#084: Angry at God? Why People from Broken Families Struggle Extra in Their Relationship with Him | Sr. Miriam James Heidland

Podcast
Written By Restored

Have you rejected God? Do you really struggle in your relationship with him? If you’re from a broken family and that’s true, you’re not strange. In fact, it’s really common.

Why? From a young age, our parents represent God to us. If their example wasn’t good, it leaves us with a distorted image of God. As a result, we reject him or struggle extra in our relationship with him. We discuss that and more:

  • How Sr. Miriam began drinking at age 12 and became an alcoholic as a D1 athlete

  • 3 common barriers that prevent you from healing

  • Tough questions like, “Why would God allow our families to fall apart?” and “Why doesn’t God make his love more obvious?”

Buy Sr. Miriam’s Book: Behold: A Guided Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

Buy Joey’s Book: It’s Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents’ Divorce


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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you come from a broken family and you really struggle in your relationship with God, or maybe you've downright rejected God, I'm actually not surprised. In fact, it's really common for people like us. I've been there myself, and you might be asking the question, why is that? Basically from a young age, our parents represent God to us, and if their example wasn't good, we tend to think on a subconscious level.

Well, if they're like that, then God must be. Two. And it leaves us with this distorted image of God. And as a result, we reject him or we struggle extra in our relationship with him. We break all that down and more in this episode with my guests as she shares vulnerably her story, how she began drinking at 12 years old, how she struggled with alcoholism, even as a division one volleyball player, and how she really hid her addiction and her brokenness so well for so many years.

And finally, she shares how she found healing, how she found, uh, so much peace and so much growth, and was able to leave that all behind. And she answers the question too, what is healing? What is the definition of healing? It's a really important question. She also shares three common barriers that prevent you from healing.

We also discuss some common struggles in your relationship with God such. Why would God allow our families to fall apart? And why doesn't God make his love more obvious for us? And then she answers the question, how do you heal and offer some healing resources to help you do just that? I'm so thrilled for you to hear this episode with our incredible guests, so keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents', divorce, separation, or broken marriage, so you and feel whole. Again, I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 84. If you haven't heard my book, it's Not Your Fault. A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents'.

Divorce is available on Amazon, and the sad truth is that for a lot of teenagers and young adults, the most traumatic thing that they've endured in their lives is their parents' separation or divorce. But nobody shows them how to handle all the pain and all the problems that stem from their family's breakdown.

And without that guidance, they continue to feel alone and struggle in numerous ways, in serious ways with emotional problems, unhealthy coping, relationship struggles, and so much more. And I experienced these exact same problems. I felt alone myself without the guidance that I really needed, and it really shouldn't be this way.

It's not your fault, my book, it's an answer to that problem. It features 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges face by teens, young adults from broken families, such as After my family broke apart, I felt abandoned, unwanted, and adequate, and even rejected as something wrong with me.

What's your advice for navigating the holidays and other life events? How do I avoid repeating my parents' mistakes and build a healthy marriage, and so many more questions and answers? The content itself is based on research, expert advice, and real life stories. And after reading, it's not your fault.

Teens and young adults will learn how to handle the trauma from their parents', divorce or separation, how to build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pain and problems. They'll learn healing tactics to help them feel whole again. They'll learn how to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God, and how to make important decisions about their future.

To buy the book or just get the first chapters for free, just go to restored ministry.com/books. Again, that's restored ministry ministry singular.com/books, or just click on the link in the show notes. My guest today is Sister Miriam James Hyland, and she's a popular speaker. She's the cohost of the Abiding Together podcast and author of the best selling book.

Loved as I Am. She's a former division one athlete who had a radical conversion and became a religious sister, and her story's been featured on E w tns, the Journey Home at Seek and Steubenville Conferences at the U S C C B convocation Relevant Radio and other outlets. And she holds a master's degree in theology from the Augustan Institute in Denver.

And she speaks regularly on the topics of conversion, authentic love, forgiveness, healing, and even sports. In fact, she actually wanted to become an espn, uh, newscaster. We talk about that a little bit in the show. She also frequently puts on retreats with Dr. Bob CHUs, who you may remember from episode 30.

And by the way, if you wanna request Sister Miam to speak at your event, just contact her@eventrequestsot.net event requests ot.net. We'll throw that in the show notes for you. Quick disclaimer. This conversation obviously includes a lot of talk about God and faith, but if you don't believe in God, I'm really glad that you're here and I really challenge you to listen with an open mind.

And even if you take the God parts out, there's still a lot for you in this episode. But at some point, I really wanna challenge you. You owe it to yourself to tackle this topic, to wrestle with maybe why you don't believe in God, and why you struggle so much in your relationship with Him. And that's exactly what this episode is meant to do.

It's not meant to be preachy, to convert you, to convince you of anything, but really just to show you like, Hey, these struggles that you have in your relationship with God, they're there for a reason. The fact that you reject God, there's a reason for that, and you really owe it to yourself to dig into that and really understand it, uh, to see is that the right path for you.

And again, we're not here to coerce you or make you go any which way, but I just, I wanna challenge you to dig into these topics because they're so important. And so just give it a shot and listen with an open mind. Let's dive into my conversation with Sister Miriam.

Sister Miriam, thank you so much for making time to be here with us today. Oh, thank you, joy. Thanks for having me with you. I'm delighted to be here. Delighted. Yeah. I'd like to just dive in and kind of go deep quickly, if that's okay. At what point in your life did you realize that you needed healing? Mm, that's a great question.

I think, I think that's an ongoing awareness. fair. I think a lot. I think a lot of times in our life we. Manage and we try to get through things and we tell ourselves it's okay. And I think when you ask most people how they're doing, which you know, in certain social settings is entirely appropriate, but if you say how you're doing, they'll say, good busy, , good busy.

And, and you know, that's fine if you say that at a cocktail party with people you don't really know. And God forbid we wouldn't be busy cuz then we wouldn't be important, right? All, all the things that go beyond, um, that, but if, if that's the answer we're giving to the Lord. And if that's the answer we're giving to people in our life who care about us the most, I think it's indicative of a place maybe where, um, fear is showing up in our life.

And I think I've had several really crystallizations of the Lord opening my heart to places where my heart has been broken. I look back at my story now and I, my heart goes out to that girl from the womb with such compassion. Such compassion, and there were just so many things I couldn't tell anybody.

And so I just kept a lot of secrets for a really long time. But I think I, I knew it underneath in my heart. I knew that something wasn't right and that my heart was broken, but I didn't know, uh, what to do about it. And it really wasn't until I, yeah, that I probably entered religious life, that I had a wonderful religious superior who first started opening those doors of, you know, what happens in our life when we've experienced trauma and, you know, what are our stories?

And I'd never had a place where I could look at my story even and have it be received. And so that was the very beginning. So that was a small opening in the door. I had a moment a few years later where I just kind of hit bottom in my life where I just looked at Jesus and I was like, I can't do this.

Like, I don't know. I don't know what to do, but I can't do this. And it was a deeper awareness of places. Things that happened to me as a little girl that'd never told anybody about, they were having a direct impact on my adult life that I had no idea. Mm-hmm. . So I think, and there's many, you know, just because we're so little and it's so wonderful, we always get to grow.

And there's every day in places in my life where I'm like, oh Lord, here's me trying to be self, you know, self sufficient or self reliant or independent, or telling myself stories that aren't true . So yeah, the Lord's like, I love you too much to let you live like that. I want you to live in the truth. So I'm gonna bring you into the light.

Beautiful. And as much as you're comfortable sharing, what were some of the wounds that you were grappling with? I have several ways where love has been ruptured in my life, even from the womb. And it's been for me, uh, an 18 year journey of healing. 18 years of very concerted intentional healing. And, but for me, I see the wounds beginning even from the womb of my mother.

Um, I was conceived out of wedlock. My biological parents were in high school. They were 17 years old and not married, and I was the fruit of their union, however that came to be. In the 1970s in the state of Texas, all adoptions were closed that I know of. And so to this day, I've never seen my parents. I don't know what they look like.

I don't know who they are. I have a piece of paper that tells me some physical characteristics. Uh, so I don't know for a fact, but I, in my own healing journey, I have a deep intuition, like a biological, like embodied intuition that at some point my mother thought of aborting me. Uh, but she didn't. And when I was born, uh, was given up for adoption and that was, that was a process that started while my mother was pregnant, but I wasn't ready.

I had some medical abnormalities. And so I was put in a foster home for three months, and then I was finally adopted by a mother and father who loved me very much and had been waiting to have a daughter for a very long time. But what was happening at that time is when I was finally adopted, that was mother number.

Already. And so you can hear already the broken attachment from the womb and where the enemy has come to start telling stories that aren't true of like, I'm not wanted, I'm a burden. Nobody cares. I'm an accent. I shouldn't be here. Um, I have to try really hard to be loved. If I don't, I'll be abandoned. I, I can just, I, I feel those in my body.

I, I know them very deeply of the stories that happened even from very young, when I was 11 years old, I was sexually abused. I didn't tell anybody. And then when I was 13 years old, I was just deeply violated by, uh, another man. And I just didn't tell anybody. And I just began a very shattering journey of a lot of promiscuity, a lot of, I began drinking at 12.

That's how my, I responded to that trauma was starting to drink at my 12th birthday. And so I, you say, I could say a crazy thing, but like really the most sorrowful thing, like I said, had you asked me at the time, if I was fine, I would've told you I was fine. And even in college, I played Division I of volleyball in college.

I wanted to work for espn. I was pursuing a career in journalism and. I just was a full blown alcoholic and I, I just, I wouldn't have told you that cause I was in college where I can get away with, you know, kind of excessive drinking in college. But I clearly had a different drinking pattern than my roommates and just the situations that would end up because of that particular way of trying to run away from my pain and, and, and cope with pain just created such sorrow in my life.

And so those were some really deep bedrocks of those major breaks of the shattering of my soul that where the enemy just would continue to pour in those lives. And these agreements that I came into that for the last, you know, over, over 18, I mean the 18 years, but when I into religious life only 24 years ago and then 18 years into that really began a journey of restoration with the Lord.

That still continues to this day, which I'm so grateful for. I get to continue to learn and grow and to allow Jesus to come and speak to my heart in deep. Wow. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing all that. And it's a lot of heavy stuff and I know a lot of our listeners can relate to a lot of what you, you went through the, the trauma you endured and mm-hmm.

one thing, there's so much to comment on, but one thing I just gathered from what you said is you were a high functioning alcoholic. Right. People looking from the outside, they would've seen you thriving, like playing D one volleyball. That's, that's a difficult thing to do. I'm curious. Yeah. Just the complexity of that, like hiding your struggles, was that a continual theme in your life of like making sure that other people didn't know that you weren't doing well?

I think that's a common theme for every single one of us. It's from the garden where, yeah, you know, Adam and Eve, their relationship is shattered and God the father comes in search of them and I think we have to be very careful assigning a tone of voice to God and he comes in search of them and they're not anywhere to be found and he knows what's happened and he comes to them and he says, where are you?

Now, where are you? But where? Where are you? And it's beautiful. Adam's response is all of our response. Adam says, I heard you in the garden. I was naked because I'm afraid. So I hid myself. And to me, when I think of Adam there, it's all of our responses. It's, I might be seen here, or I am seen here. I'm unlovable here and I have to do something about it on my.

And I think that's the, that's always, I know myself, like when I start to hide, even like to myself of things like I'm disappointed and I don't wanna admit it to myself. I, it's very interesting little things. I know myself well enough to know now that in those areas and just having a decom compassion saying, okay, we, we have to come to the truth of this.

And so, yeah. I think for people, we talk about addiction, which is a trauma response. All addictions are trauma responses, whether it's to food or to self-righteousness or anger or Instagram or porn or whatever that is. Like, it's all, they're all trauma responses. They're, there are ways of us trying to manage our pain and mm-hmm.

I think so for those of us who have, are in recovery for those things, we know them very well, but every person, just because of the nature of the fall, all of us have things that we very strategically and what with much sophistication, many times try to hide. We help those things go away and nothing just ever goes away.

Time, time does not heal all wounds. Time heals some wounds, but not all of them. The only thing that heals all wounds is authentic love. And that requires us being seen and being open and vulnerable, which is terrifying for us. Yeah, it is. And I remember when my parents separated, I was 11 and I couldn't have put it into words then, but I can now.

When my mom broke the news, I just was totally overwhelmed. It was certainly traumatic for me. I didn't know how to cope with that news. And so I remember just hiding in the closet and crying and sitting there in the closet. I felt abandoned. I felt un Monte. I felt like I just wasn't good enough. And in the months and years it felt I dealt with all sorts of pain and problems, but one of the ways that I coped was pornography was lust, and it really did numb the pain, but it made me miserable and I knew that I wanted to be happy.

But one of the trends I've seen through my whole life that goes back to the garden, like you said, is just this desire to feel wanted. Yeah. Like everything I've struggled with, Within my life in one way or another was just a, an attempt to, to be, wanted, to feel wanted. And what I hear you saying about Adam in the garden was like him basically telling God, God, you know, I noticed my imperfection, I noticed how I screwed up and I didn't wanna show myself too, cuz if I did, I was just afraid he wouldn't want me.

Mm-hmm. . And so it's, it's better we think to hide and run than it is to like show God our brokenness. Mm-hmm. . And I've certainly struggled with that over the years. Made a lot of progress as well. But, um, I think that is a common struggle for so many of us. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Oh gosh. Uh, joy, I just wanna honor, uh, I wanna honor that part of your heart.

I can feel that little boy inside and, and that just, that image of the closet crying, like, and just all the ways that the enemy surrounds with those lies of, isn't it interesting how we interpret that through our own story of like, we interpret those events through our, our worthiness or our lovability, or.

Oh gosh, that's so ugh. That's so sacred. It's so sacred. And that desire of being wanted, of being pursuit of, of having safe, consistent, unconditional love that that's deep in the heart of every person. No matter how many academic degrees you have, no matter what faith you practice, whether you don't practice any faith because we're human beings may the image like this of God, that desire for a love that never ends, a love that is consistent, that tells us the truth that is with us, that that frees us, uh, from hiding from the places we want to run away from, that that's the deepest desire of every heart.

Amen. Beautiful. No. Well, thank you. I appreciate your empathy and I couldn't agree more. I think everyone listening can resonate with everything that we're saying, especially cuz so many of our listeners come from broken families. They've been through that sort of trauma and they've, I'm sure, acted out in different ways.

And so I wanna turn our gaze toward healing. Mm-hmm. , what's helped you heal the most? Mm-hmm. . Oh gosh. There's been so many things. I, I really believe in the ways that Jesus comes to heal us. And the Lord doesn't have just one way He does that he is the way and in the heart that is his way. He has also just many ways of bringing us into wholeness and communion.

And so I know you've had Dr. Bob Schutz on your show, and, and I've been mentored by him for many, many years. I met him many years at a conference and that changed my life. And now I, I do a lot of work with him, you know, fulltime and, and so just, I'm not sure if he did this, but I just wanna just kind of give you a definition of healing because I think even when we talk about healing, all of us have these ideas and, and even when we talk about.

Like broken homes, that it's every, Humana, every human family has a degree of areas where love has been ruptured. And, you know, for a lot of us, and I think, I don't know about you, but I, you know, it's just sharing my story and hearing people's feedback of like their own stories. Cuz you hear so many, you get to hear the sacredness of other people's journeys.

Many times when people don't have like a major type B trauma, like the direct interruption of violation or the fragmentation of divorce or death, they have type A trauma, which is the lack of the good things that we needed. And, and all of us, we can honor our families, we can honor our parents and also be honest about the places that they're just people where they weren't perfect.

And so sometimes it's not the one catastrophic event. It's, it's not the porcupine quills or like the, the, the deep, you know, sword and the soul. It's the paper cut. For a lot of us, we just have a lot of little paper cuts, , and, and we say, oh, it's just a paper cut. It's not a big deal. But man, of those things burn and they sting.

And if you have several paper cuts on one finger, it is very painful. And we're like, oh, this is not such a big deal. So I just wanna bring that out for people's hearts of, if you're, if you're listening today and you're thinking, well, gosh, I didn't have, my parents didn't divorce, or I wasn't sexually abused, or I didn't, wasn't bullied at school.

Like I had a, you know, the, the saddest thing that happened to me is my dog died when I was nine. That's, we can kind of sit in that place and say, yeah, that's, that's true in your life. And it's not comparison. And looking at the places where maybe we don't have the catastrophic wound, the shotgun blast, but we have a lot of paper cuts and those are painful, you know?

And so I think to, when we talk about a definition of healing, so when you and I talk about this today, this is what I'm referring to. And here I'll give you a little definition of this, an experience of God's love that brings us into wholeness and communion. So an experience of God's love. That brings us into wholeness and communion.

We're not talking about fixing, we're not talking about managing, we're not talking about some like, movement in the church or like, it's, it's really honestly, in a sense, like nothing more than the daily life of an experience, not just a theoretical concept, but an experience of God's love that brings me into homeless within myself and communion with God and others.

And that's, that's what healing is. And so that's why healing takes place in our life every single day, because I don't know anybody alive who can't, you know, have need, who doesn't need an experience of homeless and communion every day and their life. I know I do. I need a lot. So, so that's kind of like when we talk about that, that's what we're talking about.

Not like, oh my gosh, you people over there, you guys really need to get it together. I'm fine. But that was my MO for a long time. But that's just our own self defenses mechanism. That makes so much sense, and thanks for that definition. It is trickier than you'd think to find a definition of healing. So I, I appreciate that.

And there's a lot of, I think, false ideas out there when it comes to healing. Mm-hmm. like, like you alluded to. And so that makes so much sense. And I wanna talk a little bit more about healing, but before I get to that, I'm curious, you touched on this a little bit, what's been maybe the biggest barrier to healing in your own life?

The biggest barrier to healing for me, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is fear. It's fear and probably shame. You know, all of us, I think, really believe in our hearts that we're the only person in the world that struggles with whatever, that we are struggling with. And if I, like you were saying, you know, if, if I told you this, you wouldn't want me, or if I told you this, you'd find me unlovable.

And, and let's be honest, we probably all had experiences where we revealed something very vulnerable in our heart, and the person on the other end just wasn't able to receive it. And they either gossiped about us or they told us we shouldn't feel that way, or they, they shamed me. And so we translate that into what we think God.

Experiences when he's with us and, and that's not how God is. And so I know my own journey every time the Lord brings me to you another layer of an experience with his love. It's very interesting to find that a lot of what surrounds that is fear of like, okay, Lord, if I open this part of my heart to you, are you still gonna be here for me?

Are you going to reject me or am I gonna, you know, change somehow or I'm gonna be unrecognizable? It's just interesting. And I think when we can be honest about that, I think when we can honest about our fears and, and name them, it dissipates the power of them. Because if I could say, name my fear of rejection, okay, Lord, I'm afraid you're gonna reject me here.

And then I can hold that up to light and say, is that true? Does God ever reject me? Like, does, is that an exp? You know? And so I think we can hold it up to tradition. We can hold that up to gospel, the gospels, we can hold that and we, we know that God doesn't do that. So I'm like, okay, Lord, this is a fear that I'm having and maybe I've hadn't experience of that, or I wanna reject myself here cuz I do that, but you're not going to reject me.

So I'm gonna press into this even though I'm afraid and I'm going to let you bring me into wholeness and c communion here. Beautiful. And that makes so much sense. I, I've even heard from young people who've said that that vulnerability that they've maybe shared with someone in their life sometimes can even be weaponized against them, which is a whole, whole new set of wounds.

And I'm sure there's so much we could talk about there. I am curious, in addition to kind of the barriers that you've struggled with, are there any other common barriers that you see that are preventing people, uh, from healing in addition to what you already mentioned? Yeah. You know, I really, I've just over the years noticed, I, when I speak about them, I call, I call them three common self defense mechanisms that arise when we start to go down these paths.

And I'll just throw them out to your, to you and just see what you think. So the first common self defense mechanism is, I've already dealt with this. I already dealt with this. I went to therapy for 15 years. I already dealt with that. I'm a grownup. I don't need, but just even. You can hear the tone of voice.

I've already dealt with that. It's like the fear of like, just look, I already, I'm over that. And we just, we don't quote unquote get over things. I really believe we move through them with Jesus because we move through the Pascal mystery and we move through them over and over and over again. And every time we move through them, if it's really of the Lord, he's gonna move it through.

He's gonna move through it with us, and he is going to bring us into his life, death, and resurrection. And it's gonna be a new layer of freedom and, and truth that comes. So whenever, and I see these in myself at times, I'm like, any of that, that kind of knee jerk reaction I've already dealt with that is, you can just hear the defensiveness in it.

So that's, that's one that I often hear. The second one that I often hear is, my parents did the best they could. It wasn't that bad, right? My parents did the best they could. It wasn't that bad. And we kind of talked about that already, but just to tell you today that your mom and dad with what they had, they did the best they could.

And that's true. And like we said, we can be honest and we can honor them. And honor who they are in our life and we can honor the authority they have over us and God giving us to them. And, and we can honor our mother and father, like I says in the 10 Commandments. And we can also be honest in the places where they hurt us, where they weren't perfect.

And this is not blaming them. This is not scratching up stuff and trying to like, you know, be full of a self pity. Part of this is none of that. And it's the same thing for those of us Catholics. When we go to confession, this is what we do in confession. We go to, we go meet the heart of Jesus and we say, Jesus, I'm a beloved son and beloved daughter, and here's the places that I've failed.

That's exactly what we do. We're honoring the truth of who we are. And we're also honest in the places where we have, like the Greek archery term, we've sin, we've missed the mark and, and we can hold both as true. So I think that's a common one. And then the third one that I often hear is if I open that door, I don't know what's gonna.

If I open that door, I might cry. I might start crying and never stop. I might destroy everything and rage. I might go down a black hole and never come back. And so, so I don't wanna open that door. It's like the proverbial closet in our house that we all have, that we stuff all the junk in and they're like, man, you open that thing, something's gonna come out.

And I haven't seen that in a long time. And let's just, let's just keep it there, you know? Mm-hmm. . But if, if the Lord is really inviting us, if it's Jesus, which we're always gonna follow Jesus. This is not me on my own trying to heal myself cuz I can't do that. But if it's really Jesus inviting me to a new layer of wholeness and communion, that means he's already provided the grace for whatever he's going to reveal.

So there's a saying that Jesus does not reveal anything. He doesn't also wish to heal. And we just get to go little by little. And so just, I think we, if we can kind of name some of those things of like, yeah, here, here I am. And I, and they almost kinda laugh at them like, oh gosh, I'm just scared to death.

That's just the truth. It's actually, I'm just scared to death or I don't know what to do and I know I need to do something, but I don't know what to do. I think that just kind of makes it more human versus like kind of this scary, nebulous darkness. Does that make sense? Totally. And I, I've seen those in my own life and with the young people that I work with through this ministry.

Every one of those, honestly. And one of the interesting things with this problem of coming from a family where your parents are divorced or that your family fell apart in a very obvious way, is that so often there's this idea in our culture, first off, that divorce actually isn't traumatic. Mm. Uh, it's so common.

Kids are resilient. They're not really affected by it. In fact, everyone's happier, everything's better, right? I mean, your parents are happier, so why aren't you happier? And um, it's such a lie because it truly is traumatic for the majority of people. And certainly there are like high conflict situations where something needed to happen for the safety of the spouse or the children.

Just acknowledge those from the outset here. But one thing I see left and right, and I've heard again and again in the 80 plus interviews that we've done at this point, is that so often there's this disconnect between the everyday struggles, the pain and the problems that I deal with today and the trauma from my past.

There's this disconnect and I think you can't heal until you make that connection. And so the idea that someone says, well, I already dealt with it, they might be thinking, well, I got through the legal proceedings. I got through that kind of the drama of that. But without even realizing, and I'm sure you see this a lot in your ministry too, without even realizing it, they're carrying this trauma with them.

That younger version of them who is so impacted by that trauma is still wounded, is still broken, still needs to be healed, needs to be loved. And so, so yeah. So I mean, each one of those problems I could talk about for a while, but that's one of them that I've no realized in particular, uh, doing this ministry.

Have you seen that as well? Where people just don't make those connections? Mm-hmm. . Oh my gosh, that's, that is so beautiful. What you just said, joy. That's so beautiful and just so true. I just wanna give you an name in on that. It's all true. Thanks. And I think that's part of why many times our relationships or the, the things we, you know, dive into as adults are so problematic for us is because there's all this unresolved trauma and all these unhealed places.

And then when we talk about trauma, trauma's just the Greek word for wound, you know? So all of us have wounds. All of us have places where love has, like St. Thomas Aquinas says, where love has been withheld or love has been withdrawn and. Those things until they come into wholeness with Christ over and over again, will, they'll just continue to play out in our life.

And I, I think even just going into the deep attachment areas of, of, you know, from the womb and just how we attach and how we view other people and how we view friendships and just like the science of attraction and kind of what are the patterns and relationships even that we find ourselves into with our friends or coworkers or if you're married a spouse.

Like those things are not random. Nothing in our life is random. And it's just been very eye opening to me over the years of seeing more and more kind of the blueprint of survival in my life. So it's like what has been the blueprint of survival in my life? For some of us, avoiding conflict, some of us it's, it's the anxious, preoccupied attachment.

We're like, oh my gosh, please don't leave me. I'll do whatever you want. It's, for some of us, it's just running away. It's, it, it's just interesting of how in our lives we've been trying to survive. And I, and we can, we can honor that and be honest about that. And then we can also say maybe, maybe there's a better way, maybe like Christ, because Jesus is the man fully alive.

Jesus has no self defense mechanisms. He has no guardedness. He has no armor, that he doesn't armor up for anything. He doesn't have any self righteousness like we do. He's not, he is totally vulnerable. I mean, like even the word, the Latin word for vulnerable means able to be wounded or means leading up to death.

Like you can feel it, like that's why it's so terrifying for us. But Jesus doesn't put up guards. He doesn't put up barriers. He doesn't lie to get himself out of hard situations. He doesn't try to impress people. I mean, he's so stunningly human. And if that's Jesus Christ, if he's teaching us what it means to be human joy, that means that he's got, he has to be able also simultaneously giving us the way to live.

If that's true, if that's really true, if what we believe is true, that means it's not just an idea or a kind of a moral kind of like thing to strive for. He is taking on our humanity and teaching us what it means to be human, and he's giving us the grace to do so, which means I don't have to live in my coping mechanisms, my survival skills the rest of my life.

I don't have to do that. Hmm. To me, like that's, I think we are shocked at the level of intimacy that Jesus wants to have with us. We're we're, it's so shocking. He's so shocking. Like we'd rather have God as a roommate, rather than a lover. It's like, because it's just so overwhelming for us. We say we, and I'm saying it to much to myself as I'm saying it to you.

We say we love Jesus, but then he wants to draw close to us. We're like, Ooh, not that close, Lord. You know? It's like, because we're terrified and He is te he is teaching us and not just teaching us. He's, he's embodied. He's, I can't even, it's the intimacy with which he's calling us into this truth of who we are.

We have no idea of who we are. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Wow. I love that. And one of the thing, one of the ways I think about healing too, is it's really a return to being fully human, like you said. Yep. And it really is as simple as that. And I think what happens with our wounds, with our trauma, it prevents us from being fully human, from being the man or the woman that we're created to be.

From reaching our full potential, from becoming the best version of ourselves, however you wanna talk about it. Mm-hmm. . Um, I think it all means the same. And I think that as a, something that all of us, like even now talking to you, like there's something burning in my heart. Like, yes, I want that, I want that, I want that.

You know? And I think all of us, like when we think about that, like, yeah, I want to be that person. I want to heal this brokenness. I wanna experience that wholeness and that communion that you mentioned, even if the brokenness doesn't fully go away, which I think is important to acknowledge because there's certainly wounds in our lives where, um, we can find, gain incredible ground mm-hmm.

but maybe it never totally goes away. And that's a really hard thing to wrestle with and not something we've really talked a lot about on this show. So I just kind of feel let to go there now. Um, anything you would say about, about that, those ones that maybe don't fully go away? Yeah, I, those are mysteries, aren't they?

Yeah, they're mysteries and I think that they are places where, We get to be very little cuz they're very humbling. And you know, I wonder, like, I just think of Lord of the Rings at the very end of the story when Frodo like, what? Ultimately, if I'm spoiling the end of Lord of the Rings, I'm very sorry, but Holy cow.

Okay, here we go. So what I just think option of Frodo, what, at the end of the story, what saves Frodo from himself? It's love and suffering. At the very end of the story when he decides to take the ring for himself, what saves him from himself is suffering in the form of goam and love in the form of Sam.

And had neither of those been there or one of those wouldn't have been there, he wouldn't have, he wouldn't have given up the ring like he would've succumbed to his own darkness. And I think sometimes, I know myself, like we look at the scars we have and we don't have to have pus infected, you know, wounds our whole life.

Like, but we will have, like Jesus arises from the dead with his wounds open and they're no longer sources of shame. Or, you know, they're not, they're things people have done to him, but Jesus is never ashamed of his wounds. And so we, our whole life, if this is not like, Lord, fix me so I can get rid of my pain and I can fear perfect, like this is coming, like we said, in the fullness of who we are as human beings.

And, and so we, on this side of heaven, we will always have tender places. And those are many times the places I see in my own heart every day where I just sit at the foot of the cross with Mary and I, I'm just little like, Lord, I can't, I see this part of me and I, I desire a deeper response. But right now, Lord, I just, I just need you to love me here.

I, I can't, and I, I just wonder joy, like at the end of our lives, It's gonna be those very places like the Goms in our life that we wanted to get rid of so many times that just kept plaguing us over and over and over again that we had to engage with over and over and over again. That through that mystery of suffering given in love will be the ultimately the things that save us.

I don't know. Beautiful. I remember a while ago listening to Aham by Father Meg Schmidtz and he was saying he was preaching on the gospel of the the Blind man where he comes to Jesus and he says, Lord, if you want to, you can make me whole. And Father Me was just breaking that down saying in that sentence and that question is implied that, Lord, if you don't want to, that will be done.

Like I accept that, which just like moves me so much like it, it like gives me the chills even talking about it right now. Cause it's just like such a beautiful like surrender and trust that like, Lord, I wanna be whole, I want this part of my life completely healed. Mm-hmm. . . But if you don't, for some reason that I maybe can't fully understand, but you know why mm-hmm.

it will be done. Mm-hmm. . And so one of the things I've learned from Father Mike is that sometimes God's only response to our pain of his presence. Mm. And that's something that I've tried to carry with me as well and suffering in my own life. That, you know, instead of maybe finding the perfect answer, it's more about finding like God in the midst of it.

Mm-hmm. , which to a lot of people that isn't very satisfying. I just wanna acknowledge that, cuz I know people listening right now. Maybe you don't believe in God or maybe you're really struggling in your relationship with God for one reason or another, and you might be thinking like, no, no, I, that doesn't satisfy me.

And we'll get into that in a second. But I think there's a, a beauty there to that surrender, that trust. I agree with you. And I, I also think that in that same line of thought, that it's suffering in communion, which is actually healing. I mean, imagine, just imagine in your story as a little boy when you're in the closet, if somebody in your life that you trusted would've come and sat with you there and just said, Hey, this is really hard and this is awful, and we can be honest about that.

And you know what? I'm not leaving you. I'm not leaving you. I'm going to be here for you. I'm gonna give you space for your emotions. I'm gonna let you cry. I'm gonna let you rage. I'm gonna let you feel sorrowful and I'm not gonna leave you. I'm gonna be here with you. And I think for all of us, if we look at the deepest sorrows, part of the prob not problem, part of this heartache is that we feel so incredibly alone there.

And that's, I was listening to a a, I was sitting in on a class for trauma experts, many, like a year or so ago, many months ago, and, and there was all these trauma experts like Belo, Vander Col, and Peter Levine, like all these people that are on the forefronts of like scientific discovery of what heals trauma biologically like in our bodies.

They were saying that it's actually communion that heals trauma, not modalities, not even, you know, internal family systems or emdr, like those are modalities. But they said ultimately what heals trauma is communion. And one of the therapists was saying that all of us have these wounds, they have these primary wounds.

But she said surrounding every wound is a secondary wound. And the secondary wound is having nobody safe to tell it, to being totally isolated. And so when we look at some of the deepest sufferings of our life, many times those are surrounded by a ring of isolation and a ring of, I'm all alone here. I have to take care of myself.

Nobody cares about me. God has forgotten me. This as good as it's gonna get. Like all those things. And those are very real places where it's like a taste of hell. It's like a taste of hell. And if that, and if that's what's true in our lives, we would do everything we could do to avoid that. And that would make sense, doesn't it?

Like who wants to sit there, but, but if God is present there, If God is present there and he's bringing about something far more than I can understand, well then that, that opens a little bit of light on something different. Hmm. Yeah. No, absolutely. No, I love that. And there's a trauma therapist of whom we refer people to, and one of the things that she's taught me is that what makes trauma, trauma is how it gets taken care of or not taken care of.

Mm-hmm. . So if you have someone there who's, like you said with you through the pain, who can just love you, just be there with you, not try to make it go away mm-hmm. , but just sit there in the brokenness and the pain with you. That makes like a ton of difference. Right. Huge difference. And uh, she tells a story of like, uh, this young man who tore his leg open, he was playing like football in a parking lot or something in a city and tore his leg open and his grandpa actually, uh, was like right there on the scene and was able to help him immediately bandage it up.

He had some medical experience from the military and. Just like bandage it up, cleaned out his wound and then went out for ice cream with him and he, to this day, that man says that was like one of the most beautiful and impactful experiences in my entire life. Something that was like really bad and painful and clearly broken.

Mm-hmm. became something that was really beautiful and bonding and something that, you know, formed him into the man he today, so, so I think, yeah, it is, you're right. That secondary wound of just being isolated, having no one to turn to is just so devastating. That's why I love the work that you do and why this ministry, why ReSTOR exists over whole is because there's all these young people.

Who are going through the trauma in their family, the, the dysfunction at home, their parents get separating or divorcing and no one's there for them. Yeah. And, and that's how I felt, you know, as a young man, like as a boy, I was like, there, there's just no one there, there's nothing for me. And so we, we were trying to change that, but I think it's a beautiful lesson to everyone listening to see that we need people in those moments to love us, to be vulnerable, to, um, and then hopefully too, um, in time we can become that for other people as well.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . That's, that's beautiful. And that's very true. That's very true. Yeah. Those are all such important aspects of Yeah. Coming into the fullness in these places. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I wanna shift to healing and, and we've been talking about it, but in particular, what would you say if someone came to you who was broken?

Like in the case of my audience who comes from a broken family, let's say they came up to you today and they said, sister, I'm really broken. I recognize that I want to heal, but I don't know how, how do I heal? I, I think first of all, I mean it really is true, like in the 12 steps, like the first of all is this first step is just admitting , admitting the places where, and I think for a lot of us, just admitting it is huge and.

Then I think allowing the Lord to kind of open some doors for us. Like what is even on our day to day level, like, what is our current distress? Like, what are, what are the places that we find are distressing? Is it depression? Is it we're chronically angry? Is it, uh, just a pervasive lie in our life that nobody cares about me?

And those, that's a place where the Holy Spirit starts. He starts there. So we don't have to scratch ourself and kind of figure out, I, I mean, I, I recommend a whole, like I says, I really believe in so many ways of how Jesus heals us. So I recommend a whole source of ways. We, uh, first and foremost is, is our interior life.

Like we have to cultivate with the Lord an interior life of kind of what's, what's going on within me, you know, what am I experiencing? And most of us live at St. Teresa. B or St. Benedict, uh, St. Teresa Benedict the Cross. Edith Stein says, most of us lived out. We live outside of the heart of our home. Like we live outside.

And then we're trying to say there's peace in my soul, but it's actually not. Cuz I'm living so far outside of myself, , and I think most of us live so far outside of ourselves. And so I think even just starting there of what's going on with me right now, like, what am I feeling? What is, what am I, what am I holding in my body?

You know, where am I holding tension? Do I have a chronic illness? For many years, I had an autoimmune disease and I also was diagnosed with clinical depression, and my body was screaming. I really believe our bodies screamed the things our hearts are afraid to whisper. And I had, you know, a lot of health problems.

And so I think kind of getting an assessment of like, what, what's the most pressing symptom and kind of what, you know, what, underneath that, what is, what is my heart and my body trying to tell me? I, so I, I highly recommend prayer. I recommend a daily discipline of prayer of if you're Catholic, the sacraments of going to confession regularly.

Uh, I mean, I, I've been in so many years of counseling and I believe in counseling. I believe in good counseling. There's, you know, EMDR and Internalists, all kinds of stuff. I really believe, and if it's true and good, I really believe in that. But there's nothing that can replace a good sacramental confession.

Gonna reconciliation of confessing not just the sin, but the roots of. What's happening in my heart of receiving the Eucharist, which is Christ, it's Christ himself. He is communion. And that my friends, like, there's nothing on earth that's, that's outside of this world. Like there's nothing on earth that can heal us that way.

I highly recommend Bob's book, Dr. Bob's book, be Healed. That's a very easy way of just, there's journaling questions and he has a shorter version now called Do You Wanna Be Healed? So like a book you can buy and just sit with it. Just take it little by little, step by step. If you know of somebody in your life who's a good spiritual guide of talking to somebody, of finding a good counselor.

I mean, just, there's different ways we can start little by little, but I think the first and foremost thing is just allowing the Lord to come into these places of our heart and, and starting to journey that place of honesty and then asking the Lord for the grace to be willing to, to try to, you know, to respond to his call there.

Beautiful. So many great resources and we'll make sure to list those in the, the show notes as well. And I think one of the biggest barriers for. The people that I work with, uh, when it comes to healing is that they struggle in their relationship with God. Mm-hmm. , you know, like I said, the majority of our listeners are from broken families.

And for so many of us, those barriers in the relationship with God are very real. Yeah. And they're very felt and asking God to, to heal them might in one case, seem very foreign because they don't even believe in him. Or in another case it's really difficult because of those barriers. And there's so many different things that we can talk about here, but overall to everyone listening who may not quite understand, like why, why is a relationship with God such a struggle for those of us who come from brokenness, uh, especially from broken families.

And what I would propose is that our parents represent God. You all have probably heard this, but our parents represent God. Uh, when we're young, they're the most powerful creatures that we know. Yeah. And so we tend to think, well, if they're like this, then God must be like this too. In some cases, that's probably beautiful cuz our parents are very heroic, they're virtuous and they do represent God in a very beautiful way.

Never fully, but they might represent 'em in a very beautiful way. On the flip side though, if you come from a very broken family where that wasn't the case, um, we can have very distorted images of God and which might prevent us from having any sort of a relationship with him. We might struggle with the question, you know, God, why are you allowing yes, this evil in my life to happen, or, God, why don't you make your love more obvious for me in my own life?

And so I'd love to kind of hit on each of those barriers, if, if that's okay with you, sister. The first one being, yeah. How can we untwist that extra distorted image of God that we, we have mm-hmm. . Yeah. I think what you're talking about is very real. And, and all of us have places in our life where we believe things about God that aren't true.

Every single person, like we have distortions just by living this side of heaven. All of us have distortions. We don't, you know, as St. Paul says, we see dimly now as in a mirror and we have a lot of fragmentation based on, and that what your, your statement about your parent, our parents are so important.

It's actually in the catechism that says, you know, the mother and the father represent God to the child. And that. That it's a very small and limited way and it can be distorted. Like it's that. That's like a profound statement in the catechism. And it says, but then it says at the end that nobody is father is God is Father.

There's nobody. And so I think understanding, a lot of times we find we start from our parents outward versus kind of like the outer limits of like, okay, Lord, I need you to reveal who I am or who. Who you are and who I am. And I think even naming our fears like what are some things you believe about God?

I think be very, being very honest about that, of what are some of the beliefs you have about God? And be very honest without self censoring of like, I believe God's not there for me, or that he doesn't care about me, or that he's cruel or he's sadistic, or that he just stood there and watched me watch this happen to me in my family, didn't do anything about it.

I think if we can kinda start naming even writing out what are some of the fears we have, then we can hold that up to the light about the Lord and we can see if that's true. I think this is why, you know, when we speak. So often I have youth ministers and parents and priests and like, how can we help people heal?

And I really believe, and I say this all the time, like the best gift, and I mean that in all sincerity. The best gift we can give our youth, our our, the kids we teach at school, our coworkers, our spouses, people in our pres, whatever that is, the best gift we can give them is to allow Jesus Christ to come and heal us every day.

So that means that personal, like my interior journey, and this is why our witness to each other is so profound because sometimes it's too, it feels too dangerous to start with God, but do we know somebody in our life is there at least one person in your life? Cuz God sends people into our life that you can trust.

And what is it about that person that you find so trustworthy? Maybe they're patient, maybe they're kind, maybe they're loving. And I think we can often start there. The Lord's not offended by that because he understands our woundedness. And if we can start looking at the things in, in people's lives, like where has authentic love in present in our life, where has understanding love, where has.

The truth and love and present in our life. And we can start there. It's very interesting. Even I was listening to, um, another talk by a therapy expert, and it was very interesting. He was saying that in many therapeutic models, when somebody goes on a journey of healing, and these are not Christian, okay, so I'm just throwing this out there.

But they're saying that you can, they invite the person to create in their heart a wise guide or a compassionate guide, and they say, what, what is that person like to you? And name their characteristics. And it's this person inside really listing all the characteristics of God, of saying that they're kind, they're loving to me, they're understanding.

They don't shame me. They tell me the truth when I need it. They encourage me. And, and then they'll say, what would that person say to you? Like, so if, if, if you can kind of create like a person, like in holding your heart an ideal person, a wise guide or a compassionate guide, what would that person say to you?

And I, I think it's a very interesting way of looking at the, the qualities of God when for many of us, he doesn't feel safe enough. Yeah. And, and I think what we find is, As we name those things about God, that we believe about him and he shows us the truth, and we can experience the rage, the pain, or the bitterness or whatever.

What we find is that God, we we're more receptive to the truth of, of who he is, and we see that God doesn't will bad things for us. He's not sadistic, he doesn't do that, but we all have to have a lived experience of that. So we have to know what gut says about himself, and then the experience of him toward us.

So I just kinda offer that to your heart. Those are just many different facets, but those have been really helpful, I think, along the way. Yeah, very helpful. And I think for the Catholics listening and even Evangelicals listening to, one of the things that I've found helpful is looking at scripture to say that definitely mm-hmm.

who is God actually. Mm-hmm. , you know what I mean? Because we, like you said, we have all these ideas. It's like hearing a bunch of rumors about a person that we've never actually met, we've never actually spent time with, but we're saying, oh, they're definitely like this. It's like, well, that's. Maybe we should go, you know, grab coffee with them and, and see like what are they actually like, hang out with them, get to know them in a more intimate way.

And I think a lot of those misconceptions that we have then are shattered. And another one that's been really helpful for me, and I understand this is maybe unique to us as Catholics, but the lives are the saints. Yes. Because they more than anyone really image who God is for us. Mm-hmm. . And so kind of seeing that in a more maybe modern or contemporary way, we're able to see oh, okay, like pure Georgia for society.

Like that's what God's like, I, I'm able to see kind of glimpses of him through, uh, the lives of the saint. So, and then again, taking that and comparing it to what we might think or believe on an even unconscious level, it can be really powerful. I, I totally agree with you. And I think that's been one of the most healing aspects of the gospels I know for me is just seeing and learning that Jesus never once in any of the gospels shames any of the sinners.

Never once, whether it's a woman con adultery, he doesn't shame Peter for his denial. He doesn't shame the people who are broken. He doesn't shame the lepers. He doesn't shame the man born blind. He doesn't, he doesn't shame any of the people in the gospel who need healing. Never. He tells 'em the truth.

Like, you know, when the woman at the wall says, you know, I don't have a husband, and he loves her, and he says, I know you've had five husbands and the man you're with now is not your husband. He's telling her the truth and love because he's Lansing the wound of lust. He's laning the wound and allowing the PU to come out so the wound can be healed.

But he's not shaming her the way other people have shamed her. She's at the well at noon because she's been shamed and she holds a lot of interior shame. So I think that for me of when I f Oh, I'm afraid Jesus is gonna shame me for like something new I discover in my heart, I'm like, oh, actually no, it's not true.

I can, I can hold that as a fear and say, Jesus, I'm afraid you're gonna shame me here. And I can hold that simultaneously with the truth that Jesus never shames the sinner ever. That's beautiful. And even that tactic you just said right now, I think a lot of people won't go there like telling that two Jesus, like in prayer.

That's a challenge for everyone listening right now. Like if you feel the in sync to pull away and to not talk to him about that. Push against that. Yeah. Like push against that strongly and tell them like, Hey, tell him this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm experiencing. I think that's a great tactic as well.

I wanna turn to this question that so many of us struggle with, whether we come from broken families or not, but I know, especially for me, one question I've asked God for a long time, and I found a lot of like answers to this, but I wanna just tease this out that, God, when my family is falling apart, when everything was so painful in my life, like where were you?

Like why were you allowing this to happen? What would you say to someone struggling with that question right now? Mm-hmm. . Gosh, I think, I think anybody on planet Earth who's ever even halfway thought about their own life or the lives of somebody else has thought that. I think every single person. Just we look at our life and say, if God is so good, if, if that's true, then why is he allowing this to happen?

Or if it's not something that I'm personally experiencing, it's a suffering of other people. So like that's been the transcend, like the, the transcendent question from generation generation of, if God is so good, why is there suffering? And I think I, I just, there's been so many people that much holier and smarter than me who have talked about this, but I, I, I guess just to offer, cuz I've struggled in that my own life.

And there's not a, there's, there's no reason why we can't ask that question. And we can ask that question all we want. But ultimately I think intellectual answers are only gonna get us so far. I think allowing the Lord to show us an experience of where he was in those memories and. Many times I've had, I've sat with the memories in Jesus, you know, with Jesus and those memories.

And I've, I've seen him, or if I couldn't see him, I would experience him and understanding that Christ is more present to me than I am to myself, and that he can't ever leave me. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about our faith, is that it's a proclamation that I'm never alone. That I am never alone, that other people have abandoned me or rejected whatever that is in our life.

But God cannot leave us. He can't. He cannot. Psalm 1 39, the Lord can't leave us. He can't leave us. So that means he's with me. And if he's with me, that means there's something much deeper happening and, and I think, you know, we can ask why. And I think sometimes in life, You know, every now and then we'll get kind of a thread of a glimmer of like, well, if this wouldn't have happened, then this wouldn't have happened.

And you know, it's the saying that our gift and our wo our gift and our wound like side by side. So the places where the enemy has come, Satan has come to destroy us cuz we have an enemy. And the places where he's gone after us are the very places where the Lord is restoring. Where the Lord has broken our heart so deeply.

He's a, allow our hearts to be broken so deeply that we love in a way that would've never existed otherwise. And so there's a, there's a ity there in the mystery of suffering. And Father Jacque, Felipe, you know, and I know a lot of spiritual masters, father Jacque Felipe is one of them, but many spiritual masters throughout the ages have said, ultimately the question that we're not gonna ask ourselves is why.

I mean, you can only get, but the question really ultimately wanna ask ourselves is how will I respond now? Like, how will I respond now? So, Lord, show me where you are, Lord. What is your desire for me now? Like what you know, so I think, I think. Because sometimes we can get hung up on that question. And it's like, I, I, I hear my own heart when that question comes up, a lot of grief and a lot of rage, and that's okay, that's okay.

But in that place of, ultimately, I'm not really looking for an intellectual answer. I'm looking for a person. And I think that like Frodo at the end, I think all of us, when we leave this time of chronological time, like we all will, one day all of us will take our last breath on this earth and we will see God face to face and we will finally see as we are seen and know as we are known and love as we are loved.

I really believe, like, like CS Lewis writes, and, and until we have faces that we will behold the face of God. And I think our only response is gonna be, oh,

right, right. Okay. Yes. It could not have ever happened another way. Like, oh, okay. Just like, I think we're gonna be stunned at like the interweaving of everything that happened in our life of the intricacy, which with God wove our life, what the enemy meant for destruction. Where the Lord's like, Nope, the.

And it turned out in a way different than we thought. But the masterpiece that has arisen will be stunning to behold. I just, cuz he's a divine artist. I don't know. I just, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. No, thank you. And for me personally, going back to, you know, that 11 year old I, for years, through a lot of prayer, through a lot of spiritual direction, wrestled with that question like, God, where were you?

Yeah. Where were you? Cause honestly, I felt like he was just sitting on the sidelines watching me. Mm-hmm. , get my teeth kicked in. Mm-hmm. . So like, God, like, where were you? And through, again, a lot of prayer didn't come easy, a lot of spiritual direction. I realized that he was actually right there with me in the midst of it.

Like he was with that 11 year old boy sitting next to me in the closet, like crying with me too. Saying like, I don't want it to be this way. It wasn't meant to be this way, but it, it has to be right now because I respect human freedom so much. And so, like I mentioned before, One of the things for me that's been really beautiful is realizing that, you know, sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence.

Like Father me Schmitt said, and I think there's a lot of beauty in that. I invite everyone to wrestle with that question and, and really, um, meditate on it, pray with it, thinking like, okay, where is God in the midst of my suffering? And how can I, instead of pushing him away, which is my next question, how can I then hold onto him in the midst of it and see how that goes?

I know for me, like I've, I've always, or for a lot of time in my life, I would push him away as like the default. But what if you tried the opposite? What might happen? Maybe just experiment. Mm-hmm. , see, see what happens. Mm-hmm. . But getting to that point on kind of pushing God away. How can, how can we stop that?

How can we stop pushing God away? How can we stop running from him and instead embrace him mm-hmm. and hold onto him in the midst of those instances. I, I think being honest when we do that, of even when the temptation arises, of being very honest and saying, Lord, I wanna push you away right now. I want to self protect.

I want to run away. I don't wanna face this. I, I think that just being honest of, of the temptation to do that. And then if we can allow the Lord to bring up the deeper root, well, what, what am I afraid of? I'm, I'm, I'm a big fan of like, following the, following it down to its route. What am I afraid of? Like, am I afraid I'm gonna be rejected?

Am I afraid that it's too messy? Am I afraid that I'm a burden? Because those things are telling us stories and the stories we believe about ourselves. So what is it like, why do I wanna push God away? And why, you know, why, what is, what is the fear behind it? And we might find that in different days as different reasons.

It's very interesting. And then if we can just sit with that place of not, not minimize it. Just say, Lord, I, I am whatever. Say, say I'm ashamed. Like I'm ashamed of this struggle that I'm having Lord, and I'm afraid you're tired of it and you're disappointed in me and I, and if we can just kind of sit there and say, Lord, What is the truth here?

You know, I think this is, might be surprising to you, but one of my biggest deliverances from addiction was being able to sit in the places where I felt disappointed, where I just had to sit at my desk many times and say, you know what? I feel really disappointed right now and I'm really sad that that person did that.

Or, I'm really sad that that didn't go the way I wanted. And I can feel it in my body. I can feel in my heart. I don't have to do anything about it. like I don't. But I just, to name it and say, Lord, be with me here. Jesus. I'm feeling really disappointed, like, please be with me here and I, that that's the kind of honesty, more and more that helps get, it just gets everything out into the light.

I think when we start practicing that, I really believe this St. Paul says, pray without ceasing. He's not just talking about the rote prayers that we learned, say as Catholics or Christians. He's talking about the interactions of our life with the Lord of like, Lord, I wanna run away, or, Lord I'm feeling anxious, or, Lord, I don't like what I'm feeling.

I don't wanna feel this in my body. Lord Jesus, just help me. Come Holy Spirit and I, it's those little things that have the power to dramatically transform our lives. So then we don't live by ourselves anymore, that we're in constant communication with the one who, who so deeply loves us. Beautiful. And I think in our culture today, there's this constant desire for comfort.

And so I think we don't really know what it's like to sit in those difficult emotions and like you, that's been actually really healing for me. Mm-hmm. and in a way that you wouldn't expect, right? Yep. That, you know, I remember one of my mentors just after going through a rough breakup, um, it wasn't traumatic, it was just a difficult thing to go through for me.

And, um, I remember him like challenging me. He was like, you know, in the midst of that emptiness, in the midst of that pain, like, don't push it away. Don't run from it. Don't hide from it, but like, sit in it and invite God into it because he said that's actually where he wants to meet you in the midst of that.

And that was, that was really helpful and healing for me. One final barrier I wanted to touch on, wish I could spend all day with you, but we gotta, um, close, close this down. I, this is, I'll just be vulnerable with everyone here. Sometimes I feel like God, his love for me isn't as obvious as I wish it would be.

And I, uh, have a one year old daughter at this point, and I thought becoming a father would actually like, kind of automatically bring me closer to God. Mm-hmm. . But it's actually presented some problems and it's something I'm working through with my spiritual director and I, I've made some progress on this.

Yeah. But it's just something that I, I, here's the struggle when I wanna make my daughter feel loved. There's very simple ways I can do that. I can pick her up and like hug her and tell her, I love you, Lucy. I can play with her. I can take her to the park. I can like very clearly tell her like, I love you.

Like, make it so obvious that there's no doubt. Right. And that's where like the struggle for me has been like, well God, I really wish you would do the same for me. I really would wish you would make your love like, very obvious for me. And so, like part of me is like, well, you're just such. Hypocrite or you're, you're, he's done a lot for you already.

Right? He's died in the cross. And, but my knee jerk reaction is like, well, right. That was beautiful and I'm grateful for that. That was 2000 years ago. And then on the flip side, it's like, well, the Eucharist, like everything he's done for you in Eucharist, like, yeah, no, the Eucharist is really beautiful, but it's super veiled.

It sound very obvious in a lot of ways. So, um, it's something I, I'm working through again, but it's, um, I think a struggle for a lot of people. It's like, God, why, why don't you make your love more obvious for me? Why, why do I have to seek it so much? So I know that's a big question, but I'm curious, uh, what would you respond to that if someone came to you with that question?

Well, first of all, I'm just hearing your heart joy. I'm just hearing your heart and just think about your little girl and just what a lovely gift she is to your heart. I, I just, and just your ability to, and maybe in many ways, maybe when even your dad wasn't able to show you love the way that you get to show her love, like you get to.

Have this corrective experience of kindness, of attending to her heart, of knowing your heart now so well, that you can attend to hers and be attuned to her and, and just the gift of, of her and your life and the gift that you are to her. And I, and I, I think all of us have asked that question many times.

It just seems like God is absent, you know? And it's kind of like, here we are on this earth. Or without a father, we're orphans or like we want, and I don't think there's anything wrong at all about voicing those places of our heart to the Lord and just asking the Lord, Lord, show me. Show me where you're loving me.

Show me where you're loving me. And, and yes, like if, if physically like God sends us people, like one of the ways God reveals his love is he sends us people. Like that's why this, this road of healing is so serious for all of us is because we become living instruments of love for others. And so God often will reveal his love through the gift of others and through the gift of creation and beauty and like you said, the sacraments and, and sometimes, but like there's places in our heart, we just want God to come pick us up.

like, dad picked me up. I just need to be, I know I'm a grownup, but I need to be picked up right now. I feel like a little kid and there is absolutely nothing wrong with voicing that to the Lord. And I, I know in my own heart when I experience the same thing as you, joy, like I just like Jesus. Show me I'm so aching right now and I wanna believe the lie that you don't care about me or that.

I'm ungrateful, but I'm just really aching and I just, I just need you to pick me up. I just need you to show me how you're loving me, cuz I know you do so I just need that. I need you to do that for me and just see what happens and just see what happens. And also it does, it challenges some of the beliefs we have about God, like we said, of those are old stories many times.

And, and the Lord he doesn't, he's not sadistic, he does no violence to our human nature. So He doesn't expect us to be angels. We're not angels, we're humans. We're a union of soul and body. We're a hypomorphic union. And so the Lord is attending to us in both ways, both naturally and supernaturally. And I, I'm like, okay, Jesus, show me, show me how you're loving me cuz I know you're not cruel.

So show me how you're loving me cuz I really need that right now. No, that's beautiful. And just to kind of close the loop on that with my story, I don't wanna leave everyone hanging. There's been a lot of progress Yeah. On that end for me too. And I remember just like really wrestling with this question, I was like on a walk with my daughter Lucy, and we were going to adoration, there's iteration chapel not far from here.

And I just remember just like really being like, God, like I want your love for me to be more obvious. Kind of like I love my daughter and I, I like, it's so arrogant of me to think that I could be a better father than you, you know? Cuz I'm not. I know that my phone like malfunctioned. I had my earphones and I was like listening to some, like literally, I don't know how this happened.

Like, and I'm a tech guy, so I like understand this stuff pretty well. Literally like malfunction, like the song came on that I hadn't heard for years, like years wasn't on my like playlist, nothing like that. And uh, and it was like exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. It, it was like a Christian song.

So, but it was literally like God, like saying, Hey, this is what I wanna say to you. And it brought me to tears and I don't cry easily. Yeah. Like, so. Um, so that was beautiful. So he has kind of like broken through a lot of that. But the second thing I've learned is so often, like he actually wants to make his love more obvious to me, but I'm the one who's stopping it from happening.

Oh yes. I get in the way. So . So it's like, okay, I need to, you know, as if my daughter were to like kind of continually run from me or hide, it's like, well then I couldn't make my love obvious to her. Yeah. So those are a few things that I've realized a lot. Oh, that's such wisdom. And I love, oh, I love that.

So beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. And in the end of our time together, sister, again, I wish I could talk with you the whole day, but uh, yeah. I guess what are some of the results you've seen in people's lives and your own perhaps when they go to God for healing? What are some of the, the beautiful things that you've seen, the transformations you've witnessed?

I know you've seen a lot of them, so I think it would be good for people who'd never hear this sort of thing. What, what are those transformations? To me, I see the manifestation that love is real. I see people becoming more human and more humble and more kind and, and stronger and more loving and more honest and able to receive the brokenness of others without pushing them away or without engaging in decades long struggle.

Those things come to an end and maybe the other person, the situation hasn't changed, but you have. and there's real freedom that happens. There's deliverance from our coping mechanisms of addiction. There's deliverance from unforgiveness and hatred and self hatred and self contempt and self destruction.

And it's coming to the places of, of being naked without shame, really. You know? And you see Jesus, who you know, like Adam, and ever naked in the garden without shame. And then you see shame enters in and you see Christ. He's crucified and he's naked. Christ is naked on the cross, and he's stripped and he's a bride, groom, pierce for the bride, completely vulnerable, completely powerless.

And he's there without shame. And he's bringing us into the truth of, of what it means to be human. And our hearts grow and become more like him. And that I, I really believe joy. Like I really believe that kind of holiness, that can't be faked. Like there's a lot of things in life we can fake. But we cannot fake an intimate relationship with Christ because it just is radi.

It radiates from us. And I have seen it happen in my own life. I've seen it happen in lives of other people. I believe in the authentic power of love. I believe in it. I believe in it, and I will never stop speaking of that because it's so powerful and it's just so true. And I, it's true. It's the most eternal thing that love heals and that's what God does.

That's what he do. That's what he does, and that's eternal truth. Beautiful. I love it. One, uh, resource that I would recommend for healing is your book. Loved As I Am. Mm-hmm. . Will you tell us a little bit about like why did you write it and what's in the book and what do you want for people who, who read it?

Sure. Yeah. That was a book that I wrote about 10 years ago and I was approached by Avin Maria Press and they, they said, Hey, you know, we've seen some of YouTube videos. Can you tell us your story? And I wrote kind of more of an academic treatise on the catechism. And they're like, well, that's really great, but we really actually want

We want more of your story. So it's an interweaving of what it means to be human, of theology of the body of my own story. It's got reflection questions in it, discussion questions, and it's small on purpose. And my heart, when I wrote it all those years ago, and to this day, is when you close the book, you say, Okay.

I want, I want to get honest about this part of my life, or, okay. I, I want to dive a little bit more deeply into this. I might be afraid, but I, and so just a little tiny invitation unto more. And since then I've wrote two, I've written two more books. One of last l called Restore, and then one of this advent called Behold.

And it's about healing with your families, about healing with your mom, with your dad, you as a child. And, and so it just like forgiveness, all those things. And so just giving people resources, I really just want just be a gentle guide of just gonna take your hand gently and lead you along this path if you wanna come.

And if you need to sit down, we'll sit down and we'll rest together. Well, you know, and just to let the Lord come and find you. And that's, yeah, that's my deepest desire for all of. Beautiful. And is behold the one about the mother, father? It is relationships and healing. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Cause I think that's very relevant to our audience.

Yeah. And so I'll be actually walking through that, this, this advent with people. So Advent is, you know, the, the, the Sundays we celebrate up until the Christmas season. So if you go to the Avan Maria Press Instagram account, I'll be doing some Instagram lives and things like that. Um, just walking with a book, and you can do the book by yourself.

There's videos that come out every Sunday that are free from a Maria press that will kind of give you an overview of the week. And you can do it by yourself. You can do it with your parish community, your small group, whatever that is. Just to, yeah. To allow you to encounter deeper healing in your heart with the, the main people in your life.

And just to let Jesus bring you home in his holy family. This, uh, advent, which is, I, I love the holy family. They're so beautiful and so wonderful and they have so much for us and we're always welcome at their. A lot of us needed to hear that. So thank you so much. Thank you for coming on the show, for taking so much time with us.

Um, how can people follow you if they wanna know more? I know you mentioned the AER Press, but, and their Instagram page. Is there other places that people can follow you? A co-host, a podcast called Abiding Together, and so you can check us out on Instagram or Facebook or our website, abiding together podcast.com.

Um, I'm also on Twitter at one. Groovy, none . I don't, I'm not, I'm not personally on any other social media account. If you wanna know about my, about my religious community, you can check out so lt.net, that's the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy trinity solt.net. And um, yeah, you'll find different things on YouTube that people post.

So there's many different resources. Yeah, all the books are available on Amazon too, so. Sounds awesome. I love your handle, by the way, . They're like, are you old enough or groovy? I'm like, I'm probably not . Well, sister, thank you again. I wanna give you the final word, and the question is as what encouragement would you give to anyone listening right now who feels stuck?

Who feels broken? Because of the wounds in their life, but especially because of their broken family and their parents' broken marriage. Uh, what, what encouragement would you give to them? Mm, I would tell you that, I'm sorry. Those things, um, have happened to you, are happening to you. It's not fair and it's not right.

And I'm sorry. And I wanna tell you that this is not the end of the story. This is not the end that we are not the Saint John Paul II says, we are not a summation of our faults or our failures or what other people have done or what they've done to us. That is not the summation of who we are. We. So some of the father's love for us, and I just wanna invite you on this journey.

It's worth it. It's not easy, but it's so worth it. And yeah, that we are never alone. Oh gosh. We are never, we are never alone. And so just to encourage you on yeah, on the journey of love, because it matters and you matter.

There's so much in that episode to unpack, but I wanna leave you with a few, uh, questions to reflect on, to think about. One is, what's holding you back from believing in God? So if you don't believe in God, what's holding you back from actually believing in him? What's standing in the way of having a relationship with God?

So maybe you do believe in him, but you don't have a great relationship with him, or it's a big struggle, what's standing in the way. And then finally, what's preventing you from asking God to heal you And actually letting him do that. Give those questions some thought, and I even challenge you to, to talk to God about those things with no filter and just see what happens.

As a reminder, if you wanna buy the book, it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents divorce, you can buy that on Amazon or go to restore ministry.com/books or just click the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. If you know someone who's struggling because of their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them.

Always remember, you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life.

Restored

Restored creates content that gives teens and young adults the tools and advice they need to cope and heal after the trauma of their parents’ divorce or separation, so they can feel whole again.

https://restoredministry.com/
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#083: 3 Steps to Navigate Your Broken Family During the Holidays | Margaret Vasquez