Pastor to Pastor

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Guest (Male): Before we begin today's conversation, we'd like to let you know that this episode includes a candid discussion about suicide, depression, sexual assault, and trauma. While this conversation is filled with hope and the redeeming power of Christ, some listeners may find these topics difficult or triggering. We encourage you to use your discretion, and if you're listening with children nearby, you may want to save this episode for another time.

Kristen Jane Anderson: I think the more we isolate, the more alone we feel. Isolation breeds depression. I think that we have to be with people. We need to be in community. We think we don't need it, but it is like the most beautiful, precious thing that we could have in our lives. I think if we run from that, we are going to struggle so much more.

Dave Stone: Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I am your host, Dave Stone. Funny how that works, isn't it? Thank you for joining us today. If you haven't already, make certain that you subscribe to Pastor to Pastor wherever you listen to podcasts. If this podcast has served you in this way and you enjoy it and you benefit from it, then give us a review. Give us a rating. Let us know how we're doing.

If you don't enjoy this program, we're not going to ask you to give us a rating, okay? We'll just allow you some more free time today to do whatever you'd like to do. If you're on Instagram, you can follow us at @pastortopastorpodcast, and on YouTube, we are at the Focused Pastor channel. You can also check out all of Focus on the Family's content on Godcaster. Godcaster is a new live streaming platform where you can listen to Christian music, the daily Christian podcasts, and radio resources Focus on the Family produces. Finally, if this conversation blesses you, as today's will, please share it with another pastor or ministry leader in your life.

I don't know how to say this, but I think that this is an episode that will touch every single person in some special way. It applies to you whether you are a Christian leader, whether you are a Christ follower, or whether you are investigating Christianity. It's a story of moving from hopeless to hopeful. Our guest today is Kristen Jane Anderson. Kristen leads Reaching You Ministries. I think that this will be one of the most listened-to episodes.

I'm getting choked up even talking about it, if that tells you anything, as we're going to hear how God has transformed the life of a woman through a very painful journey that began when she was 17 years old. It's one that every Christian leader needs to hear, and you will have a message of hope that you can share with those who are hopeless. Listen in on my conversation with Kristen Jane Anderson.

Kristen Jane Anderson, we are thrilled to have you with us today. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule.

Kristen Jane Anderson: It's a blessing and an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

Guest (Male): Your story is gripping and it also will rip your heart out. I've got a lump in my throat just thinking about it. I've been following you and watching different interviews with you. Your book, *Life, In Spite of Me*, is powerful, and I know people are going to want to get this book. But I want you to take us back to growing up in a godly home. You're 17 years old and all of a sudden you're starting to feel the weight coming in on you from a variety of different places. I'm just going to let you share your story and we'll listen.

Kristen Jane Anderson: When I was in high school, I felt like I was going to be okay. Junior high was a little bit rough, but the first couple of years were pretty smooth for me until my junior year, mostly. That's really when I started to struggle. That's when I lost my grandmother and I had started to lose some friends. It wasn't like they were all really close to me, but just having them as part of my high school, part of my circle, had an effect on me.

There was one friend that I knew who died in a motorcycle accident, one who died because of a brain tumor, one who died because of a car accident, and then one who died because of suicide. The one who died because of suicide was a closer friend and his death was the hardest for me, I think mostly because it was suicide. I just didn't know how to handle that. I couldn't process it. I had a hard time making peace with that. I really kind of felt like if I knew, I could have helped him. If I would have known, I could have helped him. I should have helped him. I should have known. I really kind of took it on myself and that really kind of added to my depression because I took on that responsibility even though it wasn't my responsibility.

Guest (Male): Were you a junior or senior in high school at this stage?

Kristen Jane Anderson: I was a junior. It wasn't long after that, I had started going to parties, which I really hadn't done as much before, not really at all. I started going to parties with friends and older people who weren't even in high school anymore, smoking, drinking, partying, just really trying to escape everything that was happening. I was burdened, I was overwhelmed, I was hurting, and it just was a coping mechanism really. I was trying to escape.

At one party that I was in, I had only just a little bit to drink. My friends had left to go get some other friends to come and I ended up being alone in this basement with this older guy which I had trusted. He was in school to be a police officer, but unfortunately, he took advantage of me that night. I was raped and it took me a long, long, long time to recover from that. Between what happened to Brandon and what happened there, I lost really all my hope.

What was different with this is I lost my value. I felt like I had nothing left to offer the world. I felt like things were taken from me that I could never get back and like I would never be able to be myself or help others or be whole again.

Guest (Male): I'm so sorry. That's painful for you to share, it's painful for us to hear. I know we have people who are listening right now who have experienced this and it's a pain that no one should ever ever have to go through. But that picture that you painted of no hope and this cannot be salvaged, it did chip away at your value and your significance. Tell us where that led to with the deaths of these close friends and family members, the suicide of your friend, the death of your grandmother, the rape. How does this culminate?

Kristen Jane Anderson: As all this was happening, my grades were dropping because I was skipping school, I was skipping classes, and my parents didn't know how much I was struggling. They knew something was wrong, but they didn't know how deeply I was struggling. I still had a smile on my face most of the time, so it was hard for everybody to know.

I was grounded, but I asked if I could go out for New Year's Eve. My parents agreed that they were going to let me go out for New Year's Eve just to be nice even though I'd skipped all these classes and my grades were in the garbage. They were going to let me go out New Year's Eve of my senior year just to be nice. I kind of argued with my mom before I left about what time I would come home. She wanted me to come home after midnight, I wanted to sleep at a friend's house.

I remember as I left the house, I had agreed to come home when she wanted me to, but there was some part of me inside that knew I probably wasn't coming home at all that night. Right before midnight, I called my mom to tell her I wasn't coming home and I hung up before she could even respond because I was so scared what she would say. At the time, I know I wasn't trying to worry her, upset her, or hurt her. I was really just trying to... I was grasping at straws, any little thing that made me feel a little bit better, any little thing that helped me get through the next moment, the next day, the next minute.

I was just whatever I could do. So that was that next thing. I was like, "This will help me feel a little bit better if I just do this with my friends tonight." The next morning I came home at about 10:00 in the morning and my mom was in the living room. She had been up all night waiting for me. She was the mom that was always very loving and involved. She knew where I was, who I was with all the time, even at 17.

She was just beside herself. She was like, "Kristen, we didn't know if you were dead in a ditch somewhere or what happened to you." She was just so worried and shaken up. I felt so bad, but I didn't know how to express anything that I was feeling or what I was going through. I remember I just slept the rest of the day. I was tired from the night before, I was stressed by the consequences that I got, and I just wanted to escape.

So I slept the whole day and then the next morning I woke up and it just happened to be a Sunday morning, which in our house, in our family, on Sundays we always went to church every single Sunday. We went to church that morning and I remember walking into church and walking out of church feeling exactly the same way: very broken, disillusioned, lost, confused, and empty.

When we went home, my dad went to buy a new washer and dryer, my mom took a nap on the couch, and I put on these videos of my nephews at the time opening their Christmas presents because I thought it would cheer me up a little bit, put a smile on my face. It did, but when I was watching those videos, my friend Kelly called. She wanted me to come over to her house to make gingerbread houses.

It was our last day of Christmas break before we were supposed to go back to school. I went to her house, we didn't make gingerbread houses, but I came back from her house. When my friend dropped me off at the end of the street, I started to walk home and it was almost like I had nothing left in me. I was supposed to go back to school the next day and I really wasn't ready.

I'm sure there was homework I hadn't done, tests I hadn't prepared for. So I walked to the pizza restaurant that I had been working in. I got my paycheck, I got a pack of cigarettes, and I just started to waste time, almost like if I wasted time, it wouldn't come. After about a half an hour, I realized I needed to go home. I didn't want to worry my mom any more than necessary.

As I started to walk home, it was almost like my legs wouldn't take me there. I just felt like there was nothing left. There's nothing in me to try, to fight, to live, to feel. There was just nothing. So I walked kitty-corner across the street from where I was. there was like a park that I grew up playing in and I just started to swing on the swings again, just trying to waste time, get myself together.

I remembered I couldn't be in this park after dark. It was just like a rule that they had for safety sake and if the police saw me, they would make me go home. The swings were right next to the driveway that they drive on in and out to make sure people aren't there at night. So I looked around to see where else I could go and I saw a train at the edge of the park.

The train, I knew from driving by, that it had been sitting there for like three weeks and it wasn't going anywhere, I thought. So I thought that'd be a good place for me to go sit and think a little bit more before I went home where the police wouldn't see me. As I sat on the train with my legs dangling beneath me, I remembered this thought process that I'd had about three months beforehand as I was grieving through my friend Brandon's death.

What I remembered was sitting in my bedroom thinking about how he took his life, how I could never take my life, especially the way that he did it. Then my thought process started to change just slightly. How would I do it even though I would never do it? We lived about a half a block from the train. When the train went by, I could feel the power of the train shake our home, I could hear the whistle blare through the windows and it just snapped in my mind. That's one way I could never live through it.

I didn't think about it again until three months later when I was on the train that day in the place I was in emotionally. I started to consider it as an option or as an answer. I never really considered it before that. I was really back and forth in my mind and I would think things like, "There's a reason I'm here," and then I'd think, "There's no reason I'm here." I'd think, "There's something I'm supposed to do here," and then I'd think, "There's nothing I'm supposed to do here." I'd think it's going to get better and then I'd think it's not going to get better.

I think I was back and forth like that for probably about 45 minutes before a train started to come. I hadn't made a decision, I didn't know what I was going to do, but it was so cold out. It was like 8:30 at night in the middle of winter. It was January 2nd, so it was very cold out in the Chicagoland area. I knew I had to make some sort of a decision or go somewhere.

Right before the train got to me, I just made this last hopeless decision to get off the train I was sitting on and lay down on the tracks that the train was coming down. I laid down right before it got to me and I remember that I just closed my eyes, I clenched my fists, I turned my head in the opposite direction than where the train was coming from because I didn't want to see it come at me. I just was trying to avoid, avoid, avoid.

What I felt at first was I felt this wind kind of start to suck my hair, my head, and the midsection of my body upward. Then I felt something like in the middle of my back start to hold me down and I remember just feeling the railroad ties on my stomach and on my legs, hold me down until the train came to a stop. It squealed to a stop and I had no idea that it was even going to stop.

But when it stopped, it kind of made me start to think, "Is this really happening? Is this just a bad dream? Is this just a nightmare? Is this my reality or just something I'm imagining?" So I opened my eyes, I unclenched my fists, and I started to look around. When I looked behind me on my right, about 10 feet behind me on my right, I saw my legs.

I knew that they were my legs because they had these bright white tennis shoes on them that I just got for Christmas. But it just felt like it couldn't be real. This couldn't be my reality. This couldn't be real life. This had to be a bad dream. I remember I crawled out from underneath the train, looked at my legs. I couldn't see anything on my left leg because it'd been severed so high and it was so dark out.

But on my right leg, it looked like it was severed below the knee. It was really hard for me to make sense of it because I'd never really seen an amputated leg before. Of course, I'd never seen my leg amputated before. So as I looked at my leg, it looked like it'd been severed and I ran my hand below it to see if it was really gone. I saw blood and then I felt pain like I hadn't felt before.

When the train was going over me, I felt pain, but it was sort of a dull, in-the-background sort of pain. I think that when I realized I was alive and my legs were gone, it became much more real, loud, in-your-face sort of pain. It's weird how the brain works like that. But I started crying harder than I'd ever cried in my life, really I was in the worst pain I had ever been in in my life, and God met me in that moment in such a special way.

I started to feel this peace just cover me, like almost a blanket of peace. I started to hear the song Amazing Grace play over and over and over in my mind. I've had people ask me if that was a favorite song of yours, did you hear it in church that morning? And the answer is no. I didn't listen to it often. I didn't hear it in church that morning. It wasn't a favorite song of mine, but it was playing over and over in my mind.

My thought was it could only be music from heaven. I thought I just needed to lay there and wait to die. So I started hoping, waiting, and praying to die. It was not long after, just a couple minutes later, where I felt somebody pull my hair off my face and behind my ear. I looked up and it was like a firefighter who was walking the tracks trying to find me.

He stumbled back because he wasn't expecting me to be alive and radioed to the other medical personnel of my location and my status and started to get me ready to go to a hospital. They couldn't Flight for Life me to the hospital in Milwaukee that they wanted to, so they blocked all of the roads in the intersections from where I was to the closest hospital that could take me. It was normally, it says on the police report, a 45-minute drive, but they got me there in eight minutes.

Guest (Male): Wow. And what day was this?

Kristen Jane Anderson: This was January 2nd of the year 2000.

Guest (Male): And you lost eight pints of blood?

Kristen Jane Anderson: Right. Yeah, that's what I've been told.

Guest (Male): And you're not supposed to live at that point, are you?

Kristen Jane Anderson: Right. That's what I've been told. When I was in the pre-operating room before they put me into surgery that night, there was like a group of nurses or whatever that were talking in the corner who felt like they were witnessing some sort of a miracle. I found out later that's why they said that, because I was conscious, talking, answering all their questions after losing eight pints of blood.

I guess you're supposed to die after you lose five. It was complicated for me because you would think I'd be grateful, but I was still... I was like, "I don't feel like a miracle. I don't want to be a miracle." I was wondering, there was a part of me that was like, "Why do they even want to help me when I don't even want to be here?"

Guest (Male): And you had chosen that method because you were convinced that there's no way that I could survive this. The force of that... and there was a lot of force. I can't imagine the force to sever legs off. 55 miles per hour?

Kristen Jane Anderson: Yeah, 33 freight train cars.

Dave Stone: Well, God wasn't done with you even though you were fighting it at that stage. I want to interject with a question because I know that one of the most telling parts of your story is that almost nobody had any idea of the weight that you were carrying. I know we have a lot of Christian leaders who are listening and that's often the case with them as well. Why is it often difficult for anyone experiencing pain to share those struggles with others?

Kristen Jane Anderson: I think a part of it is there's an obvious sense of the evil that's involved. You don't want to burden somebody else with that. You know that it's not right even though you feel it to be true. So I think that's part of it. And I think part of it is you're believing the lies. You're believing them.

I think for leaders, they probably feel like they know all the answers. They probably feel like they know the answers, there's nobody that can tell them anything more than what they already know. I don't know for sure about that, but I feel like I know there are people that I know that are in leadership who've kind of felt like they know the Christian answer. They've counseled people, they know what to say.

But it's different when you're going through it. I think that you hit the nail on the head when you said that Satan dupes us into buying into the fact that we have no value, or "Why would I want to trouble somebody else with this? They've got their own problems and troubles as well." So I'll just try to suck it up and gut it out. Then as we're seeing with so many young people today, they get to that point like you did where it's like, "I give up," and they just want that easy way out.

Kristen Jane Anderson: It's not worth it. I remember thinking that it's not worth it.

Dave Stone: Let's fast forward a little bit. You start this recovery that had to be just... I can't even begin to imagine. You have the guilt and shame of wanting to take your own life, you have the guilt and shame of a man who has raped you, you have the grieving of these people that are not in your life anymore. You've got all this still piled on you and now you don't have your legs. Now you're totally dependent on everybody else. I'm certain that's just a glimpse of what you're experiencing. Talk me through, if you were a Christian at this stage... I know you were part of a godly home, but take us through that next step where Christ becomes real.

Kristen Jane Anderson: I somehow ended up in counseling with a Christian counselor even though we weren't seeking Christian counseling. One of the things that she helped me realize is that even though I had accepted God's forgiveness, in many ways I had not forgiven myself. I really was punishing myself for what I had done and how it had forever changed my life and changed the lives of my family and friends around me.

She just seemed to recognize that I needed to forgive myself and she challenged me to memorize Romans 8:1, which is "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." For me it was like a mental exercise when she challenged me to memorize this. I was like, "Well, I've never memorized a verse before. I think I could try this. Maybe she'll be proud of me."

So I wrote it on note cards, I put it in my bathroom, on my nightstand, on my dashboard in the car, and I just said it to myself over and over throughout the day. It was very odd and interesting and amazing because the more I said it to myself, the more I felt like it seeped into my soul. I began to realize that I wasn't any more special, powerful, or greater than God. If He could forgive me, why couldn't I forgive myself?

If He could forgive me, I began to recognize that by not forgiving myself, I was holding myself back from everything that God had for me. I also began to realize that if I would forgive myself, I would be in agreement with Him in the forgiveness that He was giving me. I kind of went on that journey of self-forgiveness.

At the same time, this woman who I didn't know came up to me in the parking lot at the community college I was going to, who just shined with more peace and joy and a love for life than anyone I had ever met before. She was just sharing her story with me, just very outgoing, loving, beautiful lady and she just shined.

It was... I don't even remember most of what she said except that she just had this peace and this joy. So when I went home after meeting her, I remember saying to God, "I want to know You the way that lady knows You." What I felt Him tell me was, "Kristen, you have to let Me be your best friend." I was 21 at the time and it was language that I understood.

My friends were still a huge part of my life and I knew that that meant like I just needed to start talking to Him about all the stuff that was going on. I realized that at that point I'd learned to go to my doctors, my counselors, my friends, my pastors, really everybody else around me for help with my problems, but I wasn't going to Him personally for help with my problems.

I felt like, "Well, I'll start talking to Him about everything and we'll see." I kind of realized that if God is who He says He is and He knows me inside and out and He knows my problems, He probably knows the answers to them better than anyone else in this world. So why wouldn't I go to Him for help with my problems?

So I started just talking to Him about everything and it wasn't overnight, but it was almost like I started to walk out of my depression. It was a beautiful season where I started to experience more peace, more joy, more wholeness, more freedom, more fullness. I just can't... all the words. I mean, I was able to get off of my meds that my doctors told me I'd have to take all my life.

I started going back to church, I got involved in the children's ministry and the youth ministry and the young adults ministry. I just started to take off spiritually. I was just falling in love with Him and knowing Him and knowing who He made me to be and how He sees me is what changed everything for me.

Dave Stone: That's a beautiful picture. God knows all the crud, He knows us warts and all, and yet He still loves us just the way we are.

Kristen Jane Anderson: Yes, couldn't love us more.

Dave Stone: Sometimes I'll think when I'm just driving down the road and I'll see a hitchhiker, I'll see a homeless person, or I'll see a variety of different people and I'll think that thought that you just said. I'll think, "God loves that person just as much as He loves me." When you've got someone who's willing to die for you, you can't top that in any way.

Jesus says laying down your life for a friend, that's the greatest love. I'm sure you've had a lot of people who made big sacrifices for you, especially in those really early years. You have the challenge of accepting that, you have physical therapists, you have different people who are coming alongside of you. You have this friend that is challenging you in your faith, you've got this talking to Jesus as a best friend and now you're confiding in Him all along with every part of it.

For the listener who maybe has a secret wound or a painful experience that they have had a hard time forgiving themselves of, what words of advice do you have for them? Because I know it's a process. I know it's not a "check this box and all of a sudden, yes, you'll move out of the depression and life will go on and the smile will return and it'll be genuine."

Kristen Jane Anderson: I think that sometimes the reason it's hard to forgive yourself is you think that you're protecting yourself by holding on to it. But really you're just hurting yourself by not allowing yourself to forgive yourself. Even if God has forgiven you, when you can't forgive yourself, you're punishing yourself.

Like I said, I think you're holding yourself back from everything that God has for you emotionally, spiritually, all of it. I think that He has so much more planned for you even as it pertains to that specific wound. The way that He can heal and renew and bring new life and even healing to others if we are willing to talk about our pain and our shame.

I can't even tell you. There's a quote by Sheila Walsh that says basically how she's been able to lead more people to Christ through her brokenness than her pretend holiness. I totally agree with that. Opening up my life and my shame and my fear and my pain and even why I didn't feel like I could forgive myself has built a bridge into other people's lives and led them closer to me and closer to the Lord, more importantly, in ways I could have never imagined. I think just opening up our hearts and our lives can be so much more healing to us than we think. We think it's going to get worse, but it really can make things so much better.

Dave Stone: Satan wants us to throw in the towel and to give up and to quit and yet the beauty of a God who takes us back and gives us second chances time and time again... and just being a parent has helped me understand how much God loves me. I'm reminded as you spoke of Sheila, she said something that really impacted me when I was going through a stretch of depression. She said one day, just out of the blue, "You know, if you rearrange the letters of the word 'depression,' you can spell 'I pressed on.'"

Kristen Jane Anderson: Yes, I remember that.

Dave Stone: I thought, "There's no way." Well, I started playing with it and I'm like, "Oh, that's every letter and that's it." What a perfect picture from Philippians of Paul saying that "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." You have done just that.

I want to move on to another section of your story because I don't know if you thought you would get married. I don't know how it is that God crossed your path with Alan, and I know you were ministering and serving. Tell us that story of how He brought this man into your life that is just an exceptional guy.

Kristen Jane Anderson: From a young age, I always thought that I would be a wife and a mother. That was one of my main goals, I would probably say. But I really was just focused on serving the Lord, knowing Him, loving Him, being loved by Him, all of the above, after I came to know Jesus the way that I know Him now.

It was after I had been on *Oprah*. He had done a two-year pastoral program at his church and he was looking for internships. He did not do an internship with me, but he did start volunteering. He started helping with everything, and that was always our biggest need really was people to help, of course finances, but people.

He just had a real servant's heart and that really spoke to me. So we just became friends at first, we were just friends. I never thought that I would date somebody who had kids and he had two kids. It was out of my box of expectation. But they too were a very special blessing to me and I've gotten to see them grow up from the ages of 5 and 8 to 22 and 25.

I can't even believe that, and my husband and I have been blessed with four more children, which is unbelievable to me. When I think back to that day on the train tracks, could I have ever imagined that I would have the family that I have now? I would say no. I knew that I was made to be a wife and a mother, that someday I wanted that, but I just could have never imagined what I have now. I'm so grateful. We've named the four youngest kids in honor of God's grace because the best way grace has ever been described to me is that's when God gives us favor and we don't even deserve it. I think that He's just given me favor when I didn't deserve it again and again and again.

Dave Stone: You said something just a moment ago and I don't want to let this go by. I have never interviewed a person who Oprah interviewed, okay? So what was that like? I mean, were you on pins and needles? Were you excited? Were you nervous? What was that like?

Kristen Jane Anderson: I definitely was nervous, mostly because everybody around me is trying to make sure everything is just right with the schedule, the set, the hair, makeup, everything. But it was surreal. I remember though the best part of that day for me was... I don't know if you know this story. I was really just trying to walk through whatever doors God opened for me.

I was like, "Okay God." I'd gotten to the point where I realized that my story was like that little boy's lunch that he offered Jesus. I needed to let God use it however He wanted to. If He wanted to bless, multiply, whatever He wanted, I was offering it to Him however He wanted to use it. So I was walking through any door that opened.

When I got the call from Oprah's producers, I was like, "Okay, here we go, we'll see what happens." On that day when after they had invited me to be on the show, I was in the green room before they were fixing my hair and makeup and they have screens in the green room of the stage and the studio where they record.

Oprah was out there talking to the audience and she noticed... I have to tell you first, I was praying in that moment that God would remind me that He was there with me, that He wanted me to do this and that He was there. She was on stage talking to the audience and she noticed that BeBe and CeCe Winans were in the audience.

She asked one of them to come up and sing a song. So BeBe came up and he wasn't really sure what to sing. He's like, "I know what I should sing. I'm going to sing 'Amazing Grace.'" It was literally a minute or two after I had just prayed this random prayer as they're fixing my hair and makeup, asking God to remind me that He was there and He was with me through this.

It was so special to me because to me that's like my song with the Lord. It's so special to me and going on stage was... I felt just like I was talking to anybody. She's just another person, another woman that God created and I enjoyed meeting her and I am very grateful that she had me on her show. God has used that in ways that to save people physically, spiritually was so much more than I ever dreamed.

Dave Stone: I'm sure your witness came through loud and clear. How cool is that, that God's up there just gathering His angels saying, "Get ready, get ready. Going to sing Amazing Grace and we all know what that song means as she's there on that train track and she's hearing Amazing Grace." I can't wait to get to heaven to hear the story of how it is that that song was just playing in your mind. I'm sure God will have an explanation for that, but it's your song. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you for making me cry one more time.

Kristen Jane Anderson: Sorry, thank you.

Dave Stone: Well, you've been blessed with a lot of great friends, a lot of great family members as well who have stood beside you and have been a great source of inspiration and help to you in some of your lowest moments. I know that your dad passed away recently.

Kristen Jane Anderson: Yes, my mom and dad were married for 58 years and just a few months ago he passed away. It was really special right before he passed. We had a really beautiful moment with him. We had went into his room and he was talking. He hadn't been talking for several days before that, hardly eating or drinking.

In that moment he reached upward toward the ceiling and just smiled so big and so beautifully. His eyes were wide and my mom just said to him, "Do you see people? Do you see God?" and he just said, "Yes." Then he said, "Jesus, He really is God and He really, really loves us." Then he looked at my mom and he said, "We had a good time, didn't we?"

I think he knew that he was going, he was going to be with his Jesus, he was going to be with the Lord and we didn't know if it was going to be that moment or the next day or what was happening. But for us that was so special and so beautiful and so healing just to see... even though my dad had dementia really bad.

To see that he could speak so clearly in that moment and see so clearly in that moment, we were astonished because he had loved the Lord for many years, but he wasn't able to communicate it that well until the end. And towards the end, when his dementia started to get so bad, he couldn't really remember my name or my kids' names anymore, but what was really beautiful is he still remembered his Jesus. He still read his Bible every day, he still read his devotionals every day, and that was a testament to all of us.

Dave Stone: Thank you for giving us a peek into your heart and sharing that special memory. You just took us right in that hospital room with you. Thank you so much. I want to make certain that I find out a little bit more about what's on the horizon for you and what it is that you're involved in right now, because I know you have a ministry and that started back, was it 22 years ago? Reaching You Ministries. Tell me about that.

Kristen Jane Anderson: It really just came out of me getting asked to share my story at youth events. Every time I shared it, I thought it would be the last time and then another door would open and another door would open and people were reaching back to me. So as I prayed about it, I just asked God what He wanted me to do with that.

At the same time, I had been praying along the lines of what people had been telling me in the hospital, "Kristen, God kept you here for a reason." So I've been praying, "God, what did You keep me here to do? What do You want me to do?" So as people were reaching back, I just felt like that was part of what He wanted me to do was help people who were going through exactly what I had gone through.

I started Reaching You Ministries just in a moment of faith and clarity and at the same time enrolled in school at Moody Bible Institute because I was hoping that would prepare me for a life of ministry. I have continued speaking, we answer a lot of messages from people. It used to be on email, now it's all on social media.

We're going to have a new podcast called *Endless Hope* at the beginning of next year, January 27th. My co-author and I are working on another book that's kind of part two of my story, but also a little more practical than the first one and has encouraging notes and letters and prayers in it as well like the first one.

Dave Stone: This first book, *Life, In Spite of Me*, is powerful. I was glancing through it some more and it's riveting, some of the stories and just the insights. It's got to be painful for you to look over some of these pages, but then to think about the redemption that God has brought out of it, it is a story of God's faithfulness.

Kristen Jane Anderson: That's when people ask me what my favorite attribute of God is, His faithfulness, because He never gives up, He never gets tired, He never walks away. He will always pursue us and fight for us and He's always going to fight for our best and for our good.

Dave Stone: Well, you're a dynamic speaker. I can't imagine a church not wanting to have you because the story in itself is one that people can relate to because we've all gone through times. This was not something that was premeditated over a course of days or weeks, it was just at a low point when you were in a valley and life had just thrown you a lot of curveballs and painful ones.

I don't want to diminish the pain that you went through whatsoever, but it is where people are struggling today. Talk to us a little bit about some of the mental health issues that you see with young people before we close out, because I think it's important for you to speak to that more so than even some others.

Kristen Jane Anderson: I think one of the biggest struggles that they have is a little bit similar to me and other people who struggle with depression: they feel alone. But that's complicated by the world we live in with our phones and social media and just the internet in general. It's very easy to get sucked into any of that, gaming, whatever it may be.

I think the more we isolate, the more alone we feel and I think isolation breeds depression. I think that we have to be with people. One of the things I heard recently was that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; He is community. We need to be in community. We think we don't need it, but it is like the most beautiful, precious thing that we could have in our lives.

If we run from that or we avoid that or we don't seek that or pursue that, we are going to struggle so much more. I think young people think they don't need anybody, they think they are self-sufficient, like not even their parents. It's almost like a strength today that's not needing others. But I think the strength is leaning into others, asking for help, that is the courage, that is the strength that we need to be sharing to young people.

The more alone they are, the more they're going to struggle. And as people that are a little bit older, we need to be pulling them out of their rooms and bringing them out into the world to have those face-to-face encounters because they will be blessed, their hearts will be filled. You can't get that on a phone.

Dave Stone: One of my favorite verses is "Let us make man in our own image." It's not God saying, "Let Me make man in My own image." It's not God the Father saying that or God the Son saying it. It's all three, it's the Trinity saying that. "Let us make man." So it just stands to reason from a logic perspective that if God needs community and we're made in His image, then how much more so do I need community with others?

Great point that you brought out and I hope that it's underscored to our listeners that you might be in ministry and you might be serving and leading, but you still need one another and you need people close to you and you need people you can let your hair down with and you need people that you can say, "Hey, I am at the end of my rope and I need some help."

Therapists will say that that depression will lead to either addiction or to isolation or both and that's why we need one another. Did you ever think that your greatest wound would end up being the greatest platform for you to be able to share? Your greatest setback would be the set-up for your awesome comeback?

Kristen Jane Anderson: No, absolutely not. It was so odd and surprising to me. It was like, "Why would God want to use this?" To me it was like the story I would never share. At my baptism, it was encouraged that you write out your story and your testimony and you share it and I thought that'd be the one and only time.

Then I got asked to share it once more and once more and I was like, "Why would people... I thought it was a story nobody should hear. I thought it was a story it'd be better for nobody to hear." And as it turned out, God needed people to hear it, I guess. I can't believe how many people hear it and say that they felt like they were listening to their story. I think it's just the pain, the desperation, the suffering.

Dave Stone: And we were talking earlier about in the book, *Life, In Spite of Me*, how it is that you say that people will write you and say that they will reread chapters over and over and they'll reread the book over and over. Somehow they're finding help and it's a coping mechanism that is giving them strength. I think they're being buoyed up by the fact that you made it through this against all odds.

Thank you so much for taking time to be with us. You are a breath of fresh air, you have a joyfulness about you that is contagious, and for someone to talk to you and meet you they would never know the backstory, but that makes your joy shine even brighter.

Kristen Jane Anderson: I think so too. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dave Stone: Well, all I can say is I'm glad I had this box of Kleenex handy. That story ripped my heart out. Getting to meet Kristen up close and personal face-to-face was a powerful experience for me. You can check out Kristen at reachingyou.org and you can learn more about her ministry, Reaching You Ministries.

Also got a picture that I took in the studio with Kristen that means a whole lot to me. You can check that out in the show notes as well. Knowing how God sees you and how He made you to be changes how you view yourself. I thought that was just a powerful takeaway that I walked away with and you only harm yourself by not forgiving yourself.

You're holding yourself back from everything God has for you emotionally, spiritually, all of those different ways. To hear Kristen say that you only harm yourself by not forgiving yourself... every morning when she can't get out of bed, there's always something there to remind you of a mistake that you made when you were 17 years old and her joy and her effervescence is something that is just electric.

I just love the fact that she got to that point of forgiving herself. Opening your heart and your life is much more healing than you think. If you feel yourself pulling away from community, if you feel yourself struggling with feelings of hopelessness, man, I just want you to know that God is there for you and that Focus on the Family is there for you and Pastor to Pastor is there for you as well.

Trying to think of a story that I could play off of... we had so many emotional stories that just ripped our hearts out and what I landed on is actually one that kind of plays off of the story that she shared with her father passing away. It's not a dramatic story, an emotional story, in fact, it goes the opposite direction.

A few years ago I was out of town, I was playing golf with some total strangers and as the round went on, eventually the conversation became what everybody did for a living. I kind of was like, "Oh, you hate it when that's going to come up," because you know it's going to change what happens around the course that day. I like for them to find out organically rather than, "What do you do? What do you do?"

But sure enough they asked and I said, "I'm a pastor," and that did change the language of some of the players for the next couple of holes. But now my cover was blown and later in the round someone asked me, said, "So how many people come to your church in the worship services?" I don't like to answer that question because I think it's difficult for people to understand what a church is like and I think that sometimes they can stereotype a large church and that's where I was serving at the time.

So I kind of hem-hawed around and I didn't give him an answer. I didn't want to be painted with that stereotypical brush. But the guy was relentless and he wouldn't give up and he came back to it two more times and finally he got right in front of me and said, "How many people go to the church where you preach?"

I said around 20,000 and he thought for a second and then he looked at me and he said, "But there's no way that you can know 20,000 people." I said, "Yeah, you're right, I can't. But Jesus can." And the guy in the cart riding beside me leaned over and said to the man, "And that's all that matters." It was a pretty profound moment and I thought, "Yeah, what he said!"

But that is all that matters and Jesus is all that matters and He's here to help us through the transitions of life and Jesus knowing your needs is more important than a pastor knowing your name. But you know what's even more important than that? It's you knowing Jesus's name and it's you knowing Jesus.

Right now you're thinking, "Well, Dave, you've forgotten who your listening audience is. We're Christian leaders. We're very active members in the church." Oh, I know my audience, trust me. Jesus knew his audience too. Jesus said in Matthew 7, he said, "Many will say 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and perform many miracles?' and I will tell them plainly, 'Away from me you evildoers. I never knew you.'"

Those are sobering words. I'm so glad that Kristen's dad knew the name of Jesus and when other names were a blur, Jesus's name was still front and center in his mind and in his heart because as Peter said in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."

Well, I don't know about you, but today was an emotional day just listening to our conversation with Kristen. God cares for his children and he hates to see them hurting. If you're struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, he wants to help you too. We want you to seek help and so do your loved ones. So please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

That is a service that is available 24/7 across the United States. Just dial 988. It'll be linked in the show notes. And as always, thanks so much for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand new episode every Tuesday. It's designed to encourage, inspire, and to challenge you because we know that leadership can be lonely. We called this Pastor to Pastor for a reason: it's to remind you you're not alone. So till next time, I'm Dave Stone saying God bless.

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That's why we offer a free confidential consultation with a caring Christian counselor to walk with you through life's struggles. Whether you're navigating challenges in marriage, parenting, anxiety, grief, or something else, our counselors are here to help. If you're hurting, don't wait. Hope is real and healing begins with a conversation. Request your free confidential consultation today. Call 1-800-A-FAMILY, that's 1-800-232-6459, or visit focusonthefamily.com/gethelp. That's focusonthefamily.com/gethelp.