Episode 352- Holding On To Hope and Mystery After Loss with Kay Warren
WARNING: This episode contains conversations about suicide and may not be suitable for all listeners/viewers.
What do you do when your worst nightmare comes true after a painful battle with a loved one's mental illness? How do you hold the tension between hope and the mysteries of God in your life after loss?
For author, speaker, advocate and pastor's wife Kay Warren, learning to hold onto hope after losing her son Matthew while accepting the mysteries of all she did not understand was difficult. Kay and her husband, author and Pastor Rick Warren, had walked a long, difficult journey through Matthew's lifelong struggle with mental health and faced every parent's worst fear coming true when their adult son died by suicide. Kay experienced the depths of grief and sorrow as she wrestled with God to make sense of such a tragedy. But her pain has given her the opportunity to become an advocate for mental health in the church and a voice of hope for parents who are facing a similar journey.
In this honest conversation, Davey and Kay talk about how reality, grief, and hope must all co-exist together, why we need both hope and mystery as we look back on our pain, and how to deal with the shame and guilt after losing a loved one to suicide.
If you've found it hard to hold on to hope in the darkness of your suffering, this episode will light a pathway towards it.
Episode 341- Demystifying Evil with Ingrid Faro
Warning: This episode discusses loss by suicide and may not be suitable for all listeners.
What do we do when it comes to understanding God's role in the events of our lives? How do we interpret the pain we endure, the evil that exists in the world and God's sovereignty in it all?
For author and professor of Old Testament Ingrid Faro, it was her own personal experience of pain and evil that led her to dig deeply into scripture in order to better understand how God works in the midst of suffering. Having experienced domestic abuse and divorce, a remarriage than ended when her husband died by suicide, and so much more, Ingrid began to ask questions when it came to pain and suffering and evil in our experience as humans. It was through her own story and scholarly study that she wrote Demystifying Evil: A Biblical and Personal Exploration, in which she examines the impact of evil and how to undo its power in our lives.
In this episode, Aubrey and Ingrid talk about how our stories can lead us to our life's work, the power of lament and what to do in the face of evil.
If you've ever struggled to make sense of the things that have been done to you, this conversation is a reminder that God can handle all our anger and questions, doubts and fears, and invites us to be honest with the pain that we are experiencing.