Facing Childhood Trauma Julie Busler

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Hope in the Morning. turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. Welcome to Hope in the Morning. I am your host, Emily Curtis, and I am joined today with Julie Busler.

And she is the author of two books. You have Hopeful Sorrow is the one in my hand, and what's the title of your other book? Joyful sorrow. Joyful sorrow. And you have traveled through a lot of heartache, and it really stemmed in your childhood.

So, today, I mean, we're going to be starting by talking about childhood trauma and how when we don't deal with the trauma that we go through as a child, it can actually affect who not only how we view God, but who we are as adults.

So can you launch us right into kind of what your childhood was like? Yeah, so from the outside, everything looked pretty picture perfect. My parents were married. I have some siblings, and we had everything materially you could ever need. I was vice president of my class all four years of high school and in ballet, and so it looked really great.

But behind closed doors, there was a lot of emotional neglect, which I didn't know what that was. And there was some verbal and emotional abuse. At the same time, my mom also got diagnosed with cancer when I was eight.

So I have this very sick mom, most of my upbringing.

So she loved me. She was a wonderful mother, but I think her capacity to really do probably everything that she wanted to as a mom was probably hindered. Because now that I'm a mom, I can imagine how hard that would be as someone who is dealing with cancer.

So at eight years old, you're old enough to realize something's wrong. I mean, her appearance is changing, but no one. Took me aside and said, This is what grief is. This is cancer, this is death.

So I really just learned from a very young age to pretend like I'm okay and stay out of the way.

So it's not like I even try to wear this mask, it just is how I was raised, and I didn't even know. That was not healthy.

So, um I ended up, you know, that was my upbringing and I went to college out of state at the University of Oklahoma. And after my freshman year, I went back home and my mom, she passed away. And it was, it was so traumatic because I'm this new 19-year-old, which you're an adult, but you're still very young. And I have an 18-year-old now.

So I'm like, I realize you still need a mom and a dad.

So I witnessed her death at our home. There's no hospice. There's no doctors. There's no help. And so it was, I believe, way more traumatic than it could have been with some help.

But as soon as she died, they took her body away. And we just, I got busy planning a funeral. I'm the oldest daughter. And no one took me aside and was like, are you okay? Do you need to talk to somebody?

And so that was really the trauma. It wasn't, it was also, it was going through the death of, you know, my mom, but then it was doing it alone without someone to support me. To witness that grief and to even explain what's happening, so I just shoved it down. I'm really good at that, unfortunately, and put on a brave face, looked just like this-I mean, very smiley-and went back to college a few months later. And my friends knew my mom had died, but they had no idea.

And we're all young.

So, I just pretended like I was okay. But that's really when it started getting dark. And I have all this vocabulary now, like depression and complex trauma, but I didn't know any of that. Yeah, and so I. I'm a sophomore in college.

And you know, my dad, he was the one who was, he was pretty abusive. And I didn't understand that because he didn't physically abuse me.

So I'm feeling alone and I don't have. Like any concept of a safe father who even knows me at all. We just, he provides for me, you know, with money, essentially.

So I'm really alone. And that's when these thoughts begin, and they're so passive that I don't recognize how dangerous they are, and that there's help for them. They're very passive suicidal thoughts. And it was like, I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up. Or I'd be okay if I got cancer and died or got in a car accident.

And that shows the depth of despair that I was feeling. And I wasn't a Christian yet. I guess I forgot to add this. My mom took us to church, but it was like, go to church and go back home. Um there was no family prayer or discipleship.

So I was basically a moral person growing up, but there's no true transformation, like a living hope. It's not inside of me yet. I don't know how to incorporate that by any means. And so I'm starting to have these really dark thoughts, and I just let them. Run wild all the while.

I'm this sorority girl, super smiley, successful in school, and no one had any idea. Wow. And I mean, not only not only did you face Your mom at eight years old being diagnosed with cancer. But I know, like, when we were growing up, I think we're close to the same age, when we were growing up, Cancer really was more of a death sentence even than it is now. You know, there's a lot more treatments now.

Back then, I remember if you heard that someone's mom got cancer, that was a very scary diagnosis. Like you knew that it was not going to likely have a good outcome. You mentioned that you took ballet too and you talk a little bit in your book about some some analogies between ballet and the way that you masked your pain. Can you tell us those analogies? Yeah, so I became a people pleaser pretty young.

I think I just really wanted validation, especially from my dad. Like I wanted to hear, I love you, I'm proud of you. And I was really talented in ballet. I went on to dance professionally, but that was difficult emotionally looking back now because I'm getting lots of validation in the ballet studio. And you're trained to wear these, I mean, you wear these beautiful, exquisite tutus and your toes may be bleeding, but you're trained to dance gracefully.

And the whole purpose is for the audience. You don't want to ruin their experience of watching you perform. And so it's really this creative form of people pleasing that became my whole identity. And I think that's where I escaped a lot of what was happening at home and not getting validation. I would get that on stage.

I mean, they're clapping for you, standing ovation. But that further trained me to hide everything, all the pain that's going on. Like I remember. I was in one ballet where we got off in the wings and I'm like dry heaving because it was such a fast ballet and I'm panting, but then I've got to pull myself back together and go on stage. And that's like having a panic attack behind closed doors and walking out and being like, I'm good.

I'm all great.

So really, I love ballet, but it did not help with my people pleasing tendencies. I thought that was a great analogy because we do that so often in the church. Even like you said, I know that you said in the beginning of all of your trauma and everything, you weren't a believer, but we do that in the church too. You know, we come on Sunday and people, even if we've gone through something really hard, people will just say in passing, you know, how are you doing today? And we're almost expected to say, I'm doing well.

How are you doing? And instead of like feeling like we can take those walls down and just be honest and say this has been a really hard week, and I think. For our listeners that are hearing, like if you're on the side of being a friend or being someone in the church and you know that they've gone through something hard, keep the questions small: How have you been this week? How's your grief been this week? Or even better, like take them privately somewhere and have coffee with them, like form that relationship.

I was going to ask you that question too, as far as like how important do you think that face-to-face communication is with a grieving friend? I think it's everything because we need someone to witness our grief. Um and so that was the problem is that I think I was really delayed like Decades long delayed in grieving, because you have to feel the grief in order to move through it. Like it's so important not to push it away.

So, if I had had someone to listen to me or to really know me, and when I'm like, oh, you know, I'm hanging in there to be like, How are you really? Yeah, I would have talked about it eventually. And so now later in life, I have been more open and friends are asking. And it's life-giving because I'm learning I can feel the pain, but then it eventually, I, you know, I move through it and it does lift. Yeah.

So I mean, we were made to live in community. Absolutely. You, you also mentioned in your book, which I thought was really a poignant thing because I hear this from like grieving mothers and fathers, but almost more from mothers, the fact that they feel like it's an act of love to hide their grief from their kids because they don't want to always be crying or grieving or sad in front of their kids. And yet you kind of made the point that like, because that's how things were done in your house, you didn't learn how to grieve. You didn't learn that it was okay to grieve.

You didn't learn what does it look like to grieve in a healthy way or a godly way. And one of the things that you said in there that I thought was so good, you said this, you said, we are convinced we will never be like our parents. Yet like a detective finds at a crime scene. their fingerprints can be seen all over, let's see, their fingerprints can be seen all over our children if we take a closer look. And we, the ones sandwiched between our parents and children, are the ones that made the transfer.

And that's a chapter that you talk about, kind of breaking some of that cyclical trauma that we can pass on from generation to generation. What have you learned as a mom as far as like really being vigilant to try not to pass those fingerprints on? Yeah, it's hard and it's taken me a while.

So my kids are now 18, 16, 14, and 10. And I would just say, in like the last four years, Or so years, I think I've really been intentional in letting them see the real me. And so I've had to learn. Like, I've always been a good mom. I've always gone through the motions because I've watched other moms in the church.

I've just emulated their behavior. I've read parenting books.

So I've learned how to be a good mom, but I didn't really understand it.

So, I mean, our kids will go through tragedy. My kids are old enough where they have lost classmates to suicide. They have gone through things. They've even grieved not having my parents, even though two of them never even met my parents. And so, Grief is just part of our story, you know, collectively.

So, my first instinct is to go to my room and hide it. And my husband has actually been the one who's been like, It's okay, they need to see you cry. And so, it's so awkward for me, but especially in the beginning, not so much now, but to walk out and have, it's obvious I've cried. And then they look at me and then I will explain, I mean, in an age-appropriate way, whatever it is I'm upset about. But what's amazing is that recently my oldest son has read both of my books and I was really worried, like, what are they going to think about my story?

Because I share pretty openly about mental health struggles. And the other day he was like, mom, you used to be more gray and now it's like you're full of color and like life. And it's not that I've changed like my personality. I've always been bubbly and like a fun mom, but I think he sees like the depth, like the whole picture of me. And I really think that that's why he sees a more colorful.

Beautiful picture because he sees the grief. Yeah.

And that makes me more of a human. And then they can relate to that. That's an interesting point because when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and like our kids to really get to know the depths of who we are, I think that they almost feel more known as well because they're part of us. And so. When they feel like I know mom really well, and mom knows me, and I can take any of my sorrows, any of my griefs to her, and she's not gonna tell me that's not important, that doesn't matter.

You're not gonna diminish what their sorrows are because you understand the importance of having open dialogue surrounding not only. Trauma and grief, but surrounding the thoughts that you have in your mind. And when we come back from the commercial, we're going to talk about the fact that. The loss of your mom was not the only loss that you faced. You've been through quite a few losses, and that affected very much your own mental health and really kind of where.

Where you became put in a dark spot. You're not alone. In that. And so, our listeners that are listening, maybe you're in that dark spot, you're not alone. And yes, this episode covers some really heavy topics, but it is going to be full of hope.

And as your son mentioned, we're gonna bring the color into this and show that what is hidden in the darkness, God can bring to light and He can restore it.

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I am joined today with author Julie Bustler, and she has shared with us kind of some of the childhood traumas that. She went through, not the least of which was your mom getting cancer when you were only eight years old and really not understanding how to process that grief. I wanted to just ask you, real quick, now, especially now that you're a parent, how do you wish that your parents had handled that particular situation with you and your siblings? I have a lot of compassion for them because that was a different time. My dad also, he lost his dad when he was very young and most likely didn't have, you know, the emotional care that even is available now.

So I do have compassion for them, but I wish that someone would have said, how do you feel? Like, it's okay to be angry. It's okay. We need to feel sad. This is a sad thing.

I feel sad too, like hearing that your parent feels sad or feels afraid. And what can we do with that fear? Just. Like breaking down emotions would have been so helpful because, as an adult, I learned I didn't even know how to identify what I'm feeling or how to articulate it. And so, like, a therapist may be like, What are you feeling?

And I'm like, I don't, I don't know, I don't know the difference really between all these emotions.

So, learning that from a young age would have given me vocabulary to even reach out to a friend or a pastor and even say, I'm feeling really, I'm feeling despair. What do I do? Yeah, being able to have those words, that's a powerful tool. And I would assume, even as a mom, my kids are a little bit younger than yours. But as a mom, like, especially when your kids get into those like teenage and young adult years, man, they're going to go through some hard stuff.

And so, being able to kind of have the vocabulary to say, Mom, this is how I'm feeling, especially with those darker feelings like despair or depression, or I'm feeling isolated. I'm feeling like nobody cares about me right now.

So many times when a loved one does commit suicide, people say, We didn't see it coming. We just, it seemed like it was out of thin air. And yet, most of the time, those thoughts have been ruminating in their mind and heart for a long time. And so, as we continue on with the other trauma that you faced, which was a very deep trauma, you lost your mom after your freshman year of college. And can you walk us through the next couple of years of your life?

Yeah, so I became a believer the summer before my senior year in college and. But I mean, I'm a baby believer. Like, I haven't been discipled yet.

So I belie, like, there's a transformation, but I'm a baby in my faith. But I meet my husband my senior year, and he's this wonderful, godly man. His name's Ryan. We get married after college. And so we're starting our life together.

I have kids pretty quickly.

So I'm just trying to like learn how to be a mom without a mom. Like that's... That's a difficult thing to do. And when I am about 27, I've got a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And I'm pregnant with Clementine, who's now 14.

I was just barely pregnant with her. And I wake up one morning to an email from my dad, and he has just died by suicide. And suicide, it's a whole different ballgame when it comes to grief. Because cancer, while that was tragic and so traumatic, Like people get sick and they die, or they may have an accident. And so it's awful.

But our brains can wrap our, we can wrap our mind around that because that's just what happens in life. But suicide, it's shocking. It's unnatural. I mean, we didn't see it coming like you said. And it's an abandonment because they're choosing to, even though I do believe like they're hijacked, but it's their choosing death.

And so it's such a complicated thing.

So that's just an added layer. Like my mom didn't choose to die. And so grieving that is differently than grieving my dad's death. Di in those moments after you found out that your dad had taken his own life, did you struggle with feelings of anger? Honestly, no, and that's what's so unhealthy.

I do believe I should have felt a lot of different emotions, but I. I just pushed it down because I've got babies and I'm pregnant and now I have to go clean out my childhood home. I've got to do all, like plan a funeral. I mean, there's so much to do, and I'm just so trained to push it away. My first instinct is just it can go over there, and we can do that for a long time.

I mean, we're pretty good at doing that.

So, I remember just being very stoic at his funeral and not even crying, which is just so not healthy because while he was a difficult dad, he's still my dad. And so, that's pretty complicated grief. Like, how do you grieve someone who wasn't always very nice to you? Like, that's He was abusive.

So there was a lot there that I just pushed away to try and make it through. Yeah, you actually, you talk in your book about like different kinds of grief. Can you break a couple of those down for us? Because I know that was kind of a new concept to me. Can you break some of those down for us?

Yeah, so I mean, there's regular grief. Like when my mom died, I'm just grieving the loss of her. I'm also, I don't realize it then, but I'm grieving the loss of a future I expected. Like, she won't be at my wedding. I won't have help with newborns.

She won't be a grandma. Then there's like anticipatory grief. Like now I know people die.

So now sometimes I catch myself like. My husband's going to die, or if a loved one is sick with cancer and there is it's looking like they are going to die, there's always a chance for you know healing and God to intervene or whatever, but You're already grieving them because you know it's coming. And then there's complicated grief, which, like I said, is just complicated. And that can really veer off the path of normal grief where I'm stuck like. How can I miss this man who Was Bad to me.

And that can look like that. Really, I didn't know how to do that. I mean, there's post-traumatic stress disorder, there's complex PTSD from my childhood. There's so many different things going on that it just wasn't this easy. Here's the five stages of grief, whatever it is.

I mean, it just, it was so complex that I didn't even know what to do. And I think that only made. These thoughts of You know, I just can't go on and made those stronger in my mind. Yeah.

And I know that I had mentioned to you that, you know, here at Hope in the Morning, we, we do put a strong emphasis on biblical counseling, but that doesn't mean that we don't see the value in therapy whatsoever. And I know that therapy, especially in traumatic instances, can kind of give you that leg up. And that was very instrumental for you. And I mean, that's part of how you started learning the vocabulary to kind of learn how to process your grief and your trauma. But one of the things that you had said in here is you had said that therapy proved integral in processing the trauma, but also incomplete in my healing.

So I wanted to know, how did you move forward? You did something very unique that kind of aided your healing journey. What was that for you? Um well, I didn't even See a therapist for years. I mean, there would be some hospitalizations, and I mean, I We ended up being missionaries overseas.

So before I answer your question, we moved overseas with our kids and we lived there about six years working in Turkey and then in Germany. And so I'm now thrust into ministry full time and I'm on this pedestal because like people would say, you must be a super Christian, you know, because you will take your children to these countries.

So I know the word. I love the word. I love it. I can teach about Christ in a different language. but there's still something, I still am not grieving and I'm not getting any help with the trauma.

So eventually I have this breakdown and I have a few hospitalizations, but when I came back, so I'm starting to get help and I'm seeing, I'm recognizing these, you know, faulty thought patterns that are increasing my anxiety and I'm stabilizing, but then I'm realizing. Therapy, while it's helpful, does not produce fruit. The Holy Spirit produces the joy and the peace and self-control. And so, and the word is what transforms our minds and our thinking.

So, I'm realizing how both can go together. But as far as grieving, it wasn't until several years ago that I'm starting to recognize through therapy that I have been traumatized in childhood. I had to learn what emotional neglect was and that it was very abusive. And so, I started to recognize these things. And then I'm faced with.

Well, now, what do I do with all this new grief I'm feeling for the first time? I'm being flooded with decades-old grief. And so I remember one day I go home. And I had been learning about lament. We're gonna talk about lament in a minute.

I've been learning about it. It's just crying out to God in your pain, but I didn't know how to practice it. I mean, you can learn about lament all day long, but I was like hindered from it. And so I go home from therapy and I'm just mad. I'm finally feeling the anger.

And I go in my closet and I like slam my door, which I don't do that. And I grab a journal and I'm just freely writing and it's like. God hates me, you know. I've God has abandoned me. And it is not pretty.

I'm at the bottom of the pit. And I remember holding up the journal and being like, Oh my goodness, like would anyone think a Christian Wrote all these things. And in that moment, it's like it clicked.

Something in me, I believe it was God, was like, now lament it. And so I went line by line in my journal and reframed each of these. Like, God has abandoned me. I reframed it to a prayer. Lord, it feels like you abandoned me.

Like, where are you? And so that was really when I started practicing lament. And we can talk more about that if you want to. Lament, though, has been so instrumental in grieving in a godly way, attached to God as my father. Yeah, we're definitely, we're going to be talking about lament.

We don't have time before the radio segment is over. But again, if you're listening on the radio, you're not going to want to miss how to implement lament into your life because we're all going to face sorrow. We're promised troubles in God's word. We're promised he'll never leave us nor forsake us. But we are promised that you will have troubles in this world, but we can be encouraged because.

Jesus has overcome the world. But the practice of lament is very biblical, and yet, I think it's very underpracticed and partly because people just, they don't know. They don't know what it is. They don't know how to practice it.

So we're going to be talking about that in the podcast portion of things. But one of the things I wanted to talk to you about too, we only have a couple of minutes here on the radio portion so we can continue in the podcast with this. But you had talked about how you went over to be missionaries and how you ended up being hospitalized. And can you tell us briefly what the hospitalization was for and how your childhood trauma played into that? Yeah, so I had all this unprocessed trauma that I had pushed away, and eventually that comes out one way or another.

And for me, I had just lost my will to live. But I'm this missionary.

So, how does that go together? I didn't know how to tell anyone the despair that I felt and would just succumb to.

So, eventually, I had just planned to end my life. And praise the Lord, I did it. And I told my husband that I wasn't okay. I don't remember that conversation because it was so scary. And I saw a psychiatrist who then hospitalized me in a Turkish psychiatric hospital, which was traumatic in and of itself.

They did ECT, electroconvulsive therapy on my brain without consent, which affects your memory. And, you know, I had no Bible. It was forbidden.

So I never expected to be literally without access to the Word of God. Praise God. I had, you know, written it on my heart and the Spirit had scripture to bring back to mind. But while that was traumatic, It also was so important because I started to realize maybe I do need professional help. And I started the baby steps of beginning to process what I had been through.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, like you're not alone in that. And I think I've mentioned before on this show, I struggled with that after some postpartum depression stuff. And it was a very hidden thing because you do feel like there's such this stigma that what are people going to think if they learn that these are the thoughts going through my mind. And one of the things you had talked about in a section of your book, and I thought this was great because, as I mentioned, I really struggled after my third son. I really struggled.

And my husband, like, he'd gone to seminary. And I wasn't, I was in ministry as a singer, but not in ministry like this. Um but I I struggled really, really deeply for about a year and really dark places. And I wasn't telling anybody. I wasn't telling my husband.

I wasn't telling my mom. But it was the same kind of thing as what you're saying, like thinking I could just drive this car off the cliff. Or and and it's kind of You mentioned this as well, which I thought was so important is the fact that A lot of times, when we're hurting, whether we are believers or unbelievers, our initial reaction in the flesh is to. Eradicate the hurt.

So, whether we do that through, I mean, you see people have sex addictions, you see them have drug addictions, alcohol addictions.

Sometimes it comes in the form of dark thoughts. And all of those things have to be taken captive. It's not that one of those things is more sinful than the other, per se. But first of all, I thought that you You did a great thing by calling it what it is, which we don't think about, which is they're murderous thoughts. And it's not it's not just You know, we put this word of suicide on there, but it's murder.

And how we have to come to a place where we can acknowledge that it's sin and acknowledge who those kinds of thoughts originate from. And yes, we are children of God, but we're also. You know, I mean, we are we're battling. between the spirit and the flesh all the time. What What was your experience like when you finally came to realize, like, oh, this is.

A foothold there, and I'm not going to, I'm not going to give it dominance over my life anymore. Um You know, it's sometimes it's still a process because I'm in a fallen body, and my mind is, I'm on earth. And so I think to say that those thoughts are just gone would not be authentic. And I think that that's. Probably taking away from the glory that is seen when our sustainer helps us endure.

But I think it was as I started to process my childhood and see what I didn't have, and then I'm starting to give my kids what I didn't have, and I'm seeing them thriving, and I'm seeing God redeem this. It's like God started to open my eyes to. To they need me, I'm not a burden. I mean, they love, they would rather have a struggling mom than no mom. And so, braiding my daughter's hair one day, I remember thinking, Who would be braiding her hair?

Like, and that's such a basic thing, but I think I needed to see my purpose as a mom, and then that's grown. And I mean, now I see it all the time. And so, when thoughts come in, I can say that is just a thought, that is not a command. Can be taken captive, and I do not have to obey it. But I think that.

As my eyes have been opened to the truth and I'm recognizing this is the voice of the enemy, it's gotten so much easier. They do still come in and praise the Lord. He helps me to say that is not his plan for me. What advice would you give to someone that's listening that is struggling with those thoughts? To get help, honestly, because I had to have help.

I was isolating myself in those thoughts. And I mean, like you said, like Satan, he's been a murderer from the beginning. There is no truth in him. He's the father of all lies. And so I think I needed professional help to understand maybe where they're coming from or what to do with them.

But I've also needed scripture. I've needed to confess them with believers because then you're held accountable. And that's bringing what's in the dark out into the light. That is so important because those thoughts have so much more power in the dark. But when I hear them in the light, I'm like, that is not what I want.

That is not God's plan for me. There's so much purpose in my life and in everyone's life. And so confession is so important. And it's so hard because that takes humility. And so many of us, We're so prideful.

I mean, that's why Paul's thorn in his flesh was to keep him from conceit. And so, if this is a thorn in my flesh until I go home to heaven, I know that God's grace is always enough. Yeah.

And so to get help and to tell people. Yeah.

Satan wants us in that dark place and he wants us isolated. And one of the hard things about being in. Being in that state of mind, whether you're having suicidal ideations or maybe you're in a severe depression or you're feeling despair, all of those, a lot of times, they kind of jumble together, those three. But Unfortunately, our go-to is to want to isolate ourselves because we. You're just not in a good place.

You don't want to be around. You don't want to have to put on that mask, or you don't want to end up crying in front of a group, and you weren't planning on that. But Satan really does whisper a lot of lies to us when we're isolated. And I think it's so much easier for us to believe those lies when we're not bringing them to other people who can shed truth on them. And we talk about that actually fairly often here on Hope in the Morning: is that.

When we're in really dark, hard seasons, we need the church. We need brothers and sisters in Christ to come alongside us and speak that truth into our lives when we're not actively speaking it to ourselves. Or maybe we're in a season when we can't see. Beyond the darkness, we need somebody to bring their light. We need somebody to bring their candle into our darkness and say, I'm right here.

Please talk to me. Tell me what's going on. I care about what's going on. I love you. Messy and all.

Um And one of the other things that you had said is that here you were dealing with all of this, maybe you didn't even know you were dealing with it, but you had all this like unprocessed trauma. And yet you left for the mission field and you were thrust onto this pedestal, the spiritual pedestal, as far as, you know, most people think pastors and missionaries, they've got it all together. You know, they never struggle. They never struggle with sin. They never struggle with bad thoughts or tempers or anything.

And we want to bring all of that to light here on Hope in the Morning because we want to pray for each other authentically and really strive toward godliness and sanctification together and not put people in these positions where they feel like they have to hide these things because of the position that they're in. And were you fearful at all when you went to your husband that you guys were going to lose your position as missionaries? Or like, what were some of the fearful thoughts that you had before you felt like you could confess that?

Well, we did lose our position, and that's the sad thing. And I think a lot has changed in the world. That was in 2018. I think after COVID. Just mental health is a a bigger conversation now.

But I wasn't even, I could not see past. Like, I couldn't see to tomorrow. I was in so much despair and had lost sight of my hope. Where I couldn't even see tomorrow was a possibility.

So I wasn't even thinking about our livelihood and all of that. He is such a good husband. I mean, the man's not perfect, but he. He was so supportive and was proactive because I could not get help for myself. I needed someone to say, We're gonna get you help.

And that may be a friend, that may be your Sunday school teacher, whoever it is. Mine was my husband. Um, and this is this is just a picture of Christ in the church because he is so talented at life overseas, he's an evangelist through and through, he thrives in a foreign context, and but he has me who he loves. And he laid down his dream to then get me help, which we're still in the United States. Um, he laid down his life for me, and I don't think I would be here if he had not stepped in.

Help has looked a lot of different ways. It's just I've tried, I've seen lots of different people and done lots of different things. Um, but I needed that support, and so yeah, we lost our jobs, and he had to, we're in our late 30s and start we're homeless and carless, and we have kids, and we're in America. And he had to find a new career path, and he had God has provided that, but um, it was worth it because I'm here, and God has brought so much beauty, a whole ministry from those ashes. A whole different ministry.

I mean, that's that's pretty crazy. It's almost like the Lord plucked you. You out of there and said, you know what? I've got a unique purpose. I've got a unique purpose for your pain.

And that's what that's what God does, which is like that's where the hope comes in. That's where the hopeful sorrow comes in. Is that the Lord, he sees it all. He sees every tear you cry. He sees every struggle that you have.

And when you surrender it to him, when you bring it to the light and you confess it and you surrender it to him, he brings purpose from the pain. And what a neat thing that here we are talking openly about these things. And Lord willing, it will minister to a lot of people that are hurting that can feel seen and realize like, oh, Me too. I'm really struggling. Maybe I should get some help.

And the other thing I would say, too, is if you're listening to this, and again, if you have a loved one that has mentioned anything to you about, I'm really depressed, I'm really sad, I just don't want to get up in the morning, I don't want to eat. if you notice that they're losing their Zeal for life, take it seriously because that is the kind of thing that people. Then they say, I didn't see any signs. I didn't see it coming. We need to be vigilant to look for those things and be willing to bring it into the light.

But the other thing I was going to say regarding that is that A friend of mine told me years ago she had lost her mother when she was pretty young. And then she went on to lose her dad just a couple of years later as well. And she. Said something to me that I'll never forget. She said, Be careful in the church that we don't usher people.

onto pedestals before they've been properly tended to. And we do that often. You know, we know of a mother who loses a child, and a year later we say, Do you want to speak at the women's conference? Or, you know, a new widow or a child who's lost their mother. And we ask them to speak, and sometimes it's too soon.

Like we have to find out where are you at right now? Are you okay talking about this? Are you at a place, are there things you don't want to talk about? Um those are important questions. And In in some regards, do you wish that people had Had stepped in to your grief a little bit more and maybe seen that you weren't.

You weren't in the position quite yet where you had been fully tended to and could therefore tend to the needs of others spiritually. Yeah, I love what you just said about being tended to. And here's the problem: I had all the right answers. And I did have hope in Christ. And I was doing my very best to try and grieve my dad, but I didn't really understand what I was doing.

But I had all the right answers, and I looked. Very okay. And so when I'm like, I'm okay, I wasn't even. lying. I just didn't know what you don't I didn't know what I didn't know.

So I think if someone could have said, hold on. This girl has lost her mom. Her dad just ended his life a few years prior. She's got three little bitty kids. One is one, about to go overseas.

And she's never gotten any help. There's just no way I was humanly okay.

So I think even stepping back and looking, and not like we're not diagnosing people, like I'm not a trained professional, and I'm not gonna say, Well, you say you're okay, but you're not, but I just think. It was kind of obvious that there's no way any human would be okay after going through all of that.

So I do wish someone would have said something. And that's one thing I'm passionate about is. If we could have waited to go overseas while I got some, what, while I was tended to, maybe like our longevity, we would have been there. Our plan was forever. Our plan was just retire overseas.

And now, God, I truly believe that God is sovereign and his plan happened as it was supposed to. But I'm thinking, like, if missionaries don't come home early, like, what could they be doing? And so, if we can make sure that they're healthy and then have the support that they need while they're over there, because there's a lot of glory that is given to God when you see someone, a missionary or pastor, whoever it is, struggle and then endure through it and come out like on the other side, God gets so much glory than just saying, Oh, you're struggling, let's send you home. I do wish that there were some things that were different about that process. Yeah, I agree with you.

I think that makes a good point, actually, going back to some of the other stuff we've talked about, which is just the fact that, likewise, God can't get the same glory that other people can witness if they don't. Witness our sorrow if we don't allow them to see our suffering because of our pride, really, is what it comes down to. And I've learned, you know, I mean, you mentioned that you were a ballet dancer, and I was a performer, I was a singer my whole life. And same sort of thing. It's like you learn to put on a good show.

And And one of those things, I think that that very much when you grow up in a performance environment, that becomes part of your personality. There's just no way around it. It just does. And so I think people pleasing becomes a big problem. And therefore, We struggle with this pride of feeling like I can't let anybody down.

I can't let anybody know what's below the surface or what I'm really struggling with, because then that might make them upset. It might make them sad. That's not a good performance. And But if if People like yourself that people look up to missionaries, people look up to pastors. And we have a team of nine pastors here on Hope in the Morning, and we've very carefully selected each one because not only do they know God's word and love God's word, but they're gentle men and they're humble men.

And so they've come on here time and time again, and they've talked very vulnerably about the struggles that they have faced, they've talked about the sorrows. We need that in the church. We need to see the people that we look up to spiritually say, this is. This is what my struggles are, this is how I'm trusting them to the Lord. And this is what it looks like to wrestle between the spirit and the flesh.

It reminds me very much of like what you wish you'd had with your parents. You know, it's like spiritual parents almost. Like, how do we demonstrate to those younger in the faith what it looks like to have hope. in our sorrow. And one of the things that you really clung to that we're going to really dive into now is biblical lament.

So can you start by telling us what that is and then break it down for us using a psalm as your example? Yeah, sure.

So, lament, it just that word means to wail. It's like to weep. And so, it's like this demonstrative way of like showing your grief. And so, it's a prayer language that we see in scripture. It's all over scripture.

It's probably like one of the primary ways that people do pray in the word. And Naomi lamented, and Moses and Habakkuk, we have the whole book of lamentations, and Jesus lamented. And so, it's kind of like, how are we missing this? Because it's so important in scripture. And I think that the best place to really learn the language of lament and the pattern of it is in the book of Psalms, like you said, because David, who wrote a lot of the Psalms, he's an excellent lamenter.

And so, I think it's Psalm 13 is a really good place to start because it's short and it has a pattern that you can see. I'm going to break that apart because this pattern has helped me to really know how to put all these emotions into a prayer to God.

So, I guess I'm going to tell you the four elements that I see in the lament, and then we're going to walk through Psalm 13 and kind of break that apart.

So, laments, they start by turning to God in faith.

So, if I'm feeling despair, I can turn away from God and just settle into unbelief and hopelessness and. I'm going to do it on my own, or I can turn towards God in faith. And so, a lot of the Psalms you'll see start with. Oh God, or O God, Lord of my salvation, or how long, O Lord? And so you see the psalmist turning to God, which indicates faith.

Because You're not going to pray to God if you don't believe he exists or he's there.

So you see them turning to God, even with whatever they're feeling. Then you see them move into this Time of explaining like what they feel. I mean, it's Talking about anxious concerns. I mean, there's all kinds of ways that that is written in the Psalms. And when you read it, it's so relevant.

And I mean, so many of us. Can read these words, and we feel like we are, like they are our heart. And it's a gift to us that God put the Psalms in the Bible. And then you also see in that section complaint. And I think people can be like, but the Bible says do all without complaining.

We can't complain. I think we need to define complaint. And here in the Psalms, it's more like, Asking God, like, I don't understand this. It's not like the Israelites who grumbled against the character of God.

So, for instance, I might be like, God, Psalm says that you are good and you do good. But My brother was abused. That's not good. I don't understand how those go together. Like, God, like, why would you let this happen?

And so I think that we're free to ask Him those questions. We see that in scripture.

So it is like, how long, God, are you going to make me, or how long are you going to let me suffer through this issue? Like, how long am I going to grieve this? Like, that's a complaint. Then it moves into a request. Like, it's boldly asking God for help.

Like God, my enemies are attacking. Help me. It's asking for, it's like going to a parent and saying, Dad, I need help. Like, I can't do this on my own.

So, lament is essentially, it is saying, Without you, God, I'm helpless in this situation. I cannot fix it. And I need you to intervene. And we know that God will. But then, this is where lament is different, this last step, from just venting our emotions and our pain, like you might do to a friend.

Lament comes back to a place of hope and trust in the character of God.

So, in this one, you'll see in a minute, you know, David, he talks about how he feels, he's asking God for help, and then there's the word but. And sometimes you'll hear yet, and it's like a turning word. But I'm gonna trust in you. But I will sing of your faithful love. These are my own paraphrase, but it's coming back to no matter what is happening, no matter how bleak my situation looks, I'm going to trust in you.

and your faithful love. And I think that God's steadfast love. Um, his hesid in Hebrew, it's this loyal love that's the foundation of our laments, and it's it's covenant love, it is secure. We know that he's not gonna let us go, he does not change, and so that's the same as being like. But Dad, you promised.

Like... Like you said that you would do this. Please help me. And so you'll see David mention faithful love or steadfast love in his Psalms a lot.

So I would love to read Psalm 13 and kind of point out those sections. Yeah, that would be great.

Okay, so in my Bible, it's titled A Plea for Deliverance. But starting in verse 1, David says, How long, Lord, will you forget me forever?

So I'm going to pause. He's addressing the Lord. He's turned to God in faith. He continues, How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me?

Agony in my mind every day. How long will my enemy dominate me?

So there he has turned to God, and then he's told him there's agony in his mind every day. There's these anxious concerns inside of him. And how many of us know what that's like? And he's saying how long will the enemy Dominate me. And we know that, I mean, Satan is a defeated foe, but it feels like he can just be dominating us sometimes.

So he's turned to God, he's said what he's feeling, he's complaining: like, how much longer, Lord? Then he moves to requesting help. He's saying, verse 3: Consider me and answer, Lord my God. And I love that 'cause that's identity. He's saying, Lord, my God.

Like, you are m Lord my God, restore brightness to my eyes, otherwise I will sleep in death. That's pretty dark. And it it resonates with so many of us. He's like, if you don't intervene, I'm gonna sleep in death. Restore brightness to my eyes.

I mean, it's poetic, but we we get that. In verse 4, David says, My enemy will say, I have triumphed over him, and my foes will rejoice because I'm shaken. And so, I mean, he's still. In the depth of what's going on here. But then in verse five, is where we see David he turns to a place of hope and trust and confidence in God, starting with the word but.

So he says in verse five, But I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. And so here you see some resolve. He's saying, I will rejoice in your deliverance.

And then we see worship. Even if David is still feeling this anxiety, because this is a very short prayer, I'm guessing he's still feeling some emotion. He's still saying, I will worship, I'll sing the Lord, sing to the Lord. And The whole foundation of this trust is the character of God, God's faithful love that will never let David go. And so I love this because this is different than just venting our emotion.

There's a purpose in Lament. It's coming, it's moving through these emotions and it's asking God for help, and we are landing in this place of hope. Um, it's the opposite of stuffing our emotions, which I tend to do. It's getting them out of us. And God is faithful, He will sustain us, He knows exactly what we need, each individual child of His.

And so, I believe that He will hear our prayers and then act. Yeah.

And so, if sometimes people have a hard time, I think, and I do sometimes of knowing where to start. And so, I I've adopted. These different laments, and I've just prayed them back to God as they are in scripture. Um, and that's been really helpful as I've learned to then just formulate my own prayers of lament. Do you know off the top of your head, like what would you say are like three psalms that people could start with?

If they want to do exactly that, what are three psalms they could start with? to practice lament. Yeah.

Yeah, I think um You know, actually, Psalm 88 I think is a good one because someone may be hearing this and they just may be like, Okay, that's great, but I'm just there's so much darkness, I don't have it in me to turn and hope. I get that. We always have hope in the Lord, but I get what that feels like. And Psalm 88 is a gift because we see it, it begins with, Lord, you are my God. Like, he's again turning to God, but it ends.

In a pretty dark place, with darkness is my closest friend, or darkness is my only friend. I'd have to look it up. That's a pretty dark spot. But you can't separate that psalm from the whole of all the psalms. And so you can see that even when there is faith and hope.

There are seasons where it might be a little bit harder to arrive at that hopeful place, and God included that. On purpose. I truly believe. And it's comforting to those of us who have been there. I mean another psalm is Psalm 28.

That's one to start with. Um they're There's a lot, like I would say a ton of the Psalms. I'm not sure the number. Are psalms of lament. And so, if you if you just start reading them, it gets it gets easier to identify them.

I mean, there's psalms on Thanksgiving and psalms that tell history and all kinds of different psalms, but the ones of lament are pretty obvious once you start looking for them. Um, you'll recognize them, and it's so comforting as someone who struggles completely. And one of the things that we can remember too is that we don't know how long these seasons were for David before he wrote them down. And so, that's something that we can have empathy and grace for one another because we might think, okay, you've been in this depression or you've been in this slump for two weeks, snap out of it already. But we had a guy on here that was a believer and he struggled with really deep depression for seven straight years.

And I mean, it cost him everything, but. We don't know how long David's seasons of depression and feeling isolated and cast out from God were, but we know where his hope. Lied in the end. We know where he started and where he ended. And we can encourage others with that.

While still knowing that just because they're in a season like that doesn't mean they don't love the Lord, doesn't mean that you can't encourage them with hope and with. Having that endurance is so Important, and that's what scripture says that we will have. I mean, that's why James tells us to count it all joy when we encounter various trials, because we know that it's producing for us endurance. And it strengthens our faith. A lot of times, it even gives validation in our own souls to the faith that we have in Christ.

And when you were talking about how. How David opened up some of those Psalms, it made me think about how when you have a good, loving father who feels like a secure and safe place. You can, you can lay your sorrows before a father like that. You can even come, if you're having a real bad day, you can bring a bad attitude to a dad like that, and your dad will lovingly correct it. But you don't have to worry about that dad turning you away or abandoning you or saying, go deal with this on your own.

I don't have time. that a good father that makes you feel safe and secure would never do that And our Father is a perfect father. He would never do that. He wants us to come and turn to him when we're having those seasons of sorrow. And nobody's immune.

It that's the other thing is that I think that we all need to be aware, not only for those around us, like to be vigilant about really knowing people's hearts and caring enough about them to pray for them, call them, text them, check in with them, have coffee with them. But also being guarded in our own hearts so that we don't we don't get haughty. We don't start thinking, I would never struggle with that. You know, you you don't know. You don't know what what The struggles are that God is going to bring your way.

But. Julie, you you're a beautiful Testament to the fact that God can take even that which seems the darkest. And it seems like, God, how would you ever use this? I mean, I can only imagine how it must have felt like We failed at the mission. We got sent back home as missionaries.

And so we weren't deemed worthy to evangelize because of my problems. And that's Satan speaking lies like that. Whereas God, you see today, God takes it and He says, nope. You're mine, which means that I will use all of this for a purpose and, um, As we wrap up today's show, first of all, I wanted to ask you: where can people buy your two books? Where's the best place for them to buy both of your books?

I mean, just where books are sold, Barnes Noble or Amazon, Audible. I know a lot of people like to listen to books now. Just wherever they get their books. Yeah, so I would love for them to read it. I think these are great books to open up some doorways of conversation that.

are otherwise pretty tightly sealed. And you know, being able to have whether it's your small group or maybe you do it with your teenage child, and you say, Hey, listen, I just want you to know that believers can struggle with these things too. And let's have open communication here. If you have these thoughts, if you're struggling with things, please. Please bring it to us and we'll bring it to the Lord together.

And then teaching the art of biblical lament.

So, one of the things that you did in here that I think is really neat, Julie, is that I don't know if people are gonna be able to see this on YouTube, but you actually have taken some of the Psalms. And You've done exactly what you just did, where you kind of like diagrammed it so people could see how it breaks down and what it looks like. What lament looks like in the psalms? You also have a version of that letter that you went and scribbled in your closet. That's a great practice.

Like, I would have never thought to do that. What a great practice to write out everything you're honestly feeling and thinking. and then strike through it and put truth next to that. That's a great practical way to take our thoughts captive. And when we end, I'm going to read a poem.

But I first wanted to just. Ask you going forward, what are the words of hope that you would want to leave our listeners with today, especially those that are. feeling like my darkness is never going to end.

Well, I want to tell what's happened in my life because this, I think, shows that God can do more than we could ever ask or imagine. Because my whole ministry has been really about being this adult orphan who's lost her parents. But last December, I was actually legally adopted by this woman who I've known and loved for 12 years. And our relationship in 2025, after my book came out, shifted to a mother-daughter one. And she asked to legally adopt me.

And I'm like, I'm too old. I'm 42. And she's like, you're not. Like, you're never too old. And so she's got kids and grandkids, but.

She chose me, and I'm like, I have nothing to offer her, but that's how it is with God. I mean, He wants our hearts, and He chooses us.

So we went to the courthouse with our families, and I have a mom, but to me, my Fury was It was ended. God's using it, but there was no chance of having a parent. And God is just showing me our stories are not over. And He continues to write it and shift it. And so.

I mean, if someone's listening who thinks there's no way God could could do anything else with my story. I mean, I have a mom and I'm in my 40s and it is teaching me safety and relationship like really nothing else has aside from the Lord. That's such a neat thing because, like you said, you don't think of adults being adopted, but the need for a parent is like it doesn't diminish just because you're a grown-up. In fact, some of the times your problems get bigger and you want to take it to your mom. And I think, what a neat thing that the Lord provided a mom for you and a grandma for your kids.

I think that that's a beautiful redemption aspect to your story today. And I hope that people leave feeling inspired and encouraged. And again, it's like only the Lord can take a subject like cancer and suicide and suicide ideation and Make it make it Full color. As your son said, you know, make it something where we can be joyful about it, where we can say, you know what, God is still good, and God still intends for your good. God still intends for Julie's good, and you're clearly bringing glory to him in these realms.

So I hope that you will pick up one of these books that she has. It's Joyful Sorrow or Hopeful Sorrow. And I have read the Hopeful Sorrow one, and it was very encouraging.

So I would definitely read that. And I'm going to close this out with this poem. And this poem is just, it's called Confession. It's in our book, Hope in the Morning. And To me, this was something that I wrote when I was in a season of depression.

And I hope that it makes our listeners kind of be able to step into what it feels like to. Not only be in those seasons, but most of our poetry in this book, they're poems of lament. And so it's structured very much like the Psalms.

So it's called Confession, and it says this: it says, The world spins around me in a dizzying fury, demanding my time and attention. I worry that my all isn't enough, and my best is left wanting. Even as I lie to rest I feel weighed down with haunting thoughts of failure, of things done all wrong, and I hear a faint dissonance in my heart's aching song. Gasping for breath to sing one more note, I feel unable to play the very music I wrote to encourage the hurting, and help them find rest. I can't seem to shake this pain in my chest.

So I wave my white flag and surrender my sorrow. I cry out in anguish with a voice weak and hollow. God in the heavens, the Maker of man, do you see the tears shed in darkness? Or my cold, shaking hands, as I raise them to praise you and confess all my sins? You are holy, holy.

Holy. holy. Amen. Then, whispered to my heart with a melody clear, was a promise from heaven and command not to fear the plights of this life. no matter how the storm rages.

You will make all things beautiful as you compose all the pages of the glorious work that only you could write. and you'll never leave me alone in the night.

so now, though the darkness may at times still surround, Where once there was panic, unspeakable peace now is found. And the verse that we tie with that is John 14:27, and I'll leave you with this today. It says this. Peace I leave you. My peace I give you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled. nor let it be fearful. Thank you for joining us today on Hope in the Morning. Hope in the Morning is a non-profit ministry that seeks to encourage the hurting.

Equip those who walk beside them, and evangelize the lost with the hope of Jesus Christ. To partner with our ministry or to make a donation in your loved one's honor, please visit hopeinthemorning.org. Your donation helps keep these stories of hope on the air and helps tangibly meet the needs of the hurting.