Here at Family Light Today, we believe all scripture is inspired and 2 Timothy 3.16 puts it this way. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting and training in righteousness. And what you just read, that's how the CSB translates it. And it just captures the weight and purpose of God's Word so clearly. Thanks to the Christian Standard Bible for supporting family life today.
Visit csbible.com to learn more. Hi. There's this pressure as parents, I think we feel to have the answers. Why does mommy have a disease? Will I get the disease?
What is go like, why would God allow this? And it was. Hey, mommy feels that way a lot of times. And you know what? I'm still upset.
You know, I get angry at God too. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is Family Life Today.
So, as we've shared before, we're out this week, but our good friend Cheryl is currently sitting in and bringing great conversations that inspire you to act. She sure is.
So, check out this discussion with John and Keena Aragon, and I'm sure it's going to be good. Even the best spouses. Will disappoint us, will misunderstand us, will hurt us. And they were never meant to carry the weight of fulfilling us. There is only one love.
That Never fails, that never disappoints, that never falters. And our guests are here today to help us unpack God's enduring love. Because if we anchor ourselves in his love, then that will help us love those imperfect people around us very well. John and Keena Aragon. It's Aragon, right?
Yes.
Okay, great. I said it right. Yes.
And John, you're actually Jonathan, correct? Jonathan, but John, but you know, it'd be John Aragon, if you want to get John Aragon. I love that. I like the way you say it too. I love the accent that comes through.
You're from Colombia, right? Right. And you are. I'm from everywhere. I'm from the Philippines.
I was born there, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. Kina, you are like every tribe, tongue, and nation around the throne. Yes.
Yes.
That's a little fulfillment right there. Right, right.
So before we start talking about your book, I would love to know a little bit more about you. I'm just now meeting you, and I know you've been here before, but maybe the audience that has come along since then, they would like to get to know you as well.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us how you met. Oh, yes.
Okay.
So then that means I get to tell us. I'll tell you guys how we met.
Okay.
No, I was born in the Philippines, like I said, but raised here in Orlando, not too far from here. Was raised with my mom, dad, older sister. And so being Filipina, you know, it's pretty normal to be Catholic. And so I was raised in the Catholic Church, went to Catholic school and all of that. Around the time of, I want to say middle school, I was asking questions about faith, about how do we know what's, you know, true and what's not.
And at that time, I didn't feel very satisfied with the answers I was getting of things of just, you know, just have faith. And I was like, but how do I know what, which one am I supposed to have faith in? Like which religion or whatever. But to be honest, I was still just very much in a place of, I want to just be accepted and find places of where I belong and where I can find identity. And for me, that was academics and sports.
And so. Was always an athlete and was pretty good.
So, that's really where I found a sense of home or belonging. And that carried over into going into this big public school in Orlando and was really on the same trajectory until I met a friend on my volleyball team who shared the gospel with me. And yeah, nothing's been the same since.
So, I've been walking with the Lord since I was 16. I'm 37 now. What's the math on that? That's 21. 21 years.
Okay, yeah, too. I don't know how they carry the one. Yeah, yeah.
So, uh, yeah, I've just been walking with the Lord ever since. And, um, Went to USF in Tampa for school and so lived there. And after I graduated, that's when I met John just through a bunch of mutual friends. And we hung out a lot in community and got to know each other just by a lot of us. We were very privileged because a lot of us in our early 20s were just, you know, single and able to go places and do stuff.
We had time. And you weren't broke because I was. I mean, as a college student, right? College and after, like, pretty much, because I lived with a bunch of women in the same house. And it was just such a precious time because we were all growing in our faith and broke at the same time.
So it was like just the joy of the simple things. And just, you know, back then I could stay up till 2 a.m. and talk about, you know, the Bible and Jesus and, you know, still go to work the next day.
Now I can't quite hang like that. But those were, you know, really sweet days. And that's around the time I met John. And so, yeah, we got to know each other in community and it sort of organically developed that way. The reason that why.
While we're here, you know, we're here to talk about your book, which is called, I wanna make sure I get it right.
So I am not even gonna try to do this from memory. It is Love Has a Story: 100 Meditations on the Enduring Love of God. And I was doing a little bit of background research on the tube and I came across your book trailer. First of all, is that you speaking on the book trailer? Is that your voice?
Okay.
Well, as I'm listening to you, I'm like, oh, he has a radio voice for sure.
So it had to be.
So, but you said something that really struck a nerve with me. You said you felt like you had no business writing a book about the love of God.
So, first of all, can you unpack that for us? Tell us a little bit about what you meant when you made that statement. Yes, uh the most difficult thing for me, I think, in my twenty-one years of walking with Jesus has been truly believing in my bones, in my heart of hearts, that God actually likes me. That he actually loves me, that he delights in me.
So I knew, I know the passages. I can quote the scripture. I know what it says. I know what the scripture says. I know what God has said.
And. I believe it. But it's like the man that said to Jesus about, you know, and his son couldn't be healed. And he's like. You know, if you can heal him.
And Jesus is like, if I can, okay, I believe, but help my unbelief. And that's truly when I think about really basing my identity on being the beloved of God, being a beloved daughter of God. That has been my biggest struggle. And everything that I think all the other struggles that just come with being human and being broken, being sinful, a lot of them I think flow out of that misalignment.
Somewhere between the schedule, the responsibilities, and the routine, it's easy to forget why you enjoy being together. Weekend to remember gives you that time back. away from everything competing for your attention. Focused only on each other. And right now, through September 21st, registrations are 50% off, two for the price of one.
Just visit familylifetoday.com and click on the banner at the top of the page and find your date. Location. You know what I mean? You can pick whatever weekend you want, wherever you want. And you get the deal by just using the promo code SAVE50.
That's Save50. You know, I have been spending a lot of time in the identity scriptures for the last, I want to say the last year.
So, you know, Ephesians. One, two, and three, and Colossians, and what have you, all of those things that, and you know, Romans chapter eight, all of those things that really talk about who we are to God. I always stop at. Paul's prayer that my prayer is that you be strengthened to know what is the height, the depth, the breadth, and the width of God's great love for you. Because there's so much of life that comes at us that tells us something different, that paints a different story for us.
But God says, I love you.
So, how did you begin to experience his love in? The struggle that you were having with not even believing that he delighted in you and loved you. Yeah, I mean, there's always been, love has always had a witness. Every moment, you know, every day of my life. I've always had someone in my life, whether it was my grandmother or my parents or whatever, showing me love in some way.
But I think there's this really significant pivot for me that happened probably around 2019. And John and I say that we had about five or six years where the Lord had us take several seats, in the sense of we just had emergency after emergency. My health declined. That's a whole story in and of itself. And so my health declining, experiencing deportation in our family, experiencing injustices, experiencing friendship fallouts, financial strain.
It was just, you name it, it was just back to back to back. And when all of those things were being stripped from us in a time where we were still, you know, young-ish, I think I had just turned 30 and very still excited about the Lord and very involved in various ministries. And all of a sudden, it's like, I have to say no. To this, I have to say no to that. I have to quit my job.
I have to just take care of my health. My job is to stay alive now for multiple years. And so. Through that experience, God put into my life first a professional counselor and then a trauma therapist that both of them have just been really pivotal in terms of connecting me to my own story, my family of origin, stuff.
So when I say, man, the love of God has been one of the hardest things for me to grasp for myself over the last 21 years. I have a better understanding now because of the last six or so years of that counseling and therapy and story work. I have a better understanding of why that might be the case, you know, and I have a lot more compassion for myself that I think Jesus has had for me all along. That, you know, I just really think God has so much more compassion for us than we have for ourselves. And so now I'm able to look at my story and go, yeah, that makes sense why it might be hard to believe, you know, God, the Father, really likes me, God loves me.
And so it was between the counseling, the therapy, Therapy. And then honestly, John is not to be cliche at all. Like, he has been like a shield for me, truly. Whether there's been cases of spiritual abuse or slander or just various things, even within the many ER trips we've taken, hospitalizations, five surgeries, and so on. He has always been just that voice for me to speak up for me when I can't speak up for myself.
And also, just that person that is constantly reminding me who I am. I struggle with PTSD or complex PTSD. And so I have really, sometimes really dark moments where I can beat up on myself in a really unhealthy way. And he's just been this steady kind of presence that's like, I'm not going anywhere. You don't scare me.
You can't talk to my wife like that. You know, after I'm beating myself up, he's just been such a shield. I think that's the image for me.
So that incarnate nature. That's not a word, but that incarnateness of keep it. Throw it in there. Of my husband and then of various friends along the way, I think showing me the love of God through just staying. But for the person who maybe doesn't have a circle like that, who doesn't have a spouse, who loves Them like Christ loved the church.
And how would they begin to experience the love of God through their circumstances? And I'm asking because I, so I am a cancer survivor. You know, we all have had trials. We all have, we all have had struggles, but I remember distinctly the day I was diagnosed with cancer. I was worshiping God that morning.
And we had taken the test. We had done all the things we hadn't heard from the doctor, right? But I was worshiping God and I got stopped at the Lord is my shepherd. And I just kept repeating the Lord and then began worshiping him for who he is and recognizing that's who is shepherding me. That's who's loving me, right?
We get the call a little later and I go back into the room after my husband and I kind of talk about, okay, this is our new reality. I go back into the space where I'm worshiping God and I sit down and I say, okay, daddy, they say I have cancer. What are we going to do about that? And I look around my room and I realize the world is still spending the sun was still shining. My walls weren't cracked.
And I was like, you're the same. You're still the same God who. I was able to, because of my experience with God, detach my circumstances from the reality of who God is, that he is always just infinitely good and exceedingly holy, right? And that never changes. And he loves me.
That never changes. But for the person who is in the middle of their struggle right now and doesn't have a John or doesn't have, you know, extensive faith walk behind them, they're like, I can't believe that God loves me with everything that's going on. My wife has left me. My business has folded. All of the things that I believed God for has come to naught.
And I'm sitting here in a wasteland. How do I get up from that place with a realization that God loves me, that he likes me, that he delights in me despite my circumstances, telling me something different. Yeah, I mean, the first thing. That came to mind.
Well, there's multiple images that just flash through my mind of these times just in my prayer closet or these times of. You know, for lack of better terms, just throwing a fit before God, right? Lamenting, being snot-nosed like a little kid, just like, God, how could you? You know, saying the crass language towards God and saying all the things that you think might be illegal to say to the holy God of the universe, getting to a point where I'm so pushed over the edge that I have to be honest. Like, there's no, you know, gloves are off.
It's Jacob wrestling with God, right? It's David saying, okay, singing, mind you, not just saying, but singing, when are you going to kill my neighbor? Right? Like, when are you going to take care of this? Yeah.
Okay, but I trust in you, but you need to deal with this.
Okay.
Or the psalmist being like, God never sleeps. And also wake up. I'm not so wicked God. Right. Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah.
So I think there's just so many moments that just flashed through my mind as you were speaking where you're just in this place. And I really do think of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, with God himself, in that desolate place of desperation where he thinks his brother Esau is going to kill him for all the wrong that he has done to his own brother. And he wrestles with the Lord all night. And I think there's something, obviously, that God blesses and honors in your willingness and my willingness to get onto the quote unquote wrestling mat with God and to go, how could you? Like, what are you doing?
I'm struggling with insomnia, but you say you give sleep to your beloved.
So what does that mean about me? Am I not loved? Am I not loved? Yeah.
And so I think poetry is my native tongue. And really, so I end up writing poems of lament often. And I think there's just been a deeper and deeper honesty in my relationship with God and my prayers with God that has opened a door. That lament has been, yeah, it's like you're experiencing the death of the various losses that you're experiencing. But when we're willing to go through that death and name those losses, it's a little bit like throwing a funeral, right?
You're, when someone dies, you throw a funeral for them. You honor their life. You honor the loss. You honor your grief. And so our experience, I know for both of us has been this continual and deeper naming of the various losses that have come and the losses that one loss even encompasses, right?
Because it's never singular. And that's not just the death. The actual physical deaths of loved ones that we're experiencing. We're talking about, you know, all the other things we've just mentioned. But when we're willing to name those losses, it's like we get a chance to throw a funeral for them.
But if you don't admit that that dream, that joy that you used to have, that thing or that person, that relationship is dead, then you're not going to throw a funeral for it, meaning you're not going to lament and you're not going to have the chance to then experience lowercase R resurrections of those things. Right. Because on every side of the grave is resurrection. Correct. It really is.
And not just that it's dead, but also that it mattered because that's what you're saying. Like this, this really mattered to me. And this has been stripped away from me. And I don't like it.
So what I hear you say is, be honest. Be honest with God. One, during a season in my life, I lived in the Psalms. I absolutely lived in the Psalms. And I think that's where I began to respect David's relationship.
With the Lord so much because he was so honest with God about what he was feeling, what he was experiencing. And he gave that up to the Lord. And the Lord stepped right in the middle of there and brought healing and remembrance of how big he is, how faithful he is, and how much he loves.
So I like that. And that's a good starting place. But, John, would you like to add anything to that? Like, what about the person that's struggling? Like, what could they do?
Yeah, I I I mean you said it well and Kina spoke to it. God's always writing with a redemptive arc. But then we have to deal with The unresolved subplots of our stories. And to Kina's point, Going before the Lord with that level of honesty and even crass language and asking God, Do you even care? Like, where are you?
I'll share this because I think it's appropriate. During the years when we were dealing with just health crisis after health crisis, our daughter, who is now 10 at the time, was Yeah. And she was struggling to believe whether or not God was good. And one of her questions, and hopefully this resonates for anyone who's listening, was, how is God good? Mm-hmm.
How is God good if mommy has a disease? And in her young sixth Seven-year-old way, she was struggling to believe that God was good. But her circumstance wasn't reflecting it. And I think we see this throughout scripture. We see it with David.
We see it with Job. We see it with so many others that God often brings deliverance from the trial while you're still in the trial. And the longing that our souls have to. Desire God not for the things that He can give us, but for God Himself. Yes.
And getting to that point. Requires death in all ways, shapes, and forms, where you're brought to the end of yourself. And it's, you know, you wrestling with the angel of the Lord. Like, God, where are you? God, do you see me?
Do you care? And that's where God can do his best work. But it feels like death because it's supposed to.
So how do you explain that to a six-year-old? Like if I'm thinking as a parent, my daughter's father, my first husband, passed away when she was 13. And this was after a time when they were estranged from one another because of something he did.
So she was just beginning to recover a relationship that was very important to her. And then he died. And although she tells me she did not lose faith in God at that time, I imagine a six-year-old who's struggling with feelings and their feelings are big and they don't know how to put their feelings into words, asking a very real, real question doesn't have the complexity of thought to think that through.
So how do you explain that as a parent? How would I explain that to a child? Yes, I have a very vivid memory of this. Not that there's only been one conversation. There's been many conversations.
But as John was saying, JL was, our daughter was wrestling with. One, we had to move from Tampa to Orlando.
So for her, her world was Tampa, her neighborhood friends. We took her away from everything. And so she's struggling with that. She's struggling with having seen me for years be on the couch or in bed, dealing with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, in and out of surgeries, and so on. And she also wanted a sibling.
And now I can't have children. And so she knows I can't get, I don't get to have a little brother or sister like everybody else. And so I remember there is this pressure as parents, I think we feel to have the answers and to be like, okay, well, I have been walking with Jesus for X amount of years. I've been studying. I should be prepared for this, right?
Like I should know. But for me, like my parenting verse has always been James, I think it's 1.5 of if any of you lacks wisdom, and as parents, you got to know you lack wisdom. I don't know what to say right now. Just ask God and He'll give it. And there was this one day, and she was six.
I remember this. She was just dealing with her attitude, and it was so outside. Side of her normal, you know, happy-go-lucky kind of personality. And I remember. Kind of freaking out inside at first and being like, okay, do I discipline hard here?
Do I, you know, do I lay down the law or do I try to give this, you know, sort of a mini apologetics class to a six-year-old in terms of like why God is good or how do I okay, Laura? It's like kind of took a pause and was like. Lord help. And what I think God brought to mind was that Kina, your experience of me and my goodness has been through this long journey of being willing to lament. Allow her to have unanswered questions and let her into the fact that you yourself don't know the answers.
Why does mommy have a disease? Will I get the disease? What is going? Like, why would God allow this? And so instead of giving her the, well, you know, technically the scripture says that I was like, we live in a broken world, blah, blah, blah.
It also starts Genesis 3. It wasn't that in that conversation. It was. Hey, mommy feels that way a lot of times. And you know what?
I'm still upset. You know, I get angry at God too. And she's like, wait, you get because she's thinking, my parents, no, like they're. And I just remember her face being shocked. And that's when I knew, okay, I think we're on the right.
I've struck the right chord and we're on the right path here. Yeah, mommy gets angry at God too. And God invites us to come to him with our questions, to come to him with our frustrations, even if we're actually frustrated at him for allowing certain things. And I don't know all the answers to these. And I could see in that moment, there was just this pivot for her of like the tears started to fall and she was able to express all the things I just mentioned.
Yeah.
What a great discussion and this is just the beginning. For sure and I can't wait to listen tomorrow when Cheryl and John and Kina Aragon will continue on this same topic. Yeah and in the meantime check out the show notes at familylifetoday.com for links to all the resources discussed on today's episode. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
