When Life is Complicated: Lisa Whittle

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The question is, after 42 years, do you still love me? That's not the question. But you didn't answer. You just avoided that one. I totally love you. What else are you going to say?

We're out of here. But here's the real question. And this is really, I think, a question everybody wants to know the answer.

How does a person truly change? 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 or on the Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. Well, I know where we're going today, and I know what we're going to talk about. And so, as we're talking about this, this is the thing, too. As I was reading the book and learning about the author we're about to interview, I thought, yes, this is true. Because pain is one of the things that really helps to mold us and changes us.

It can, but we don't always allow it to. Yeah. And we've got Lisa Whittle with us today. Lisa, welcome to Family Life Today.

Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. It's been a while, right? Yeah. I mean, last time you were with Family Life, we were in Little Rock.

That's true. And we weren't even there. We were just little kids at that time, maybe. I mean, listen, I was trying to recall the year, and I can't recall the year, but it's been seven books ago. I was going to say, you've written eight books, right? And that was your first book? Right. Eight books, married, kids. Yeah.

Three children, a daughter-in-law, a dog of 15 years. Fifteen? Yeah. You know what that means? I know. Don't talk about it. I'm already sad.

We've already gone through that. Your book is The Hard Good. Yes. So, you know, we just talked about pain.

Would you answer the question the same way? Is that how God changes us? Yes, but I loved what Ann said, that it can change you, but it doesn't always. I mean, for the better.

Let's say it this way. Pain can either change us for the worse or for the better. You know, there's some of us who become bitter, become jaded, become skeptical. It's not like pain is an automatic changer of you for the good. It can be a transformer for the good. But we have that opportunity, and we also have the opportunity that it not be used for our good.

Well, Dave, my preacher husband right there, he has always said pain will make you either better or bitter. Right. And he always says at the end, isn't this good? I remember this, huh? Look at this. Oh, yeah.

The choice is yours. Yeah, so is that what happens? Obviously, I love your title, Hard Good.

Is that what happens? It can be hard bad? The book is about the things that can be transformational in your life if you allow God to use them in that way. But certainly, as we go through our life, we face difficulties all the time that, as we know, make us feel a certain way, might close our hearts for a certain time. And that's why I wanted to talk about how if we allow the Lord to use those things, we develop this incredible usability for the kingdom of God. But we can thwart that by saying, I don't want that thing.

I don't want to be informed by the hardship. I don't want to open my heart again when it's been hurt. I don't want to accept something that I wish had been something different. And maybe for a time that's true as well, but in the end, do we want to be used for the kingdom of God in this powerful way? And I think a lot of us say, Oh, I want God to use me. And yet those things that help us become wildly usable for the kingdom of God are things that we face every day that are hard. And so that's why it's really specific, the hard good. If it were just hard, it's not necessarily transformational.

Or if it's just good, as we know, that's not going to be wildly transformational either. But it's those two things together that are so important, hard and good. Which is throughout the Bible.

Yes. When you look at some of the best and the greatest leaders, but also the great patriarchs and those that we look up to in their faith, their lives were hard sometimes and a lot of times. One of the things that you've said too is some people think the reason they never get anywhere, because a lot of people say that, like, I'm just not getting anywhere, is because of difficulties they've encountered in life. And I like this because you say, but the real reason is because they keep bailing on where God wants to take them through those hard things. And I'm guessing you've experienced some hard things. Like when you wrote this, I mean, there's usually something behind their story, behind the story.

What's been hard for you? Well, I'm also historically a bailer sometimes, Anne. That's why that line is— Yes.

We all want to bail. It's interesting though, because there's some things I really stick to it about. But then there's times that when God has wanted to work in my life and I call it like mess with me, right?

Yeah. I've wanted to just bail on that process because it's hard to be transformed. It's hard to go through the sanctification process, big word. But, you know, those things to be used for the glory of God and to face them. I've certainly gone through hard things. You know, I talk about my father's death in this book, who was a great love of my life. And yet there were hardships even in that relationship, because my father was a pastor.

He went through a tremendous ministry fall. And as a young woman, I watched that. I observed that. I watched all the intricacies of that. I watched him battle his own inner turmoil that he faced through that.

And I had this front row seat to this man's inner battle. And you were 18 when this was exposed? It was kind of in between 18 to 24. You know, it was those kind of young adult years. And so, you know, the first time I remember when this all happened, the IRS, it was an IRS situation with my father. Initially, I remember coming home and seeing he and my mother sitting at the kitchen table and seeing someone that had a uniform on, like an officer's uniform, and just seeing the look on my parents' face. And knowing something immediately was going to shift in our family forever. But not knowing what was going on, because there was a lot of protectiveness.

They didn't want us to know everything, but kids just know. And so that just became this, you know, five, six-year sort of investigation, and just a lot of things that happened in my family. And so, you can imagine, as someone who loved Jesus, but also was in this ministry life, and watched my father battle. And here, my father was my spiritual leader, and, you know, here's the Jesus business, quote, unquote, you know, all these things.

It was very confusing. And so, you know, when my father died, I just remember feeling this mantle. I knew God had called me into ministry as well.

By this point, I'm already an author and a speaker. But separating my own DNA and legacy piece from my father has been somewhat of a lifelong process. And I talk about that in The Hard Good, you know. And so, certainly that has been difficult, but there have been difficulties throughout my life like this. I mean, everybody wants to know, how do you get from the hard, or the trial, or the pain? And it's what your book's all about.

It's so well done to the good. So, help us understand that, because if we're not in hard now, we're going to be, or we just come out. I mean, it's the reality of living in life, but a lot of us don't ever get to the good. Whether we bail or whatever it is, it's like we don't walk that road. So, help us understand, how do we walk through hard, in hard, to good?

Well, you know, I wish there was just a push the button, one, two, three. I do talk about process in this book, because it is important to know processes. And I think it depends on kind of what you're going through, whether it be a grief process, which I talk about in chapter six, or whether, and you're talking about acceptance, which is what I talk about in the beginning of the book, because one of the most difficult things for us is accepting something that we wish were something different. That might be a death, but it also might be the death of a dream, might be a job loss, might be any of those kinds of things. And I think that's one of the most difficult things, moving from what if to what is. And that endless questioning that we have, and we have those questions of what if they, what if I, what if God. And it's kind of spending time spinning in those what if scenarios that we have. And so, I think that's one thing that's very important is being able to move from the what if to the what is.

And we talk about that process in chapter one. I think also, it's a matter of what do you want most? Because for a lot of us, what we want in the moment is not what we will actually want most. And so, it's very important for us to understand that these temporary feelings that we have that are from God, because feelings are from God, where He could have made us robotic, He did not. He gave us feelings, they're very important, but they are not meant to be God in our life.

They're meant to be a gauge. And so, one of the things that I found very important to talk about in this book is the fact that our bossy feelings sometimes overtake us in moments. And so, anything ever becoming good from hard has to be gauged, those feelings have to be gauged. And so, sometimes what we want in the moment is to get even, or to get relief, or all of these things. And in that temporary place, if we're ever going to get to the good place, we have to process those feelings in the moment and remember what we want the most out of it, which is for God to use us greatly in our life.

And so, we have to stick with God through the uncomfortable process of transformation, which is what I talk about here. I'm thinking about our marriage. Dave and I really struggled 10 years in.

Are we going to go there again? Yeah, because this reminded me of this. I wanted something immediate, and I thought I wanted Dave just to change.

If Dave would change, then I could be happy. But one of the things that ended up happening during that time, and you've talked about this, is my heart just shut down. And you talk about this a lot, and I was resonating like, oh man, I talked to so many other women. Our heart gets hurt, we're disappointed again, our expectations aren't met. And so, what begins to happen is we try to protect our hearts, and so we shut them down. And we don't want to do that, but we do it out of this protectiveness. And I think so many people are there in their marriages, like, I'm just shutting down. And God doesn't want us to do that. So how do we not shut our hearts down? Yeah, well that's, I mean, it is tough, and we do need the Lord for that. I mean, there's no way, that's not a Christian answer, that is the truth. Like, we can't show up for our lives.

We can't live this subtitle that sounds really great, we might want to wear it on a t-shirt. But to show up for our lives requires His help. I'm a person that, when I'm in a moment, historically, whether it be in my relationship with my husband, or in a moment that someone could set me off, especially when the Holy Spirit is not controlling my life in the way that I want Him to, I'm not allowing Him to. My dad had died, and my mom was dating someone who she's now married to, who I love very much. But he had come to visit, and we were going to go on the lake, and he walked out of the house wearing my dad's cowboy hat. And, you know, it was a little fresh for me after my father's death, and he wasn't at all in any way wanting to be cruel or any of those kinds of things. He simply needed a hat for the lake.

He and my father were really good friends, and so it made sense to him. But for me, that was my daddy's hat. Oh, total trigger.

Yeah, it was a real trigger. And I just remember going to the lake. I mean, it almost brings me to tears right now. I remember going to the lake that day, and as soon as I saw him walk out of the house in that hat before we were even going to the lake, I remember saying, God, you're going to have to help me, because in my flesh, I want to rip that cowboy hat off his head.

And I want to say, that's my daddy's hat, and you can't wear it. And I remember thinking, I cannot behave this way, the way that I really want to behave, because I can be very feisty, Ann. I mean, I'm telling you, it was in my spirit.

I wanted to do it, but I knew that that would ruin the lake day. And I think what I'm talking about is something that people can relate to. There's been many times in our lives where that emotion threatens to take us over, but we know that give us two hours, and we'll wish we hadn't behaved in that way, because it's ruined the whole day. And I've had those moments happen so many times in my life where I've thought, oh, I just wish I'd waited a little bit longer for that response, or I'd waited a little bit longer to not have reacted in a certain way, because it just ruined this moment, or ruined this relationship, or whatever the case may be. I think a lot of us online have thought, oh, I really wish the Lord had bridled me a little bit here, you know, because of the way that it's manifested for a relationship.

So the question that you had was, how do I not shut down? And I think one thing, and I talk about this a lot in that chapter, is paying attention to the cues in your body even, where you know when those things begin to happen, where you begin to sweat, or the heat is rising in your body, or you begin to be very short with someone, or you begin to pace. Your body, this is what's so genius about God, body, mind, and spirit, we're created as a whole being, it's tipping us off sometimes to, oh, you're about to shut down here. And that doesn't mean we don't ever need to walk away, or any of those things.

Sometimes that's very important. But it just means that when you're beginning to shut down, and you're in that shutdown mode, you really need the Lord to help you to defer that type of sort of emotional response to sometime that's more appropriate later, where you can process it properly. I was on a retreat. I took a young woman that I had been discipling, I think she was like 19, and she had tried to commit suicide. She had lost her scholarship, and she came to my house because she went to our church, and she was so mad. She was mad at God, she was mad at the world, and she had just gotten out of the hospital, and she didn't know Jesus. And I remember saying to her, who are you? And she said, I'm a soccer player. I said, no, that's what you do.

Who are you? And she started crying. She said, I have no idea who I am apart from soccer, because it had ended her career playing. And so she ended up giving her life to Jesus, and this transformation was happening. And I take her to this women's retreat, and I'm thinking, oh man, she's going to really be set on fire at this retreat.

And as we get in, we had this little housing thing, and all these girls and women are there, and I'm watching her out of the corner of my eye, and I think, uh-oh, she's shutting. You can see when someone shuts down, can't you? Yes, a lot of times you can. Yeah, and I can see her. Women can.

I just threw that in there a little bit. I'm not saying men can't. Women know.

Men can too, but I miss a lot. She starts getting really quiet. She starts retreating away from everyone, and it's almost like her head goes down. And I've seen this with so many women. I do this sometimes, where I'm starting to hear a lie, so I pull her aside, and I said, hey, what's going on? Because I'm seeing like your head's down, you're not engaged. Are you hearing lies? And she said, I don't belong here.

These women are so spiritual. I'm nobody. I'm nothing. I don't even know Jesus. If they knew what I had done, they wouldn't want to.

And I think we're all faced with lies from the past, lies from the enemy, so many lies that tend to shut us down. And I remember looking at her, and it's like, look at me. Like, you are a child of the king.

You are his daughter. We need your full self here because you add so much. Sometimes I think it takes another woman or a group of community saying to one another, like, we need the fullness of who you are here because God has things in you. I have nothing like you, but we need your fullness here.

And it took her a while. And I think you're so good, Lisa, in helping us know how to get out of that. That's so good.

That's so good. And that's one of the reasons why I think Satan wants to isolate us so that we don't have that community. We can't speak into each other. You know, this is the thing that I have realized. I knew this before I wrote The Hard Good, but I think it's been confirmed so many times after I released it, is that we are all going through something hard.

Everyone, every single one of us. And some things are literally almost unspeakable. I mean, I get DMs and messages every day, you know, being in the pastorate. The stories that people carry are just almost unbelievable if we didn't know that this world that we live in is a difficult world. And so I think what you're saying is so crucial here because the lie is that you're better off alone. You're the only one going through anything. And so if someone's listening and you've been believing that, I just need you to know that I know from the stories that I hear every day that it's not true, that there is just unspeakable hard that's going on in the world, and your hard matters. And the best thing that you can do is not isolate yourself at this moment because people do care. There are people that care. The world is hard, certainly, and there are people that don't care about your pain, but there are people that care.

And so it's super important to pull together. Yeah, and the last thing you want to do, although it's easy to do, is shut down. I mean, your chapter about shut down or show up, I think a lot of us shut down.

I've shut down at times. It's just like, oh, it's easier. I'm just going to stuff it. I'm just going to hide it. I'm not even going to tell the guys in my life.

I'm not even going to tell my wife. And yet if you do that, obviously you know you stay in the hard. You never get to the good. That's so true. And it's interesting to me because this chapter especially, and of course it's the subtitle as well, it has resonated with so many people because the idea of showing up for our life is so appealing. We want to show up for our life.

We really, really do. We want to show up for other people as well, but we so often feel like I don't even know how, I can't. I will tell you that, and one of the things I talk about in this chapter is that our mind is the place that is often where this belief system lies. As you were talking about this young woman, and I talk about this domino effect that happens. You have this sort of belief that leads to hope, that leads to a risk, and then sometimes when we take this risk that hurts us, that doesn't pay off, then there's sort of this breach, right? And then it leads to this lie, like this woman coming to this retreat. She had this hope, she took a risk, and then there was a breach maybe that someone didn't talk to her immediately.

It didn't go as well as she thought. Then there's this lie again, I don't matter, and it leads to another belief. And so that's how sometimes this cycle goes, and a lot of that is in our mind. And so we can't ignore our mind in that sense of what matters and how that shuts us down sometimes.

So it is a real body, mind, and soul effect here. And I talk in the book, and it's interesting, it's just a small little example, but it's about how we have to hook our lives to the bigger hook, which is Jesus. I was talking about how I had this hook in my bathroom, and I kept trying to put my bathrobe on it, and it just kept falling off, and I was so frustrated, and I'm like, ugh, this bathrobe just won't go on this hook. And then all of a sudden, sometimes it takes me a minute, I thought, I guess I just need a bigger hook.

That's what I need here, right? But there was already this small hook on the wall. I didn't want to have to put a bigger hook there. But the idea is we have to have something bigger than ourselves here. We can't just show up.

It's not possible. I can't pull the bootstraps up enough. At some point, the bootstraps are going to wear. And so this is about Jesus. It's not just gonna be willing ourselves to show up for our lives.

It is going to be about Him, and it's super important. And I think it can be in the moment, as you're saying, of calling out to God and telling Him the truth, this is where I am, God. I feel like I'm shutting down. I feel like I don't matter. And He is right there wanting to hear us, listening to us, hearing our cries.

He knows every tear. But just telling Him the truth, this is where I want to go. Give me the power in Your Spirit to walk in the Spirit and to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, and peace like to start out with even. You're listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Lisa Whittle on Family Life Today. When you think of encouraging verses, Second Chronicles might not be the first place you go, but stick around. Anne's got a verse to share that'll really bless you. But first, Lisa has written a book called The Hard Good, showing up for God to work in you when you want to shut down.

You can get a copy at familylifetoday.com or by calling 800-358-6329. That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. All right, here's Anne with an encouraging verse for you today. I just read this verse this week.

It's so good. It's from Second Chronicles 16, 9. It says, The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. And I just love that idea of the eyes of the Lord are searching the whole earth in order to strengthen us. You know, if we're seeking Him, He's right there and He wants to strengthen us.

It's easy to disregard pain, or sometimes if you're like me, find yourself at a complete loss of how to deal with your pain. So how can we get unstuck from that? Well, tomorrow on Family Life Today, David Ann Wilson will talk about that with our guest again, Lisa Whittle. That's tomorrow. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.