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Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.
Music.
Hello and welcome. I'm Sarah Holler, and this is our first episode of When God Got Real.
I get excited about holy mischief, and I really appreciate holy calm.
I try to make friends with holy nervousness. Beginning this podcast comes with
a lot of holy nervousness.
But my friends who said yes to sharing their story say it's been a good experience for them.
So I'm encouraged to see what comes next.
You've likely heard the phrase spiritual but not religious.
It usually describes the state of believing in a powerful,
benevolent force, or presence, but not ascribing to an organized doctrine or
belonging to a community of like believers.
What is often not described is the religious but not spiritual.
These folk have experience with organized religion.
They know the tenets of a faith in the style of worship.
They may commit to participation with the membership, but they do not feel an
intimate connection or relationship with God.
For them, God is real, but also a distant, elusive construct.
That was true for our guest Beth until, until God got real.
This is her story.
Music.
Hi, I'm Beth. I grew up in a pretty strict Irish Catholic family.
Church on Sundays, even when you had an ear infection.
Confession before every major holiday. Stations of the cross.
Holy days of obligation. Fish on Fridays.
Interestingly, with all that religion in my upbringing, I never once picked
up a Bible, and I had no idea how to pray.
When I left for college, I left the church, if not officially, certainly in spirit.
Oh, I went to Mass every so often, mostly when I needed the comfort and familiarity
of the Catholic liturgy.
I dabbled in some other faiths, but nothing stuck.
In my mid to late 20s, I had a practice marriage that flamed out spectacularly after three years.
We had been married in the Catholic Church, but an annulment seemed like an awful lot of work.
So if I hadn't officially left the church those years ago, it left me in November of 1995.
After that, I figured I'd live a mostly secular life. Spiritual,
but not religious. And I was okay with that.
I married again in the early aughts, this time to a man I expect to grow old with.
He's a mathematician, a guy who needs proof.
He's a man of great integrity who believes in doing the right thing every time.
That said, faith is a concept that eludes him, even today.
In 2005, after a difficult pregnancy, we welcomed our daughter, the light of our lives.
From day one, she was alert and curious and kept us on our toes.
She rolled over early. She never really crawled. She went straight from sitting
to toddling to walking to running.
She loved blue popsicles.
Eating Wheaties out of the same bowl as her dad. She spent hours with her dolls,
all of whom were named Macy.
She loved to sing and to run outside and to read books and to cuddle before bed every night.
When she was three, she moved to a preschool near where I worked.
I would drop her off on my way in and pick her up on my way out.
Those morning drives were my favorite time of the day.
One day, late in the year, she came home with a story about a new preschool
friend who had joined her class.
Her new friend wasn't allowed to play as rough as the rest of the group because
she was finishing her recovery from open-heart surgery.
My empathetic kiddo did everything she could to make this new friend feel welcome and included.
We eventually became friends with this little girl's parents,
getting together for playdates and pool dates and dinners on the deck.
We had no idea then how important this relationship would become.
Flash forward to a Saturday evening in late April 2010, and our now four-and-a-half-year-old
is sick, like 103-degree fever sick.
It's the weekend, of course, because kids never get sick sick during the week
when their own doctor's office is open.
So we make an appointment for Sunday at noon with the doctor on call,
strap her into her car seat, and traipse halfway across town to see Dr.
Joy Ball, who tells us right away that our kiddo has strep.
That's easy to treat, she says, but I want to know about this heart murmur.
My husband and I both sigh, and I start to tell her the story.
Every time our daughter sees a pediatrician different from her own,
they hear a heart murmur.
Then they tell us that sometimes you can hear a heart murmur when kids are sick,
that we should have her own pediatrician listen really, really closely the next
time she's in for a well check.
So we do that. He listens closely. He can't hear a murmur.
We breathe a sigh of relief, and life goes on.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
How do you feel about that? Dr. Ball asks me. I hate it, I say,
but when you're all singing from the same hymn book, it doesn't make much sense to push.
She pauses for what seems like an eternity. Then she says, I would push.
There is a murmur, she says. It whispers, but it's there.
If her doctor can't find it, if her doctor can't hear it, find someone who can.
Joy Ball would turn out to be the first of many angels on this journey,
but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Ten days later, we see our pediatrician. He can't hear the murmur,
but he can hear the concern in my voice, so he refers us for an echocardiogram.
There, in the office of a pediatric cardiologist named David Olmsted,
we learn that my beautiful daughter's precious heart has a hole in it.
The good news is we can fix it, Dr. Olmstead says, and then he tells us the bad news.
The fix would involve cracking open her chest, stopping her heart on purpose,
and patching the hole while a machine keeps the blood pumping through her veins.
Time stopped dead in its tracks.
The next several weeks are a blur of referrals and appointments and surgeons and terror.
As my daughter continued to surprise and delight us, wholly unaware of how our
world had been rocked, we walked around in a daze.
As she played make-believe waitress, taking our make-believe orders and bringing
us make-believe food and drink, we had to make believe everything was just fine.
It was exceedingly difficult to remain present to her and for her.
I don't know that I've ever struggled so hard.
Throughout that time, the air through which I walked was heavy,
like muck. The sky was gray, the world was blurry.
The only thing that had sharp, crisp lines and edges was my anger.
Actually, anger isn't strong enough. I was enraged.
And as I wandered through the days that followed, and didn't sleep through the
nights, My body thrummed with a fury I hadn't ever experienced,
and one that I can't adequately describe today.
One day, about three weeks in, as I walked my regular path through our neighborhood,
the rage began to well up, and then to boil over.
The feeling was so intense that I felt like I had to run.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I don't run, except when I'm being chased.
That day, I ran and ran and ran.
My fists were clenched. My breathing was labored.
I had ringing in my ears. When I finally stopped and bent over to catch my breath, I was overcome.
I stood up straight, looked to the heavens, and screamed at God.
How could you do this? How could you let this happen?
What has she done to deserve this?
I can't really remember the moments that came after that I do know that I stood
there for a long time before I crumpled to the ground racked with the sobs that
had eluded me to that point.
As I sat there on the ground in a cul-de-sac, the words came tumbling out.
Lord, I am so scared to lose her.
God, I need your help. I can't do this alone. Lord, will you please hold us
tight until we're through this?
Lord, please, please, please.
After a few minutes, I was spent. And that's when the God that I had never really
known and had definitely never talked to before, got real.
All of a sudden and for the first time in weeks, calm wrapped around me like a blanket.
I was no longer terrified. I wasn't shaking or strumming or angry.
For the first time in weeks, I felt free and strong and ready to face this.
I got up and walked home. When I got there, I scooped up my baby girl and whispered in her ear.
All will be well, sweet girl. God's got this.
A few days later, he was with us as we sat on the floor with our kiddo and told
her about her special heart.
Sometimes hearts need a little help to grow big and strong, we told her.
We can't fix it, but there are people who can.
They've promised to do their very best to make it all better.
Will it still be special, she asked. Absolutely, we told her.
Surgery was scheduled for five weeks from the day she was diagnosed.
A week before, we visited the children's hospital where they would perform the operation.
We took the tour, we met the people, and everyone acted like this was totally
normal, this nonchalant talk about opening up a four-and-a-half-year-old chest
and patching the heart inside.
God made himself known with every angel who crossed our path that day and in the week that followed.
The child life specialist whose attention good
humor and expertise turned our terribly shy child
into a superhero the surgeon who told us to be sure we visited the icu where
our kiddo would go after recovery you don't want the first child you see hooked
up to all those machines and with an angry scar on her chest to be your own
he said the icu doc who told us it was okay for us to be afraid,
and that he and his team were not.
We're prepared for this, he said. We have your back. We'll take care of your little girl.
And the head ICU nurse, who looked me in the eye and promised she would care
for my husband and me, while her nurses cared for our daughter.
Can I give you a piece of advice, she asked us. Of course, we replied.
Your daughter will probably come out of surgery with a breathing tube.
When it's time for it to come out, they'll ask you if you want to stay in the room.
You will want to stay in the room with your child, but I hope you won't.
Because, see, she won't remember the procedure, but you will never forget it.
Surgery day arrived, and our kiddo marched into the hospital,
dragging her tiny suitcase behind her, and announced to the angel at the reception
desk that she was here to have her special heart fixed.
Two hours later, as she sat naked on a gurney, refusing to put on a robe and
coloring a Scooby-Doo picture with a yellow crayon, they scooped her up and took her away.
I talked to God for the next three hours. I can't really remember what I said,
but I do know how he responded.
He held us all in his hands, my daughter, the doctors and nurses,
our family and friends while we waited.
What should have been the most terrifying three hours of my life were gentle and calm.
When it was over, her heart was successfully patched, and mine had a crystal
clear understanding of what it means to be a beloved child of God.
The rest of that day is a blur of nurses and doctors and calls to family.
As the sun began to set, her surgeon rounded for the last time that day.
I'm really pleased with how she's doing, he said. She's a strong little girl.
Now, I don't want to hear that you spent the whole night by her bedside.
Go get some sleep, he said, doctor's orders.
We were fortunate to be able to stay in a room just down the hall from where
our daughter was. I set an alarm for midway through the night.
At 1 a.m., I peeked into her room to find her talking to Lourdes,
sweet, sweet Lourdes, the overnight nurse angel in the ICU who had washed the
surgical blood out of her daughter's hair and braided it beautifully.
We curly girls have to stick together, Lourdes told our kiddo.
The scene brought tears to my eyes.
I used to think in the deep and abiding wisdom of my 20s and 30s that people
who handed difficult things over to God were cop-outs, chickens, cowards.
I'd listen to their nonsense about praying about it and trusting Jesus and listening
to the Holy Spirit, and I'd silently judge them.
I mean, the notion that God, with all there is to do around here,
had the time to pay attention to the individual trials of a single believer,
well, to me, that felt laughable.
I figured it was just a simple way to admit I don't have the courage,
the fortitude, or the strength to do this myself, so I'm taking the easy way
out and handing it over. I don't think that anymore.
That morning after surgery, as I laid with my daughter in her hospital bed,
I had the most meaningful conversation with God.
Thank you, Lord, for the wisdom of the doctors, nurses, and angels who guided
our way, for the courage and pluck of our daughter,
for the strength of our marriage for the support of family and friends and for
the kindness of strangers,
more than anything Lord I thank you for showing me that day on the street what
it means to know that I am yours and you are by my side to help carry the load
when I can manage some of it and to take it from me when I cannot,
thank you for showing me that day on the street what the Holy Spirit looks like
and feels like and how she moves in the world with precision and grace.
And thank you for making it abundantly clear that it is indeed okay to hand things over to you.
I have always thought that Jesus's final words on the cross,
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, were a lamentation,
a resignation, an ending.
I know now it was a prayer. It is a prayer for all of us.
Music.
Thank you, my friend. What I just heard was a mentally, emotionally latent experience.
I think there are few things that make us feel as helpless as any danger coming at our child.
The unknowing and the lack of control can be debilitating. That you found assurance
and calm and a sense of good being done on your behalf sounds so revealing.
You claim that relief as God's loving presence and intervention.
That assertion feels wonderfully confident and hopeful.
So, Beth, I'm curious.
This crisis, this angst-filled event took place 15 years ago.
The memory of God's presence and participation has to have dimmed a bit.
Even so, how does remembering God in a practical, effective way then and there
affect your relationship with God in the here and now.
So I'm going to quibble a little bit with the notion that the memory has dimmed a little bit.
And here's why. That was my first experience with an understanding of what,
of a relationship with God that allowed me to be anything other than reverential, right?
To be anything other than thankful and joyful and all of those things and allowed
me to be fully human in that moment.
And to understand, I didn't have words then, I have words now,
that he could handle it, right? That he could take that.
And the truth is I am very mindful going forward of that ability to be fully
human in relationship with God.
And when I am joyful, I share my joy and I talk about it with him.
And when I'm angry and I don't understand and, or I'm frustrated or I'm sorrowful, um,
I, I also bring those things and not always just in a please help me sort of way, right?
But in a, how could you let this happen sort of way?
Or, you know, show me where you are in this because I can't see you.
In order for me to do that now, I had to hone that earlier sort of all over the place experience.
And I am mindful of that as I go forward.
Yeah, in the here and now.
Because I know you to be wired as a self-actualized, take-charge woman,
analytical, and lover of proofs,
married to and deeply in love with a man who is skeptical of things divine.
What has it been like to credit the good outcome to God and to share that conclusion
with your husband and daughter and maybe other intimates in your life?
So, unfortunate. I am married to a man who needs proof.
And I have told this story many times. He asks a lot of questions.
He is willing to engage in conversation about my faith and about God and about
the human experience of God and all of the things that uh,
that faithful and spiritual people, uh, are part of a faithful and spiritual people's lives.
Um, and we do, we have some really deep and honest conversations about things,
this experience among them, um,
both then and, and now, although not necessarily in the same way.
And those conversations I love them and
also I know um that that that he is that he trusts me not to try to change his
mind and I trust him not to try to change my mind we're both just interested
in the other's perspective.
They almost always end the same, which is we have questions and answers and back and forth.
And then he'll say, but how do you know?
And I'll say, I don't know. I have faith.
And that's sort of where we diverge because faith is not something he necessarily can grasp.
My daughter, on the other hand, is an incredibly faithful young woman.
Um, I am so proud of the faithful young woman she has become.
Um, she has a relationship with God. She draws on her relationship with God
in ways that I never did at her age.
Um, she wraps him into her college experience, which, I mean,
as I said, I went to college and immediately ran away.
Um, and she did not, she carried it with her.
It is a very important part of who she is in college.
And it has exposed her to interesting people with differing points of view about
how to be Christian in the world.
And I'm really gratified by two things.
One, that she's open and interested in perspectives other than hers.
And also, she is solidly faithful in her own values.
And I think that that's just amazing. Other intimates, I'm not as comfortable
talking with them about my faith around this experience or really any other.
I wish I were better at it. I try to get better at it every day.
So, to that point, sharing personal anxiety with strangers can feel risky.
To share one's experience of God with strangers, or even those close to you can be intimidating.
How has writing and recording and sending this story out into the world been for you?
In a word, terrifying.
Um if I am expanding it into
some other words um I am
honored to do it and delighted to do it because um I I am I am very faithful
and I am a follower of Jesus Christ I believe in his teachings.
And I know that my belief in his teachings can differ sometimes from people
who consider themselves the best Christians.
And I put that sort of in air quotes.
And I wonder sometimes if, well,
I hope it's okay to say this, but I feel sometimes
like they've hijacked my belief system and taken it to a place that doesn't
feel familiar to me at all and doesn't feel like it meets the Jesus that I follow.
I think sometimes people have a tendency to allow those voices to be really
loud and to quiet their own voices in the name of manners or in the name of keeping the peace.
And at the beginning of this year, in a promise to myself, I promised that I
was not going to abdicate that role anymore.
I'm not going to go with knives out, And I am not in any way interested in arguing about it.
But I am interested in gently and respectfully offering a different perspective.
Because I think that perspective is too quiet right now. And I think this world desperately needs it.
Luke.
So why did you say yes to sharing this story,
Uh, one, because I love the idea of this podcast.
Um, I think telling these stories, uh, is not only valuable to those of us who
already believe in a divine presence in the world.
Um, but also to those who maybe don't either don't believe or don't can't identify
that presence in the world.
Um, and wonder, you know, wonder, does it have to be, you know.
Mary showing herself at Fatima or something like that.
And, and understanding that it's in the, it's in the day to day things that
happen to us in our lives, whether they're extreme, like the story I just recounted
or, you know, something that happens in traffic or whatever,
where it becomes clear to you that you're not walking by yourself, right?
You're not, you're not, you're not, you're not doing this alone. Like you're not alone.
This is, um, and I think telling these kinds of stories and showing that regular
old Joe, regular old Jane, like me, right.
Um, who, um, isn't running around, you know,
evangelizing and trying to, you know, convert people and, you know,
but it's just living my life and also is able to identify where God is working
in my life and in the world.
Not always, but hopefully I'm always looking for where he's working in the world.
I think it's important if you don't show people it's possible,
they may not know that it's possible for them to.
Thank you my friend thank you
thank you for your yes
and your time and your willingness to speak the
truth of your heart and thank
you for being a witness to when god got
real it was my pleasure my friend
thank you
listeners and subscribers thank you
for your time attention and ponderings I invite your comments and reviews I
also invite you to share your story of when God got real Send them along to
sarah at whengodgotreal.com,
Until next time, breathe and be well.
Music.