middle of having to show up the way you do? I remember one day we had to show up for a recording and the dog got out and he was running up the street, and by the time the camera came on, I was worried about a hot flash and sweating, and you know, so you're a little ahead of us. So being a little ahead of us, how do you balance internally that feeling as is somebody gonna look at me and say, How can you do this? You're touched by humanity too, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah, no, I think that that's a great question. Um, for me, I I think what we miss about resilience, especially as black women, is that we want this like, I fall, I'm on my knees for 2.5 seconds, I'm back up by, you know, one to two business days. Like we gotta keep it moving. The show goes on. Like, okay. And that is just how we are. And it was in writing that book where it's like, actually, like I remember the Lord, I was writing it, and the Lord was just like, you don't get to decide how long you're on your knees. And I'm like, I just don't like that. Um, because I want, I want to know, you know, I want to be like, I fell and I'm gonna be in these ashes, I'm gonna be, you know, in the devastation on my knees for, you know, about two months or a couple hours, and then I'll be back to it. And it's like, if I was the con if I was in control of how long I got to stay on my knees, would I be formed in the way that I needed to be formed? No, I would not. And I look at my own life of like when I was back here and I wanted kind of the life that I had now then. And I was like, okay, God, like by the time I get to Colorado, I should be on my feet in about two to three months, you know, we should be good to go. Um, I got my book deal, all these things. And I remember like month six would come, month seven would come. And I'm like, God, why are you, why do I have to still be in this deposition? When am I gonna see the beauty for the ashes? Like, when am I gonna be in the promised land? And I think so much, unfortunately, of American Christian culture, we turn a lot of these redemptive stories into the Bible into these Hollywood movie versions that promise people replicated redemption and quick redemption. And it's it's it's hurting us because when we get in these these seasons where it's like, I'm still in the ashes and I know that there's a promise there, I know that God's gonna make beauty for my ashes. I just don't see it later, and I don't know how long it's gonna be, and it feels like too long. And so I think for me, it's like understanding that I don't get to choose how long I'm on my knees. And that when I'm on my knees, it's not, it's not time for me to figure out how quickly I can get back on my feet again. It's for me to figure out how long God wants me there and what he wants to do with me there. And that takes learning to lament, which is something that we as Christians don't really know how to engage with. We don't like to do that. Um, we don't, because we were like, am I having a pity? Like it, I don't want to have a pity party and life happens to all, you know, and especially for black women, like we got to be strong. Like, we, you know, all of these things, these messages that that make it hard to engage with the spiritual discipline of lamenting. But if we don't slow down to actually grieve the thing, like even in the small things like your day, like I'm actually grieving the fact that the day didn't go the way I wanted it to. I'm grieving the fact that I didn't get to show up the way I wanted to show up. Even for me, I'm grieving the fact that I had to be in survival mode for five years and I feel like I missed out on so much of my life. We have to engage with that grief. We have to acknowledge it. We have to make space for it and understand that I think we don't want to make space for that grief because it's like, well, then when am I gonna get to the to the glamorous part? When am I gonna get to the glory, the good part? But what if that is a part of the good? What if that is a part of forming our hearts so that we can receive his glory fully and not just like, oh, you know, yeah, I was through this and now I get to see the good of God, and now, you know, it's kind of a cheapened experience of redemption. Like, I want to fully experience his redemption, and that's gonna mean I am well acquainted with my grief, so I can be well acquainted with the joy.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

That makes me think about a passage in Job, in Job 120, where you know, that's you know, the that's the first part of the book. Like everything's taken from him, you know, he loses everything. And in that, in that verse, he says, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Um and I was resonating with this this week. We were talking with a group, we have like this uh group study that we do. Um, and I was talking with the the women in the group, and I was saying, look at this expression of worship out of the deepest, darkest place. Not a yearning to necessarily even understand why. Not even a it's still asking of questions, but also this space, like you said, this rock in this rock bottom space saying, if it be your will, and kind of that same space of like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he says, I am sorrowful unto death, but if it be your will, take this cup from me. But if not, I'm go I'm moving forward. I'm moving forward in what you're doing, and and in that, you know, what does it look like to experience resilience in those rock bottom spaces, not because it looks together, but because when you cry out, you're comforted by the Lord. Um, you know, and I I was really sitting with that earlier this week. Um, when you said that, it reminded me of that verse of the Lord giveth, he taketh away. Like to have that level of trust in the Lord takes resilience to be able to say, my bounce back looks like worship, like I'm worshiping him in the midst of nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. I'm actually in the middle of it. Um, and I I really feel like that's where a lot of us, like you said, struggle of that space of being like, I don't understand it and I'm trusting in him, but I'm gonna worship in the middle of it. And as I do that, I'll watch as we often say in our profession that resilience is not a personality trait. A lot of people think it's something that's a personality trait, but it's something that's actually built. And it's funny that you say that, you talk about the getting up, because we'll often say resilience is built in the get up. So it's like if you don't have that process where the Lord is um giving you those things, you don't build the resilience. Um the resilience isn't built on the mountaintop spaces, it's built in those spaces, those valley spaces where you're saying the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Um, and you talk a little bit in your book about the gift of rock bottom. So what is that for you? What is the gift of rock bottom? What does that mean? Um, and um, and how are you trying to portray it in the book?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Um, so in the book, I talk about when I got fired from a church position I had in my early 20s. I was a worship pastor, and um, I was I was a year in and I was starting to kind of like live not a double life in this very scandalous way, but I was like, I'm on when I'm at church, I'm off when I'm not at church. And eventually that kind of caught up to me. And I remember I was let go. Um, I didn't get to really say goodbye to my kids. Like it was a very traumatic time for me in my early 20s. Um, and I ended up working at this coffee shop and I just watched the trajectory of my life just go like hard. Like take a hard right. And um for me, I I remember being like so angry with the Lord, like just so mad, because I felt stripped of everything. Like I felt like I was truly at my rock bottom. And I parallel that moment um with Samson and how it was this culmination of like small choices. Like Samson made a lot of small compromises until he hit his true rock bottom. And for me, I think I wanted to present this idea as rock bottom being a gift because I think that we often try to avoid failure so much so that we miss the blessing of actually being stripped of everything. We miss the blessing of being at the true end of ourselves. Like it's one thing to talk about it in a very like elusive way and abstract way of like, I'm at the end of myself, but actually experiencing being at the end of yourself is humbling and it doesn't feel like a gift until you're on the other side of that rock bottom. Um, and so for me, I really wanted to present this idea of like the the kind of like, because we all kind of know when we're on the cusp of a rock bottom. Like we know when we're whether it's like, okay, I've been compromising a lot, like I'm about to hit the end of that road. Like we're very much aware. And I think for me, I want to be like, hey, like it's actually time to surrender to that, to that failure. You can't keep cup trying to cover it up, you can't keep trying to like mask your life and make it look a certain way. Like the moment that you surrender to the rock bottom that God has waiting for you is the moment that you get to receive the gift of being redeemed and reformed in ways that you couldn't if you keep like kind of circling the pit. And so I think we, at least for me, like resilience is yes, it's you know, the ability to get back up again. It's the ability to experience hardships and then, you know, get back up again. But it's also the ability to acknowledge the places that we found ourselves because of our own actions. That has to be a part of the conversation of resilience, as much as like the things that happen, like that are out of our control. And so for me, like rock bottom was like, okay, what about this pit has my name on it? What about this pit has my hand on it? Um, and until I'm ready to do that and acknowledge that, I'm not going to receive everything that I can from that moment. So I'm really like, I think I'm very, I wanted to subtly do this, but like I'm very passionate about self-accountability in a culture that is trying to strip us of that and and you know, give us different ways to blame everyone else for things that we can we can say we had our hand in it. You know, we it's it's both hands. Sometimes we are victims to really bad things, and sometimes we need to be accountable to like the ways in which we've been a part of our own destruction, and it's not comfortable, but it's important.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah. I as I don't want to leave this because when you're in that rock bottom uh place, I remember I think it was the soft the soft corners often the hard corners of my heart, and that stood out for me. And so where is that balance between I need to lament this, but I don't want to be bitter on the other side of it?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Yeah. Um, I was recently asked about that, and I think that for me, it's like we know when we're in the ashes for too long. And I think for me, when I look at my life, I'm like, that that sweet spot is when I'm like, am I now defending the ashes? Like, am I defending the the destruction? And I am I like, hey, no, nope, like this is where I'm sitting. This is my space, these are my ashes. No one can tell me how long I can stay here. No one can tell me if, you know, it's time for me. Like, when I start to defend this place of destruction that God has told was not a dwelling place, was just a place for me to be formed. That's for me when I'm like, oh, okay, like I uh it's actually time for me to get up and and start moving forward. And so I think that bitterness is really, and you spoke about like Job. I love that in that first verse, but I also think the thing I love about Job is that it was continual communication with the Lord for 30 plus chapters. And yes, he was saying like a lot of stuff. He was upset, he was angry, he was devastated, but that too is worship. To have Job, he continued to speak to the Lord for 30 plus chapters after losing everything, right? That's crazy to me. Because so many, how many of us are like, as soon as our life looks to start the minor inconvenience, we're like, I'm not talking to God for like leave me alone. Like, I'm gonna go to church and I'm not gonna raise my hands because I'm just upset. But it's like for me, that that resistance to bitterness is like just I'm I'm gonna talk to you. Even if I'm upset, I'm still gonna talk to you. And I'm gonna acknowledge that that too is worship because the enemy, he doesn't care if I raise my hands, if I play the game. He cares if I'm gonna keep talking to my savior. That's what he's like, oh, can I just cut off that line of communication by any means necessary? I don't, I just need to cut that line of communication. So for me, that's how I, even when I'm in the pit, even when I'm at my rock bottom, even when I'm in the ashes, it's like I may not be able to, I may not be able to say, God, thank you for this. I can all I can say is God, I'm angry, but I still am talking to you. But I still want to speak to you. Like that too is worship. And for me in my own life, that has been what's kept my heart soft. That's what softened those those hard corners, is like knowing that I could, I just just want to talk to him. I just want to tell him how I feel. Even if I'm telling him I'm angry, I want to know, I want him to know that like that's the only worship I can give. But that is still worship because it's like we're still here.

SPEAKER_03 28:12

Yeah, I think the way when you said, I don't want to raise my hands. I think we have this um way of approaching the Lord that comes out of just the a religious mindset. So we don't see him as a good, good father, and we don't see him as our father that we'll crawl in his lap and say, I'm hurting, and here are my wounds. We see him as more punitive. And so, as I heard you saying that I just had this visual of just crawling up in his lap and just looking when our kids come to them and they have a boo-boo, they don't hide the boo-boo, they're just like, look at my boo-boo. And of course they're making it as a scratch, but they're making it this whole laceration. And so sometimes I want to sit in the Lord's lap and say, This may not be a big deal to somebody else, but it's a big deal for my heart, and just show it to him and just have him say, baby, you're gonna be okay. Like, you know, let's sit here with me. It may feel huge, but I'm telling you, just sit there. And have you ever had the kids where they go through like 500 band-aids in the summer? Where you're like, I'm not even buying band-aids. We are in that stage now, right? And so the answer becomes it just needs some air, it's gonna heal quicker. And so I think sometimes if I sit there and the Lord is like, babe, you just need some air. Just let it get some air, just quit covering it, quit showing it to me. Just sit there, let it air out, and learn what you need to learn. That's okay. And so that's it. We've come off time. Oh my god. And I don't even know. We need to know. No, there's so much more to go. I know, so this is so good. I know.