FamilyLife Today®

Elizabeth Woodson: I always talk about disappointment is the friend we don't want that just shows up every so often because we just live in a fallen world. Stuff is just not going to go the way we want it to. Sometimes we do have unreasonable expectations. I think a life that is devoid of difficulty is an unreasonable expectation.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: I was thinking of two tests for a marriage. These reveal the character of a person: how they handle prosperity and how they handle adversity.

Ann Wilson: Which one is harder?

Dave Wilson: When you're in it, you're thinking it's definitely adversity. But I've seen more people fall away in prosperity. When adversity, trials, and hardship hit a person or a marriage, it's the test. You find out what you're made of. Most marriages and a lot of families, when they go through really serious hardship, they don't make it. We're going to talk about that today.

Ann Wilson: We've got Elizabeth Woodson with us. Her book is called Embrace Your Life. Elizabeth, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Elizabeth Woodson: I'm excited to be here.

Dave Wilson: I love this subtitle. Did you come up with it?

Elizabeth Woodson: I did.

Dave Wilson: "How to find joy when the life you have is not the life you hoped for." Everybody just thought, "Yes and amen." I wonder how many people think, "I got the life I hoped for." Most think, "I wanted it, but I don't have joy if I don't get it." Talk to us. How did this book come about?

Elizabeth Woodson: I tell folks it came about really for two reasons. One is just my own personal journey through seasons of discontent and seasons of difficulty. I always tell people it's like you're in the valley and the timer has run out on how long you wanted to be there, and God's like, "Oh no, we still got more time."

Then it was stories of working in ministry. I've worked on staff at two different churches in my vocation of ministry experience and I would have this chair in my office. People would come in, sit in this big old wingback chair, and they would tell me their stories. Some of them are really great and some of them are really hard.

There were two types of people that would come in with the hard stories. There would be those who, whether it's financial, their health, or a relationship—I worked in singles ministry so it was a lot of relationship stories—were trying to press through. They were trying to make it and still have a joyful attitude in the midst of their difficulty.

Then there was the other group where it was the same story all the time. I'm a person that believes in giving people time to process. It just takes time to get through some stuff. But year after year, I'm hearing the same thing.

Dave Wilson: What do you mean the same thing?

Elizabeth Woodson: I'm hearing the same complaints about their situation. It's never going to get any better. I hear people talking about how this person did this thing however many years ago and that's really the root of what they are going through right now.

Really, it's people pointing back to a past event, whether it's a broken relationship, financial difficulty, or a health issue, and they can't move forward because they can't get past what happened. Again, we have to process the things, but when people are just replaying the tape, they are stuck.

I distinctly remember one girl I was talking to who was talking about a past broken relationship. She couldn't move forward and receive new relationships. She's a wonderful woman, but she couldn't walk into that because of the bitterness and the brokenness. I was sad because there's so much that God has for you and you're going to miss it because you can't get past it.

Dave Wilson: Could she hear you?

Elizabeth Woodson: No. I tried to be encouraging, but there is a point at which the Lord and the Holy Spirit has to do that work in you if you're receptive to it. Sometimes we're not receptive to it because of fear and a lot of different reasons that make it complicated.

That's why I wrote the book, because sometimes people need hooks to hang their hat on. How do I get out? How do I move forward? A lot of those stories and people were with me as I was writing the chapters of that book.

Ann Wilson: Have you ever gone through those times of adversity where you thought the same thing, like the timer has run out and that's it?

Dave Wilson: We want to hear your story.

Ann Wilson: Here's what I want to do. I want to bring a wingback chair in and have you sit in it in our office and tell us your story. What was your story?

Elizabeth Woodson: I think one piece of my story is just death and grief. Losing a lot of loved ones in a short period of time. Grief is no respecter of man. It just pops up at the most inconvenient times and makes you feel like you should be past this. It is just really heavy and you don't have what you need to function.

I didn't have what I needed to be present in relationships or present on my job. I'm bursting into tears and I have to excuse myself to go to the bathroom because it is just really hard. You ask, "Lord, why does it keep happening? Why in this season? Why this person?" It just was really sad.

I remember I moved to Dallas to be with my grandparents and right before I moved, one of them passed away. Then right after I moved, probably about six or seven months later, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away like four or five months later. I thought, "Lord, I've uprooted my life to spend time here and at this moment, you've taken both of my grandparents to be with the Lord."

Those were situations of adversity and difficulty for me. I just asked, "Lord, how?" I think about another one for me which is the pandemic. The pandemic really exacerbated some of the times of my difficulties with depression. I was in my house living by myself, single and never married. I tell people I'm wonderfully happy, but during the pandemic, it was a little bit too much of me.

I remember just being on my bed and just weeping with the Lord because I longed to be with people and it was not happening in that moment for obvious reasons. It was just this sadness that wouldn't go away. After other seasons of difficulty, I told myself, "Elizabeth, you can't stay in this bed. You have to do something."

It was in that moment that I thought I should take the stories and lessons that I've given other people and put them on paper to see how the Lord heals through the pages. I saw him do that for me and just bring healing. Again, mental illness is a complicated, difficult journey. The book is not a simple answer for that. But it asks how I can find hope in those places. This might not go away, but I still believe that the Gospel provides me with something that can sustain me.

Dave Wilson: How did you get out of the bed?

Elizabeth Woodson: I've had friends help in a really simple way. They said, "I need you to put your feet on your floor. I need you to put some clothes on. I need you to take a bath. I need you to put some perfume on and your day will be just that much better."

It was just those simple things from other people who I've reached out to in difficult times. They said, "I need you to practically do these things just today." We're not saying what you're going to do for tomorrow. We're not even saying what you're going to do for this evening. Just right now, do this and it is going to lead you into a better place.

Even though you don't feel like it, in those moments I listened to those people and the wisdom they've given me. I'm going to do this one thing and have enough energy for the next step and then the next step. It's one step at a time for me in those kinds of seasons.

Dave Wilson: Does it ever dip? You crawl out and you're on a journey and then you find yourself back in the valley?

Elizabeth Woodson: Always. I think that's the aspect of our journey with the Lord and our journey of healing. You'll have a great few weeks, months, or year and then something happens. For me, it's always about whether I can give myself grace in that place.

The Lord doesn't expect us to be perfect, but he expects us to be faithful. Is my response time maybe a little bit shorter than it was before? I think sometimes we want the Lord to change us really quickly, and he does it slowly over time.

That's what I've learned. The Lord is with me. He loves me. He has grace for me. He's not abandoning me and he's not disappointed with me. So let me love myself the way he loves me and in this moment give myself the grace I need.

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Dave Wilson: When you say embrace the journey, you mean really embrace it.

Elizabeth Woodson: If I run, where am I going to go? There eventually comes an end to all of the ways in which I want to ignore the pain. There is a frustration with that as well. Whether it's comfort, control, or approval, I'm going to run to a different relationship. I'm going to run to Texas's gift to the world, which is Blue Bell ice cream.

Rocky Road makes some things better, but at the end, it doesn't satisfy. I encourage people to embrace because what you really long for can only come through the Lord. All that other stuff you're going to go to because you're going to go somewhere is not going to satisfy you.

It's going to leave you with additional habits, things that are easy and hard. Again, I want to emphasize that it is not always a straight line. It is not always easy. But the Gospel provides what your heart is yearning for. God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can provide.

Embrace means walking with the Lord through the journey and taking what he gives. Be empowered, healed, and strengthened by him. I think about the words of David, that the goodness of the Lord I'm going to find in the land of the living. I can thrive now. It might not happen today or tomorrow, but it is possible because of Jesus.

Ann Wilson: Any stories in particular that you can recall that you've watched somebody really embrace a hard situation?

Elizabeth Woodson: I think about a friend of mine who had a chronic illness where she needed a kidney transplant. She's my age going in for dialysis. She is an actress with a very bubbly, super charismatic personality, but she cannot live in that space.

I see her continue to, when she's not on dialysis, try to show up for auditions, try to work, and try to do life with her family. Her story has the blessing of a kidney transplant that finally came through. To be in the hospital with her when she got the news, because she had been in the hospital for a medical difficulty related to her illness, just to see it was a long road and God's come through.

To see the faithfulness of God, those are the things that anchor us. She's seen the faithfulness of God in small ways, but she saw it in a really big way. Her health is not perfect now, so it still requires her to show up and be present with God in his faithfulness. To me, just to see someone labor for years in waiting on the Lord and to see their relationship with God transformed when they saw God come through was really fun to be a part of that journey with her.

Dave Wilson: Now have you seen the opposite? Maybe they walked with Jesus and hardship came and another hardship came and they just said, "I'm done."

Elizabeth Woodson: It's a moment of disappointment with the church and disappointment with God. I know stories of friends and their kids or friends themselves who say the Jesus they see in this world they really don't want to have anything to do with. They are not sure what they still believe in, but there's just been too much harm done in the name of Christ and they don't want to sign up for this anymore.

Or their pastor was involved in something and so he has this fall from grace and their faith is crushed because they believed the truth this person was speaking. What they said wasn't true and it just shatters. I've also seen people who were waiting on the Lord, and the timer ran out for them. They chose just to go find what they were desiring on their own.

Ann Wilson: They feel like it's too much and it's been too long. They feel like the Lord has abandoned them.

Dave Wilson: What do you think the difference is in the ones that embrace? Embrace is a great word. It's like hold on, grab. What's the difference in people who can embrace pain and come out better and closer to the Lord, and others who go through the exact same difficulty and are turned away? If I'm listening, I don't want to be this person, I want to be that person. What do I do? How do I embrace it?

Ann Wilson: I'm thinking of one of my mentors in seminary. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and I remember saying to her, "Are you mad at God?" She was in her late 40s. She said, "How could I be mad when God is the only place that I will find any kind of hope or help?"

I think it's what you had said earlier, Elizabeth, about what your options are. If any of us have lived long enough, we've tasted and seen when we try to go hide or we get triggered and we try all of the ways in which we're just trying to escape any kind of pain, it just doesn't work.

Yet there's something about falling on your face before God over and over and over, and then he takes our eyes off of ourselves and he puts them somewhere else. When we're in the midst of pain and we feel his presence—and we don't always feel it. Sometimes it's just an act of faith.

For me, I get on my knees and say, "Lord, I'm just going to be obedient today and do the things." Exactly what you've said. I'm going to put my feet on the floor. I'm going to take a bath. I'm going to go take a walk. When you feel his presence and you're in the Word, even this morning, my soul comes alive. This is what I was made to do, to be with him.

Elizabeth Woodson: In those moments you're making withdrawals from the deposits you've made previously. If you've just shown up in a hard season and the spiritual account is empty, it's going to be difficult because it's this process of remembrance of even though my feelings are telling me God's abandoned me and he's not good.

Some of the ways in which our sufferings get twisted is like God is punishing me for something that happened 20 years ago. There's all this stuff people hear in church and so we can start to think things that are not true. But if we have been internalizing the character of God, the stories in which he has delivered people in Scripture, and the testimonies of the believers today, our heart is emboldened. If he did it for you, he can do it for me.

We're making those deposits. That's why we're in our Word, because it comes more easily for me to withdraw in those seasons where I don't have much to give. Even for the people who do kind of leave and take that exit door, what I love about the Lord is he doesn't move. He's always waiting. He's always there and he's pursuing his people. God is in his grace. I think about the story of the prodigal son and how the father just ran to his son. That is the image we would have for the Lord even in those seasons where it's difficult for us.

Dave Wilson: I love what you said about making the deposits before the storm. I remember Dr. Tony Evans years ago saying you don't build a foundation for your house in the storm. It's before the storm comes so that it's going to stand.

The thing I was thinking when I was reading your book is expectations and disappointment. You said at the very beginning, "I didn't sign up for this." How many people say that? We work in the marriage space. That happens almost in every marriage. "I didn't think it'd be this hard. I did not sign up for this." You go into whether it's marriage, a job, or going to live with your grandparents, you have these expectations.

In Detroit, everybody knows about this because every football season they have expectations the Lions are going to come through. When it doesn't work, people are throwing things or putting bags over their heads because they didn't come through like they expected. I think we do the same thing with life.

Talk a little bit about that, expectation and disappointment. How do you balance the two? Because disappointment's going to happen.

Elizabeth Woodson: It's going to happen. I always talk about how disappointment is the friend we don't want that just shows up every so often because we just live in a fallen world. Stuff is just not going to go the way we want it to. Sometimes we have really good expectations about something.

There's nothing wrong with the expectation that my marriage would be good and happy or that I would have a relationship with my children that is full of joy. Sometimes we do have unreasonable expectations. I think a life that is devoid of difficulty is an unreasonable expectation because Scripture points us so much to the difficulties we'll find along the way.

Are we willing to live with open hands? The problem comes when we hold our expectations so tightly that when they don't happen, it crushes us instead of saying, "Lord, life is a good gift that you give and so when it doesn't match up with what I want, I know that you know better even if I don't understand why you would allow this to be included in my journey."

Ann Wilson: I'm going to give you a scenario. As you were talking and sharing that I thought, "Oh, this reminds me of this woman I met in this women's ministry." She's in her 50s, she has a child, she's single and she's never been married. She's come up to me every month and she says, "I'm walking away from God."

I asked why she would do that because she's fantastic and smart. She goes, "Because he's not there for me. I have been wanting to be married my entire life. I've been asking him to bring me a good man my entire life." And she said, "He doesn't love me, he doesn't listen to me. I don't make that great of an income and I'm in a job that nobody notices me and I'm tired of it."

She actually ended up trying to take her life and I just saw her right after that. What would you say to that constant disappointment? She says, "I've been trying to walk with him, but he has not delivered. I have delivered. I've done my part, but he has not done his part." I bet you've heard that before.

Elizabeth Woodson: Those situations to me are always just super sensitive because the compounding impact of disappointment is super, super weighty. I like to point people to in the most gentle way I can, "I know it feels like God hasn't shown up in any way, but maybe let's just go down memory lane and talk about some of the ways he has shown up."

As we start to go down that path, all of a sudden the heart softens just a little bit to realize maybe he hasn't fully kicked me to the curb. The goodness of God is in my life. That's what disappointment does to us; it just strips us of our vision and perspective.

Ann Wilson: Do you think the enemy's in that too?

Elizabeth Woodson: I do. I know the enemy would love for us to forget all of what God has. Back in the Garden in Genesis 1, as the enemy is talking to Eve and promising her that she'll be like God if she does this thing, the thing is she already was like God because she was made in his image.

We already have all we need because we're connected to God, but the enemy wants us to forget that. Despair and disappointment make us forget. Remembering what God has done... I always tell folks if there is breath in your body, you are blessed. If we remember, it doesn't make the disappointment fully go away, but it reminds us that he is showing up.

Dave Wilson: That sounds like if I'm listening and I'm struggling, you just gave me step one. That's something I can do right here, right now, today. It's almost like opening the Word and getting another glimpse of who he is.

Ann Wilson: Think about Scripture and the faithfulness of God. Moses did that over and over, how he rescued us here and came through there. If you've had a journal, go back in your journal and see how God has rescued you. Maybe you start a journal, a gratitude journal. Maybe your eyes haven't been seeing the faithfulness that he has bestowed, but help me to remember today and go back and tell my family.

You've been listening to FamilyLife Today and what a great conversation with Elizabeth Woodson. Her book is called Embrace Your Life: How To Find Joy When the Life You Have Is Not the Life You Hoped For. You can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

We want to make sure that you know the back-to-small-group sale ends August 31st and that's 25% off every FamilyLife video study and workbook. You don't need a code, you just go to FamilyLife.com/shop. Any study, Art of Marriage, Vertical Marriage, Art of Parenting, we've got them in there for you and you can get them at a discount. Sale ends August 31st.

FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.