Angry Daughter: From Hatred to Love ~ Nanci Lamborn Ep.153

Today, we’re diving into a powerful and deeply personal conversation with author and chaplain, Nanci Lamborn.

Nanci’s memoir, Angry Daughter: A Journey from Hatred to Love, is a raw and redemptive story of navigating childhood trauma, wrestling with decades of bitterness, and discovering the healing power of God’s love. With honesty, vulnerability, and even humor, she shares how her journey through grief, forgiveness, and heart-healing prayer led her from resentment to restoration.

So lean in with me, because in this conversation you’ll be encouraged to know that no wound is too deep, no past too painful, and no heart too broken for the healing presence of Jesus.

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Transcript

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Denisha: [00:00:00] I am so excited to Welcome to the podcast today, minister, author, and speaker Nancy Lamber. She helps others exchange lies for truth. Bondage for freedom and anger for joy through biblically based healing prayer. She is a survivor of childhood trauma. Her life radically changed after a healing encounter with Christ.

I can't wait for you to hear about that. Since 2016, you guys, she has guided over 2000 inner healing clients as an ordained minister and licensed chaplain. Nancy, I am so excited to have you on today to talk about all of those things. And your book Also Angry Daughter that was released last year. Yeah.

Nanci: Awesome. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much. 

Denisha: Oh, I'm so, uh, this is gonna be great. I love what you bring, to this audience and just to our lives. Let's just jump right in. 

Nanci: Yeah. Okay. 

Denisha: So you wrote a book [00:01:00] called Angry Daughter and it's a journey from, I have a copy here. It's, yes. Okay, awesome.

Perfect. And we'll be posting that on social media too, at the link. Um, awesome. And it 

Nanci: just came out last week on Audible. I'm so excited. Yes, 

Denisha: yes. Oh, fantastic. That's even better. I can throw a lot more books that way. 

Nanci: Awesome. 

Denisha: So you say that it is a journey from hatred to love. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Nanci: Yeah, so first I never planned to write any book, much less this book. but obviously the Lord laughs you know, at our plans, my journey, like so many other women, my mother and I had a very. Unhealthy, rocky, tumultuous relationship. It was never healthy. she didn't like me very much and I didn't like her very much, and this was my normal life.

Also, I was experiencing childhood trauma of the worst kind while I lived in our home by some male relatives, and my mom actually [00:02:00] knew about it, blamed me as a very young child and did nothing about it. And so that really began my journey of. Alright, well you didn't, you didn't love me well, so I certainly can't love you.

Well, so this, the anger that I had towards her just kind of became part of my identity and I. I left home angry, got married right outta high school, angry, and I became really an angry person. Anger really consumed my entire life. I cussed like a sailor. I hated people. I would not speak to strangers.

I would, you know, road rage at the little old lady at the stop sign. Anger was my norm Now. Anger had been normalized in my home. My mom was also very angry and the environment knew it when anyone was angry. You know, they're slamming dishes and slamming doors and lots of stomping and whatnot. So when that's normalized for you, that's what's normal for you.

And I never knew anything different. lot of [00:03:00] bad choices and traumas along the way, but fast forward, I am. In a healthy marriage with a godly man who starts praying for me. Not like, oh Lord, please fix my wife. It wasn't like that. It was God. Just show her her destiny, show her her identity, be who she needs to be.

It was just this general like be what she needs. And I actually didn't even know for a while that he was praying for me. So the Lord orchestrated a small group for us, had never been in a small group before. I was a good evangelical girl, had never heard of these little small group things. That was weird.

but we joined this small group and these people were much more spiritually mature than we were. And they'd even seen miracle healings and you know, we'd never heard of that. That was really odd. but loved these people and just grew a lot. Learned a lot. Well, there was a couple in this. Small group.

And she was older than my parents. Uh, they're older than my parents. And, she, this lady, her name is Lucy, she ended up becoming my mentor and she shared [00:04:00] that she did this weird thing where she prayed for people in her house. And I thought, well, that's weird. You do, you, uh, you know, okay. And she's weird, big.

I love it. She thought it was so weird. I, you know, never heard of that. Um, but she was the most peaceful wise. spirit-filled, not like head in the clouds, but she just walked in a level of submitted this and peace with the Lord that I'd never met with anyone else. So got to know her and her family. She got to know me and my family, and after about a year of just being in relationship one day at church, she came up to me and she said, I'd like to experiment on you.

I was like, okay, I trust you. You know, whatever, whatever that looks like. Well, she sat me down and she had figured out over the last year the source of my anger, and it was the mother wound, and I never heard of the term mother wound and. Had you asked me, I don't think I would've [00:05:00] cognitively agreed that my issues with my mom were the source of my life's disappointments and frustration.

But through this beautiful time of prayer and just seeking the Lord and asking hard questions of the Lord, and being willing to answer those, for the first time ever, I was 45 years old. For the first time ever, I actually forgave my mom. Mm. And again, had you asked me if I had not forgiven her, I would've been like, oh no, I forgive her.

But there was no fruit of that. I couldn't stand the air she breathed. I mean, that doesn't go together. But the way. She walked me through forgiveness was just very different. Like it's very line item, mom, I forgive you for not protecting me from the Abu abuse and blaming me, and I forgive you for the damage that's done to my life.

And like that's different. That's very specific, obviously very emotional, A lot of tears. And in this prayer she had me ask the Lord, how do you see my mom [00:06:00] never occurred to me to ask the Lord how he sees my mom. What he showed me broke me. I saw a 15-year-old girl crouched down in the bottom of a closet, weeping, grieving because her dad had just died.

Now in real life, I knew my mom's dad did die very suddenly when my mom was 15. He was her world, she was his person. and my mom was the middle of the middle of seven with a very angry, stoic, stern mother. So my mom's life ended when she was 15. Wow. She stopped functioning emotionally, spiritually, social, all, all of the things.

She was 15 until the day she died at 77. Wow. And the Lord showing me this was like, oh my gosh. It's no wonder all the things that I experienced, 15 year olds aren't ready to be parents. They don't want to change diapers and have to go to the PTA meeting and check homework, and they don't wanna have to compete with a teenage daughter.

And 15 [00:07:00] year olds are petty and catty and moody and argumentative and dramatic, and all the things that my mom was until the day she died, and it was mind blowing and life changing. I'm like, oh, okay. This is actually. Who she really is. but with the forgiveness, there was such a profound change that I was not expecting really.

Just a couple days after this forgiveness experience, I went to visit my mom like I did, you know, at least once or twice a week. She didn't live far away. And I walked in the house and I was like, what is this? I'm not. Irritated. I'm not offended right now. I'm not. I'm not angry. Oh, wow. It was shocking how free I was when I walked into that house.

I was not expecting that. And I went back to Lucy. I'm like, I don't know what that is, but I want all of that. Whatever that is, give me it all. Mm-hmm. So it began this journey with her of unlearning and learning how to love her in the state that she was [00:08:00] in. In the book, one of the chapters is actually figuring out that she is who she is and I can choose to love the broken grieving 15-year-old, or I can expect her to act like a mature adult.

And then I'm angry and I'm offended and my, my expectations are the ones that aren't not met. Right. And when I recognized, oh wait, I can actually just choose to love her in the broken 15-year-old state that she's in. Made it easy, and she lost the capacity to wound me, offend me, hurt me, irritate me. Like it, it was supernatural that there was like a separation that happened, that I could just love her where she was.

there was such a transformation in my life and I, I did have to set some boundaries because. She never changed. So if I recognized that she was spiraling and wanted to start fights between people, which she often did, uh oh, look at the time, gotta go. Love you, mom, bye. And I would leave. And she never recognized I was setting boundaries.

I knew I was setting [00:09:00] boundaries that was healthy for me. But you know, fast forward, she got COVID. This was 2021, August of 2021. She got COVID and, Howie didn't kill her. is a miracle itself because she was already disabled, already had COPD already on 14 medications, very unhealthy.

So did a number on her body that she physically couldn't even hold a pencil. That's how the, the effect it had on her body. she was sent to a nursing home that was still taking COVID positive patients. The only one in a hundred miles that was, and she fell with twice within the first eight hours she fell.

And I knew it was because she wasn't getting the care she needed. My mom was very stubborn. I'm gonna do it. I don't need help. But when you need a walker and it's over there. You don't wait for help, you're gonna fall. So we literally broke her out of the nursing home, out the back door, and I brought her into my home.

My friends put a hospital bed in my house, and I [00:10:00] became my mom's caregiver. And that transition is just to see where I was, how many years was this? six or seven years from when I first forgave her to, this is profound because I didn't. Become her caregiver begrudgingly and with resentment and making her pay for the crimes or whatever.

I just loved her and it was very hard. She was obese, she was disabled, she was detoxing from closet alcoholism, which had been hidden. It was hard. It was hard, but it was beautiful. nursed her back to health. and then just a couple months after that, she went to be with Jesus. Wow.

And I got to be with her in her last breath. And that actually began the journey of the book because, when I was with her, and they hadn't told us that this was the last day, but she was seeing angels and hearing music from heaven and like, oh, okay. Like we're [00:11:00] leaving soon. And the Lord spoke to me in her hospital room, was like.

This is a beautiful sunset and outside. There was a beautiful sunset, but he was like, no, no. This is a beautiful sunset. And I was just filled with gratitude that this could have been very different. I could have been sitting there with anger and regret and resentment and unforgiveness and bitterness, and none of that was there.

All I felt was honor and gratitude and all I could. Think of with her was the good things and what she had done and the gifts that she had used and like that also was supernatural. So it was a gift. It was a gift. 

Denisha: It sounds like the Lord gave you such a gift of compassion for her. Oh, 

Nanci: supernatural. 'cause I didn't have that.

No, I didn't have, didn't have that. 

Denisha: That's what I was wondering. If you had not gone through, it sounds like your turning point, was that healing time, that healing prayer? 

Nanci: Oh, very much so. And there's a lot more that happened. Through those journeys with my mentor and [00:12:00] Lucy and just surrendering to the Lord that, that fundamentally changed who I was as a human.

But yes, it, it gave me a compassion. I was never a compassionate person. I mean, to anyone. And, it's changed. Yeah. It's a radical change. 

Denisha: Yeah. You don't strike me as a angry cursing sailor. No. No, not at all. Not at all. Now, do you think if you had not gone through that time of healing prayer with Lucy, would you have invited your mom into your home?

Would you have been to 

Nanci: care? 

Denisha: Oh, absolutely not. No. 

Nanci: I would've left her in the nursing home and like, well, she did this to herself and we would've had a funeral less than a week later. I knew that she was gonna die very quickly if she did not come out of there. Wow. But no, I absolutely would not have brought her in my house 'cause I didn't wanna be around her.

Denisha: What was life like growing up for you in your home? Did you attend church? What was life like? Oh yes. 

Nanci: Praise Jesus. Every time the sun, the doors were open to church. Sunday morning, Sunday night. Monday night. Bible study. [00:13:00] Tuesday night GA's. Wednesday night. Choir rehearsal. Oh yes, we were on the front row.

Mom was a pianist. Dad was a deacon. Grandma was a missionary. We were paraded like good little, you know, family. Very visible in the mega church. Very much so. Yes. 

Denisha: how did your young self Yeah. Handle the duality of what you were seeing on Sunday morning? Yeah. And all of these times during the week, and then what you saw.

It sounds like the walls within your home were very different. Than what was being portrayed on at church? Was that the future? Yeah, 

Nanci: well we learned to dissociate and we learned very quickly where the rules are and if they can be broken, where they can be broken. And I don't know that there was a big difference in being at church because the rules still applied.

You know, one glare from my mom on the piano bench, and you got a really serious whooping when you got home like. the only time where me and my siblings could ever be free of these where we're alone in the woods, you know, [00:14:00] where we've gone. 'cause you know, back in the day, in the seventies, in the summer especially, you leave, when the sun comes up, you're gone all day.

You come home and you find a creek or a hose somewhere and drink water, and then you come home for dinner. That was, that was the only time where we didn't have those, these oppressions and the rules and the yelling and the not good enough and the never enough, and the, just the children were to not even to be seen.

They didn't wanna be seen or heard children need to go away somewhere else. And so that was where we had fun and make friends and, you know, live the other part of our life. But in our house, yeah, for the most part it was. Making sure you didn't make someone mad is what it felt like. 

Denisha: Did that ever spill over to your relationship with God?

You have such a vibrant relationship with him now. Oh, 

Nanci: how 

Denisha: did you, oh my gosh. Right. 

Nanci: I did not know the Lord. it's like they say if someone claims, they, they know. a president. Okay, well you know their name. You can [00:15:00] look up Wikipedia and know their birthdate and maybe what food they like. But like if you call them on the phone, they're not like gonna answer say, oh hey, how are you?

Like you don't know them. And I absolutely. And one thing I'm internally grateful for was a foundation of faith. very rare seasons in my life that I ever walked away from, that I got baptized when I was seven or eight. Rededicated my life. And like, 'cause you know, I did the whole middle school wild crowd thing, but turned it all over to the Lord as a middle schooler.

I really consider that kind of my true salvation. but. Jesus I knew was not one who could practically help me with my current resentment or my current fear or my current anxiety. I have my ticket to heaven, my, uh, fire prevention ticket, which I was eternally grateful for. And once in a while there'd be a really good worship song or really moving song, but most of these are about.[00:16:00]

And later and what I'm gonna go through to get there. It was very rarely about freedom in the now. didn't know anyone that was free in the now, ever until, really, until I met Lucy. I didn't know that kind of freedom was possible. Yeah. And so I got, my first, We call it the eyes of the heart, right?

Paul said, the eyes of the heart have been enlightened. I got my first mental picture of Jesus, in that first prayer time with Lucy, and it was super sweet and, I was dirty and he was wiping my face off, is what I saw in this picture in my mind. And that like really broke my heart, but in a good way, like.

Wow. He knows that I feel dirty and I need to be cleaned off. and so my capacity to. You know when we talk about prayer, no one ever taught me what prayer was. The word prayer in the Greek is ProSite. ProSite is translated in the original Greek exchange wishes with God. [00:17:00] We're never taught that. That's what prayer means.

We're taught that we pray, oh God, help, help, help, help. And I want this and I want this, and I want this. Thank you. Amen. That's not prayer. That's either the Santa Claus usage or I'm just complaining and. Lucy taught me that prayer is a conversation where you're actually getting responses, you're hearing yes.

And you're hearing no. And you're hearing, I love you, and you're hearing you're beautiful and you're hearing that that wasn't your fault. And like that was mind blowing and life radically life changing. so life changing in that season that. I'm trying to think of the timing now. Six, six or eight months after that first time with Lucy, the Lord called me out a full-time career level, you know, corporate America to do ministry full-time as Lucy did it, but actually taking it 10 steps further.

so yeah, The awareness of who God is. Um, my God was in a very nice pretty [00:18:00] box that I appreciated and now like there is no box because he is eternal and there's a new facet of him that I get almost every day. Yesterday I was praying and I had this picture in my head. It was so cool. Sounds kind of weird, but it was really cool.

I see Jesus in front of me and like he invited me to place my hand inside of his heart and then to, to like consume whatever, like to drink from him. It was neat. Like I didn't make that up and I didn't ask for it. so yes, my, my awareness of who God is profoundly changed. It 

Denisha: sounds like he went from the Wikipedia.

I'll learn about him to Yes. Truly experiencing him. Oh 

Nanci: yeah. His love, his 

Denisha: personal I see a lot in pictures as well, and that is, it's just such a personal moment with him. Oh yeah. To be able to explain that 

Nanci: and. If I had ever heard anybody else talk about this, I would've seen it as like, well, that's nice for you, right?

Yeah. Only certain [00:19:00] people get that. And now I know that that is fundamentally not true. Right? 

Denisha: Yeah. Yeah. It's just 

Nanci: not, 

Denisha: that's so true. That's so true. Yeah. So throughout your book, you walk through your journey. Mm-hmm. Which is incredible, and you're very honest and raw. Very and funny too, at the same time.

as you watch, my childhood 

Nanci: is hilarious. If you think about. 

Denisha: I share that with you. Uh, so as you walk through that, like you really feel in touch with, um, what you experienced, what you went through, you also included short prayers. Yeah. And that to me ties into you having the heart to want others to experience that personal God.

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, 'cause it's not like, here's Nancy's life from zero to 50. It's Topic. 

Nanci: It's actually thematical. Yeah, they, each chapters are different. You know, this one's on fear, this one's on, anger, this one's on shame, this one's on, injuries, you know, all these things.

I didn't plan it that way. The Lord obviously [00:20:00] planned it that way. I'd scheduled a writing retreat. Uh, my sister is a published author, and so we, I thought, well, there's a book I'm thinking about writing. and I thought. That's what I was gonna go to that weekend to write. and I write old school pen and paper 'cause there's something different in the brain that happens when you do that.

And I literally, I put my pen down and the first chapter of angry daughter came out within like 30 minutes. Wow. And I was like, okay, Lord, I guess we're doing this now. And. My mother had passed away already. I'm trying to think the timing, maybe six months before then. And part of the whole writing process was very healing, cathartic for me.

Just processing grief and because after the person you hated for so long is no longer there because they passed away, how you process that grief looks very different. It just does. But as I began to put pen to paper, first it seemed natural to include a prayer at the end of [00:21:00] each section because these were the things that got me, that I'd been taught by Lucy or by other ministries or training that helped me get free of a particular thing, shame or guilt or fear or whatever.

And I didn't want the story to go to waste, right? God doesn't waste pain if we give it to him. So I didn't want it just to be all, you know, negative. Negative. Oh, I'm better. Nice. But the story is so common. Like you said, the story of women who have the mother wound right. Is so common. I wanted to give people a key to actually get free of it.

Not just to commiserate, but to actually like, oh, I can actually pray this. Oh, for myself. That's great. so that's how they came about was just a very short. Exactly what I would've said in a moment if I needed to release prayer or forgive or what have you. I've gotten a lot of feedback about those three line prayers at the end of each chapter.

and they're different. You know, you don't find a lot of books with that. I [00:22:00] wanted to empower the people who are reading it to realize that they don't have to stay stuck either.

Denisha: So what would you say to the person who's here and going, well, good, you could forgive your mom, but that's not for me.

I can't forgive my mom, or my mom's no longer alive or there can't be reconciliation. Yep. what would you say, what's your experience? What would you say to someone who's coming in with that thought process? 

Nanci: Sure. Okay. Couple things. So first of all, forgiveness and reconciliation are not in the same thing.

I would actually say that there was never really a true reconciliation with my mom. She never owned what happened, never apologized for it, never admitted fault. and she also really didn't heal from her own narcissism and her drama and, and all those things. so if I'm waiting for someone else to get all of their ducks in a row and get healed to forgive, I'm gonna wait for eternity.

Okay. The way I counsel people is that forgiveness is not a feeling. Forgiveness is a decision. It is a transaction. It's a choice that I make. It's an act of my will, whether I feel [00:23:00] like it or not. We have to look at the story of the servant who would not forgive, right? Jesus told the story, the parable of the man that owed 10,000 talents.

We miss the severity of that debt because we don't know what that means. One talent in Hebrew culture was 16 years of wages, one talent, 16 years. This man owed 10,000 of that. He owed 160,000 years of wages. Okay, so it's billions with a B American dollars today. Not a small debt. It's not a small debt. The master forgives it, and then the next day the friend only owes, it's the equivalent of maybe a month of wages, a couple thousand dollars in comparison.

Now he won't forgive it. What's the master? Say you wick a slave. Yesterday, I forgave you billions of dollars, and today you won't forgive a couple thousand. I'm gonna turn you to the tortures to be tormented until you may pay me back every penny. And then what did Jesus say? So shall my Heavenly Father do to you if you don't forgive Chee, that hurts a lot.

It hurts a lot. Okay? If [00:24:00] we don't recognize that we are the one in the story that has been forgiven the billions because of what the Lord has forgiven us for when we look at our own. Sin debt record that the enemy is recorded. We have to recognize that that's us. Mm-hmm. So if the Lord has taken my Sin debt record and nailed it to Jesus, who am I to hold someone else's sin, debt, record.

I'm not the Lord, right? I don't get the right to hold that record. Real important. Forgiveness is not always reconciliation and relationship. Is God a God of reconciliation relationship? Yes. Takes two people to do that, and I can't do the work for both people. They have to want to be reconciled, recognize that there's an issue, and be willing to do hard things to make that happen.

Many of us will never get that, but forgiveness is for me, it isn't for them. Corey tin, boom. I've talked about her before. She tells the story of, um, you know, she was the family that was hiding Jews [00:25:00] during the Holocaust, and she got actually sent to one of the camps and, you know, there's people being murdered all around her every day.

And there was a particular guard that just was really sadistic and evil, and she's, she's a child to 10, 11, 12 years old. She gets freed. She's, you know, a believer this whole time, many, many, many years later in her adulthood, she's invited to go back to Germany to speak, and her message has always been about forgiveness.

Well, she goes into this one particular location and she's given her message and she looks down and who is on the front row? That guard who had been with her in Auschwitz and who had tortured and I mean ho horrible things. And she said she could tell immediately that he knew Jesus. Now because. He g glowed and he was at peace.

And, and she's like, yeah, and Lord, I'm not forgiving this. Nope, absolutely not. And afterwards, he, he came up to her, this guard, he has no idea who she is, no clue. And he puts his hand out to her and he's like, oh, sister Corey, isn't it great how the Lord [00:26:00] forgives? And the Lord, uh, Corey was like, okay, Lord, you're an, you've commanded me to forgive.

I don't wanna do this. All I feel for hate is, is hatred for him. I'm trusting you. And he says to her, Cory, stick your hand out. That's all I'm asking you to do. So she put her hand out and when he touched her hand, she said it felt like warm oil covered her whole body. And all of that hatred melted. And she heard in her heart, well done Cory.

That's how my children behave. And she had love for this man. Okay? 

Denisha: Supernaturally, 

Nanci: most of us. Haven't experienced that level of, of horrific things. But even if we have, when we look at what the Lord has forgiven and what he went through to forgive us, the torture he went through, the torment, the cat nine tales, the naked crucifixion, all the things, all of that was the nail our stuff to him, to our sin, to him, right?

So who are we to hold what someone else has done in light of what the Lord has done [00:27:00] So. I have to recognize though that although forgiveness is not a feeling, my feelings about what I'm forgiving matter a lot. There are large camps in the Christian community that are like, well, you just ignore how you feel and you'll feel better one day.

That's a lie. That's not how we're wired. No, we are wired for the full range of emotion. I have to go to my healer to heal my feelings. This is what I learned how to do through Lucy. Jesus. Take my resentment. I, I'm sick of this resentment. I don't want this resentment anymore, but I don't know how to get rid of it, so you gotta take it away.

Jesus, take my anger, take my hatred, take the, you know, frustration, whatever it is that is a separate transaction completely from forgiveness. I can forgive someone a hundred times and if I'm still seething with anger. That's not because they didn't forgive them. It's because I haven't let go of my anger.

Those are separate completely. I have to treat them separate. Okay? Again, it's a transaction. I mean, the [00:28:00] word forgiveness is to cancel a debt. It's literally to write paid in full, right? To tell us die. What Jesus said on the cross that this debt record that I have held against you, a stamp paid in full with the blood of Jesus.

Now he's got it. Doesn't matter how I feel about it, it's paid in full. My feelings get handled by the healer of my heart. So they have to be separate. Forgiveness. Doesn't matter if they are already deceased or not. Irrelevant, completely irrelevant. Some people find it easier to forgive if someone's deceased, especially if they were extremely traumatized by this person.

Some people find it much harder because they got no closure. Now they regret their last conversation, what have you. Again, these are healing things that Jesus can walk me through. is a choice. At the end of the day, it's a choice and we have way more power to choose than we think we have. If I tell myself a hundred times, I'll never forgive this.

I can't forgive this, that becomes my reality. [00:29:00] But if I say, I dunno if you're familiar with the, the program called Forgiving Forward, they use a phrase for people who are really struggling with forgiveness. It's all right, Jesus, you are the forgiver. So through you, Jesus, the forgiver, I'm choosing forgiveness for this person.

And what I also tell people is if they're struggling to forgive, and it's a lifetime of abuse and trauma, whatever. Try something small. One small thing. Let's say, here's the thing. My birthday is right before Christmas. It's a terrible time to have a birthday. It always has been. Always will be.

Just is. And even into my adult life, the gifts from my parents for my birthday were always wrapped in Christmas paper. Always still. Someone who's got a birthday in July, never gets a birthday present wrapped in Christmas paper. It just doesn't occur to anyone. And it sounds petty, but it's a thing. You know when you're already struggling with a Christmas birthday and the whole world is on vacation and no one comes to your [00:30:00] birthday party, it's already, it's an issue, right?

I mean, it's, it's rough. I feel really bad for people who have to have that. But anyway, let's just say that's the one thing that just happened. See what happens if I forgive just that. Something smaller, start something small and easy to forgive that doesn't have a lot of, you know, legs and and stuff connected to it.

Right. And it is amazing that when I'm willing to start small, it becomes so much easier. It really does. Wow. 

Denisha: When I think of your story, I think there's a really important piece as well that the Lord opened up to you in realizing that moment when your young self went to your mom and told her. What was happening to you.

Yep. And she did not protect you. Nope. We expect adults as children to protect us, to keep us safe. And yeah, I remember, I, I listened to something of yours, um, where you shared what your mom said to you, [00:31:00] and so. I would love for you to share that. And then how do you, how do you step out of that piece?

Because there's some compassion that came in your story Yeah. That maybe not everybody thinks about you'd like 

Nanci: to share. Yeah. Yeah. So I distinctly remember the conversation and I'm young. I'm six, maybe seven. And this has been going on for years already. It was a normal part of life. And sadly, there's a lot of people that have that story.

So I shared this and it was, I don't even know what prompted me to say, Hey mom, this is happening. And we're actually like, had gone to the grocery store and we're climbing out of the car with a couple grocery bags. and she didn't even look at me and she's like. Well, you need to tell him to stop. You make it stop.

And you, you shouldn't be like climbing over them. Climbing over him anyway. 

Denisha: 6-year-old. Yeah. Take that responsibility. Yeah. What's happening to you and your, in real[00:32:00] reality, you are the victim. 

Nanci: Yeah. And so there's a distinct wall that comes up as like, okay, well I'm really on my own. You know, I had assumed I was on my own, but now it's, it's abundantly clear that I'm in this all by myself.

and so the compassion as I began to heal and forgive that, and name mom, I forgive you for not protecting me and for blaming me and for the hurt that that put on me, all that coming to the place where I was able to see that she. Was paralyzed by the news and there was already so much at stake.

I didn't share this in the book, I don't believe, but her mom told her literally she's about to walk down the aisle when she was getting married to my dad. I'm convinced it won't working. Come home when you're ready. Who's, who does that on their wedding day? Like you're literally ready to get walk down the aisle and sharing this with my dad would've just blown the whole family apart, right?

And she could not afford [00:33:00] that. She could not afford what this would've looked like to the rest of the family, to expose the people who, like the exposure was so great in her mind that it's so we, we can't face it. And that actually was kind of her norm. We bury everything. You know, we don't cry funerals, we don't tell people about our, bad days and sad days.

Um, you know, we just demonstrate 'em around the house, but we don't. Tell people about these things. We don't go to therapy. and so what I learned was simply that she had nowhere to put it, felt trapped, paralyzed, shocked stu, all the things, but because she didn't know what to do, she just chose not to do anything.

And it was safer for her to blame the messenger. It just was. Even though the messenger was a child. but I fundamentally remember the shift in her perception of me, that, you know, I felt like maybe I, that I was a threat to her that she maybe saw [00:34:00] me as tainted or something, like there was a shift that happened then.

I know now that it wasn't intentional. She just, you know, Satan had a hold of her in a lot of ways. I mean, she loved Jesus. She's dancing in heaven now, but she carried a lot of her own baggage that she was never able to let go of. So she was reacting out of her own lenses, her own truths, her own baggage, all that.

Denisha: And there's some grace involved in that. It doesn't make the situation right. Oh, absolutely. I'm heartbroken for 6-year-old you hearing? Oh yes. Yeah. Hearing that and having to carry that. Yeah. Knowing that your mom didn't have the healthy tools, that she hadn't gone through the healing process, that she wasn't raised in an environment of health where we, you know, we just shove things under the rug, so therefore she shoved things under the rug.

Mm-hmm. Breaking those generational patterns is so important. It sounds like that Hard work. For you is what broke those chains and [00:35:00] freed you. Yeah. To be able to have that compassion and that love for what she's experienced in her life and also for to change your expectations of what you wanted from her.

Nanci: Yeah. And it has a changed this compassion thing. It is supernatural if someone's, you know. yelling at a cashier at the store, or, taking too long to, you know, find their wallet, whatever, staring at the green light while they can't. There's now a supernatural capacity where it wr Before I would be like, what is wrong with you?

Why can't you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now the first thought is, I wonder. What's happened in their day to day that has made this such a bad day for them? Like, I wonder if they just lost a spouse or they just got a diagnosis or like they just had to work a double, like it's changed the first concept that I have about how other people.

Act, which is supernatural. 

Denisha: Yeah. That is so beautiful. That's one thing that we, when we're working with our ladies too, instead of saying, what's [00:36:00] wrong with you? What happened to you? Yeah. What happened 

Nanci: to you? Yeah. 

Denisha: Such a, such a shift in, in how we look at things. Oh my goodness. So, and it's more like what Jesus would think.

Right. That's the first thing he would think. He's after our heart. Yeah. Not our behavior. What, what's going on in there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man. If someone was listening today and heard your story and feel stuck in that anger and that shame, that resentment towards a parent or towards anyone may have been evoked a little bit by our conversation, what encouragement would you give them?

Nanci: Yeah, so first, it's never too late. I've prayed with people that are in their mid seventies who for the first time are forgiving something that happened when they were 12. so it's never too late. truly there is nothing that is unforgivable. The world would vehemently disagree with that, but the word of God is very, very clear.

we don't ever wanna make light of what we're forgiving. [00:37:00] someone could have what the world would call a very minor, embarrassment and it devastates them for years. And we wanna honor that. Even if everyone's all, well, you know, did you get this and this and this done to you? We can't compare that with others and think what I went through isn't really enough to worry about.

Right? if that matter to you, it matters to you. And verbatim, Psalm says, what matters to me matters to the Lord. Okay? It matters. first of all, Jesus is the master exchanger. He is a constant state of, I mean, the original salvation is him exchanging his, our death for his life, right? Our poverty for his abundance, our shame for his glory, all those things.

But that's actually practically applicable with my anger and my, you know, frustration and my bitterness and my resentment that he says. Take my yoke upon you. Come to me all who are labor and are heavy laid and I'll give you rest. Uh, that's not just, you know, taking a nap. It's literal, [00:38:00] physical rest from all the stuff you've been carrying on.

You right? The stuff affects your physical body. So if you can imagine that the things that have been dumped on you through no fault of your own, most of the time that. I don't actually have to carry these things just because the world put this on me or the so and so. Put this on me. I don't have to carry it.

I assume, well, this is what I'm wearing, so I guess this is, this is mine to carry. No, it's not. Jesus says, no, no, give it over. I will carry it for you 'cause that's what I paid for. And no, I'll give you peace and joy and contentment and whatnot in exchange. I think this is important to say for the person who's struggling to kind of get over the hump, forgiving with an expectation that now they're gonna do right, and now they're gonna change, and now they're gonna apologize and now they're gonna treat me better.

That's a setup for great frustration and great disappointment because I can't forgive with an agenda. Because God will not [00:39:00] interfere with the free will of man, and I cannot change the free will of another man or a woman. I can, I can't do that. I can deal with my free will and I can submit it to the Lord.

So again, going back to Corey 10 Boone, when she said she forgave forgiveness is the key to the unlocks a cage prison, uh, door, and you were the one that was in the prison and you didn't know it, and that is what it is. Is it easy? No. Do we need to feel all the feelings connected to it? Yes. We need to weep.

We need to mourn, we need to grieve. We need to be very honest. There's a misnomer in some circles that forgiveness is a whole, I choose to forgive and oh, it's all better, and. Most of the time, that's not what forgiveness looks like. Sometimes forgiveness is through gritted teeth. God, I don't wanna forgive this.

I have been dishonored again, I don't deserve this. This is not fair. I'm choosing as an act of my will to forgive. Hmm Lord, this isn't fair. This hurts. You say to forgive, I'm choosing to forgive. I [00:40:00]don't want this anger. I don't want this offense. Take it. I don't want it, Lord. Cover me with yourself. Take this anger, give it, you know, I give it to you.

That is sometimes what forgiveness looks like in real life. And God is not offended by that. He's not. He's not offended by transparency, by honesty. David, look at David. Oh my gosh. If you read the Psalms, he's blatantly honest about his emotions. We need to be the same way.

And when I know that there's a Jesus that grieves for me. One of the chapters is actually my seeing Jesus grieving for me in a moment of abuse. Wait, what? That's biblical. He's acquainted with my grief. Jesus is righteously angry at the things that were done to you. He grieves at the things that were stolen from you.

He weaves with those who weep. He mourns with those who mourn. We have a Jesus who relates to that, and when I let that Jesus in life changing, 

Denisha: yeah. So good. Nancy, [00:41:00] I think we could talk all day about this talk. I love it. I love it. Well, I know people are gonna listen and we're gonna have you back in a couple weeks talking about inner healing a little bit more and that heart healing that you experienced.

'cause I wanna like take that one moment and pull that apart a little bit. Absolutely. In the meantime, how can people find you? How can people get angry? Daughter? 

Nanci: Yeah. So, um, my website is Lamb Born Author dot inc. And that's INK, like Inc. From A Pen, lamb Born Author dot Inc. Um, my Instagram handle is at lamb born author.

My Facebook page is at Lamb Born author, and that's A-M-B-O-R-N author for both of those. angry Daughter is available on, Amazon, both Kindle. Paperback and on Audible. Yay. Yes. Um, and it's actually on Google Playbooks, as an ebook as well. and other books. It's gonna be in a Chattanooga bookstore starting next month, so that's exciting.

Denisha: Woo. That's awesome. Yeah. And then you have two other [00:42:00] projects that you got out after that and that just come out last year, so you've been. 

Nanci: Yeah. So, my first novel, which is based on a true story of a miracle I got to participate in, that's called Crazy, has a name. So that came out beginning of this year and then just a couple months ago I released a 30 day Heart Healing devotional that's called The Shift and it.

Breaking down kind of this process. Like I went with Lucy, to just take one issue with the Lord for 30 days and it's, you know, several days on forgiving, several days on releasing lies, several days on this and this and this to like work through the stuff. so that's called The Shift. and that's on Amazon as well.

And we just started recording Audible on that one. And so that'll be out probably by the end of the year. 

Denisha: Fantastic. Oh, Nancy, thank you so much. Thank you for your courage, for your honesty and the hope that you bring, through being honest and sharing what you've gone through with the Lord. He's incredible.

Thank you. And [00:43:00] you have a powerful testimony of God's healing work, so thank you for sharing with us and I look forward to having you back on. All right, great.