Refined In The Fire

What if the heat you feel isn’t punishment — but preparation?

In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, author and advocate Karol Holmes invites us into the furnace of her story and shows how affliction can become a forge for trust, courage, and costly love.

We trace her unexpected journey — from hosting a Haitian infant for heart surgery, to adopting three children with complex medical needs, to walking through the devastating loss of two sons: one in sudden tragedy, and one after decades of suffering. Her story is tender and unvarnished, yet anchored in a steady hope that only grows in valleys.

Karol shares the spiritual practices that sustained her when fear and isolation threatened to pull her under. Each morning, she wrote a simple surrender — returning her son to the care of his Creator. Throughout the day, she whispered a breath prayer:
 Inhale: “Be still.”
 Exhale: “And know that I am God.”

Those few words became a lifeline through long nights, relentless “what ifs,” and the ache of leaving her son in a facility two hours away.

We talk about how Scripture moved from the page into her body.
 How honesty deepened her relationship with Jesus.
 And how sometimes God answers by lightening the load — and sometimes by strengthening your back.

Along the way, we explore:

• Sovereignty and choice without fear-driven formulas
• The hidden grace of a home guarded from blame after tragedy
• The quiet gifts of ordinary joy when Moise finally lived close to home

Karol’s witness reframes affliction as formation — inviting us to see God’s nearness where we least expect it.

If you’re walking through your own furnace, this conversation will give you language for surrender, tools for anxiety, and a fresh vision of refining fire that shapes rather than destroys.

If this episode met you in the heat, share it with someone you love, subscribe to the show, and leave a review with one practice you’ll try this week. Your words may help someone else find hope in their valley.

Transcript

Carol’s Story And First Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to another episode of Between the Prayer and the Promise. This is a space where we talk about what God is doing in us while we're waiting on what He promised. Today's episode is tender, it's honest, and it's about faith and the fire. Isaiah 48 and 10 says, Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver, I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. Affliction is not a word we celebrate. Grief is not something we volunteer for. And obedience, especially when it costs us something, can feel unbearable. But what if the furnace was a punishment? What if it was preparation? Today's episode called Refine in the Furnace. We call that because sometimes the fire wasn't meant to destroy you, it was meant to form you. And I'm joined today by Carol Holmes, a mother of seven, an author, an advocate, and a woman who knows what it means to walk through devastating love adoption. And life altering obedience. I am so excited. Help me welcome. Mr. Welcome so much today. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I am wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm so excited to have you here and to have our listeners learn a little bit more about you. And we're going to dive right in. So, Carol, if someone's listening right now who feels like the fire is just too much, too much, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I would say kind of like grab your board and hang on, because typically when it means when we feel like it's too much, it usually means that God is doing really big things in us and that he's wanting to change us. Um to be a reflection of him and his love, and um that he's going to be pouring out grace upon grace on you. Um and he will pour out endless mercy, although sometimes that mercy is hard to see when we're in the midst of you know, we're in when we're in the flames.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Wow. Thank you for that. I know someone needed to hear that today. I want to go back for a moment because encouragement often comes from experience. Um, when God refined you in the furnace of affliction, what did that actually feel like in real life for you, especially as a mother?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Um it feels pretty awful actually, if we're being completely honest. Um, it is often so my experience as a mother, um we had a lot of my husband and I had a lot of affliction um because of basically the health of three of our children, um, and ultimately the loss of two of our children, um, and just some really hard decisions that we've had to make along the way. Um so if I were to give a few words to it, I would say that it's lonely, um, it's isolating, um, it sometimes seems unfair and perhaps even unjust. Um but probably one of the biggest things is that it has a lot of darkness. Um and one thing that I have definitely come to understand is that all of those things that we go through are part of the purification process. Um but it's it's very heavy. Um and I I really think that it has to be that way for us to truly be refined.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Were you ever during that period like angry at God? Were you ever like asking him why me? And if so, like how did you get past that point?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So I believe so completely in the sovereignty of God. I don't think I have asked a lot of why, just like why God, why are you doing this? Um I did I did sometimes ask why me, but more that more specifically, I asked why my children. Um, my oldest, so I have seven children, I have four biological, and then we adopted three. All three of our children that we adopted had developmental disabilities and complex medical needs. My oldest of our adopted children, his name was Mois. We adopted him from Haiti. Um, he suffered a lot. And so I did often ask God, you know, why must he suffer so much? I don't think that I ever necessarily felt angry with God again because I so firmly believed in the sovereignty of God. Um, but I did ask, you know, why must my son suffer so much? And the reality is my son is gone. He passed in 24, um, uh November of 2024, and I still really don't have an answer to that. Um, but one thing I do know is that God used my son and the suffering that I walked alongside of him through to shape me and to refine me and ultimately to make me a better person.

The Unexpected Road To Adoption

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So you you talked about adoption, you talked about loss and all that. So, how did your journey to adoption begin and and how did that happen for you?

Discernment, Free Will, And God’s Will

SPEAKER_01 7:01

So it was very interesting. My husband and I did not, that was not on our radar at all. We had not that we were not planning to adopt. But we were, I have a medical background, and we were asked to be host parents to a child from Haiti that was coming to have open heart surgery. Um, and then he was expected to go back to Haiti uh to his biological parents. However, um, after his heart was repaired, I began to realize that something was wrong more than just the heart defect. And um, we discovered that he had severe brain damage. And um at this point, he was we got him when he was about four or five months old. And so by this point, he's 10, 11 months old. And um, his biological mother did not return want him to return to Haiti. Um, simply it was definitely an act of love because he would not have survived in Haiti, and so we were suddenly forced to make this decision of do we send him back to Haiti where he's going to die, or do we make a decision to adopt him, knowing that it was gonna dramatically change our lives? Um, and we did decide and um really went into it and just embraced the special needs and parenting disabilities. Um, and you know, we really wrapped our arms around that and we went into it with our whole heart and our whole soul, um, and trying to be the best parents that we could be to him later on in life. Um, two more children with disabilities came to us through adoption. Um, so that's kind of how it started. It wasn't like um at the beginning, it wasn't like something that we felt called to. We just kind of were just doing a good deed. Um, and then it turned into so much more. And um, but it wasn't long after we made that decision that we realized that God had definitely um He was giving us a lot of grace to do things that we we could not do in and of ourselves. It we could only do it by His strength. Um, and even that was all part of the refining process, just learning how to navigate it all. Um, and so yeah, and you know, that once we decided to adopt, that's when I I realized that this is what God had called us to. Um and honestly, all three of our adoptions were difficult decisions because they were all very complex children, and so we just kept heaping on the in some ways it felt like chaos. Um, just the hard things that we were continuing to add to our life by these adoptions.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

At any point, did you ever question was this the will of God?

Isaiah 48:10 Becomes Personal

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And if so, how did you know, like even in the questioning that I I did, I did, and it's very interesting. So there was so my daughter, my my middle child that we adopted had Down syndrome, and she passed away when she was two and a half in an accident, and it was devastating. I then that that was the only time I pursued an adoption. I wanted another child with Down syndrome, and we pursued um uh a family from India that had given birth to twins and they didn't feel like they could um parent the child that had Down syndrome, and we wanted that baby really bad, but through it that that adoption was stopped, and I really struggled with that, but you know that baby I don't I don't know whatever ended up happening to that baby, but but not of our own choice, that adoption we were not allowed to have that child and to adopt that child, and it was a bunch of governmental things that stopped it. Um, and that was the point where I really saw and truly understood the will of God, and you know, we we like to say, you know, is it God's will for every little thing? And at that point, I really started to realize that God gives us our own free will, and it we really do have a choice in as long as we are not sinning and we are aligning with the word of God, we are free to make our own choices, and so you know, I never went looking to adopt Moise, and he brought him to me anyway. I believe that if I had said yes or no, both of those would have been in the will of God because there was no sin in either of them, it was obedience, but it would not have been outside of the will of God, I don't believe. And and then God would have worked that for good and and placed Mois in another home in the same way that God has the the power to allow or disallow. So we did seek this other adoption, but God disallowed it, and so I don't I don't understand why he said no to that one, but there was so much freedom in that that that's what I took away from that experience of not being able to adopt that child, is that as long as we are line in line with the word of God, we really do have freedom of making our choices, and they're not necessarily sin. You know, whether I choose to do this or not do this is not necessarily sin. The will of God will come and He will work that for good. He He did work for good the decision that we to adopt three children with special needs.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Wow, thank you for sharing. I think that that leads right into this powerful scripture of Isaiah 48 and 10, which um talks about the refining and the furnace of affliction. When did this verse stop just being words on the page and become personal for you?

Surrender, Breath Prayers, And Sanity

Night Fears, Peace, And Rest

Nearness Of God In Trauma

SPEAKER_01 14:29

That verse became very personal for me. Um, so when Mois turned around 17, we started to have a lot of problems with him. Mois suffered loss after loss after loss. He was deaf. Um, he had cerebral palsy, um, he was cognitively impaired, he never spoke a word. And then when he was 13, um he just kind of out of the blue, he lost his vision also. And so when he lost his vision, we lost our our most effective communication because we had used sign language and he couldn't see it anymore. So he just had a lot of loss, and he was angry about all of the loss that he experienced, and he didn't have a way of expressing his his anger and his frustration, and it came through in aggression to the point of violence. And we for about 18 months we struggled with not being able to care for him. Um after some horrific events that took place, he was eventually placed in a um state operated developmental center, which was two hours away from my home. And I struggled a lot with guilt and even shame for not being able to take care of my own son. Um and he was in that facility for four and a half years, and during that time COVID happened, and I we didn't see him for eight months. We did not lay eyes on him for eight months because everything was shut down, and there was really no we couldn't really FaceTime with him because he couldn't see us or hear us, and so that was a really, really dark time. But that went on for four and a half years of he was in a facility that we didn't really feel like was the best place for him, but we couldn't get him into another facility because of his aggression, and we knew that we couldn't bring him home to protect himself, to protect ourselves because he was very violent, and most especially to uh protect um our seven-year-old boy that we had at home at that time. Um, and so that was a very, very difficult time for me, and that verse started to speak to me that through this period of waiting, it was very, very dark and very lonely because I just didn't have there was nobody who I knew who could understand what it felt like to not be able to care for your child when everything in you wanted to be able to take care of him yourself. It was just I felt very lonely and very isolated, and I was scared because I just I didn't know what was going on with him most of the time, and so I was scared. Um, and like what my mama heart wanted to do, and what my head knew we needed to do, my my mama heart wanted to rush up there and get him out and rescue him. My head knew we had to protect everybody, and so there was just this constant battle between my head and my heart, and my husband was experiencing the same battle, but it was there in that period of waiting that I really began to realize that God was really He was refining us, and it was a very, very hot fire. Um, but He was refining us, um And it was there, I believe, that I really truly began to understand what surrender looked like. Um because I had to wake up every morning, so like I I feared I would lose my sanity because of the worry and the stress that I felt for my son. And you know, my mind it would just go through my mind all day, and I finally realized I cannot do this anymore. And so I got to a place where I would wake up in the morning and I would surrender him to his creator and say, Lord, he is yours, you love him more than I do, and I trust that you are taking care of him, and I I and then I put it away and I could not let myself go there. I couldn't let myself think of him for the rest of the day in order to keep my sanity, and so I really learned to surrender him to trust. I I I learned an incredible amount of trust during that time. Um one of the things that I did, I called them breath prayers. Um I learned when when his thoughts of him would come into my mind, I would stop and I would breathe in, be still, and then breathe out and know that I am God. And that would take my mind back up to the cross, back onto the savior, and away from all of that worry that I had.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

So just so the audience can hear, uh like actionable steps, what you did with the surrender. So you literally surrendered it to God, you gave it to God, you verbally said, I give this to God. What did you call it?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

You did breath prayers, breath, uh breath prayers. And actually, I wrote my prayers, I wrote it every morning in a journal. Lord, I give Mois to you, I surrender him to you. You are his creator, you know the number of days that he has on this earth, and you are doing something in him, and you are doing something in me. He is yours, you are God, and I am not. I give him to you. So every morning I would write that prayer, among other things, of course. Yes, and then I throughout the day when thoughts of him would come in, them breath prayers, where you breathe in, be still and breathe out and know that I am God. And I would once thoughts would come in, I would breathe that in, be still and know that I am God, be still, and it would just take my mind back to Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

That is wonderful. And if you're listening right now and you need to take that moment right now and just take a deep breath in and take a deep breath in, be still and breathe out and know that I am God. Yes, thank you. That is beautiful. I love that actionable. Things we can do, especially because uh people are listening and they want to know that what to do with that worry and and the scripture that came to my mind that you were speaking, ask my care, after care, uh, after care is upon you, and what does that look like? And and that was just a beautiful way of how can we do that? Because when we're in it and when we're going through sometimes, it is so dark, it is so lonely, we are so consumed with whatever it is that we're carrying that we don't know what to do, but try. We're conflicted with our heart and our mind, right? Of what we're trying to do, and we forget to really cast it and leave it there. We want to take it and carry it, and we have to cast it and leave it. So thank you.

Bringing Moise Home And Saying Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 22:49

You can use any scripture with that. I I it wasn't that's just the one that I use as an example, but you can use any scripture. And another thing, I think we all know that um the enemy likes to attack us at night um in the darkness and the quiet. And it so sometimes my nights would get really like sometimes I would even have nightmares about him being mistreated. And I would wake up, you know, in a sweat, and I would I would start those breath prayers, and amazingly, the next thing I know, I'd be waking up in the morning because it would quiet my mind, quiet my heart, and I would be able to go back to sleep and just give it to him.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Amen. That is wonderful. So, was there any moment when you felt especially near to God or you felt God near to you um during your sorrow and during all of this?

How Suffering Deepened Faith

Trials As Love And Transformation

Resources, Books, And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_01 23:56

So there were basically three times that really stand out to me. One was when my daughter passed, um she died in an accident, and it was a horrific trauma, um, tragic. And um, my four biological older children were between 11 and 16 at that time, and they were very badly traumatized by her death. And so we just had this horrible situation in our home with four traumatized children, four traumatized teenagers. My husband and I also trying to grieve the loss of our daughter and raising at that time nine-year-old Moise, who was very complex. And it was only a few months after she died. We had a surgery that we had to go through with him, and so we were navigating all of this, and I my husband always says we could literally feel the arms of the savior carrying us through that. There is no way that we did that in our own strength, and there's no way that we got up every morning and did that in our own strength. It was the Lord carrying us, and we just felt like he had put a hedge of protection around our family. Um, one of the things I say is that um it was an accident, but none of us blamed each other. And my husband and I didn't, there was no blaming or finger pointing that you should have done this different or you should have done this different. None of us did that, and that just felt like a hedge of protection that the Lord put around us, um, because the enemy could have had a heyday with that, um, and the Lord protected us from that. So that was one major part. Um another area where I really felt the Lord with me um is whenever we would go up two hours north to see Mois when he was in the facility up north. I when we would drive up there, I would start to feel this like writhing in my soul of never really being sure what we were gonna see when we walked in that door and knowing that I was gonna have to leave him. It was like absolute like writhing in agony. And when it came time to walk away and leave, my husband and I would get in the car and it felt so heavy, and yet like this strength came that I don't have words for. Um he gave us the strength to be able to say we we know we can't take care of him, and we know we have to leave him here. Um, and so it the first with Laney's passing, it was just that hedge with going up north to see Mois each time we saw him, it was a strength that I could not describe. Um, and and another kind of funny story about the strength is I Mois was non-ambulatory, and so I weigh about 135 pounds, and he weighed 145 pounds, and I could still carry him. And I when we first adopted him, that's a fun little story. An older woman at our church came up and she said she had heard that we were adopting him, and she just kind of put her arms around me and she said, You have taken on something really big here, and the Lord is either going to lighten your load or strengthen your back. And I all throughout his life, I would laugh and say, That little lady had no idea how literal that was, that he was literally gonna have to strengthen my physical body to be able to care for Moise. So such a fun little story that I have. Um, and then this the third really major piece that stands out um is when our son Moise passed. Um so he had been up north for four and a half years, and we brought him home. We were able to get him into a facility that is seven minutes from our home. And it was a beautiful facility. He was being very well cared for, and I could go and see him every day if I wanted. And we brought him home once a week to take him swimming and put him in a hot tub and do all the things that he loved to do. And I'd feed him his favorite meals, and um it was just kind of like that. Was kind of always our dream for him was for him to one day be able to live there where we was could be with him all the time. So we finally got him home. His behaviors had kind of lessened a little bit so that we could bring him to this facility, and it was just beautiful, it was just beautiful, such an answer to prayer. And then after he was there for seven months, he developed an aspiration pneumonia, and they called me and said that they had to take him to the emergency room, and Mois went to be with Jesus three days later, and I I did not see it coming. I just did not see that coming. Even though I had kind of prepared myself my whole life, in fact, I even hoped that he would go before me because I worried, you know, what's gonna happen to him if if I go before him and so I had kind of prepared that for myself for that, just because of all his medical needs, and then and then here we were faced with knowing that he's probably not gonna pull through this, and I just wasn't prepared. Um and we had to make some really hard decisions for Mois during that time. Um decisions that no parent should ever have to make for their child. But the peace of God was so abundantly clear through those three days that again it was just like he just wrapped his arm around us and he just carried us through that. Um and Mois passed. We actually ended up bringing him home on Hasis. Um and he was surrounded by all of his family, and he was only home for four hours before he actually passed, which nobody saw that coming. You know, we thought he would have him home for a couple of weeks. Um, and he was home for four hours, and he he stepped right from our arms into heaven, and he took his first steps in heaven, his first independent steps were in heaven.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Wow. Yeah, he has been through a lot.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Oh we had two very different types of death in our home, you know. We had the tragic death, and then we had the um one after 23 years of suffering, you know. And uh one is no less uh horrific than the other. Um but God was very much present in both of them. And the love of Jesus, this I've just become so acquainted with the love of Jesus through all of this that I don't think I would have ever had the opportunity to do without the fire.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

How has the um loss in grief how has your faith and even your relationship with the Lord changed because of that?

SPEAKER_01 33:21

If you were to put my faith twenty three years ago up with my faith now, it would be unrecognizable because I don't think before all of the suffering, I don't think I really understood what it was to have a deep, close relationship with Jesus. Um I I was raised a Christian my whole life, um, in a wonderful family, a wonderful Christian family, but I never knew that a walk with Jesus like that could exist. I just didn't know. You can't know that until you experience it. And um just the conversations that I have with him are so open and honest, and um I'm not afraid to ask all the questions to God because I know that he can handle them, and I know that in asking he brings us peace. And I I'm just I'm kind of in awe if if I'm honest, I'm in awe of what God has done in our life, and just the grace that he has poured out on us, the love that he has poured out on us, the mercy that he has poured out on us, um is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

So if there's one truth that you know now that you didn't know before the fire, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Um when we go through really hard things, there is a tendency to ask why me. And I think some people think, you know, maybe God is doing this to punish me, or maybe um, you know, there's all all the different things that we can ask, like why is God doing this, and why does good things happen to bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, and you know, all of these questions that we ask of God. And one of the things that I have really come to understand is that um God shows us his love for us by bringing trials and allowing trials to happen in our life because that is when he knows we are gonna draw closest to him. And we see his glory. I heard somebody say the other day, um, we see the glory of God in the valley much more than we will ever see the glory of God on the mountaintop because that's where we become, we become so acquainted with him, and he wants to be, he uses the trials and the suffering and the fire to bring us closer to him, and in becoming closer to him, we see his image, and he is little by little transforming us to look more like him. We will never look like him, we will never achieve that until we're in heaven, but little by little, through the fire, we are looking a little bit more like him.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yes, that's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us today. This was um very inspiring. I learned a lot. I learned some things too that's gonna help me as we all go through and some actual things that we can apply. If people want to connect to you and learn more, um, how can they do so?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

So I have a website. Um, uh my website is very much geared towards um special needs families and people who are walking through some of the trials of raising children with complex medical needs and disabilities. Um, that site is lovingtheleast.com. And then my social media, I'm on uh Facebook and um Instagram, and my tag there is Carol Holmes Author, so K-A-R-O-L-H-O-L-M-E-S author. So that's my Facebook and Instagram tags. Um, and then um I have two books that I published. Um, they're available on Amazon. Um, one is called Grace According to Gifts, and the other, which is actually um it's in the pre-order phase right now. It's I'm really excited. This one is Moisa's story. Um, it's called Only Jesus Knows Loving the World's Most Vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Wow, thank you. Thank you again. We appreciate you for sharing and um just being very, very vulnerable with us all. And I know that someone today is listening, and someone will definitely get something out of it. I know that I did. So, you all um give it up for our guests today one more time. Thank you, Carol. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

All right, so thank you all for joining us for another um moment at between the prayer and the promise. And remember that if you are between the prayer and the promise, remember that God is in the middle. And I definitely want to close with the prayer. Father Lord, we just come to you. Uh we come to you for every person listening who feels like uh they are in the furnace right now for the mother grieving, for the woman that may be facing life-altering decisions, for the one who feels like they're tested beyond what they can bear, or to say to refine and not destroy us, Father God Lord, trip away fear, burnout doubt, strengthen what remains, Father God. In the middle of grief, Father God, Lord, remind us that you are near in the middle of obedience. Remind us, Father God, Lord, that you are faithful. In the middle of our affliction, remind us, Father God, Lord, that you are forming something eternal in us. Give us clarity, Father God, Lord, as we are seeking your will. Give us comfort, Father God, Lord. Father God, Lord, as we are walking through, Father God, Lord, give comfort to the ones that may have lost someone, Father God, Lord. Give us courage, Father God, Lord, as we continue to say yes, hallelujah, even when it's hard. Hallelujah, even when the fire feels hot. Help us to trust you. Help us to trust you in the furnace, Father God, Lord. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Thank you for listening and be sure to join us next time.