Unified, Not Alone

Season 2 is here, and I'm kicking it off with my friend Laura Snedeker, a mom of two (with her third on the way), a photographer, and someone whose writing I've admired on Facebook for years before I ever got the guts to ask her to sit down with me.

We talk about a lot in this one. Laura's move out of a stagnant season and into a faith that's actually hers, not just handed down from a pastor or a parent. What it's looked like to grieve two miscarriages and then, more recently, the loss of her dad. And a moment in a hotel lobby on a mission trip where a youth pastor told me something I haven't stopped thinking about since, that the enemy wants us to believe our grief is so unique, so different from everyone else's, that we end up isolated in it.

That's really the heart of this episode. Whether it's a miscarriage, a hard childhood, a sleepless newborn, or losing someone you love, the enemy's favorite trick is convincing you that nobody else could possibly understand. But we are one body. Colossians 1:15 says Jesus is the firstborn over all creation, which means He's not just our Savior, He's our brother too. He wept for Lazarus before He ever raised him. He grieves with us.

Laura also gets real about mothering through fear, letting go of the all-or-nothing pressure around quiet time, and why she'll never again tell a grieving friend how lucky she was that her own situation turned out easier. Spoiler, that's not as encouraging as people think it is.

A few things we referenced if you want to go deeper:

Grace Like Scarlett by Adriel Booker, on grief and going under the wave instead of just trying to stay afloat.

Psalm 27, especially verse 13, on forcing yourself to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Lamentations 3, both the "his mercies are new every morning" verses and verse 31, "for no one is abandoned by the Lord forever."

Job, as proof that deep grief and unanswered questions have never been a sign of weak faith.

If you've ever felt like your grief, your struggle, or your mess disqualifies you from being understood, this episode is for you. You are not alone, and your amen doesn't have to be pristine to count.

Grab the Messy Amen merch, including the "you're not alone" shirt, at amessyamenpod.com. Find us on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, and listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Pocket Casts. If this episode meets you where you're at, leave a review or send it to a friend who needs it this week.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:34

Hello and welcome back to Messy Amen. This is a show where we talk about the good, the bad, and the holy parts of everyday life. I'm Michelle Torrey and I'm so glad you're here. Um today I have with me Laura Snedeker, and she this is a funny thing because we've um met each other years ago and then come um and then found out that she um she knows my husband. So this is a whole um whole thing, and I'm so excited. Hey Laura, how are you?

Speaker 1 1:02

I'm good, Michelle. How are you?

Speaker 2 1:04

So good. This um month has been um June flew by and I'm like, what just happened? So I think July's gonna be very similar.

Speaker 1 1:14

Yep, halfway through the year already. Crazy. More than half now.

Speaker 2 1:18

Oh my gosh. So um tell everyone a little bit about yourself and um what you're passionate about in life.

Speaker 1 1:26

Well, I am at the the the first foremost thing in my mind that came was like I'm a mom. Um, I am about uh just eight months pregnant with my third. Um I've got a little boy uh that's four and a little girl that's two. My husband is a very busy paramedic here. I live in the Jackson area of Michigan. Um, and so that's kind of my primary uh identity right now is mom and and wife, which I love, which is fantastic. Um, when I have a hot second to be another portion of myself, I do enjoy photography. I've had a photography business that I've ran for about 15 years off and on, and it's kind of it's on the back burner now, but it's one of those things that like I've culminated enough relationships from where I used to live and even here that I can just kind of pop into someone's life if they need like a quick photo shoot, which I really am blessed with and I enjoy. Um, so that and I just whenever I can, I will try to take in a new book or a new podcast. Um, if I have a hot second to myself, um, I love to read, love to write, love anything to do with like the arts. So that's where I'm at in life right now. So I'm enjoying it.

Speaker 2 2:37

Yeah, so as long as I've had you on Facebook, I've always been um your writing and just like your the way that you share your life updates and things that are going on, it feels so amaz like it's just amazing to read, and then the way um your writing style is just to die for. So, like can you tell me like how long like how long that's been a passion or how you like write that well?

Speaker 1 3:05

I don't know. I mean, I don't know. If I sat down and actually like looked at the mechanics of it, it's uh whenever anybody asks me to write something specific, I actually don't do as well because I I feel like I struggle on the grammatical side or something. I've always loved English, always loved grammar, always loved writing, reading, anything to do with the arts, and so like that's not foreign to me because I've I've always been a reader. More than late, I haven't read as much as I would like, of course, but I've always like enjoyed reading. Um and just I don't know. I I've I feel like if if I have a situation that I'm passionate about or that I can connect to, that's when I'm able to express myself better, much better actually, uh, in writing than I am in speaking. Like I talk a lot, but I feel like I beat her beat around the bush, you know, too much. But with writing, it's actually cathartic and helpful to be able to you can think about what you're saying more.

Speaker 2 3:55

Yeah, because like Michael Scott always said, I sometimes I start a sentence and I don't even know where I'm where it's gonna end up.

Speaker 1 4:02

Of course, you're an office fan. I knew we were gonna be good friends. So yeah.

Speaker 2 4:06

Well, uh it's by um by proxy, um, Jared and sure is. So I it's I you can't not be when your husband's super into stuff. Yeah, um, so yeah, that is um, so when we first met, tell me your side of the story, because this is uh like it's really funny because comp like just two different parts of my life uh then when you met when we met versus now. So how like how'd you meet me and how'd that work?

Speaker 1 4:34

I my biggest memory of you, like I would see you around town. We live we grew up in Marlett, you couldn't not pass each other basically. But my biggest remembrance of you was way before your husband, who I went to school with, and he was a couple grades behind me, and I kind of knew his sister better than you than him. Um, but I don't know why I have this memory, but I think you worked at Dollar General or one of the little dollar stores in town for a little while. Okay. I was probably working at the subway down this down the street at the time, or maybe um I worked for the physical therapy clinic in town too. And I just remember when I met you, I got worried that I already had met you and didn't remember, which I hope wasn't the case, but because you were just so congenial and like easy to talk to. And I don't remember what we were talking about, but you were just chattering about something, and I was like, Okay, do I know her? Like I know of her, but I don't remember actually meeting her. But I feel like she's just like a friend that I not forgot about, but it was great. So that's my first memory of you was just you were sweet and you were energetic and you were just chattering about your day, and I was like, Good Lord, this is great! Like, more people need to be like this. So that's my first memory of you. And then I remember when I saw that Jared and you know, you guys got involved, and I was like, wait, that's that girl! Like, wait a minute, I know this now. So, but um yeah, that's my biggest that's my like big core memory of you when I first talked with you, and then somehow Facebook the the the joy of social media, like you connect with people that you kind of half know and you start to like, hey, I'm I'm jibing with her, she's similar to me, or you know, we have common interests and stuff, so yeah, that's what I remember.

Speaker 2 6:18

So I I love that there was uh warmth and a light there because that was coming from uh like I actually didn't grow up in Marlett, I grew up in Ipsilania, then I lived in Midland for five years. Okay but my dad was the United Methodist pastor in Marlett for like five or six years, and um so w or I think it was maybe it might have been four, sorry. It doesn't matter. But um, so I m when he moved, I ended up moving back and forth a few times between his house and then my mom's in Ypsilani. And then which had been a hard um choice because on one hand I really liked um I liked some of the influence and um you know hearing my dad preach and some of the influence there with my dad and my stepmom, but then there was n um all the people my age were off to college and I ended up dropping out of Spring Harbor, um, which um close to us, yeah. Yeah. So the it was that was a whole thing, but then I never felt like you know, I had a home after like that early adulthood patch. Um, so then finally I had to um I decided that even um even if things weren't always um super peaceful with my mom, um, that I would try a church in the area that my sister had been going to, and then I got plugged in and everything went uphill from there. So 2017 was that um kind of a breaking point for me. I recommitted my life to Jesus and then um really just said, okay, Lord, I'm all in. I I always this is so funny. I almost dated two guys in the spring and early summer of 2017, and then I was like, oh, just kidding. And I was like, and then met Jared in two months later. I love that.

Speaker 1 8:08

I love that how it's like you you don't have anything but like what's right in front of you, but like God has that long dragged out path. Ugh, the stories that I could tell too of situations like that where there's like a pivotal point in your in your life, and you don't even realize that you're at this massive like fork in the road. And then you look back like, oh wow, what if I had gone down that way?

unknown 8:30

Like, whoo!

Speaker 2 8:30

So yeah, so that's just God's grace, and so as everything's played out, now here we are almost 10 years later, and there have been more ups and downs. So may um I've been go this is be my eighth year of marriage um this October, and then even then I can tell you that we've had ups and downs in our finances, and you know, things were not always wise that we need to work on stewardship and whole nine yards. But um just yeah, so coming back to some of your story, um, what would you say um would be a theme that God has like either brought you through or something that you've learned maybe that was harder, um a nod to the show being a messy amen, or that's something that you're walking through right now?

Speaker 1 9:23

I think for me, and you were talking about 2017, my life had a huge upheaval in 2016, um the year before. And you know, I had grown up in Marlette all my life, you know, I didn't have that same um situation with you, like you were kind of back and forth with a couple places. Um, but I guess my life at that point was very stagnant. It was very the same. Um won't get into all the details, but anybody that knows my story knows that I lived a very kind of well, I'll I'll use the word stagnant. Like I was in the same space for a very long time outside of my control. And when I met my husband in 2016, he lived in Jackson to me was like it could have been Mars, you know, it was so far away. Especially when you live in Marlett all your life. And um, I feel like that point there, I was just about to turn 30. Um, I was turning, or I had just turned 30, and I feel like that new decade was kind of an enlightenment for me to be like, okay, I am where I am. Obviously, God can use you in whatever spot that you were in. I had a great group of friends, I had a great, you know, great um social life there, but there were some things in my life that I knew weren't for me, and I just didn't really know what to do with that. You know, like it's you've you know you need a change, but you have no idea how to make that change. But lo and behold, within the next two to three years, things changed where um I started living in town, I moved out of my parents' home, and um it just a whole new world opened up, not just through my husband, but through some of the people that he knew and the church that he was involved with in this area. We go to a church in Chelsea. And it was one of those things where again, you didn't realize that you were at this huge fork, but you were. And then you look back and you think, what if I had stayed there or what if I had gone the extra the other way? Like, wow, what what I would have been missing. But I feel like that started my path into realizing not just who I am, but who the Lord sees me as. Because a lot of times when you're in one spot and when you're with the same group of people that have um you know guided you and directed you, you kind of see God through their eyes or you see yourself through their eyes, and you don't actually maybe know who Jesus is and what he and what he is and what he wants for you specifically. And I feel like that was my turning point to be like, well, who are you? And what do you have from me outside of other people's opinions? I mean, yes, you know, good counsel is amazing. Um, but when you have to actually sit down with like, I'm an adult now, what do you want from me and who are you? And I feel like that began a whole new journey for me to eventually then move away and you know have a whole brand new life. And I'm still learning that, but I feel like that was the first time I actually sat down with that concept of like God can speak to me directly, not just through a pastor, not just through a parent, but me. Like this is this is our relationship. So that really changed a lot for me at that point.

Speaker 2 12:23

That that is um so beautiful, and I love that nod of even if somebody might have good things to say about you, it doesn't always mean that like if it's the same thing over and over, maybe it will you would get like kind of numbed to the idea, or it wouldn't just feel the same. Like you say, oh my dad says this, or my so um so-and-so says this, but they're supposed to, you might not feel the same um over and over. I don't know what that might not make sense.

Speaker 1 12:51

I get what you're saying, yeah. And I feel like when you when you are on your own or when you do kind of branch away from what you know, you have to start relying on not yourself, but like listening to the Lord and not just waiting for someone to hand you down uh uh you know directions. You gotta dig. And I feel like that's the first time that I started doing that, and it wow, it really it changed everything for me. So yeah.

Speaker 2 13:16

Not a hand-me-down faith, but something that you grow into. Yep. As you've talked about um transitioning your faith, moving out of your parents and stuff like that, and you know, in marriage and having kids, how would you say um your faith has evolved in motherhood?

Speaker 1 13:32

Oh, that's yeah, that's the question of the century, because it is so different. You feel like you've arrived, you know, and then you have a kid and you're like, oh well. I think for me it's like the biggest dependence is um just the the daily survival. And I I hate using the word survival, but you get it, you know what I'm saying? Like 'cause some days that's all you do. And I feel like, yes, obviously you have the faith of like um the the baby being healthy born. We had two miscarriages. We started out our parenting journey with that, and so that put a huge shift in our faith of like um you kind of have to grieve a normal process, you know what I mean? You kind of have to sit back and think uh every scan and every um every milestone is met with happiness but also trepidation of like, is this gonna happen? So your faith even before the children started to come for us, it was it had changed because we started to look at it differently and I think it did make us it did grow it because you are so scared and you think you you can't help but imagine the worst, you know, when that happens. And so finally when the baby comes, you kind of take a deep breath and you think, Oh, okay, like we're safe, you know, in some aspects, but then then comes just parenthood and figuring out what to do with this little person that has absolutely like no way of surviving outside of you, and you're like, How you know? So I feel like it's made it stretch just with in the beginning, you know, realizing what loss can steal from you and and and it made us appreciate it all the much more, you know, when we did have our first baby. Um, and then I think the faith has just grown, obviously, knowing you realize just how much you don't know and how much you can't do on a regular basis. Sometimes before parenthood, you're like, Yeah, I got this going, you know. Like, I mean, me and God were tie, you know. I maybe you feel like you don't even need him as much, but when you're a parent, it just opens the floodgates wide open of realizing just how much you truly do need help and truly don't know. So, um, so yeah, I feel like it's just grown it in abundance since we had kids, even before.

Speaker 2 15:48

So, how do you um find time to be in the word? Um, with you know, you never know when the kids are gonna wake up and stuff, busy schedules, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 15:56

I think the biggest thing that's helped me, and I didn't realize this, I will say, I'll be honest, my journey with staying in the word and staying close to the Lord and that aspect and like the mechanics of it, you know, like actually reading your Bible praying. It slacked a lot with my first just because I'm not really like a type A person necessarily, but I'm an all or nothing. So for instance, like um, if I can't have like, you know, the quiet time that I know that I should have, you know, like the hour and before someone wakes up, you know, my coffee and you know, my journal, I feel like, oh, just forget it. I can't do it today. You know what I'm saying? And and for me, obviously, that never happens unless it's some miracle of God. And when I I struggled with that with my first because I just kind of felt like eventually that would happen. And nine times out of ten, it just doesn't. So when this came, I realized, okay, I can't wait for that perfect opportune moment. And it is literally just bits and pieces of like a podcast here, going over the sermon that you heard on half heard on Sunday because you were half in the nursery, you know, going back and listening to it. Um, fostering that, uh, like when I talk with my friends, fostering more like theological discussions or talking about it with them that way. So you find different avenues of just saying, This is my 30 minutes that I hope is undisturbed, and if it is, I'm not gonna come back to it, you know. So I feel like it's just again changed a part of who I am in order to make it work because it's yeah, it's not gonna work the way I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 2 17:30

Letting letting that evolve and then find stealing those moments when you know it's not gonna be that, you know, Instagram perfect little here, let me like the TikToks that says come do a Bible study with me, and there's a iced coffee, and then crack open the Bible, open the commentary, highlight, write notes. So when you said that, I had to bite my tongue because I've never heard anybody say that thing that like I think that's literally so more than relatable. I can't even tell you because I want that, I want to that selfish time myself, but I also know what a big ministry it is to be a kind and gracious, godly mother. Right, just like oh okay, Lord. I really um try to speak on and do my best to um really have my own personality and never lose my hobbies and interests that uh I feel like I'm passionate about, besides having the kids, and then bringing them into those as much as I can, and then b finding a way to balance it out.

unknown 18:35

Sure.

Speaker 1 18:35

Which sounds funny because I that goes against my nature of like because I said like I said, it's a like an all-or-nothing situation with me that I've gotten better about, but like you know, my son's four now, so like he can actually recognize if I'm sitting down and reading you know the Bible or getting him involved with like, hey, this is what mom's reading. Did you know that? And then tell him. So for me, it's not just so compartmentalized, and I love the fact that you strive to still be yourself and not put that on the burner for the next what 18 years, you know what I'm saying? It's a long time to lose yourself.

Speaker 2 19:11

But honestly, it's feels like it's um for me personally, my big things are um Bible journaling and creative journaling, scrapbooking, like so a lot back in the you know, I'm sure I don't know if your m um your parents did, but like scrapbooking where you have the big 12 by 12s. Yeah, like your mother-in-law does it, yeah. Okay, so that I feel like is um ginormous and just very not my style. So my version is a cross between like scrapbooking and junk journaling and journal and memory keeping. So I um actually I can show you because so this is my pride and joy, and if you can see this um spine right here is um completely like curved because there is um about 365 days of um pictures and um like none of that so I I had to um I really got into it towards the end of the year and I started um so I did a little bit more like washi tape and then um but then like papers and stickers and like ripping so ripping off scrapbook, so then if it's like a um really special day there um there can be a bunch of pictures, and then if it was a boring day, so you can so it evolved. So we're talking about evolving in motherhood. So this is my um very literal and f physical evidence of how you have to adapt to the changes. So it started off as prayers, right? Yeah, and then um, you know, I was pregnant. We had last four um we have popsicle Sunday. The Sunday that's closest to 4th of July at church is called Popsicle Sunday. Okay, yeah. So last year on Popsicle Sunday I had a watermelon baby in um and I was ginormous. Then when you flip through, then the baby is born. So then um not as much writing, um, more pictures, and then I got very behind, and then then it's like start I then I realized that if I was gonna keep doing this, it had to change.

Speaker 1 21:36

I love that you didn't just say, you know what, this isn't working. It's like, well, how do I make it work? And I I love that because again, that's not my nature, but I want it to be, and I'm striving for that, and I love that idea because it's like and you can see the busyness of your life through that journal. Like in the beginning, your handwriting's concise and consistent, the pictures are all perfect. And then when you get to the end, it's just like this love bomb that just fell onto the page. And I absolutely like, yeah.

Speaker 2 22:08

I love that. I found out that to make it enjoyable when I was catching up because I got almost a month behind, I was like, you know what? This is gonna be how I remember my life. And so and so a lot of times people put a big emphasis on January 1st, right? Um so question for you What is your relate relationship towards the new year um versus your birthday? Well would you say that you think of them different as far as the new year, new like because I really don't love the um like calendar years because to me it's almost like yes, it's the new year, but it doesn't feel as personal as your birthday. So exactly.

Speaker 1 22:54

I've never been asked that question. That's a good question, and I personally don't like to make new year's resolutions because again, I'm an all or nothing. And I don't know how many times that when I was younger, I would well, everyone's doing it, so I would pick a resolution or pick something that I wanted to work on, and by January 15th, if I made it that far, I would have maybe missed a couple pages of not reading my Bible or something, and then I'd be like, Well, I can't read all of this now, so just let's just forget about it. So I have I think I actually like made an Instagram post about that several years ago of just how I don't like. And so I love the idea of looking at it more of like your birthday because that's your calendar year, so to speak, or that's kind of like if you want to do a reboot or something. Um, I love that. And I think it's the the less pressure you put on yourself for stuff like that when you're a mom makes it enjoyable. And you would never want to approach something like what you're doing there or something that you want to change about your life with like I don't know, just a feeling of like yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's not the whole that's the whole the whole point is to not feel that way when you're doing something that you're passionate about or doing something to embed yourself. So yeah, I don't definitely am not a resolution girl at all. Um my relationship with my birthday, it is different of like, oh, a new decade or oh a new year has begun. Yeah, I could see myself doing something new based on that rather than January 1st.

Speaker 2 24:21

So So what I um thought of uh on the spot was the time of the calendar, like every year going by, yeah, doesn't have anything to do with us. No. Because the time the time and the years would just keep going whether we were here or not. But when you think of it as your birthday and you say this is what happened between this birthday and this birthday, then you can see like growth and memories and stuff like that. So if you're um if you wanted a you know low-key um hobby or anybody listening does that um the astology notebooks have very thin paper, but they take well to um lots of different like gel pens and um they've been um they hold up pretty great when you um overstuff them.

Speaker 1 25:07

We're gonna send me links to all that after this because I definitely want to do that starting with my new birthday coming up in October. So yeah, I would love to go.

Speaker 2 25:15

It'll be also in my Amazon storefront. That's nice. I got to play on that. So yeah. I'm a um aspiring influencer, am I right?

Speaker 1 25:27

Yes, aren't we?

Speaker 2 25:28

All but no, at least you have something good to say and offer, so I just am working my way towards a thousand um followers on my personal TikTok so that way I can do the TikTok shop because I'm like a lot of times I feel like you can tell, I feel like when people are promoting something that they don't really care about, and then when they are when somebody's promoting something, they're like, This is the best thing in the whole wide world.

Speaker 1 25:52

Yep, yep. Nope, nope, I hear, yeah, loud and clear on that. So yep.

Speaker 2 25:56

So I want to promote stuff because I'm so passionate about like, you know, oh yeah, this is so fun or whatever. Yeah, you need this in your life.

Speaker 1 26:03

Like, yeah, totally get it.

Speaker 2 26:06

So tell me more about working through um grief and um those personal emotional struggles as you've continued uh, you know, you're raising kids and trying to have a good marriage and stuff like that, because uh then maybe dig a little deeper on something that was a a big um hurt in your life.

Speaker 1 26:29

Yeah, well, we talked about the miscarriages already, and that was like I feel like there were snippets and times in my life that were really rough, but that was one of the first major um traumatic experiences that kind of just I don't want to say came out of nowhere, but you obviously don't go into marriage and parenthood thinking that that's what's gonna reach you on the other side um the first time you're pregnant or the second time or whatever. Um, and I feel like for me, that helped um just make connections with people that I never would have made connections before. And so I I never would say like I'm I'm grateful for the situation, but in a way I can see where love poured out of that and the legacy that those two children now have, other than being in heaven. I don't know how many people that I've connected with because of those situations. A lot of like the older generation, like I would have, I feel like this generation today, one thing we got going for us is that we're able to talk about our emotions and feelings, sometimes to a fault, but at least we're comfortable with like speaking out loud our situation or our um issues, our traumas, whatever. But I don't know how many women that were probably, you know, like 50 plus, 60 plus even, and they would come quietly and say, you know, I had a miscarriage too. And they would even say it in a quiet way, and I was like, you don't have to say it. Like, I mean, if that's how you heal, and that's fine, but like I feel like it was a whole different um environment when they were young, and maybe they could have healed better, connected more had it been a more open door, like it is. And so that's why I made the decision to help myself by being open about it. And I feel like the Lord helped me with that grieving process rather than to um there's a book that I read, it's by Adriel Booker, and she's amazing. I always recommend this book to any moms that have had any loss. It's it was called Grace Like Scarlet, and the Scarlet is spelt with two T's because I believe that was her daughter's name. And she has a com she made a comment in the the book. I remember the first time I read it was my first miscarriage, and she said, Oftentimes when we have a tidal wave of grief or a tidal wave of trauma or whatever, we seek to stay afloat. And then honestly, she goes, Sometimes God can meet you if you go under and you go deep. And I that's always like makes me emotional thinking about that because she's like, God will meet you in the deep end. Go on it, it's kind of like a surfer. She likened it to like what surfers do when a huge wave comes. They sometimes will go underneath it and come back up. And so that has meant a lot to me in my life, thinking sometimes when things get too heavy, go deep. That's where Christ is, and he'll bring you back up. And along the way, you can bring up some people too. And so that kind of started my understanding of grieving and living. And then I lost my dad last year, and that was huge too, because um just oh, there's just so much um uh leading up to it, and the situation with him was more of not grieving what w could have been, you know, based off of like now he's gone, and I mean some of those memories now we can't get back. But for me with my dad, just because of situations in our lives, I kind of was grieving what should have been in a way. And grief, unfortunately, death has a finality to it in this life um that we don't have to experience in the next one. But sometimes things don't get resolved in this life. And so I feel like I'm still processing that grief, um, dealing with the fact of not having things resolved completely before he went. Um, with us, yes, but just like just some things in my life that um I wish would have been different growing up. And um so all that to say that changes how you mother because sometimes all this is in the back of your brain while little people are still asking for snacks and misbehaving and and needing things, and it is really hard sometimes to split yourself and say, I'll think about this later, or I'll talk to my therapist about this, or I'll talk to my pastor about it. Um, but still having to move forward. And again, it's just a reliance on Christ and being like taking one one minute at a time, literally. Yeah. And so yeah, that's what I've been learning with it.

Speaker 2 30:58

I feel that. Um, so um, as I think I've started mentioning in episodes, but um lost my sister last September, so the dynamic with the small humans that we're raising and trying to have that grief at the same time sometimes isn't very possible, but you know, to give yourself the time to um cry when we need to and uh you know pour it out to the Lord. Um, I really um liked the quote from the book. So there's a song that we've sang at church. It's it to me, it's an interesting song for like a worship setting, but um it says we were tossed in the water, but we never went under because um Jesus, you were always on time. I love that. But then you said, What if we did go under and we came back up? So like there's that um dichotomy of the two situ scenarios where it's not the end of the world if we went under.

Speaker 1 31:58

We weren't necessarily drowning for not drowning for good. No, and and I feel like sometimes we as Christians, especially if you've been in the church for a long period of time, um, I feel like we sometimes see grief or deep distress as almost kind of like a maybe our faith isn't strong enough kind of thing. Um, you know, like why why do I feel so burdened? Why do I feel like I'm literally drowning? Like, what's wrong with me that I can't rise above that? And Christ doesn't ask us to feel any way other than just to lean on him. Um, I mean, the the Bible's chalked full of we have a book called Lamentations. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's nothing wrong with deep abiding grief and questioning him and wondering where he is. And I feel like that spoke to me when she was saying, like, if you do go deep and go under, you're not going to perish and you're not going to drown because he will meet you even there, even if you can't stay afloat. And that meant the world to me because, you know, and people and they meant they meant well. I know that. People would come to me at, you know, post-miscarriage and try to give me silver linings, you know, some made sense, some didn't, you know. But I knew that their hearts were in the right place. But I remember nothing spoke to me more than when someone would say, It's okay to be angry, or it's okay to be really, really sad for a very long time if need be. And it gave me permission to grieve in a way that I could find the Lord then. And he says, No, like I am here in your grief. I'm not waiting for you to be over it. So yeah, it's um that made a big difference in my healing process for sure.

Speaker 2 33:39

Yeah. Um, so June 21st, um, well, whatever was so Father's Day um was very different this year for me than most years. I spent um the day traveling and we were I was on a short-term mission trip um to the Dominican Republic with um a group called Hope International. And honestly, one of the best experiences of my life. Um, but something that was like stood out to me even more so than what we the work we were doing, which was one of the main points, was some of the long bus rides. Um I was doing like just kind of one of them I was a l doing a little bit of trauma dumping and kind of getting some frustrations out, which r made me realize that I um needed uh to uh uh get my heart right and ask um God to help me forgive some people and then let just really let go of stuff that I thought that I had but had not, apparently. Um and you know how stuff can get brought up, you think you let go and it and it gets brought up again. Well, um, so that those that was two different occasions. One was the trauma thing, and then the other, um, another bus ride on the way back to the resort was um praying and just a lot of healing um in my heart. There one um there was a youth pastor, and he um he asked if we could pray together, and I was like, sure, but let's go um closer to the lobby of the hotel um because a group of people were talking really loud on the other side of me and I couldn't focus anymore. But he has the um spiritual gift of knowledge, and so he we were talking, and he was first he said something really cool about um about grief, and he said that the enemy wants us to remember and um point out things that are different about our situation that makes our grieving special or um not the same as anybody else's because I was saying, Well, it's not fair my sister um my sister died from um complications with her liver that turned into a bile duct infection and then went septic and this whole nine yards, and then he said, because I was like, but but it's not it but this and then he said the enemy wants you to think of every way that your grief is different, but we need to remember um that in Christ that we're unified we're not alone. I'm so I can I can think that I'm I'm special or I'm so different in my grieving. Well, so and so lost their sibling to X, Y, and Z, and then another person lost their sibling to X, Y, and Z, and then I had I was different because of this, but that's the enemy that wants us to feel less um unified and alone.

Speaker 1 36:32

Making that division and making it so maybe what you read in the Bible, well, it might have helped them, but they didn't have my situation. My situation is this, like, so it's I that's huge, and seeing it from an aspect that we are we are connected because what's the worst thing? What's what's the biggest part of depression? Feeling alone, feeling like nobody understands, nobody understands where I'm coming from, my situation is completely different, and yeah, that's huge to be able to say, like, no, it's written for the body of Christ, I'm part of that body, and so these promises apply to me. And I yeah, that's that's amazing.

Speaker 2 37:13

When I have felt the most um like I want to cut myself off from the world and just be in my own pit of despair, which sometimes we have good reasons to obviously like there's the this grief and these struggles that we face, but um, I'm learning now to combat that. Is so a lot of the things I'm going to say and that we've talked about would have um pricked me the wrong way, or could sound like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, that you don't know what I'm feeling. But that's the point, right? So Jesus grieved Lazarus before he raised him from the dead, right?

Speaker 1 37:52

Knowing he was going to do that, yeah.

Speaker 2 37:54

Yeah, yeah. So he knew he was gonna do that, but he took the time to grieve and wept. So knowing that Jesus could step into those emotions, yeah, um, as fully man and fully God, so he had human emotions and human temptations, and so he understands us. So another thing that um Pastor Connor said on the trip was to imagine Jesus with us when we're grieving because we're not alone, right? To imagine that him there and then what he would say, because when we say it wasn't fair, he's like we can imagine him sitting next to us and saying, Yeah, that really sucks. So I don't that might not be a biblical yes, that sucks, but to understand that Jesus is fe uh like God holds all of our tears and knows what we're what's going on in our hearts, and to we can walk with that with our you know, because the Bible says this was just mind blowing, but I like I don't um I think I figured it out when I was thinking of Jesus as um so our savior and our friend, but Colossians um chapter one says that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. So who is your firstborn is your son, but your daughter's brother, right?

Speaker 3 39:17

Right, yep.

Speaker 2 39:18

So a firstborn, and if we're children of God, that's Jesus is our brother.

Speaker 1 39:25

Right?

Speaker 2 39:26

Yeah, yeah. So if um Jesus is all of those things like are the Lamb of God, the lion of Judah, all these things, but he is also the f God's firstborn, the firstborn of all creation, with God at creation. The word was with God in the beginning, right? So these light bulbs are going off, and I'm like, wait, so if uh Jesus is the firstborn and I'm also a daughter of God, that means that he's can he can grieve with me losing my sister.

Speaker 1 39:59

And he understands that not as like a God figurehead father only, but a a parallel, like right here, not this way, too. And that's huge to understand that. And again, that kind of falls into learning who he really is for you, and not just through the eyes of other people or just from you know what you've learned on rote, especially if you've been a Christian for a very long time. You get an you get an image of Christ based off of sometimes who your surrounding people are, and that's not always a bad thing, but it can be with these intimate, tender moments if you don't understand just how close he is, um, all the time, not just in grieving processes, but um I think another thing too, I I wrote down there's a verse in Lamentations. I think it's the I didn't write the chapter, I wrote the verse. Um I think it's in chapter three, but it's the this this I recall to mind, therefore I have hope. And then I love this part. It says, it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail, if not. And so it's like not saying we won't have those deep awful moments, but you won't be consumed completely, you won't drown completely. And I feel like that's something uh you don't experience until you're actually in that space. Um so I've always that verse has always helped me a lot too. I think it's I think it's Lamentations 3, and I think it's like 20, 21, something like that, in there.

Speaker 2 41:38

Okay, I'm gonna jump in with verse 31 because this is jumping out at me. This says, For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. Though he bring um brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love, for he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow.

unknown 41:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2 41:55

I didn't know that was a Bible verse until five seconds ago. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 41:59

Yeah. Well, that's that's what Lamentations is there. He wrote a specific book for grief, and it's so that proves that grief in itself, it's not a byproduct of you not being faithful enough. It's not a byproduct of you. I mean, look at Job. Look what that man went through. Yeah.

Speaker 2 42:18

Well, there are some Christians that might say, oh, that we have victory in Christ and the mind of Christ, you know, in the New Testament mindset, that we don't have to like sit in feelings or we don't have to feel some type of way. And I like my just knee-jerk reaction is, well, first of all, that's not fair because we're still, you know, wrestling with feelings here and there, and that um I don't believe that saying the new covenant and the new hope in Christ is completely um disregarding the old testament. Oh no, no. Because most people would still go to the Psalms, most people will still argue for the Proverbs, so then why wouldn't we um encourage any takeaways from the other books with because I think we can have takeaways with the mindset of Christ and then they can mesh together, you know?

Speaker 1 43:12

Don't cherry pick things. No, that totally makes sense, yeah.

Speaker 2 43:15

Yeah, because um, but because we um I've also found out that if you read the law that God had reasons for a lot of um like for what was um said that just because we have Jesus as our sacrifice, so we like obviously we don't have to sacrifice anything like at the altar and like chop its head off, but there's reasons for everything, like the mixing of fibers, there's um different frequencies that everything the uh clothing has, and um like I'm start I'm just starting to think that polyester is of the devil because the other day when I was in the Dominican I sure ended up being like a polyester blend because I thought, well, if it had longer sleeves, it would be protecting me from the sun.

unknown 43:59

But

Speaker 2 44:00

Then I'm like, well, isn't polyester like mostly plastic? So I felt like I was roasting even worse. Like you're in a beam fan. I'm like, I thought I figured I'm like, this feels even worse than if I wasn't wearing a shirt. Right. Like if I had like a tank top. So I'm like, what because linen, um, linen is such a like a positive frequency, it's supposed to be like good for us. And then um, and then if you have the different fabrics, it's canceling out. I'm not like some psycho weirdo. There, I just was saying all that that there's like there's reasons. Yeah. People say that the laws are negated because of Jesus.

Speaker 1 44:38

Yeah, we are bound by the law, we know that. But being bound by something doesn't mean that you can't learn from it and be like that. There's a reason why he just didn't randomly pick random things not to do just because he please God and he can. Like, there's yeah, no, I I get you.

Speaker 2 44:53

So another thing, I would just say, how about in motherhood and parenting, what are some things that God has taught you and maybe some Bible verses that have encouraged you through those things?

Speaker 1 45:07

Um, going back to just um I guess letting go of fear. Not letting go completely, because obviously fear is always there when your baby does something different or you try something new. Um but I feel like my life verses in Psalm 27, like the whole the whole chapter is basically my life chapter. I don't know if I have an actual like verse out of it, but verse 13 is um that I had fainted unless I believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So basically you have to force yourself to see good things sometimes when you're in the midst of motherhood, because when it is 10 a.m. and you've only had two hours of sleep and just the the mechanics of it all, the physicality of it all that makes it really, really tough for you to keep going. I feel like sometimes you have to make yourself see the good, the world that we live in. There's not been a generation that hasn't said that. You know what I mean? Like people always say this is the worst, and it's like, okay, well, it's not. I mean, you know, it is at some point.

Speaker 2 46:05

There's always pros and there's always pros and cons with each other.

Speaker 1 46:08

There is. I'm sure the people, I'm sure the first Christians in the catacombs probably had one over on us, but I'm you know what I'm saying? Like, there's always been evil and there's always been sadness, and there's always been children, you know. It's not like you can just put on put children on hold. Like that's the their gifts. So it's like if God's given me this gift, I have to somehow fight my way through this mess of fear and worry. Because I can't hand that down to them. Um, we always tease my son as me and my daughter is my husband because he's the wall, he's the worry war, he's the one that's already looking at you know, six different situations that could happen if he jumps off this thing. Sis is just back there, let me add it. Like she has no fear, she's just second born all the way. And I have to be careful with Adam that my like the the the fears that are unfounded or the worries that just are there because I'm a worrier, I don't want to hand that over to him and give him that life beat. So that helps me. Um, to kind of put it in check and be like, okay, yeah, I hate the fact that he's doing this, but it's a good thing for him, you know, and and and to try to infuse that. So that's been a huge help to me is just living through the fear and not saying, I'm never gonna be fearful, but to find goodness and to keep going pushing through that, you know, and and finding good ways to still teach them good things.

Speaker 2 47:30

So yeah, that um it's so funny that you said that because that's one of my new favorite psalms just in the last couple years, um, or maybe in the last year, but um it like I'm just gonna read it because it's only 14 verses. But it says, The Lord is my light and my salvation, so why should I be afraid? The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble? When evil people come to devour me, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will not be afraid. Even if I am attacked, I will remain confident. The one thing I ask of the Lord, the thing I seek most, is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord's perfections, and meditating in his temple. For he will conceal me there when troubles come. He will hide me in his sanctuary, he will he will place me out of the reach of a on a high rock. Then I will hold my head high above my enemies who surround me. At his sanctuary I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy, singing and praising the Lord with music. Hear me as I pray, O Lord, be merciful and answer me. My heart has heard has heard you say, Come and talk with me, and my heart responds, Lord, I am coming. Do not turn your back on me, do not reject your servant in anger. You have always been my helper. Don't leave me now, don't abandon me. O God of my salvation, even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close. Teach me how to live, O Lord. Lead me along the right path, for my enemies are waiting for me. Do not let me fall into their hands, for they accuse me of things I've never done. With every breath they threaten me with violence. I am yet I am confident I will see the Lord's goodness while I'm here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord, be brave and courageous. Come, yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Speaker 1 49:22

It's chocked full of and he's telling you, you're gonna have issues, you're gonna have griefs, you're gonna have sadnesses, angers even. I'm still here, and I feel like that just it's it's the perfect chapter. It's always spoken to me, and it's has spoken to me in different ways as I've become a mom. Um it continues to the like the word is the word, and it it's it's never changing, but it can evolve.

Speaker 2 49:47

It's alive and accurate, like a sharper than a double-edged sword. So um what are there any other um verses or things that have been a huge encouragement to you lately? Just the fact of like what you're doing, talking.

Speaker 1 50:03

My uh I have two, I have uh several really good friends, but two in particular, um, Kristen and Jules, and we tease that we basically should just record our voice messages to each other and create a podcast. Um, because that's what we do. We give each other a rundown of you know life in itself. We talk about theological things, then we start crying about something random. But that has helped tremendously, that just connection with other moms that understand how messy things can be.

Speaker 2 50:32

And yeah, you said I'm encouraging you.

Speaker 1 50:36

But it is, it it truly is. It's when you find mom find people that are okay being messy and being being open about that. I don't know anything more discouraging. This is just totally random, but it it ties in with motherhood. When you're when you actually come to a space that you're being honest with someone that maybe isn't like a close friend and someone's like, How are you? The first thing out of your mouth is like, I'm fine, you know, and even though you're not fine. But sometimes if you're vulnerable enough to like say, Oh, well, the baby um baby didn't sleep last night. I've always had traditionally, I my kids don't sleep until they're two. I just I'm praying for a unicorn baby this time. Um hopes about it. And I don't know how many times I would I well, I didn't say it very often, but when I would actually voice that and be like, Yeah, just really tough, you know, didn't have a lot of sleep, you know, Adam didn't sleep again. The worst thing and the one thing that I didn't want to hear was someone being like, Oh, that's so strange. My baby slept from three months on. Like, why, first of all, would you say that? And second of all, like, how is that helping? So it's like, good for you. Like, do you have a manual?

Speaker 2 51:45

Or when I would say um how uh how much I dislike pregnancy and I like if I've puked a lot, and then um somebody saying, Oh, I I never got sick ever. I'm just like, cool, well, glad that you're God's favorite, but what this is not fun for me.

Speaker 1 52:01

What led you to think that that's gonna be helpful to me? Like, I don't understand. Like, what a weird thing to say out loud. Yeah, like I might think, oh good God, I'm so glad that that didn't happen to me, but I would never tell someone like I've never experienced that. Like, how is that for you?

Speaker 2 52:15

You know, like you were talking about miscarriage, you'd be like, I could never imagine going through that. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 52:21

Girl, the stuff that you it's amazing, some of the stuff that comes out of people's mouths with good intention. Like, I for a while I kind of felt bitter about like, why don't you people think before you talk? Like I would never say that. But but then I got to the point where like I did under I started to understand that some people truly do think that they're helping. Now, not everybody, I think people sometimes just mouth off, but but I had to look at it from their point of view, their generation, um, you know, and sometimes things would come across really harsh, but I knew they didn't mean it. But but again, that helped me to make sure that I I was like, note to self, don't ever say that ever to anybody if they ever are honest with me about how they're feeling. So all that to say yes, an encouragement with it is a huge encouragement to speak to other moms, whether they're older than me, younger than me, different generations, my two best friends, like they have kids in their some of them have kids in their teens, some have kids in like early elementary, I've got the littles. Um, and that's such a huge thing to just sit down and be like, wow, today stopped. I love my kids, but wow, they were annoying, you know, and to just have that honesty because sometimes in Christian, depending on where you fall, in whatever sphere of Christianity or or or or churches, sometimes you don't get that authenticity and you end up feeling alone and thinking, well, what's wrong with my kids, or what's wrong with me? Why can't I handle this? So stuff like this, showing the messy side of things, like it's incomparable. So yeah, that's been a huge help to me too.

Speaker 2 53:51

This um that's why I started the show is um sometimes you leave church and you would say, Man, so and so is going off so fast to lunch, or they had their kid was screaming and had to go take a nap, or this, that, or the other thing. Um, well, this past Sunday I I didn't want to leave because I um had missed the last two Sundays and then I was in the nursery this one, so I really hadn't talked to people in like felt like forever. But the show is that we get so busy and people aren't always able to be honest on Sundays, or they might think it's not appropriate because obviously we can um carry a lot of heavy stuff week to week, and um, and then if you don't get a turn at your you know regular scheduled Bible study with your um other ladies, then you really don't you really might not get time to just you know spill your feelings in your guts. So when we when I say uh messy amen, what does the title make you think of?

Speaker 1 54:54

It's finding goodness even though things can be rough. It's saying yes, Jesus, yes you're good, and yes, it's beautiful, but it's hard. And that's okay that things can be the same, you know. It's the same with grief. You can be you can be incredibly joyful about something, but still carry the grief of what's missing. And you don't have to lay one down to have another. You don't have to have the only way to have an amen is to have a pristine, clean, lined amen. Um, so that that yeah, that's why I'm like that. I like that.

unknown 55:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2 55:30

That will that um will be going online later. That that's a good quote. Um so meeting people has been an encouragement to me and talking to people that I wouldn't have talked to otherwise. Um, and as this show continues to grow and get into um the different seasons and the different themes, I one conviction I have is that online, um, if you say that you have a social media um like your social media account, your brand or whatever, there people might say, What are your content pillars, right? So if I answered honestly, that could I could say my pillars are like grief, addiction, um, you know, parenting, ministry, whatever, those could be my pillars, but I was like, you know what? My pillar is Christ, my my cornerstone, and then everything else is woven in into our relationship with him and others. So when the Bible says we want to love God and love others, all of this is an outflow of that because of it being our human nature and having those experiences out of our control, but relating to each other and letting each other know that we're never alone, right?

Speaker 1 56:48

I feel like that's like one of the number one things that can get people to listen to the enemy is that you're alone. I don't know how many people have said prior to something horrific like a suicide or something to that nature, where they just completely felt alone, even if their family was there, but that that the devil had somehow tricked their brain into thinking no one understands you. And so the more you can talk about those things and make it more um less of like a um a blot, you know, uh of your Christianity, it's huge. Whether whether it's your platform, whether it's the church understanding how to deal with grief more and and offer more um outreach. Because people usually don't come knocking on a church door and saying, Hi, I'm depressed. Can you help me?

Speaker 2 57:35

I mean, it sometimes they do, but it doesn't that's one of the things that really uh um frustrates me is how frowned upon it is, and then some of the cliches that you'll get in that. So I want this episode to be um not only a reminder that we're not alone when we're frustrated with motherhood, but also in in grief, in miscarriage, in um, but when we're feeling that way, to not think of how your situation is different than somebody else's and then somebody else's after that, but that the feeling the grief is um is similar, that it's grief, or the the find the things that make it um the same as somebody, not finding not letting the enemy um remind us how we're different, right?

Speaker 1 58:18

Right, right. And not diluting it, but just saying like no, they you don't and and the more you talk about it, the more you realize, oh, you've been through that too, or like, oh yeah, there is that connection.

Speaker 2 58:28

You can't always see the pain that somebody has been through with God's redeemed it. You can't always see who somebody's lost by looking. You can see the depth of somebody's soul, you can see things like wow, they I think they have a story, and then there's the gifts of the spirit where um somebody can be praying um and God tells them something to pray for that you never told them, which is really cool. Yeah. But you know, if you want somebody to remember like one or two things from um this conversation, what would you say is the main takeaway?

Speaker 1 59:02

Um that well, I guess that grief isn't the final word on your life, on your experience. Um, you can you can pack it up and carry it in a way that is life-altering to people that are around you, but it doesn't have to have the final say of who you are. Um, in God's eyes, in other people's eyes, you can take it and have the Lord use it in ways that maybe he couldn't use you before. And I don't like to sometimes always have to find silver linings and things because sometimes people, like we talked about, do have to just sit with their grief for a while before seeing anything that's good coming out of it. But down the road, hopefully at some point, they can look back and say it somehow affected someone else positively and yeah, I didn't have the final say on my life.

Speaker 2 59:56

So yeah, and so remembering what the the silver lining, or think of how God can use this. Well, that's not something we want to tell somebody straight away after losing the baby or losing um losing a family member or something. But that all to say that God can um redeem those messy situations. Let somebody feel that, let somebody grieve and be upset, sure. Um, and then give them the thinking of you gift, write a little card that has some of those Bible Bible verses because eventually they will come back and it will they'll appreciate it.

Speaker 1 1:00:33

Oh, absolutely, and then that'll be very dear to them to see in the midst of that someone noticed them, maybe they were helping somebody even when they didn't realize that they could. Yeah, all that makes a huge difference.

Speaker 2 1:00:44

Um another thing is I encourage anybody um who can um listening that those things that might feel like a prick of cliche or that um that you don't feel like listening to the Bible verse, or you don't you're like, I know that that's true, that what somebody is trying to encourage you with. I know say I understand, but no, or you you want to put your walls up. I just encourage anybody to pray now that the next time that you go through a traumatic event or you're grieving or whatever, that you would pray that God can break your heart in all the right ways. Yeah. That as you walk through that, that it's going to you'll be open to the people that love you and the encouragements and the um the verses that because we want to look towards God's word and pray with um pray with other believers and you know that and that we can remember that our hope is in Christ and not in anything, nothing in this life, nothing in this world is going to um give us complete satisfaction except for Jesus.

Speaker 1 1:01:54

That's so smart, too, of just like almost like preparing yourself because we know that the we know this world has a lot of heartache to offer, but once you get to know the mind of Christ, it's like a it's like a friend sometimes that will maybe if they say something that sounds off, if you know their heart and you trust them and you love them, you can see that much differently than if you don't know somebody. And it's the same when someone something comes down the chute that's really tough. If you know the mind of Christ and you know his heart and you understand who he is, it is a lot easier to connect with I know I don't understand what you're doing, but I know who you are. So I'm gonna hang on to that.

Speaker 2 1:02:32

Yep. And so when we we practice that with God, and then if we practice um being unoffendable, that we like you were saying, that somebody might um you don't know what their intentions are, but we can um we can forgive people or we can try to hear what they're not saying more than what they necessarily are, because people can struggle with expressing themselves or um a little bit of uh miscommunications and like that happens, and so we can try to understand where somebody is coming from to ask God to um let us be um just sensitive to other people, sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and to um have a heart that's ready to um go through the process in a godly way, you know.

Speaker 1 1:03:20

Love that, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 1:03:24

So this has been such an amazing conversation to even get to know uh my new friend Laura. I was about to say new, not new, longtime friend for one of our longest conversations and pro first um video conference type of deal. Um, but as always, um you can go grab this shirt and some other shirts. Say the um Messi Amen with the you're not alone on the back, and um so many others um online, uh MessiAmenpod.com. Um check out um TikTok, Instagram, um, Facebook pages, and then as always on this beyond YouTube and Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Cast are the main three audio ones, but I believe there are a couple as other as well. So if you can um leave a review on um one of the podcast um platforms or in comments on um YouTube, um that helps spread the word and help people find us and um send us to a friend who um needs encouragement this week. Um thanks again for joining us. We will see you next time.