Where Is God When Life Doesn't Make Sense? ~ Stacy MacLaren Ep. 100

TRIGGER WARNING: Part of Stacy's story involves sexual assault.  If this is part of your story, we want you to know that healing is possible.

How do we find purpose in our pain?  How do we not lost hope when it hurts too much?  Where is God when life doesn't make sense?  How do we find our way back when our despair and doubt has distanced us from the faith we once knew? In this episode we not only want to give you hope,  but helpful and encouraging ways to walk through your own valley with strength, courage, peace and joy.

Stacy hosts a podcast, The Creative Table, which will relaunch in May of 2023. She firmly believes that everyone is creative in some form or fashion and that we all have a seat at God’s creative table. You can listen to past episodes and read her blog over at www.thecreativetable.net 

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Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated

[00:00:00] Valerie: Welcome back to another episode of Living the Reclaimed Life. This is Valerie, your guest, host, and content ministry coordinator here at Reclaimed Story, [00:00:10] and this is just not any episode. This episode deserves some confetti and celebration because woo-hoo. This is our 100th [00:00:20] episode. Woo woo. Yay. And we wouldn't be here without you.

[00:00:24] Valerie: Our wonderful audience who continues to keep us on the air as we deliver stories and topics [00:00:30] that revive hope and inspire healing. And to help me celebrate today, I have invited back, Stacy McLaren, a dear friend of the ministry who also has [00:00:40] contributed at times to our blog as a guest writer. Welcome, 

[00:00:42] Stacy: Stacy.

[00:00:43] Stacy: Thank you for having me. Yay for a hundred episodes. Yay. Yay, 

[00:00:47] Valerie: yay. Yay, Stacy. Almost [00:00:50] Tucson native, having moved to Tucson 52 years ago when she was three years old. She is one of those rare desert dwellers and yes, I say rare who likes the summer, [00:01:00] and she and her husband, whom she fondly calls the rocket scientists, have been married for over.

[00:01:05] Valerie: 30 years and have navigated the good, the bad, the beautiful and the [00:01:10]ugly together, including losing their only child to cancer in 2017. They live less than five minutes from their favorite person in the world, and it's not me, [00:01:20] their grandson, and enjoy every moment they get to spin with him. Stacy has been actively involved in volunteer ministry for the past three decades, from running the [00:01:30] infant department to leading high school, small groups, to being the director of several women's ministries and.

[00:01:35] Valerie: And she currently serves on staff at her home church and is passionate about walking [00:01:40] alongside women in all stages of life, especially as they navigate the pain and hurts that come with living in a broken world. And Stacy also hosts her own podcast, the [00:01:50]Creative Table, which will relaunch again in May of this year.

[00:01:54] Valerie: She firmly believes that everyone has. Creative in some form or fashion and that we all have a seat [00:02:00] at God's creative table. Well, thank you for being here, Stacy. I'm so excited, my friend. 

[00:02:05] Stacy: I'm so excited to, to get to sit across from you again. Is is a pleasure. 

[00:02:09] Valerie: [00:02:10] Yes, and I said Stacy was a friend of the ministry, 

[00:02:12] Valerie: I feel privileged to call her one of my dear friends as we've gosh known each other for maybe eight or nine years now. Yeah. And have walked [00:02:20] through a lot of what we're gonna talk about today. Exactly. Well, Stacy, I am so thankful you're here and we're gonna have a conversation today about [00:02:30] experiences, about hard times in our.

[00:02:33] Valerie: That may bring us face to face, what sometimes we hear called that crisis of faith. And you know, I [00:02:40] found a great definition about that. I'm gonna read that here. And it says, A painful, a crisis of faith is a painful experience in a Christian's life when he or she begins to [00:02:50] doubt his or her beliefs causing grief and confusion.

[00:02:54] Valerie: As well as a sense of a disconnection from God. And I know I've had [00:03:00]some crisis of faith. I know that you're gonna share some of your experiences with that. In fact, Stacy, why don't you start off sharing some parts of your story and, [00:03:10] and as you do, you're gonna share with us some of those questions, conversations you had with God.

[00:03:17] Stacy: Absolutely. Well, once again, thank you for having me and giving me the [00:03:20]opportunity to share. I certainly hope that your listeners are blessed. So, like you said, I have been here in Tucson for 52 years. [00:03:30] Which means I am rolling up on 55. Woo-hoo. Yeah. And I would say if there, if we go on stereotypical, you know, pictures of people, I [00:03:40] am your stereotypical Gen X, I was a latchkey kid.

[00:03:43] Stacy: My parents were divorced when I was very young. I just, it was pull yourself up by the bootstraps and, and move forward. And [00:03:50] so I learned early on to be very independent, very self-sufficient. And I think that that was a good. Foundation for walking through some of the [00:04:00] hurts of life. I'm not gonna say that it was the best, but I will say that God used that so early on in my, I would say, Middle [00:04:10] school.

[00:04:10] Stacy: What we would consider middle school now is when I came to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. And I did so at church camp, which is where every good Southern kid [00:04:20]goes. Their parents pack them up and send them off for several weeks, and I found Jesus in the mountains of New Mexico. He met me there and I did not know.

[00:04:29] Stacy: What [00:04:30] meeting him was going to do to my life. What it did was it set off a firestorm in both sets of families to find religion, and my [00:04:40] mo mother and stepfather ended up receiving Christ and getting involved in church. 

[00:04:45] Stacy: It immersed us in scripture and we needed that. We needed to [00:04:50] know God's word. We needed to be able to know the promises that are found in God's word. Because several years later, when I was [00:05:00] 17 years old in our neighborhood, which I considered very safe, I mean, it was a very safe neighborhood here in Tucson, on the east side of town I was [00:05:10]sexually assaulted.

[00:05:11] Stacy: That is a, is a very Term that we use, let's just call it what is, I was raped. I was raped in the alley behind my home.[00:05:20] And it was horrific. It, it was everything that you imagine in going through that. My parents were busy [00:05:30] in helping out the pastor of our church. And again, we're gonna go back to that stereotypical gen.

[00:05:36] Stacy: You pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I said nothing. [00:05:40] I, I made it through that evening. I cleaned myself up. I pushed that down to my toes and we went forward. What I didn't know until several [00:05:50] months later was that I was pregnant from that night, and that rocked my world. But again, I pushed it down [00:06:00] to my toes, like to the very tip toe of my toes.

[00:06:06] Stacy: I think I pulled the what's the bird? The ostrich [00:06:10] in your, in the sand. The head and sand head. Yeah. Yep. And thinking for sure, you know, at 17 years old, this is gonna go away. This is just going to wake, gonna go away because [00:06:20] God is going to take care of this. God took care of it. Just not in that way that I was thinking he was going to.

[00:06:27] Stacy: When I was seven months pregnant, I finally told my [00:06:30] parents, thank God for a best friend that. You have one week to do so, or I'm going to tell them because you needed to get care. And [00:06:40] so 10 days before I turned 18, I gave birth to Patrick Joseph, who was the greatest blessing that God [00:06:50] had ever given me next to my salvation.

[00:06:53] Stacy: And yeah, I became a teenage mom. And that [00:07:00] was not in the plans. That was not, it was not the way I thought my life was gonna go. And it was at that moment that I felt the [00:07:10] weight of what was a crisis of faith. I didn't have words for it then. Hmm. Certainly my church family didn't have words for it.[00:07:20]

[00:07:20] Stacy: That was when gosh, I even remember the. And, and looking back, you know, he was doing the best he could. He was reading Psalm the 23rd Psalm to me, and, [00:07:30] and basically what it came down to was you're going through the valley of the shadow of death, but that was it. Like there was no. We didn't know about trauma care, right?

[00:07:39] Stacy: We didn't [00:07:40] know, how do I get out of this valley, right? Am I supposed to stay here? You know? And so I had those questions, but then I also had to go back and, and relive questions that were brought [00:07:50] up again with family of, you know, what did you do to cause this? And how, how do you navigate those, those questions internally as a 17 year old, you know, [00:08:00] of what did I do to cause this, and what should I have done differently and.

[00:08:06] Stacy: But again, you know, here was this [00:08:10] life and even going through this, I knew I couldn't go through an abortion, but I also knew I wasn't called to walk through adoption either. God was calling me to [00:08:20] be this child's mom. So there was questions there of God.

[00:08:27] Stacy: Allow this to real Christians, so maybe I'm not a [00:08:30] real Christian, you know? So there was, there was those questions that I never really answered. I never really got answered, but I would revisit them later on. [00:08:40] So, fast forward, you know, single mom. Going through raising a boy that was a boy. He was every bit of a boy that you can [00:08:50] imagine.

[00:08:50] Stacy: Before he was six. I met and then would marry the rocket scientist. So my husband's name is Roger, but I lovingly refer to him as the rocket scientist because [00:09:00] that's what he does. And my. Actually gave him that nickname when we were engaged and I thought it, it is fitting.

[00:09:06] Stacy: So he was so suited to be [00:09:10] PJ's dad, you know, he was just so well suited to be PJ's dad well before we got married. It was again, that other crisis of faith [00:09:20] of that landed me in a, in a counselor's office and I remember him. And several who will listen to this podcast will know who he is. Steve [00:09:30] Dowel was our counselor then, and he said, Stacy, you can shove things down to your toes, but you're gonna deal with them at some point in time.

[00:09:39] Stacy: God [00:09:40] doesn't allow us to walk through things and not walk through healing at the same time, and we can continue to push them down, but that doesn't negate the healing that's going to come. [00:09:50] And the the reality is, is when it comes back up, it's going to. Just as much or even more as it did if we would've [00:10:00] dealt with it when it was happening.

[00:10:03] Stacy: I didn't like that. I did not like that at all, and yet God had a plan and so we walked [00:10:10] through that then of my salvation was secure and it wasn't going to change based on what was [00:10:20] done to. Or the things that I chose to participate in my faith was my faith, and God was using these circumstances [00:10:30] to wrap my faith even more into him.

[00:10:33] Stacy: I didn't understand that fully. So again, we're gonna take another jump flash forward. Fast forward. [00:10:40] Our son married a beautiful young woman. Her name is Ruth. Gosh, she was everything. She is everything that you would want that [00:10:50] bonus child to be. And they were married for several years and then got pregnant with our grandson, Liam, who calls [00:11:00] us Gigi and Pops.

[00:11:01] Stacy: We are his Gigi and Pops. And when Liam was, so he was born in 2014 and in the fall of 2015, our son [00:11:10] discovered a lump on his tongue. And what ended up being. Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. And anybody who knows anything about different [00:11:20]cancers will know that that is a brutal, brutal cancer.

[00:11:23] Stacy: goodness. I practiced this in my head. I didn't think I was gonna get emotional, but we walked through[00:11:30] a year and a half of just battles. We just physically battled cancer with. We held him up [00:11:40] physically, we supported him with nutrition. Ruth and I,

[00:11:45] Stacy: Ruth and I would change off, you know, like Liam would come and stay with us for several days while [00:11:50] she was caring for pj. And then after chemo treatments, PJ would come and stay with us. And we just, we did that back and forth and we became his partners, but we also became each [00:12:00] other's. And I don't know that anybody, even a believer, I don't know that anybody can walk through that and not have a crisis of faith.[00:12:10]

[00:12:10] Stacy: God redeems it, certainly. And yet in the thick of it, you are, you are begging. Please fix this, right? As a [00:12:20] parent, as a mom, as the person who brought this life into the world, you're begging him, please just why are you doing this? What? [00:12:30] What are we supposed to be learning from this? Well, and 

[00:12:33] Valerie: especially as you shared, and I'm so glad you did that, [00:12:40] regardless of how you became pregnant with pj.

[00:12:44] Valerie: He was a gift right? From God. And yet I'm sure at this point you [00:12:50] must have been questioning, okay, God, you gave him to me and you might take him away. What was, what were you feeling around that kind of question? So even 

[00:12:59] Stacy: going back to [00:13:00] that, let's go back to the night he was born and, and all moms will laugh at this, but I, I can still remember standing over his crib [00:13:10] and saying to.

[00:13:12] Stacy: And, and the audacity in this saying to God, if you intend on taking him from me, I need you to do this now [00:13:20] before I fall even more in love with him. Well, again, going back to every mom knows like, wow, that was, even if God would've chosen to take him now, I would've been devastated or then I would've been [00:13:30] devastated.

[00:13:30] Stacy: But I remember saying that to God, and so I revisited. Especially in the final days of [00:13:40] like when we were in hospice of, I told you if you were gonna take him from me to do it in those first days, and you made me [00:13:50] fall in love with him even more. I was so angry, Valerie. Mm-hmm. So angry. And there's guilt and shame that comes with [00:14:00] that anger and.

[00:14:04] Stacy: I think God invites us into being angry with him. It's not something he, he [00:14:10] can't handle. He knows he created us with those emotions, those, those deep, deep emotions. He made us that [00:14:20] way and he invites us into that of just be angry. Tell me why you're angry. Let's walk through this together, you know? [00:14:30] Job, right?

[00:14:31] Stacy: Mm-hmm. David, yeah, Jeremiah, he invites us into being angry. Yeah. [00:14:40]And I think that that's where we meet him face to face in that anger. We meet him face to face in those [00:14:50] spots where it's just so dark and there it doesn't seem like there's light anywhere.

[00:14:57] Valerie: Well, and there's such a well [00:15:00] known scripture I think a lot of people use I'm gonna read it. It's Romans 8 28, It says, and we know that in all things, God works for [00:15:10]the good of those who love him. How often have you heard that? I know, I, I've used it for myself to encourage myself.

[00:15:18] Valerie: I've used it to encourage [00:15:20] others. But Stacy, when you hear that verse, and maybe you heard it during your valleys during your crisis of faith, how was that [00:15:30] truth? That is truth. When did it feel like a thorn and yet a rose at the same time? 

[00:15:35] Stacy: Yeah, so I think so often we throw that [00:15:40] verse out there because we're uncomfortable with somebody else's pain.

[00:15:44] Stacy: Yeah. And we're trying to fix it for them. But what that verse doesn't [00:15:50]promise is that it's gonna feel good, right? Mm-hmm. It doesn't promise that we're not going to go through hard times. [00:16:00] Oftentimes we may not get out of those hard times, right? We may be in those for a lifetime. What it does promise is that he's [00:16:10] going to use that.

[00:16:11] Stacy: He's going to use it for good, and we might not see it, but he will use it for good. I, I'm gonna encourage anybody that's listening, let's not throw that [00:16:20] verse out to someone that's going through New Grief. 

[00:16:22] Valerie: there's an appropriate time to share truth, but yeah. How we do it and when we do 

[00:16:27] Stacy: it, and I think that, [00:16:30] again, it goes back to, We're not good about being in other people's pain. We're not good about being in our own pain. I mean, we wanna get out of it as soon as we possibly can, but we're [00:16:40] definitely not okay with being in somebody else's pain.

[00:16:42] Stacy: So we wanna throw things out there that's gonna make them feel better. The reality is, is that we can't change. [00:16:50] We can't change feeling horrible, horrible things happen. So, you know, you said it perfectly. What is the thorn and what is the rose in that? And I don't.[00:17:00] I'm sure there's gardeners out there.

[00:17:03] Stacy: One thing that I always found interesting about roses is the ones that smell the best, have the [00:17:10] most thorns, and I feel as though that is the way God shows off beauty, [00:17:20]right? The thorns, you gotta navigate around them to hold that flower. But boy, they sure the smell sure is [00:17:30] worth the little pokes and ouches along the way.

[00:17:34] Stacy: I know that's such a simplistic way to look at it, but that verse, there is a [00:17:40]truth in that right there. There's, that's a promise. God is working things out. That doesn't mean we get to trade bad for good. [00:17:50] It doesn't mean we get to trade hard for easy, but we can hold both of. Together we can hold that joy and that pain.

[00:17:58] Stacy: And it may not, you may be [00:18:00] walking through something that you are, you feel the farthest away from joy that you can possibly be. And here's the deal. Joy isn't skipping through the tulips, right? It's [00:18:10] not the la la, la It is a deep, deep knowledge of knowing that good is going to come. [00:18:20] And you can hold that.

[00:18:22] Stacy: You can hold that hope. You can hold joy and pain together. You can be [00:18:30]on your knees crying out to God, why? And at the same time have a peace inside that you can't explain. That is the only way I can explain [00:18:40] getting through putting our son in hospice on Mother's Day and having him die the day before my.

[00:18:47] Stacy: There is a joy of knowing [00:18:50] he is with his savior now, right? He is with he's whole. He is not suffering. [00:19:00] We are we, we are suffering. And in that there is still that joy of knowing that his life meant something. His life had [00:19:10] purpose. Even now, what we are walking through has purpose. Even the crisis of faith, I'm not gonna lie, I still have a crisis of faith.

[00:19:19] Stacy: There are still [00:19:20] questions that, that I ask God on the daily of why I don't understand. And the answers that I get are, you don't [00:19:30] have to understand Stacy. You don't have to have the answers. You don't have to see the whole path. You know, we talked about [00:19:40]valleys. Mm-hmm. And the questions of. Yeah, it's great.

[00:19:43] Stacy: When someone quotes to you the 23rd Psalm and says to you, you're going through the valley of the shadow of death. Well, [00:19:50] fantastic. Now can you tell me how to get out of here? Cuz I don't like it. Here's the deal. Rivers flow in valleys right. [00:20:00] It's valleys are green. That is where the water is flowing. The, the floor of a valley is green.

[00:20:09] Stacy: [00:20:10] Flowers grow. But yeah, you're stuck down in that for a while. And I think the beauty about following Jesus and being a believer is [00:20:20] that Christ is gonna, he's gonna take us up, right? We're gonna be up on the top, looking down, and then we're gonna go down again. We're gonna, we're gonna experience those [00:20:30] valleys and those mountain tops.

[00:20:32] Stacy: And I think I found that I am most comfortable in those valley. [00:20:40] And that seems so anti-everything that we're trained, right? But that's where God makes us lie down. [00:20:50]He makes us be still, and he has us loosen our grip on the things that we think we have control of. And [00:21:00] he says it's okay to ask questions and it's okay to sit here for a while and.

[00:21:07] Stacy: Have to fix it because you can't fix it, [00:21:10] but he can. 

[00:21:12] Valerie: So what has your connection with God looked like? How has your [00:21:20]intimacy with God grown in these valleys? 

[00:21:24] Stacy: So for me, I am a control freak, [00:21:30] which means I tend to say yes when I should be saying. Because I wanna fill up all those empty spaces or what I [00:21:40] think are empty spaces, because I don't want to look at the pain and I don't wanna have to deal with it.

[00:21:46] Stacy: But again, I'll go back to what that counselor said. We're gonna [00:21:50] deal with that no matter what. And so my intimacy with God has come in the stillness where he says, I need you. I need you to [00:22:00] sit here with me, and I need you to accept the invitation. Rage at me, not at your [00:22:10] family, not at your friends, not at your pastors, not at your church.

[00:22:14] Stacy: I need you to rage with me and I need you to be in [00:22:20] community. So what's the one thing that so often when we're in pain we wanna do is run? We wanna run and we wanna isolate and. [00:22:30] When I am still enough that I can hear God's voice, he's saying, I am found in community and I [00:22:40] am found in your quiet places.

[00:22:43] Stacy: I'm not found in the busy. Quit making yourself busy. Stacy, and I know you know this for [00:22:50] sure because I think we share that similarity of just like, no, no, no. God, I need to fill up all these empty spaces up that corner is empty. Let's just fill it up with something to do. There's an intimacy [00:23:00] and there's an intimacy just in rest. And I think our culture has driven us to places where we must always be doing.[00:23:10] The thing about it is, is that we're not, there's a. I dunno who said it. We're not human doings. We're human beings and God [00:23:20] calls us to just be with him and for me, that is in his word.

[00:23:25] Stacy: I will tell you that. Goodness, this past two years has been an undoing [00:23:30] of my faith, like down to the foundations of knowing that, okay, God is my rock of hope. And it is not man, [00:23:40] it is not other people's interpretation of scripture. It is God sitting with me in his word and sharing with. His word for my [00:23:50] life, and it has meant undoing so much poor theology.

[00:23:54] Stacy: And what I wrapped my faith into was man's [00:24:00] interpretation of the way I should live. So I had to go all the way back to dealing with the shame questions. And what if I'm not a good enough Christian? And what if, [00:24:10] what if I'm doing this wrong? What if I'm doing this grief thing wrong? You know, like Sally said last week.

[00:24:18] Stacy: My grief is my grief, and her grief [00:24:20] is her grief. And we are not gonna walk through these things the same. But we have just bought into this lie that grief is linear and it is [00:24:30] not. And our Christian life is not linear either. It is a circle. It is a jumbled up. K nodded up mess that God [00:24:40] walks us through.

[00:24:41] Stacy: We are broken people living in a broken world. And to apply a linear thinking to that is just gets us in a [00:24:50] bigger mess. So yeah. 

[00:24:52] Valerie: When I think of the scripture as we talked about just sitting with God in his truth. Mm-hmm. And he's so [00:25:00] personal, he's so relational. And I was thinking of Psalm 42.

[00:25:05] Valerie: Three where David says, my tears have been my food [00:25:10] day and night. While people say to me all day long, where is your God? Like we've been talking about where is God when this is happening? These things I remember as I pour [00:25:20] out my soul how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the mighty one, with shouts of joy and praise among the fes of thong.

[00:25:28] Valerie: You were talking about community. I [00:25:30] think you know what? I used to be okay. I used to enjoy life. But then this happened, and now people are looking at me saying, where's your God? You know? And sometimes that [00:25:40] can cause us to have a crisis of faith is when other people on the outside are being like, oh, well, How does a good God allow these bad things to [00:25:50] happen, right?

[00:25:50] Valerie: Mm-hmm. But this is what David says. Why am I soul? Are you downcast? He's in the valley. He's questioning why so disturbed within me, put your hope in God for [00:26:00] I will yet praise him. My savior, and my God. I love that that. Word that just pops out on the page, but [00:26:10] I will yet Yeah.

[00:26:11] Valerie: And that's what you're saying is that we can praise God, we can have joy because joy is not dependent on our [00:26:20] circumstances. Mm-hmm. what other, scriptures did God just kind of pop out of his beautiful book to you during some of these times when you were 

[00:26:29] Stacy: [00:26:30] say, waiting? Yeah. Going along with that would be, so Romans 1212, it says, Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction and be [00:26:40] persistent in prayer.

[00:26:43] Stacy: Rejoice in hope Sometimes that's, [00:26:50] that's where your faith is. You just have to clinging to the hope that is. God. I don't know what you're doing, but I know you're here. [00:27:00] I can't feel you, but I know you're. And then the be patient in affliction. [00:27:10] God doesn't promise that we're not gonna walk through af affliction, right?

[00:27:14] Stacy: When you go through trials, not if, but when you go through trials. [00:27:20] And so to be patient in that again, goes back to hope, right? It goes back to. God [00:27:30] is a rock of hope. One that doesn't get worn down with storms, one that doesn't get tossed in the waves. It kind of reminds me of the paintings that you see, [00:27:40] the, the Cliffs of Dover.

[00:27:41] Stacy: Like they're the same constantly, and yet here they're battered by everything. It reminds me of that. And [00:27:50] then I, I, I wanna be, Hope is not easy, right? It, it, it's not. It, it was never [00:28:00] intended to be. It is. It's not easy, but it is solid because God is who he says he is, and he keeps his [00:28:10] promises. They might not be what our human eyes want them to be, but he promises and he keeps them.

[00:28:17] Stacy: And going back into the Psalms, [00:28:20] Psalm 71 14 says, but I will hope continually and I will praise you more and more. I will praise you more and [00:28:30] more. One of my mentors, a dear, dear woman who I've known for decades. She says, and, and I've clung to [00:28:40] this high water, low water, or no water at all. We still praise him.

[00:28:45] Stacy: I will praise you more and more, and some days. [00:28:50] Some days it's saying, God, I don't even know how to praise you. I trust that you're good. I trust that you're good. [00:29:00]And even going back to sometimes we just have to even say, I believe, help my unbelief. His word [00:29:10] calls us to that. Yeah. I believe. Help my unbelief.

[00:29:13] Stacy: So true.

[00:29:18] Stacy: There are days, there are days in the midst. [00:29:20] Even now we're, we're coming up on six years out from, from losing pj. And even today there are days that I just have to [00:29:30] open God's word and read. And I can tell you that I will end a reading session and not, not have a clue what I read, but I know that God was there in those words because maybe my [00:29:40]tears stopped and he's going to use whatever I read to come back around.

[00:29:46] Stacy: And, and meet me. And the, [00:29:50] those tears are gonna be, you know, as David said, they're gonna be my food and he's gonna hold them and he's gonna hold yours. He's, there is not one tear that [00:30:00] falls uncounted, and that seems so hard to grasp. And you know, like you said, people on the outside are looking [00:30:10] going, well, if you were a good Christian or good God doesn't let bad things happen.

[00:30:13] Stacy: You know, we have walked through national tragedies in the last week that have just been [00:30:20] gut wrenching and there are mamas and daddies who didn't get to tuck their babies into bed.

[00:30:29] Stacy: And [00:30:30] people are looking at that going, if God was good, he wouldn't have let that.

[00:30:36] Stacy: And that's an, that is an easy thing to say. It is [00:30:40] such an easy thing to say, but yet on the same, on the same breath, there are people that go, but I wanna do what I wanna do. And so we're [00:30:50] saying we live in a broken world and we are broken people and God grieves those things just like we do even more. So [00:31:00] those are his beautiful.

[00:31:03] Stacy: Created in his image being that he has watched [00:31:10] draw their last breath,

[00:31:18] Stacy: and yet [00:31:20] he's right there with those parents. He's right there with those spouses. He's right there with that community. He is showing the [00:31:30] world in the midst. People acting out of their own will and their own selfishness and their own [00:31:40] brokenness. Like these are broken people. We talk about mental health, they're hurting.

[00:31:46] Stacy: It doesn't excuse it, but they are hurting and they are [00:31:50] image bears too. God is moving in that, and that is a good God because he could turn away and he [00:32:00] doesn't. He steps. He holds tight and he draws us closer. 

[00:32:05] Valerie: And he's patient. Stacy, as we wrap up today, what would [00:32:10] be your final thoughts if you were sitting across from a woman who is maybe experiencing pain [00:32:20] in their life for the first time? Like gut enriching pain, loss, heartache, hardship, so, Happening to them that they've never experienced before.

[00:32:29] Valerie: Or [00:32:30] even a woman who, like you experienced something later in life that then God used to say, okay, we're gonna deal with the pain of your past. As we know, our [00:32:40]mission here at Reclaimed story is to help women heal from the pain of their past. But what would you say to a woman if you were sitting across from them when they're saying, Stacy, where is [00:32:50]God?

[00:32:51] Valerie: My life just doesn't make sense right now. Where is God? What would you leave? Them? 

[00:32:56] Stacy: Well, I think first of all, I would [00:33:00] assure her that I'm, I'm willing to walk through this with her, [00:33:10] and I think we can do that as we care for people, right? We walk through that with them. We don't try and fix them, and I would, [00:33:20] I would encourage her not to shy away from the questions that she.

[00:33:25] Stacy: Not to shy away from asking God, why don't shy away from [00:33:30] being angry because God, God knows there isn't anything he doesn't know. And so to voice those [00:33:40] out loud, it doesn't make you less than I would encourage her to not withdraw. God is in community. [00:33:50] God is in.

[00:33:55] Stacy: Asking those questions, God is in, sitting across from somebody [00:34:00] and knowing that you're gonna say these things and they're not gonna reject you. So if you're the person that's [00:34:10] actually walking through this with somebody, make it very clear that you're not going anywhere. And that there isn't anything that they can say [00:34:20] that is going to make you judge them, that is going to bring shame upon them because everything they're going through is [00:34:30]normal and it's okay to not be okay.

[00:34:32] Stacy: I think that's, that's probably one of the biggest things is it's okay to not be okay. God is in the not okay. He's in the mess [00:34:40] and. We, we have this human picture of what it's supposed to look like and how we're supposed to handle hardships as believers, and [00:34:50] what a mess that is. God is in it. God is in the tears and he's in your community and you might not [00:35:00]feel.

[00:35:01] Stacy: I used to always say, I feel like I'm sitting blind in a dark room, and I know that there's a staircase I'm supposed to be walking up, but I can't even feel my way to the first [00:35:10]step. But God is in that dark room with you, and it's okay to sit there for a while. You don't have to fix it, and you don't have to move forward until [00:35:20] he moves you forward.

[00:35:21] Stacy: And you'll know. You'll know when it's.

[00:35:24] Valerie: Hmm. Stacy, thank you so much for sharing your [00:35:30] journey, even celebrating our hundredth episode, but walking tenderly again through your story, but the hope and healing that you have clung [00:35:40] to, I know will be an inspiration to our audience. So thank you again. Thank you for having me, for being with us, and thank you for.

[00:35:48] Valerie: Today we pray [00:35:50] that you have experienced hope and healing from today's episode in your story, and we look forward to being back with you same time, same place in two weeks.