How Even a Wobbly Faith Can Change Everything

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there, it's Dr. Zoe. I'm your host, and I am so glad that you are here today. I'm so glad that I'm here today. So today's topic is how wobbly faith can still change everything. Yes, wobbly faith. I'm excited to dive into that, but first, my win and my fail that I do every week, or at least every week that I actually put up a recording. I'm going to acknowledge it's been a couple of weeks. My fail. Sometimes, despite your greatest wishes, despite your hard work, despite all of your praying and intentions, you don't get the results that you hoped for, wished for, or prayed for. I'm not right now. My daughter Sullivan has been dealing with Prader-Willi syndrome since she was born, her whole life, and this past month has been a real struggle. We've had some super scary psychological, psychiatric issues. She's been in and out of the hospital. She got back home a couple of days ago, and we're just praying that this time sticks, that this time she's gonna be able to continue to maintain health and work towards it. And I know it's not my personal fail, but I definitely get a sense of failure, a sense of, I've failed her, God's failed her. Those are the kind of deepest kind of thoughts when You know, in the middle of the night when you're contemplating your kids. But my logic and the healthy part of my psyche tells me something different, tells me that God's got her, that there's a plan, that it's gonna be okay. And I also know that we don't understand why the bad things happen. And if you are going through a difficult spell right now in your life, Just know that I feel you and I've got you in any, in any way that I can with my voice here. I hope that you can find people to support you, and if not, that you can continue to listen to my podcast, other people's podcasts that can just give you a lifeline and let you know that it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. You don't have to do this by yourself. And warning, I have to tell you, this episode may be a little more raw than usual. But as much as I would like to stay surface, as much as I wanna not always dive deep, it's just not in my nature. I also wanna be clear that I'm not bleeding all over this podcast, that instead I'm just being real. I have my triage and I have my support, but I try as much as I can to be real with you guys and share my wins and my fails so that you can get— and remember, I'm a real person just like you are. I have my struggles and I have my amazing wins, which I'm getting ready to share right now. And so in the midst of, you know, so much that's scary and frustrating with my 18-year-old daughter, I got a call from producers from a show on the Oprah Winfrey Network. And they have heard my story. I've shared it so many places and have become fascinated by it and inspired by it and want to share it in a documentary on the Oprah Winfrey Network. And we've been meeting and collaborating for the past few weeks, and it's going to happen. And it's very, hmm, I don't even know if I want to use the word exciting, but it definitely makes me feel so aligned for a number of reasons. First, if you guys are following me, you know, I've been frustrated with my book. It got essentially rejected by my editor. We've pushed it back a year almost publication date, which I was really frustrated about and feeling some kind of, I don't know, maybe imposter syndrome, something. And it just turns out that this show that's going to launch, this episode that's going to launch on the Oprah Winfrey Network, is now going to line up pretty closely with the launch of my book, and they will be marketing it as well. And so, you know, when we think that God's timing sucks, and I think that often, by the way, sometimes he just reminds us he's got it. He sees things we can't possibly see, and sometimes we just gotta lean back, right? Lean back and release and know that, you know, I have this sign behind me in my office and it says, trust your journey. And that goes for everyone out there. Trust your journey. What's supposed to happen is going to happen, and we really don't need to fear and be frustrated. We do need to be intentional. We do need to work hard, but we don't have to push and we don't have to bend the will of God. We can just live knowing that he already had a plan set up for us, even Even though we can't see the timing. Okay, I did not mean this to be a sermon, but I did just want to share my win and my fails with you guys, and I think it's so important for you to honor yours as well. Honor your fails, honor the times that you feel disappointed, that you feel frustrated, maybe even scared, but also honor the good. Honor the good that's there in your life because both of them matter, and we learn so much. Actually, we learn more from our fails than we do our wins, to be honest with you, but still, we can learn from both. Okay, on to the topic: how wobbly faith can still change everything. I took some notes, so many notes, at this Ester Conference that I went to in Nashville, which is also a huge win. I had so much fun. It was so inspiring and inspirational to hang out with other women authors. Ester Press is a publishing company that only publishes women. They're a division of David C. Cook, but their division only publishes Courageous women. I love it. Stories by courageous women, and that enough is enough to just kind of draw me to this this this publishing company. But but the speakers that were on the stage at the conference were just all so inspiring. So this episode is really inspired by one of the speakers, Lena Abu Jamra, and she is an MD who also writes really beautiful devotional type books. Her most recent is called Through the Desert: A Study on God's Faithfulness. And so today. Today, I wanna talk about how even a wobbly faith can still change everything. And, you know, I'm always talking about relationships and from the perspective of relationships, and I've walked so many people through difficulties in their marriages and their relationships with their children and their relationships with their parents. And I just wanna give you some encouragement today. I just wanna acknowledge that some of you are hanging on by a thread. Some of you have relationships and marriages that are so complicated, so difficult, Where you've lost hope in many ways. And all of my how to fix your marriage relationship advice might just seem like it's not going to work for you, not going to work for you and your situation in your marriage. Some of you may desperately want a relationship that is real and lasting and deep. And for some reason, you haven't been able to manifest that in your life. Maybe you're single and you're still looking, or maybe you're married and you're so disappointed. Maybe you even feel like, I've done the work, I've done my own personal work. Maybe you can see that you're emotionally healthier than many women who have the relationship that you want, and it feels so frustrating and unfair, and you just don't understand. And sometimes, honestly, it doesn't make sense, and sometimes it isn't fair. Can we just acknowledge that? I'm doing it today. So it's interesting because I just heard recently that there's this New Birth movement I guess a lot of doulas are talking about it or perpetuating this concept that you don't have to experience pain with childbirth. Now, I respectfully say that is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, but I'm bringing that up because I don't want to sugarcoat the pain that is involved in your experience. And I feel like that's exactly what that statement or that movement is about. I bring people onto my podcast and I get on here almost weekly to help you with your relationship with yourself and others. But what I don't want to do is pretend like you shouldn't have pain in your experience or that navigating difficult relationships is easy if you just do the things. It's not. And just like I would never tell a woman that she shouldn't experience pain in childbirth because that's just gaslighting her. And then when she experiences it, all she feels is Disappointed in herself, like maybe something's wrong with her because someone's told her that it shouldn't be painful. And I don't want to do that for you guys. And so I'm telling you, yep, this is painful. Yes, this hurts. Yes, it's not fair. If you find yourself in a difficult relationship, it is not easy. And you know what? I talk about the fact that you have options, and you do. But honestly, sometimes all the options suck. There isn't always an easy answer to solve your relationship problems, to make your relationship healthy, or to get yourself out of a difficult relationship. And I'm not sitting here to try to make you feel bad. I'm just really sitting here to say, I get you and I know what you feel. And I understand the conundrum that you're in. It does feel like you're between a rock and a hard place. So at this conference, what I loved about this conference is every single speaker spoke about Esther, that Bible story about Esther. Now the story of Esther is, It's a very small story in the Bible, but they had maybe 20 speakers all speaking about Esther, and none of them said the same thing. But what I did glean from this is that Esther is actually not a beautiful love story between Esther and her king, right? Esther was a young woman who was forced to marry a king. She was between a rock and a hard place. She had 2 bad options. One of her options would lead to possible death, And the other to disobedience, disobedience to God. And so I just want to acknowledge the rock and the hard place that you might feel like you're in, but I want to also remind you that you were put here for a time such as this. So I'm telling you all of this because sometimes when we're in difficult places and relationships in our life, we can become so disappointed that it actually makes us begin to question our faith. And as we're trying to make choices, sometimes it can make us Do I need to throw out my faith in order to be happy, whatever happy means? And few things will bruise our faith like disappointment will. Maybe you thought the person you married was someone different. Maybe you're disappointed in your marriage or your kids, or you're disappointed in how your life turned out. Resilient faith sees past disappointment, and that's hard. That is hard. Looking past disappointment, what does that even mean? When I think about that, I think about standing in front of a broken mirror. standing on, you know, a mountain and you've got this valley of darkness and you have to look past that over the horizon. That is what resilient faith does. But today we're going to talk about wobbly faith, because sometimes wobbly faith is the only faith we can have, a faith that's just like, I don't know, God, like, I don't know. But I will tell you that resilient faith dares to believe that God is good even if the outcome is bad. Because faith does not hinge on the goodness of the outcome, but on the goodness of God, right? But what about wobbly faith? You guys know how small a mustard seed is. It is so very tiny. And we know what God says about us having the faith of even the size of a mustard seed. That faith matters, even if it's wobbly faith. And so I'm talking about that in the context of your relationship because maybe you've given up hope. And what I'm not asking you to have actually is hope that your marriage will be restored, that your relationships will be restored. I'm asking you to have faith and hope that you will be okay, that despite whatever happens in your relationship, that you know that God's got you. And sometimes that can be scary because when I say despite, you can come up with all the scary despites, like, well, what if this happens? And what if that happens? And it is a waste of your time because I've talked before about what we need to do when we ask those scary questions is we need to answer them. And we need to remind ourselves, just like I talk to women about trusting, that sometimes women are so scared to trust in early relationships or in family relationships and relationships at all. And what I often say is you don't need to trust the other person. You can give of yourself and you can be open because all you need to do is trust yourself. Trust yourself that you're going to be able to tolerate anything that happens. If that person doesn't respond in the way that you wish, if they don't show up for you in the way that they would— that you wish they would, you can trust yourself, and that gives you some freedom. And so I'm asking you to put your wobbly faith not in your relationship, not in your partner and their response, and, and whether he's going to give you what you need. But take your wobbly faith and put it in God and put it in yourself, knowing that you already have the tools to deal with whatever might come forward in your relationship. I don't know what's going to happen with my daughter, but I do have wobbly faith. It's not, it's not the strongest faith every single day, but I do have a wobbly faith that I know it's going to work out. I don't know what's going to happen in my future relationships, but I do have a wobbly faith that I know it's going to work out. And I know that I can tolerate and I can help myself and I've developed skills And resilience. And I've developed some things to know that even if I get hurt, even if it doesn't work out, I'm going to be okay. I know how to take care of myself. And Esther's story is not an amazing story because the king ultimately said yes. Esther's story is amazing because of Esther's faith. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She was in, you know, the most patriarchal of societies, and she had very little. She could have died just to have a conversation, or she could have been killed just going to have a conversation with her husband. So when you think of Esther's stakes, she needed to confront her husband about something and it could have meant death. Maybe that can give you a little courage to have the confrontation that you need to have in your relationship. It will not lead to death. It might lead to some discomfort, but it will not lead to death. And if Esther did it, so can you. So I also want to talk about when we think about faith is that what we see as a good outcome is not necessarily what's supposed to happen for us. It's not necessarily what God sees as a good outcome. And so sometimes we have to redefine what good outcomes are. Does a good outcome mean everything is restored with your relationship? Does it mean that you no longer have any issues and life is, you know, smooth sailing from here on out? The reality is that, especially on social media, we're a generation of good outcomes that hide a multitude of shame. So wobbly faith recognizes that fear is there. Wobbly faith doesn't try to ignore fear. It recognizes that that fear is there, but it does act in courage, and it takes just the next right little step in the direction of where you want to go. So wobbly faith, yeah, it looks out over that horizon and says, I know I need to get there. Let me just think of the next small, tiny step that I need to do. So I want to talk about 4 fears when it comes to our wobbly faith. One of them is the fear of what they will think or say. So my question is, are you accepting the status quo in your relationship because you're worried about what others will think if you challenge it? Are you worried about what your partner will think when you challenge something that's always been normal for you guys? Another fear is fear of loss of comfort and security. Are you accepting the status quo in your relationship because you're fearful of the loss of comfort and security? Maybe you don't want to disrupt that surface peace that's in your relationship, although you've got a river of dysfunction underneath it. We all know that the question Esther wrestled with was, will he kill me if I confront him? The next fear is the fear of lack of clarity and purpose. So sometimes we stay frozen because we can't see the end line. We may know Deeply right now, something's not okay. I need to confront this. I need to stand up for myself. But we can't see what the end looks like, and so we stay frozen. And what I'm going to encourage you to do, as someone who may have some wobbly faith, is to take the next right step even though you can't see the end, because what you can see is what's right in front of you. You don't always have to have full clarity of purpose in order to take the next right step. Towards the direction that you want to go, the direction that you know is healthy for you. And the last is the fear of the future, which is connected to that one too. How will this turn out? What if I fail? What if I can't do it? Right? All of those what-ifs. And I'm going to ask you very nicely to stop overthinking the future. I know you've heard people say this a million times, but it's true that the future does take care of itself. If you are consistently doing the next right small step, you are taking care of the future. You do what's right in the moment, and you let tomorrow take care of itself. So what does Esther do when she is worried, when she's stuck between that rock and a hard place? She fasts and she prays. And I can tell you that, man, these past couple of years, I've definitely been fasting and praying and really just trying to figure out, what do I do? So Esther's knee-jerk response to fear was to pray. And the reality is, I can offer you all the psychological advice. I can explain the psychology of your relationships. I can talk to you about boundaries. I can talk to you about hard conversations and using I statements, but I cannot affect the power of prayer in your relationship. And when I think about the power of prayer and affirmations in my life and and meditation and really just honing in and giving myself space to communicate with me and to communicate with my God, it is the most powerful. And yes, I use all of those other tools as well, but it is the most powerful intervention, especially for someone with a wobbly faith. I don't believe that God calls us to suffer in difficult relationships. There is no good calling regarding that. God used Esther. So my question for you is, what's keeping you from living out your wobbly faith? Just, just wobbly. Is it fear? Is it anger? Is it uncertainty? I truly believe that wobbly faith, whatever little tiny mustard seed you can garner in that day, changes everything. You have resilience that is deeper than you could have ever imagined. And sometimes, you know, I was talking to somebody and they said, I don't even remember who it was, and they were encouraging me and they used that statement, God doesn't give you more than you can handle. And I always push against that because I'm like, well, I wish he wouldn't have made me able to handle this truly. But it is also the truth too. And the reality is, is the more that we can handle, the easier things do get over time. And so as much as I want to push against that, I also want to thank— I also want to feel thankful that I do have that strength to tolerate maybe more than other people can. And that's okay, because with that strength, I'm also able to help other people tolerate the things that they need to tolerate. And so today, I just invite you, I encourage you, I implore you, And I hope I'm inspiring you a little bit to just practice a little wobbly faith in your situation. Your situation is here for a reason, and you don't understand why it is, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that you have to stay stuck though, so please do not allow that to be a crutch to say, well, I'm just supposed to be here for some reason, and I'm just gonna do nothing. No, please don't do nothing. Please take action. Please take the next right little step towards health in your life and health in your relationship, even though it's scary. Use that little wobbly faith to just take the next right step. Okay. It was so good to talk to you today, and you've got this. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes will go out on Tuesdays. If you're new here, welcome. Please subscribe so that you will be notified of new episodes and go over to my website and hop on my email list. At Zoe at Dr. Zoe Shaw dot com, I will send you weekly encouragement. If this show is helpful, or if you know it may be helpful for a friend, please hit that like button and share it. And if you feel so inclined, I would appreciate a review. Have a strong week.