April 6, 2026 • 58 mins
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How do you begin to heal when the people closest to you are the ones who wounded you the most?
This week, author, speaker, and Collide ministry founder Willow Weston joins Jaime for a raw and powerful conversation about running toward pain instead of away from it, based on her new book, Collide: Running Into Healing When Life Hands You Hurt.
In this episode, Willow shares her deeply personal story of growing up in a home marked by addiction and abandonment, and how a moment of hiding in a closet from her own mother became the catalyst for a healing journey she never expected.
Willow also unpacks the beautiful tension between letting God heal us and actively participating in our own healing — reminding us that wholeness requires both surrender and a willingness to move. She offers a refreshing challenge to the "sweep it under the rug" approach to pain, pointing to a Jesus who never once avoided someone's mess but made a beeline straight for it.
You'll walk away with a deeper understanding of how unresolved wounds quietly travel through our relationships, and why giving yourself permission to name your pain — and invite God into it — is the bravest step toward becoming more whole than broken.
Visit wecollide.net or willowweston.com to connect with Willow,
learn more about the Collide ministry, and grab a copy of Collide.
You can also find her on Instagram at @willowanneweston.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Life Audio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi there, and welcome to the Praying Christian Women podcast.
I'm Jamie Hampton and today I'm so excited to be
here with Willow Weston. Willow is an author, a speaker,
a podcast host, and the founder of Collide, which is
a ministry impacting women nationwide. She has had decades of
experience bringing passion and truth and sharing her journey of
(00:27):
pain transparently to encourage others to just invite Jesus into
their brokenness and be healed as a result. Willow, thank
you for doing that. I know that's not easy, So
thank you so much for being here. And I'm just
so excited to get to talk with you about your
new book, your brand new book, Collide, Running into Healing
when life hands you hurt. So thank thank you for
(00:49):
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah for having me, Jamie. I love what you are
about in what you do, and so this is just
a blessing for me too.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well. Thanks. Well, before we get into your book and
your ministry and your message, we like to ask all
of our guests what is your favorite prayer closet? Like
in air quotes, where do you like to go to
the God? It could be crazy, off the wall, it
could be very you know, traditional.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's not a closet. I'll tell you that. Every morning,
I think Rob and I have been married twenty seven
and a half years, and we literally thank you. We've
literally done this every day since we've been married. But
I have my place on the couch and the sectional,
and he has his on the other side, and he
(01:34):
makes coffee and he walks over and he hands me
my coffee, and he goes and reads and prays, and
I read and pray, and not in a religious way,
but it's almost to the point where I really don't
schedule things early in the morning. I don't do workouts
early in the morning. I don't do any work meetings
(01:55):
early in the morning because I'm actually grumpy if I
don't have my little like on that corner of the sectional.
And I'm becoming that old lady where you look at
the couch and it's like indented on that side of
the couch, because that's like my little spot every morning.
But I just need it, like I need that time
(02:16):
with the Lord to center my day. And so, yeah,
it's not a closet, but it definitely is with coffee.
And sometimes I'll drink coffee and kind of sit there
before I spend time reading and praying, because I make
a joke that I'm not sure even Jesus wants to
hang out with me before I have my coffee. It
(02:36):
is my place where I hang out with God every morning.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I love that. And in like I don't know how
long we've been podcasting seven eight, nine years, no one
has ever talked about sitting with their spouse. I've never
had anyone bring that into the picture. And I love that.
Oh my gosh, just that. Yeah, that's that is really good.
Routines aren't easy, and for that length of time, for
(03:02):
that to be your routine consistently, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So yeah, we don't we don't read the same thing,
and we don't even often pray with each other. I
mean we do in other times, but in the morning
we're just kind of our bodies are like in the
same room, but we're connecting with God alone. But I
actually tell him, we joke around about this that when
one of us passes away, I think the hardest moment
(03:30):
of each day will be in the morning, because we
just have this time that we set aside every morning,
and it's just always been and I think the day
that he's not handing me my coffee cup or the
day that I'm not there across from him will be
hard to It's just become a part of our lives,
like we just do it every day.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah. So, yeah, that's amazing. That's kind of like the
epitome of accountability for you guys to do that and
you're not studying the same thing, you're not crying together necessarily,
but you're just kind of being present. I love it. Oh,
I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Willow.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, So tell us about your new book. So, how
did your new book Collide come about? What brought it
into being your book based?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, well, I always thought I would write a book
for like the last twenty some years or something, and
I think I thought I would put this book out
a lot earlier than I have. And now I'm looking
at it and seeing that the Lord wanted me to
live more of the story that was going to be
(04:39):
put in the book than I had when I first
got this vision, which has been kind of interesting. But yeah,
I mean probably, you know, nineteen years ago or something,
I had had my second kiddo, Bella, and I had Aiden,
and I had Bella and my mom moved into town
to kind of be super grandma. And I hadn't lived
(05:01):
with my mom since I was fifteen years old. I
had another family that had to take me in in
high school and my mom hat and I had a
lot of baggage, a lot of wounds. There was a
lot of addiction and abandonment and just issues. And so
I'd met Jesus when I was twenty one, grew up
in an irreligious home, no church, had this radical conversion,
(05:23):
had spent a lot of time giving God my heartache
and my pain. But when my mom moved into town
and knocked on my door totally ordinary, like a mom
would popped by on a Wednesday, and I went to
go see who was at the door, and I saw her,
and I just flipped out, and I ran upstairs and
I hid in a closet with Bella because I didn't
(05:44):
want to answer the door. I didn't want to let
my mom in. And it was like, oh, my childhood
pain was just came flooding forward. And I had this
profound moment in that closet where so apparently I don't
have a prayer closet, Jamie, I have a pain closet.
But I'm in that closet, and God said, Willow, I've
done a lot of healing in your life, but there's
(06:07):
more that needs to be done, and you need to
walk out and you need to get some help. And
I remember just going wow, like I could easily just
walk out and not tell anyone that I'm not doing well,
you know, but I knew I needed help. And I
ended up in a Christian counseling office within a week
(06:28):
or two. And immediately the Christian councilor said, you need
to tell your mom you could only spend thirty minutes
a week with her. And I just the only way
I can explain it, Jamie, is like the counselor came
in the room, the Holy Spirit came in the room,
and I just yelled, No, that is not what I
need to do. I need to figure out how to
(06:48):
love the person who wounded me the most, that's my mom.
And I just started saying all the stuff that I'd
never heard before. The counselor wasn't saying anything. I just
was like I was born into ad, I collided with wounds.
I ran into my mother's wounds. She never got healing
for her wounds, and she wounded me, and now I
might wound my daughter. I need God to heal me.
(07:10):
We're all just walking around colliding with each other and
wounding each other, and we're in need of a new
kind of collision. And when I see Jesus in the
New Testament, he collides with people makes them more whole
and broken. And if we can become more whole, then
maybe when we run into wounded people, we can bring
healing instead of pain. And so I just was having
this epiphany and I paid the ladyier eighty five bucks,
(07:31):
and I heard God say as I was walking to
my car, you're going to do something with those words
wounded collision. And so that was, you know, my daughter's
twenty now, So that was what nineteen years ago that
I felt like the Lord gave me this message and
I was going to do something with it. But I
also was just hiding in a closet with my kid
(07:53):
and felt a mess, so I wasn't looking to like
do a thing. And then within weeks this call of
ased girl asked me to mentor her and I said yes,
I said, we could look at Jesus in the New
Testament colliding with wounded people and how he heals them.
And she said, can I bring some friends? And I
thought she'd bring four. She brought twenty five. And then
I just God threw this ministry into We minister now
(08:16):
to thousands of people a year, where we do conferences
and we have resources and Bible study books and a
podcasting and counseling for all this stuff. I joke around, Lord,
I did not apply for this job, but he just
unfolded this ministry. And the whole time, I was also
raising my kids and I was like still needing him
(08:38):
to heal me. But the more I was going to
him to heal me, he was also using my pain
to help heal others. And he was writing this story
that eventually would unfold and it would become time to
tell it in a book. And so I finally released
this book called Collide, Running into Healing when Life Hands
(09:00):
to Hurt. And yeah, that's that's the short version of
what the last twenty years has looked like, Damie.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, so I'm still stuck back in the counseling office
as a people pleaser. I'm just like in awe of
your ability to say no and to hear from the
Lord and can you just talk about that, because counseling
is important. I think it's I believe in counseling. I
think it's great. But some of God's wisdom goes against
(09:31):
the world's wisdom or even a Christian counselor's wisdom. Can
you talk about that? I think as Christian women we
have to have the conversation about when do we listen
to the experts air quotes, when do we listen to
what we believe God is telling us? And how do
we know if that's how do we know the difference?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, that's such a good question and honestly not one
that people have asked me before. I want to say
right up front that I ended up going to a
different therapist after that therapist, and I was seeking counsel
from not only my husband, but my close Christian friends,
my pastors and mentors in my life. So I wasn't
(10:15):
sort of being reckless with like godly counsel by any means.
And I'm not really the type to like yell at
a counselor. In fact, I've been way more amicable and
open to things. It was such a clear thing that
the spirit was saying to me. It was so clear
that that's what I mean. It was almost like someone
(10:36):
else stepped into the room. I never had had that
experience like that before, and I just knew. It's not
that I don't think boundaries are absolutely necessary in relationship,
and I've had to have plenty of boundaries with my mom.
But God was actually challenging me into something more than boundaries.
He was actually challenging me in saying, Willow, you need
(10:59):
to get healings you don't hurt your daughter. But also
I want to heal you in such a way that
you actually bring healing to your mom instead of more pain,
because your absence from your mom's life and you pushing
her away and you not spending time with her is
not going to help her to know me. Wow, I
(11:19):
actually want you to figure out how to love her
who wounded you the most, the way I love the
people who've wounded me the most. That was I'll tell
you what I knew. It was God, because I would
never chose that in my own flesh. I would have
never been like that. Sounds like a fun assignment. I've
(11:40):
been waiting for years to have a counselor prescribed me
to push my mom out of my life. That would
be have been so much easier. She was a terrible
alcoholic and so hard to deal with and I hated
being around her. It would have Oh, this is counselor approved, Mom,
I don't need to spend very much time with you.
So I knew this isn't something like go to Hawaii
(12:01):
and you know, lay on the beach for three months
and drink pini clattas like I was being given a
challenge by God. That sounded like him. It sounded like him, Jamie,
Like I think if you spend time looking at the
life of Jesus, when you hear him, it sounds like him.
It's like he's actually saying, like, I gave up my
(12:24):
life for people who wounded me and betrayed me and
hurt me and turned their backs on me, and I'm
asking you to figure out how to get so whole
in me that you're able to do that. So it
(12:48):
definitely didn't feel like something I would make up in
my own head because it wasn't going to be easy.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah. I love that, And you know, I'm thinking of
those day after day of sitting there reading the book,
being in God's word, talking to him. That is the
foundation that allowed you to have that experience and say, oh, yeah, okay,
this is God, this is this is what he sounds like.
This is in line, like complete alignment with what he says.
(13:18):
So what if someone is listening right now, I'm throwing
you some curveballs. I didn't send these questions over you
ahead of my love.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Curve ballsy, let's sell with this spirit.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I'm just thinking, like the person listening right now who
has a toxic relationship or who has had in the
past a toxic relationship, and that person's trying to come
back in or whatever, what would you say are the
steps of discernment? Because for some people the right answer
might be thirty minutes a day. You're not saying that
you're hearing from God that that wasn't correct, isn't necessarily
(13:49):
someone else's correct. And I think that's important. So, I mean,
I'm hearing you talk about asking from multiple different sources
of godly counsel, looking at at God's word. But what
is like a first step for someone who's just thinking,
what do I even do? Do I set the boundary?
Do I where do I even go to seek healing?
(14:10):
How do I even do this?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I love this conversation because I think we absolutely have
to say that there's not actually a formula. I can't
answer you and give you a formula because if I
sat down with each one of your listeners and I
heard their story, and I heard the intricacies of their pain,
and I heard the way they feel burdened, how much
they love the person who hurt them, but how hurtful
(14:34):
it is. And if if I got to process with them,
I might have specific a specific sense of intuition or
discernment that I could potentially offer them. But I can't
actually give a formula because there have been times in
my life where I had to lay out some pretty
serious boundaries with my mom when it had to do
(14:57):
with her time with my children. And that doesn't mean
that I wasn't loving to my mom or that I
didn't love her like Christ, but I also didn't want
her to hurt my kids. And so there was a
time where my father, who was absent most of my
life and then started showing up when I was eight
a couple four times a year or something, I would
(15:19):
visit him. By the time I hit college, I was
so angry with him for not being there for me
and not rescuing me from the trauma and the pain
and the abuse and stuff that I experienced as a
little girl. I stopped speaking to him for a couple
of years. I'm not giving anyone up her mission slip
to go just stop speaking to people. But I will
tell you this. We have gone through things none of
(15:42):
us should have ever had to go through before. And
I needed that time with my dad to process with
a therapist why I was so angry. I had to
name the pain first. I had to get to a
place where my therapist said, why don't you write a letter?
Never mail it. I had to write a letter I
never planned on mailing to my dad, to tell him
(16:04):
pages and pages of the ways I felt hurt by him.
I had to do that work, and then I ended
up mailing it, and this beautiful process happened between us,
where he not only owned all of his absence and
the pain that caused and how much he that haunted
his life, but I finally got to release him and
(16:27):
forgive him, which released me. But I don't think I
could have gotten there because one I showed up to
church and my pastor said, forgive, because Jesus forgives you.
I think I had to go through a hard process
of really feeling angry and really having to recognize why
I was angry. Where we go wrong though, is I
(16:47):
think we just we kind of surround ourselves with kind
of like yes people, yeah, and they just tell us like, oh, girl, yeah,
you're your dad was a loser. You should just disown him,
never talk to him again, girl, Or like, yeah, you
can get better with your husband, like you could get
a better man, like all this stuff. We surround ourselves
(17:08):
with people who just kind of tell us what we
want to hear. And if we surround ourselves with, you know,
godly counsel, people who truly are seeking the Lord, praying
to the Lord, reading as scriptures, a Christian therapist who's
the same pastors, and we're going to them and we're
telling them like, hey, my mom moved into town and
(17:29):
she's an alcoholic and she's broken and she doesn't know
Jesus and she needs his love and I want to
show her his love, but also I don't want her
alcoholism to bleed all over my children. I'm like processing
that with godly counsel, and they're all kind of like
saying the same thing, and they're listening to my hurt
and there they're listening to God and his ability to
(17:52):
redeem and heal. I think we're going to get somewhere
that honors Jesus. But I think if we're just listening
to people who tell us the easy way, we're going
to just keep having broken relationships that never experience peace
or forgiveness or redemption because just cutting everybody off because
they're hurt. The truth is we're all hurt, we're all wounded,
(18:14):
and we're all wounding each other. And God can heal,
God can redeem, God can bring peace in relationships that
feel completely wrecked. But we have to be open to
the idea that he can.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, that is all so good, and yeah, I know
that a lot of people probably really need to hear that.
Can you just talk about this word and this concept
of collide and you touched on it, but can you
just go in a little bit more depth, like what
does that mean to you the title collide and how
(18:48):
is that concept kind of woven throughout your book?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah? I mean, like I said, I met Jesus when
I was twenty one years old, and I kind of
like to say he wrecked my life in a good way.
I mean it was like it was a collision. Like
when I met him and I saw who he is
and how he is and what he offers me. I mean,
(19:13):
it just literally changed my life upside down for the better.
And when I see him in the New Testament and
he runs into people, there's kind of a before and after, right,
There's just like people are never left the same after
they run into Jesus. And so I've spent the last
I don't know, thirty years just being in love with
(19:37):
watching Jesus run into people in the Bible. I mean
you see him with the woman at the well, and
he's traveling somewhere, and you see him completely re route
his trip to go meet one lady who has a
terrible reputation. No one respected her, she didn't respect herself.
She'd gone from man to man to man, and he
(19:58):
goes out of his way for her. And I saw
that and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm her.
I'm her Like I went from you know, being wounded
by my parents to going to college and partying and
sleeping around, just longing for someone to choose me and
love me. And I see Jesus and he goes out
(20:19):
of his way to run into people like me. And
then I see him. He's on his way to heal
a twelve year old girl who's dying, and that's a
really important mission, it's so important. And on his way,
this woman fights for her own healing and she reaches
for the hem of his robe, and he could just
be like, I don't have time for you, chick, but
(20:41):
he actually doesn't. He stops for her. He stops right
there for her, and they have this run and it
completely heals her life. And he actually calls her daughter
and she falls down at his feet and she tells
him her whole truth. And it's just this beautiful collision.
And I think about Jesus, where you know, he's in
the boat with his disciples and there's the famous storm
(21:02):
and they're all peeling their pants and he's chilling, and
he bosses the wind and the waves around and then
that same boat gets to the shore and you see Jesus.
And I write about this in the book because it's
crazy because Jesus gets out of the boat, but you
don't see the disciples getting out of the boat. They
want to say cozy and comfortable, but Jesus gets out
of the boat on purpose and goes and runs into
(21:25):
a man who's living as an outcast. He's been shunned
to live in the tombs. He's cutting himself, he's crying
out day and night. He's broken the chains that people
try to bind him with because he scared people, so
they tried to lock him up. We do the same thing,
and here's Jesus. He goes out of his way to
collide with this guy. And by the time Jesus is
(21:45):
done running into this guy's life, he's now he was naked,
now he's dressed. Scripture says, he's in his right mind,
and he's begging Jesus, please let me go with you.
I just want to go with you. And Jesus says, no,
I want you to go back into your cammunity, the
community that hurt you, go back to the people that
hurt you, and I want you to tell them what
(22:05):
the Lord has done for your life. And so the
whole concept of collide is like, we have a God
who left heaven the perfect place on his throne, and
he comes down. He moves into our hood and it's
messy and it's broken and it's dysfunctional, and he chooses
us anyways, and he does life with us, and you
see him doing life with us, and he enters mess
(22:26):
and he touches mess, and he takes wounds and mess
on himself on the cross and says, by my wounds,
you are healed. Like I'm gonna take all your wounds
on and so that you can be finally whole. And
so I just started to look at the life of
Jesus and go, wow, he runs right into our lives
and when he does, we are made more wold and broken,
(22:50):
and it's a beautiful thing. And it became a thing
for me where I wasn't just reading about it, like
I think we kind of treat the Bible like some
sort of like historical text where it's like, oh, Jesus
did this then, But actually, you know, when that girl
I was mentoring, she broad her twenty five college age
girlfriends over and we started meeting in my living room,
(23:11):
and like, as we were watching him heal these people
in the New test Andy, he started healing us. He
started showing up in our pain. And that was a
crazy thing. And that's what I've seen him do over
and over again, is that he's actually still healing today.
And if we let him enter the mess and enter
(23:32):
the pain instead of avoiding it and acting like we're
put together and we're good and we needed Jesus twenty
years ago when we gave our life him, but we're
good now, we don't need him. But we actually let
him enter it, he will make us more whole.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, that is such a powerful picture, just to see
him doing that, And it's convicting for me because I
guess everyone maybe, but I know for myself it's hard
to run into people's pain for lots of reasons. It's
it's uncomfortable. It's you're not sure what to do. Sometimes
you're not sure if you're going to make a mistake
(24:05):
or say something wrong, and so sometimes it's more comfortable
to stand back. And I'm thinking maybe with your mom
it was a similar thing where you had your own pain,
but then even after recognizing that she had her pain,
that had to be hard to engage. It's like, we
all have our own stuff, and so it's almost like
(24:25):
sometimes whether it's the busyness of my life, whether it's
my own baggage, it's like, Okay, my plate is only
so big, and I'm afraid I'm not going to be
able to if I even begin to enter into someone
else's pain, that I will not be able to see
it through, that it's going to be too much. And
so seeing Jesus, and Jesus had boundaries too, But seeing
(24:49):
Jesus running toward the people, like the people that he
made a bee line for were those who were desperate
and in pain because they were open, they were at
the end of them. So else Meanwhile, you have the
Pharisees who were full of themselves and had no interest
in him and in fact wanted him gone. So can
you talk about that process of not only let's start
(25:12):
first with the beautiful knowledge that God runs toward our
pain and accepting that. Can you just talk a little
bit about you know, why is that message so important
for women to understand that Jesus runs toward pain, He's
not afraid of it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I mean, with a little kid, we slap a band
aid on when they're crying and we're like, stop crying.
You have a band aid now, and they're trying to
stop crying, but it still hurts. I think we've been
told sweeping under the rug, move on, be strong, be tough,
pray and you'll be good. And that's not working. And
so any kind of unresolved pain, whether it's big trauma
(25:52):
or little hurts, if it's unhealed and unresolved, it's going
to come out sideways. And what I think is happening
if you look at your own life, or you look
at your friends or your family, look at your family
or people you know from work or school or whatever,
unresolved pain is wreaking havoc like wounded people, wound people,
(26:15):
wounds just travel. It's just a contagion. And so what
we have to recognize is that our avoidance of pain
is actually causing more of it. It's not working well.
You don't see a god who avoids pain. That's what's
crazy about Jesus. Like, look at what we know about Jesus.
He's on an all out pursuit. He's chasing down people
(26:36):
in pain. He's running towards the leopards, he's running towards
the blind people's He stops in a house party for
a paralytic that's you know, raised down by four friends.
Through the roof. He meets the hemorrhaging woman that I
was talking about. I mean, over and over again. He
touches and heals the man with a shriveled hand. He
goes to the guy by the stirring waters who's waiting
for the waters to heal him. Jesus is on an
(26:59):
all out pursuit to enter people's mess and pain, and
then he takes it on himself on the cross. And
so I don't understand why we've bought into the idea
that we're just supposed to sort of sweet pain under
the rug and it's gonna go away. The only way
that you can heal pain is by letting Jesus come
(27:19):
in and mend and restore it, the only way. And
if you don't give him your pain, if you don't
name your pain, if you aren't real about it, if
you're still buying into the idea that you have to
move on somehow because you're a Christian. I mean, look,
I spoke at a retreat once and there was this,
you know, beautiful thirty year old lady probably, and she
(27:42):
just she came up to me after every session that
I spoke at lunch during the break and it just
kept being like, I don't know, I'm crying, and I'm like,
I don't know why you're crying either, but it's okay
to cry and then it was like the next time,
I don't know why I'm crying, Like this thing happened
ten years ago, and I shouldn't be crying, Like I
have a savior, I'm good with God. And then finally,
when we had time during lunch break, I'm just like,
(28:05):
why don't you tell me what happened to you ten
years ago? You keep wondering why you're crying. You keep
thinking you should be good because you have God. What
happened ten years ago? And she said, well, I was
dating a guy and he didn't share the same faith
and values as me, and I felt like I was
supposed to break up with him, and I broke up
with him and he killed himself. And she said, my
(28:27):
pastors and my spiritual mentors told me you did the
right thing. You have God, you should be good, move on.
And I just said, when someone kills themselves, that's really sad,
that's so sad. You're sad. You're still sad because you're
still sad. And I think like we need to give
each other permission to be sad, to be mad, to
(28:49):
feel disappointed, to grieve, to name the pain you If
you aren't given permission to say, you know what I
experienced this and it sucks and it hurt and hard.
Then you're just going in her mind, the theology that
she believed was like God is good, so I should
be good, right, But her pain was leaking out sideways.
(29:11):
I can't imagine how that was impacting her marriage and
her kids because she had this unresolved pain. So I
think our avoidance of pain is not working. And God
is not a god who avoids pain. He's a God
on an all out pursuit to heal pain. So I
think we really need to shift, like, oh, my avoidance
(29:33):
is actually hurting other people. I'm actually my pain is
starting to hurt the people that I love the most,
and I need God to come in and heal me.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah. I mean it's kind of a like overused example probably,
but just you know, when you have this pain and
you just kind of mask it, like this woman I
think was encouraged to do or made to feel like
that's what she was supposed to do as a good Christian,
I mean, it just festers. It festers, and so what
does it practically look like? You know, you talk about
(30:05):
slowing down and meeting Jesus in your pain, what does
that look like practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, I mean that's such a big question with so
many answers. I mean, when I look at Jesus, he
meets all of these different people with different pain, and
so it always looks different. But one thing that I
would say feels like it always looks the same is this.
(30:35):
I think that we do one of two things in
our lives with pain. Besides avoid it. We when we
decide we want to heal it. We either go, oh,
God has to heal me. Like I'm just gonna wait
for God to wave a magic wand and I'm gonna
wake up on Wednesday. I'm gonna be healed. I'm gonna
be like someone's gonna put me on the prayer chain.
I'm gonna be the miracle they all prayed for, you know.
(30:57):
And that's great. And God can do miracle. He has
way more power than a magic wand. But the other
thing we do is we go, I have to heal me.
I have to do all the stuff. I have to
eat kale and I have to go on a keto diet,
and I have to, you know, make all these amends.
And like I have all this stuff I have to
(31:18):
do too, and the mistake I think in both of
those is that it's actually both. I think it's both.
And why I think it's both is when I see
Jesus colliding with people in the New Testament. And I'll
use the guy waiting at the Stirring waters as an example.
He shows up to this guy and the guy is thinking,
if I just do this one thing, if I just
(31:40):
get to these waters, and Jesus is standing there, and
it's fascinating. Jesus has already shown me as so much
power to heal. He is the healer standing right in
front of the guy. And this guy is still talking
about if I just do these things, so he's relying
on himself like to heal himself. And Jesus says, do
you want to get hold who? You want to get well?
(32:01):
And the word want is the word thilo, and it
means to not only want something, but to purpose it
to action. So he's actually like beginning to suggest that
we have to participate in the healing we long for,
that we actually have to want our own healing as
much as we want God to want it. We can't
just sit around and be like, oh God, I just
(32:21):
pray that you make my body healthy. But In the meantime,
I'm gonna snarf on nachos and drink three gien and
Tonics every night. Like that, that doesn't work. He wants
us to participate in our own health and wellness, but
also not to rely only on ourselves, but with him,
to walk towards to walk towards healing. So when you
(32:42):
see Jesus with this guy, he's been there thirty eight years.
That's so long to feel stuck so long, and Jesus's
pick up your mat and walk, I would imagine a
guy who's been sitting somewhere not able to move from
a stuck place for almost four decades. Is like, bro, Jesus,
(33:05):
did you not get the memo, I'm the guy who
doesn't walk. You're asking me to pick up my mat
and walk. I don't walk, and Jesus is saying, I'm
actually asking you to move. Part of healing requires that
we not only believe God has power to heal, but
that we are willing to participate in the healing we
long for. It is absolutely both. God empowers us and
(33:28):
gives us agency. And you can say, well, I've tried things,
I've tried things. Well, what is one thing today? You
can do that you have not yet done, And I
don't know what that is for each of us. It's different, right,
Like I mentioned, For me with my dad, it was
writing a letter I never planned on sending. That was
(33:48):
something I could do. It didn't mean that I could
make my dad change, but I could write about my
pain and the pain that I felt like he caused.
I could write to him and never plan on sending it.
But months later or a year later, whatever the time was,
when I wrote it and I read it to my therapists,
the next move, God asked me to make his actually
(34:09):
put it in the mail, to actually send that letter.
And so there have been different times in my life
where the move that God is asking me to participate
in looks different. And what it looks like for you
is different than what it looks like for me, because
we have different pain. But I think God, He's gonna
ask you if you go to him, he wants to
(34:31):
enter your pain. He wants to agree with you and
wants to weep with you. He wants to hold you,
he wants to listen to you and process and be
a safe space for you can name pain, and he
already knows your pain there's not a freaking thing that
you have experienced that he does not know about. But
he wants you, like a good dad, to go to
him and bring him your pain, and he's gonna hold
(34:52):
it with you. But he might ask you to make
a move. And if he asks you to make a move,
that move is one step closer to your wholeness than
you were yesterday.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, And I think sometimes we can get paralyzed by
not seeing the in between steps and thinking. You know,
you look at a person maybe who's on the other
side of healing, or you imagine what your life might
be like completely free from the bondage of your pain,
and you think that's impossible. And then but you know,
(35:36):
I love that you're saying, give yourself permission to take
one small step like you, I bet you wouldn't have
written that letter if God had told you were going
to have to send it. I mean, that would have
probably been really difficult. So to look for the micro step,
like what is the one thing God's asking me to
do right in front of me, and then let him
worry about how that leads to healing.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Know we're a prayer podcast. What kind of Yeah, what
kind of host would I be if I didn't ask
you about what role has prayer played in your personal healing?
And you talk about a partnership of not just saying Okay,
God heal me, but what role does prayer play on
all the levels of healing that you kind of have
(36:23):
talked about.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I mean, oh goodness, I'm thinking over the years
of all the ways. I mean, prayer to me is
really talking to God, listening to God, being with God.
And over the years, I've needed that for so many things.
(36:46):
And I remember when I was first going to a
Christian therapist. I didn't go to her because she was Christian.
I wasn't a Christian. I was twenty years old. I
was completely broken. I was no longer speaking to my dad.
My mom lived all the way across the country and
I hadn't lived with her since I was a kid.
(37:08):
I felt alone. I felt on my own. I didn't
believe in a God or a higher power. I not
only been wounded by my parents and other characters growing
up and hadn't told anybody the things that happened to
me for two decades. But I was starting to hurt
my own life and found myself withdrawing from class in
(37:31):
a hotel. I didn't want to live anymore. I mean,
I was as broken as they come. I ended up
in a counseling office. Someone recommended this counselor and she
was Christian, and she actually I was starting to seek
is there a God? And who is Jesus? And God
had kind of surrounded me. He was stalking me, is
how I like to think about it. He was just
(37:51):
surrounding me with all these Christians. And I was like,
oh man, I'd never wanted to give any Christians a chance,
and he was trying to get a hold of my life.
And here I was in this therapist's office who loved Jesus,
and she and I started talking about God and she
asked me if, she said, when you think of one
(38:13):
of the hardest things you experienced as a child, I
want you to think of that right now, which is
a hard thing to do in general. And it was
really weird because the imagery I got was not a
picture of violence. It wasn't a picture of you know,
seeing people using drugs or being scared people were after us,
(38:35):
or it wasn't any of this crazy stuff. I pictured
myself alone on this like purply plumb colored, old tattered
velvet chair petting my cat when I was a little girl.
And she asked me, why that's what I pictured and
I and I said, I used to spend so much
time being left alone every night, and like not every night,
(39:01):
a lot of nights during the week, and I just
I felt so alone in the world, and I had
no one else and I didn't have siblings, and I
would sit there and just wish I wasn't alone. But
I felt like I deserved to be alone, and I
didn't know why. And she said, could you invite God
to go back and sit on that chair with you?
(39:24):
And I was like, no way, There is no way,
I am if God was sitting on that chair with me,
why would I have ever experienced any of this in
the first place, Like, there's no way I can do that.
And to make a long story short, And I write
about this in the book Jamie, but probably some time
later after really like pursuing and learning more about Jesus
(39:49):
and seeing how beautifull he is and gracious and kind,
and the Jesus who wept with Mary and Martha, and
you think about Mary and Martha, like they called Jesus
to come and save their brother, and he doesn't come
in time, and he purposely didn't come, and then he
shows up and two days later and their brothers died,
(40:12):
and they both with this raw honesty, they each run
out separately to Jesus and they say, if you had
been here, our brother would be alive. And if you
had been here, my brother would be alive. And they
had these if you hads with God, and I think
we all do. We have these things and I had those.
My biggest hang up with believing there was a God
(40:33):
was where were you when I needed you? Why didn't
you stop the abuse? Why didn't you protect me? Why
didn't you give me a different story? Why didn't have
a different moment dad that I had? Why didn't have
to go through all this by myself? Where were you?
And what I experienced in that therapist's office eventually was
that Jesus can handle all of those things. He can
(40:56):
handle all our if you hads, he can handle me
saying you were a no show, just like my dad.
I don't feel like you showed up for me. I
don't feel like you were there for me. Where were you?
Why weren't you there for me? And I had this,
and this is prayer. This is prayer. I finally invited
him to come sit on the chair with me, and
(41:19):
I had this moment that just completely like Jesus came
and he sat on that chair with me, and he
held me and he weeped with me, and he said,
you were never supposed to experience this hurt. You were never.
You were never intended to experience being alone and feeling
like you deserved me alone. You were you were never.
(41:41):
You were never supposed to to feel this way. But
wounded people wounded you. And he was weeping too, and
he held me on that chair, and I had this
experience where it's like he started stitching me up and
I was his daughter and he was my dad and
it was a beautifu experience. And so I think prayer
(42:03):
can look like that. But prayer can also look like
you know, me on my couch even yesterday in my
journal and just saying, Lord, here are things that are
hurting my heart right now, and I just lift those
things off and I say, I'm handing these to you,
and I'm hoping that you're in them, and that you
(42:24):
can be with these people and be with these hard circumstances,
and so I think prayer can look all sorts of
different ways, and I love talking about what I can
look like. But inviting God into your your if you hats,
inviting God into the things that are hurting your heart,
(42:45):
making a list of all the people that you love
who are hurting right now and handing them to God.
I mean, there's so many things that prayer is really
just just an invitation to let God come into those
hurting places, and He's healing, just his presence is healing.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I love that you give us such a great spectrum
of how prayer can look in different seasons, in different situations.
But yeah, what a beautiful what a beautiful picture of
I have never heard that Lazarus story spoken of in
the you know, in the context of you should if
you had been here, then it wouldn't have happened, or
(43:29):
this wouldn't have been this way in the context of
things that have happened to us in the past. Can
you talk about with prayer during your healing journey and
really just prayer at any point? What is the importance
of prayer in the context of community. I mean, I
(43:50):
think of prayer whenever someone says prayer. For the most part,
I think about my personal prayer time with God, but
the Bible. Just the more I read the Bible, the
more I am just inundated with God saying it was
never meant to be done in a vacuum. This life,
this Christian walk, prayer, everything like it's in a context
(44:11):
of the body of Christ. So what does that mean
to you? And what has that meant to you? And
in your journey having that community?
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Oh man, I have so many fun stories, and we
probably don't have all day for me to tell them.
But there's been so many moments where I've heard the
voice of God while praying in community with other people
that shifted my trajectory. I mean, I think about this
whole collide thing wasn't something I was trying to start right,
(44:41):
And I don't know how many years in I was
actually offered a position at a church and I was
gonna They said, you could bring Colyde under our umbrella.
You can get a salary, you can have all the resources,
you can do all you can have all this stuff.
You can have office and health insurance. And at the time,
(45:02):
we didn't have an office and we didn't have a budget,
and we didn't have a staff, and I wasn't getting
paid and I'm working over full time and all this stuff,
and so I invite some of my community. And we
also invited my son, who was probably in middle school,
to come, and we did this sort of I think
it's a Quaker tradition where they come and just ask questions.
(45:25):
They just ask you questions for discerning and you answered
the questions, but they don't give any opinions, and then you.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Pray, okay, so give me. And so is this You're
in a room and this is kind of like this
is a church gathering of.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It's not a church gathering. It's in my living room.
I invite in your living room, okay, people in my
living room if I did my son, because I believe
that God speaks to kids as well, and I think
your kids need to know that they have a spiritual
voice and God can speak to them. And I say
that because we did this whole discerning thing. They asked
me all these fantastic questions and I answer, and then
(46:02):
we go to pray.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
So you answer the questions. So they'll ask you a
question to get you to kind of be thinking, and
you answer verbally back to them, is that right?
Speaker 1 (46:13):
And then they ask more questions, okay, and more questions,
and then at one point we all prayed. And it
was the prayer of my son that made it so
clear that God was calling me to do something that
didn't make any sense on paper. And the thing God
was calling me to do was to believe that He
(46:34):
was doing something bigger with this collide, thing that I
could imagine, and it wasn't underneath the umbrella of one church,
but that He actually wanted to impact and change so
many lives further beyond even the city I live in
or the county I live in, but beyond. And so
it was going to be actually me having to continue
(46:54):
to trust Him, even if it meant no money, no health, interests,
oh resources, no office, no whatever. But it was through
like this discerning prayer experience. And I look back at
that and go, wow, like, there's nothing wrong with being
a pastor of a church. That's amazing. But God had
an entirely different plan for me that I don't know
(47:16):
that I would have recognized without the discerning community who
gathered around me and prayed. Another example I think of is,
and I'll give this advice because I think this is
advice is cultivate friendships when you are okay. Oh yeah,
so that when you're not okay, those people feel like
(47:37):
they have permission to comments around you when you need
it most. And I had done that, not knowing that's
what I was doing. It cultivated some deep friendships with
some women. And I didn't know all of a sudden,
three women and they're not all close, but I'm close
to all of them. They just are from different pockets
of my life. But so they don't know each other well,
(48:00):
but they know who each other is. My husband did
not think I was okay. At one point in time,
I was struggling, and he called these girlfriends and they
show up on a Saturday morning and I'm on the
couch in pajamas and I'm like, what are you guys
doing here? And they're like, we're worried about you. And
they're like on the sitting on the carpet by the couch,
(48:21):
like they're on the ground, sitting there, not in a
creepy way, but just like close, and they're like, we're
worried about you, and so we came over here today
because we want to pray over you. And I was
like I don't know. I think I was humbled. I
think I was emotional, like I felt like, oh, these
people are taking up their Saturday for me. I'm totally fine,
(48:44):
I'll be fine. But I was also like wow, like
I have those kinds of friends where they get one
call and they're like, we're there, you know what I mean,
And so they prayed over me, and I felt hell
and I felt carried, like okay, like I can make
it through this really hard season. I'm like so loved
(49:06):
and cared for. And sometimes that's what we need to know.
But it's really hard to go finding that or creating
it when you're not okay. Like sow seeds into the
kind of relationships when you have some energy and when
you have the emotional like ability to invest in relationships
so that when you need it, they're there for you.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Wow, that is such good advice. I Alana and I
talk about this in terms of prayer, like, when you
have the mental space and the place in life where
you're feeling pretty solid, cultivate those habits, maybe set up
systems that you can fall back on when you're not okay.
But for friendships, that's beautiful, Like that is so important
(49:47):
because you don't have the energy to, you know, brush
your teeth in the morning. Sometimes when you're not in
a good place much less find people like you need
people that can already have been found, that are already invested.
That is so good.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I mean. The only other thing I would say is
for moms who are listening when you are having a
bad day, when your heart's hurting, when there's something stressful
going on, or when that's true of your kids, don't
pretend like you're fine, don't pretend like you're strong, don't
act like you have it all together, but instead be
real with your kids, like I'm having a hard time
(50:26):
and I need to go to God right now. Will
you pray with me? Or you know, model for your
kids that you go to God when things are hard.
And the reason why I say that is I did that.
I did not raise my kids and hide my pain.
They weren't my therapists. I'm not suggesting that, but I
tried to be very real with them about what is
true real pain. They saw real pain, but they also
(50:48):
saw real healing. And the reason why I bring that
up when it has to do with prayer, is a
week or so ago, I it was the week my
book was releasing. I was to preach three times in
a weekend. And I was already feeling really like a
vulnerable hangover from putting this book out because it has
all these stories that quote unquote, I'm not supposed to
(51:12):
tell raw, hard stories that are being put out in
the world. And I was struggling with that. And then
I had, you know, a very short period of time
to prepare for these three sermons that I had to give.
And I got the day that I had to start
working on those messages, I started getting so sick. I
(51:35):
was got some sort of terrible flu. I was vomiting,
I mean, tmi, I know, diarrhea. I had all things, egges, headaches,
like it was terrible, terrible, terrible, And I thought, Oh
my gosh, Lord, I don't know how I'm gonna do
this assignment you have for me. I'm not well, like
I feel like the enemy's at me, Like I don't
know how I'm going to pull this off. I was
(51:56):
nauseous all the time. And my son, he's twenty three
years old, and he called me on the phone day
two of being sick, three days out from the assignment
where I had just show up and you know, bring
a message to impact lives. And he says, Mom, can
I pray for you? And I said yes, So I'm
on the phone and he says, Jesus, what do you
(52:20):
want mom to hear? And he stayed totally silent, and
I listened, and I was like, wow, you know, Aiden,
I said, you know what God just said to me.
I was supposed to preach on the foot washing and
the cross and on the whole idea of you know,
Philippians too, and Jesus he did not consulder her equality
(52:41):
with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing,
emptied himself and died on a cross. I'd been studying
all that and when Jesus, when Aiden said, Jesus, what
do you want Mom to hear? I heard God say,
You're gonna come empty. I'm actually emptying out your entire
body on both ends. You're gonna come You're gonna feel
so weak, You're gonna feel like you have nothing to offer.
(53:04):
You're gonna feel like you have nothing to give. You're
actually going to have to resonate with the very characteristics.
You're going to tell people that I lived in that
moment like it was like, not something I wanted to hear,
but again, prayer and community. My son he knows where
(53:25):
to go when things are hard. He knows where to
go because we did it together as whole childhood and
he prayed over me, and I needed to hear that.
It actually sounds weird, but I got excited even though
I felt terrible that I was going to come empty,
because I knew there was a purpose for it. I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna come empty, which means your
power is going to show up even though I'm empty,
because you told me this is how it's supposed to go.
(53:46):
You know what I mean. So I just share that
story that happened last week, and I share it Jamie
because the influence that you have as a mom when
it comes to prayer, not in a religious duty, obligatory
blah blah blah. I'm talking about going to God when
things are hard with your kids because where else you
going to go? And then when they're young adults, they
(54:07):
know where to go. Yeah, and that is awesome. That's awesome.
I'm so glad my son knows where to go, and
now he's leading me when I need to go there.
So I thought i'd shared that before we close up.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
I'm so glad you did. That's what a great story,
what an amazing story.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Well.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Can you just tell us a little bit about just
tell us where we can find out more about Collide,
where your ministry, Where we can find out more about
your book, your podcast, and just all of the things
connect with you on social media online.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, totally. So if you want to find out about
my ministry, go to week Collide dot net, or you
can go to my own website page, which is Willowweston
dot com. If you want to come hang out with
me on Instagram and we can share life together there.
I'm on there at Willow and Weston. And as far
as grabbing a book there where books are sold to Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, you know the places.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
All the places. Well, thank you so so much for
talking to us and just sharing your stories. And thank
you again just for sharing hard things, because, like you said,
I know it was not easy for you to talk
about and put out to the world a lot of
the things that you've been through, and just to do
(55:24):
that with the knowledge that God redeems it and is
going to bring healing to so many people. Is just
so wonderful. Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Thank you for having me on Jamie.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Well, I'm going to close us in prayer. How can
we pray for you today?
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Willow? Thank you. I will take prayer every day. How
do I need prayer? I think this is like the
week that this book Collide releases, And yeah, I think
I mentioned it earlier, but it's a little bit. It's
terrifying and exciting. I'm so excited to see how God
could use it to bring healing to hurting people. But
(56:00):
I also feel terrified by putting this stuff out there.
So if you want to pray not only just for
my fear and my heart in that, but also that
God causes this book to get into the hands of
the people who need it, I would love that.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
All right, will do well, let's pray. God, thank you
so much for a Willow. Thank you for her story
and for meeting her in it, and for being there
even in the hardest of hard times when she didn't
know you were there. God, thank you for being there.
Thank you for opening doors for her to use the
(56:39):
things the enemy intended for evil to bring about healing
and hope and peace and good and glory for you
and your kingdom. We just pray that you would be
with her as this book goes out into the world,
and that you would just surround her with protection from
any lies, from the enemy, from anything except the absolute
(57:03):
certainty and joy and knowledge that you are in this book,
that you are using it to reach more people than
she ever could have imagined, and that you are pleased
with her, and that you are just absolutely in this
and working through this book. We just pray that you
(57:25):
would open doors that weren't open before for the book
to reach the people that need it the most. We
pray that healing and salvation would come through the pages
of this book. We pray that there would be no
barrier for it reaching the people you've intended it for
it to reach. And we just thank you so much
for being a redeemer, for being a God who uses
(57:48):
each one of us, and just for Willow's testimony of
how you bring us to the point of emptiness when
we get to the end of ourselves, that's when you
and your power is made perfect in that weakness. And
we praise you God. We praise you that there's nothing
the enemy can take from us. There's nothing this world
(58:09):
can do to us that will keep you from working
through us and in us. We just pray that we
would be open to it and receptive to it, and
that through us we would be able to not only
receive your healing, but extend it to the world. Thank
you so much, and thank you for Willow's message today
in Jesus name, Amen.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
Amen, Thank you Jamie.
Speaker 2 (58:36):
We'd like to take just a quick second to thank
the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us
on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
you will find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in
their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
and so much more. That's lifeaudio dot com.
Life Audio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi there, and welcome to the Praying Christian Women podcast.
I'm Jamie Hampton and today I'm so excited to be
here with Willow Weston. Willow is an author, a speaker,
a podcast host, and the founder of Collide, which is
a ministry impacting women nationwide. She has had decades of
experience bringing passion and truth and sharing her journey of
(00:27):
pain transparently to encourage others to just invite Jesus into
their brokenness and be healed as a result. Willow, thank
you for doing that. I know that's not easy, So
thank you so much for being here. And I'm just
so excited to get to talk with you about your
new book, your brand new book, Collide, Running into Healing
when life hands you hurt. So thank thank you for
(00:49):
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah for having me, Jamie. I love what you are
about in what you do, and so this is just
a blessing for me too.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well. Thanks. Well, before we get into your book and
your ministry and your message, we like to ask all
of our guests what is your favorite prayer closet? Like
in air quotes, where do you like to go to
the God? It could be crazy, off the wall, it
could be very you know, traditional.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's not a closet. I'll tell you that. Every morning,
I think Rob and I have been married twenty seven
and a half years, and we literally thank you. We've
literally done this every day since we've been married. But
I have my place on the couch and the sectional,
and he has his on the other side, and he
(01:34):
makes coffee and he walks over and he hands me
my coffee, and he goes and reads and prays, and
I read and pray, and not in a religious way,
but it's almost to the point where I really don't
schedule things early in the morning. I don't do workouts
early in the morning. I don't do any work meetings
(01:55):
early in the morning because I'm actually grumpy if I
don't have my little like on that corner of the sectional.
And I'm becoming that old lady where you look at
the couch and it's like indented on that side of
the couch, because that's like my little spot every morning.
But I just need it, like I need that time
(02:16):
with the Lord to center my day. And so, yeah,
it's not a closet, but it definitely is with coffee.
And sometimes I'll drink coffee and kind of sit there
before I spend time reading and praying, because I make
a joke that I'm not sure even Jesus wants to
hang out with me before I have my coffee. It
(02:36):
is my place where I hang out with God every morning.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I love that. And in like I don't know how
long we've been podcasting seven eight, nine years, no one
has ever talked about sitting with their spouse. I've never
had anyone bring that into the picture. And I love that.
Oh my gosh, just that. Yeah, that's that is really good.
Routines aren't easy, and for that length of time, for
(03:02):
that to be your routine consistently, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So yeah, we don't we don't read the same thing,
and we don't even often pray with each other. I
mean we do in other times, but in the morning
we're just kind of our bodies are like in the
same room, but we're connecting with God alone. But I
actually tell him, we joke around about this that when
one of us passes away, I think the hardest moment
(03:30):
of each day will be in the morning, because we
just have this time that we set aside every morning,
and it's just always been and I think the day
that he's not handing me my coffee cup or the
day that I'm not there across from him will be
hard to It's just become a part of our lives,
like we just do it every day.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah. So, yeah, that's amazing. That's kind of like the
epitome of accountability for you guys to do that and
you're not studying the same thing, you're not crying together necessarily,
but you're just kind of being present. I love it. Oh,
I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Willow.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, So tell us about your new book. So, how
did your new book Collide come about? What brought it
into being your book based?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, well, I always thought I would write a book
for like the last twenty some years or something, and
I think I thought I would put this book out
a lot earlier than I have. And now I'm looking
at it and seeing that the Lord wanted me to
live more of the story that was going to be
(04:39):
put in the book than I had when I first
got this vision, which has been kind of interesting. But yeah,
I mean probably, you know, nineteen years ago or something,
I had had my second kiddo, Bella, and I had Aiden,
and I had Bella and my mom moved into town
to kind of be super grandma. And I hadn't lived
(05:01):
with my mom since I was fifteen years old. I
had another family that had to take me in in
high school and my mom hat and I had a
lot of baggage, a lot of wounds. There was a
lot of addiction and abandonment and just issues. And so
I'd met Jesus when I was twenty one, grew up
in an irreligious home, no church, had this radical conversion,
(05:23):
had spent a lot of time giving God my heartache
and my pain. But when my mom moved into town
and knocked on my door totally ordinary, like a mom
would popped by on a Wednesday, and I went to
go see who was at the door, and I saw her,
and I just flipped out, and I ran upstairs and
I hid in a closet with Bella because I didn't
(05:44):
want to answer the door. I didn't want to let
my mom in. And it was like, oh, my childhood
pain was just came flooding forward. And I had this
profound moment in that closet where so apparently I don't
have a prayer closet, Jamie, I have a pain closet.
But I'm in that closet, and God said, Willow, I've
done a lot of healing in your life, but there's
(06:07):
more that needs to be done, and you need to
walk out and you need to get some help. And
I remember just going wow, like I could easily just
walk out and not tell anyone that I'm not doing well,
you know, but I knew I needed help. And I
ended up in a Christian counseling office within a week
(06:28):
or two. And immediately the Christian councilor said, you need
to tell your mom you could only spend thirty minutes
a week with her. And I just the only way
I can explain it, Jamie, is like the counselor came
in the room, the Holy Spirit came in the room,
and I just yelled, No, that is not what I
need to do. I need to figure out how to
(06:48):
love the person who wounded me the most, that's my mom.
And I just started saying all the stuff that I'd
never heard before. The counselor wasn't saying anything. I just
was like I was born into ad, I collided with wounds.
I ran into my mother's wounds. She never got healing
for her wounds, and she wounded me, and now I
might wound my daughter. I need God to heal me.
(07:10):
We're all just walking around colliding with each other and
wounding each other, and we're in need of a new
kind of collision. And when I see Jesus in the
New Testament, he collides with people makes them more whole
and broken. And if we can become more whole, then
maybe when we run into wounded people, we can bring
healing instead of pain. And so I just was having
this epiphany and I paid the ladyier eighty five bucks,
(07:31):
and I heard God say as I was walking to
my car, you're going to do something with those words
wounded collision. And so that was, you know, my daughter's
twenty now, So that was what nineteen years ago that
I felt like the Lord gave me this message and
I was going to do something with it. But I
also was just hiding in a closet with my kid
(07:53):
and felt a mess, so I wasn't looking to like
do a thing. And then within weeks this call of
ased girl asked me to mentor her and I said yes,
I said, we could look at Jesus in the New
Testament colliding with wounded people and how he heals them.
And she said, can I bring some friends? And I
thought she'd bring four. She brought twenty five. And then
I just God threw this ministry into We minister now
(08:16):
to thousands of people a year, where we do conferences
and we have resources and Bible study books and a
podcasting and counseling for all this stuff. I joke around, Lord,
I did not apply for this job, but he just
unfolded this ministry. And the whole time, I was also
raising my kids and I was like still needing him
(08:38):
to heal me. But the more I was going to
him to heal me, he was also using my pain
to help heal others. And he was writing this story
that eventually would unfold and it would become time to
tell it in a book. And so I finally released
this book called Collide, Running into Healing when Life Hands
(09:00):
to Hurt. And yeah, that's that's the short version of
what the last twenty years has looked like, Damie.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, so I'm still stuck back in the counseling office
as a people pleaser. I'm just like in awe of
your ability to say no and to hear from the
Lord and can you just talk about that, because counseling
is important. I think it's I believe in counseling. I
think it's great. But some of God's wisdom goes against
(09:31):
the world's wisdom or even a Christian counselor's wisdom. Can
you talk about that? I think as Christian women we
have to have the conversation about when do we listen
to the experts air quotes, when do we listen to
what we believe God is telling us? And how do
we know if that's how do we know the difference?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, that's such a good question and honestly not one
that people have asked me before. I want to say
right up front that I ended up going to a
different therapist after that therapist, and I was seeking counsel
from not only my husband, but my close Christian friends,
my pastors and mentors in my life. So I wasn't
(10:15):
sort of being reckless with like godly counsel by any means.
And I'm not really the type to like yell at
a counselor. In fact, I've been way more amicable and
open to things. It was such a clear thing that
the spirit was saying to me. It was so clear
that that's what I mean. It was almost like someone
(10:36):
else stepped into the room. I never had had that
experience like that before, and I just knew. It's not
that I don't think boundaries are absolutely necessary in relationship,
and I've had to have plenty of boundaries with my mom.
But God was actually challenging me into something more than boundaries.
He was actually challenging me in saying, Willow, you need
(10:59):
to get healings you don't hurt your daughter. But also
I want to heal you in such a way that
you actually bring healing to your mom instead of more pain,
because your absence from your mom's life and you pushing
her away and you not spending time with her is
not going to help her to know me. Wow, I
(11:19):
actually want you to figure out how to love her
who wounded you the most, the way I love the
people who've wounded me the most. That was I'll tell
you what I knew. It was God, because I would
never chose that in my own flesh. I would have
never been like that. Sounds like a fun assignment. I've
(11:40):
been waiting for years to have a counselor prescribed me
to push my mom out of my life. That would
be have been so much easier. She was a terrible
alcoholic and so hard to deal with and I hated
being around her. It would have Oh, this is counselor approved, Mom,
I don't need to spend very much time with you.
So I knew this isn't something like go to Hawaii
(12:01):
and you know, lay on the beach for three months
and drink pini clattas like I was being given a
challenge by God. That sounded like him. It sounded like him, Jamie,
Like I think if you spend time looking at the
life of Jesus, when you hear him, it sounds like him.
It's like he's actually saying, like, I gave up my
(12:24):
life for people who wounded me and betrayed me and
hurt me and turned their backs on me, and I'm
asking you to figure out how to get so whole
in me that you're able to do that. So it
(12:48):
definitely didn't feel like something I would make up in
my own head because it wasn't going to be easy.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah. I love that, And you know, I'm thinking of
those day after day of sitting there reading the book,
being in God's word, talking to him. That is the
foundation that allowed you to have that experience and say, oh, yeah, okay,
this is God, this is this is what he sounds like.
This is in line, like complete alignment with what he says.
(13:18):
So what if someone is listening right now, I'm throwing
you some curveballs. I didn't send these questions over you
ahead of my love.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Curve ballsy, let's sell with this spirit.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I'm just thinking, like the person listening right now who
has a toxic relationship or who has had in the
past a toxic relationship, and that person's trying to come
back in or whatever, what would you say are the
steps of discernment? Because for some people the right answer
might be thirty minutes a day. You're not saying that
you're hearing from God that that wasn't correct, isn't necessarily
(13:49):
someone else's correct. And I think that's important. So, I mean,
I'm hearing you talk about asking from multiple different sources
of godly counsel, looking at at God's word. But what
is like a first step for someone who's just thinking,
what do I even do? Do I set the boundary?
Do I where do I even go to seek healing?
(14:10):
How do I even do this?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I love this conversation because I think we absolutely have
to say that there's not actually a formula. I can't
answer you and give you a formula because if I
sat down with each one of your listeners and I
heard their story, and I heard the intricacies of their pain,
and I heard the way they feel burdened, how much
they love the person who hurt them, but how hurtful
(14:34):
it is. And if if I got to process with them,
I might have specific a specific sense of intuition or
discernment that I could potentially offer them. But I can't
actually give a formula because there have been times in
my life where I had to lay out some pretty
serious boundaries with my mom when it had to do
(14:57):
with her time with my children. And that doesn't mean
that I wasn't loving to my mom or that I
didn't love her like Christ, but I also didn't want
her to hurt my kids. And so there was a
time where my father, who was absent most of my
life and then started showing up when I was eight
a couple four times a year or something, I would
(15:19):
visit him. By the time I hit college, I was
so angry with him for not being there for me
and not rescuing me from the trauma and the pain
and the abuse and stuff that I experienced as a
little girl. I stopped speaking to him for a couple
of years. I'm not giving anyone up her mission slip
to go just stop speaking to people. But I will
tell you this. We have gone through things none of
(15:42):
us should have ever had to go through before. And
I needed that time with my dad to process with
a therapist why I was so angry. I had to
name the pain first. I had to get to a
place where my therapist said, why don't you write a letter?
Never mail it. I had to write a letter I
never planned on mailing to my dad, to tell him
(16:04):
pages and pages of the ways I felt hurt by him.
I had to do that work, and then I ended
up mailing it, and this beautiful process happened between us,
where he not only owned all of his absence and
the pain that caused and how much he that haunted
his life, but I finally got to release him and
(16:27):
forgive him, which released me. But I don't think I
could have gotten there because one I showed up to
church and my pastor said, forgive, because Jesus forgives you.
I think I had to go through a hard process
of really feeling angry and really having to recognize why
I was angry. Where we go wrong though, is I
(16:47):
think we just we kind of surround ourselves with kind
of like yes people, yeah, and they just tell us like, oh, girl, yeah,
you're your dad was a loser. You should just disown him,
never talk to him again, girl, Or like, yeah, you
can get better with your husband, like you could get
a better man, like all this stuff. We surround ourselves
(17:08):
with people who just kind of tell us what we
want to hear. And if we surround ourselves with, you know,
godly counsel, people who truly are seeking the Lord, praying
to the Lord, reading as scriptures, a Christian therapist who's
the same pastors, and we're going to them and we're
telling them like, hey, my mom moved into town and
(17:29):
she's an alcoholic and she's broken and she doesn't know
Jesus and she needs his love and I want to
show her his love, but also I don't want her
alcoholism to bleed all over my children. I'm like processing
that with godly counsel, and they're all kind of like
saying the same thing, and they're listening to my hurt
and there they're listening to God and his ability to
(17:52):
redeem and heal. I think we're going to get somewhere
that honors Jesus. But I think if we're just listening
to people who tell us the easy way, we're going
to just keep having broken relationships that never experience peace
or forgiveness or redemption because just cutting everybody off because
they're hurt. The truth is we're all hurt, we're all wounded,
(18:14):
and we're all wounding each other. And God can heal,
God can redeem, God can bring peace in relationships that
feel completely wrecked. But we have to be open to
the idea that he can.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, that is all so good, and yeah, I know
that a lot of people probably really need to hear that.
Can you just talk about this word and this concept
of collide and you touched on it, but can you
just go in a little bit more depth, like what
does that mean to you the title collide and how
(18:48):
is that concept kind of woven throughout your book?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah? I mean, like I said, I met Jesus when
I was twenty one years old, and I kind of
like to say he wrecked my life in a good way.
I mean it was like it was a collision. Like
when I met him and I saw who he is
and how he is and what he offers me. I mean,
(19:13):
it just literally changed my life upside down for the better.
And when I see him in the New Testament and
he runs into people, there's kind of a before and after, right,
There's just like people are never left the same after
they run into Jesus. And so I've spent the last
I don't know, thirty years just being in love with
(19:37):
watching Jesus run into people in the Bible. I mean
you see him with the woman at the well, and
he's traveling somewhere, and you see him completely re route
his trip to go meet one lady who has a
terrible reputation. No one respected her, she didn't respect herself.
She'd gone from man to man to man, and he
(19:58):
goes out of his way for her. And I saw
that and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm her.
I'm her Like I went from you know, being wounded
by my parents to going to college and partying and
sleeping around, just longing for someone to choose me and
love me. And I see Jesus and he goes out
(20:19):
of his way to run into people like me. And
then I see him. He's on his way to heal
a twelve year old girl who's dying, and that's a
really important mission, it's so important. And on his way,
this woman fights for her own healing and she reaches
for the hem of his robe, and he could just
be like, I don't have time for you, chick, but
(20:41):
he actually doesn't. He stops for her. He stops right
there for her, and they have this run and it
completely heals her life. And he actually calls her daughter
and she falls down at his feet and she tells
him her whole truth. And it's just this beautiful collision.
And I think about Jesus, where you know, he's in
the boat with his disciples and there's the famous storm
(21:02):
and they're all peeling their pants and he's chilling, and
he bosses the wind and the waves around and then
that same boat gets to the shore and you see Jesus.
And I write about this in the book because it's
crazy because Jesus gets out of the boat, but you
don't see the disciples getting out of the boat. They
want to say cozy and comfortable, but Jesus gets out
of the boat on purpose and goes and runs into
(21:25):
a man who's living as an outcast. He's been shunned
to live in the tombs. He's cutting himself, he's crying
out day and night. He's broken the chains that people
try to bind him with because he scared people, so
they tried to lock him up. We do the same thing,
and here's Jesus. He goes out of his way to
collide with this guy. And by the time Jesus is
(21:45):
done running into this guy's life, he's now he was naked,
now he's dressed. Scripture says, he's in his right mind,
and he's begging Jesus, please let me go with you.
I just want to go with you. And Jesus says, no,
I want you to go back into your cammunity, the
community that hurt you, go back to the people that
hurt you, and I want you to tell them what
(22:05):
the Lord has done for your life. And so the
whole concept of collide is like, we have a God
who left heaven the perfect place on his throne, and
he comes down. He moves into our hood and it's
messy and it's broken and it's dysfunctional, and he chooses
us anyways, and he does life with us, and you
see him doing life with us, and he enters mess
(22:26):
and he touches mess, and he takes wounds and mess
on himself on the cross and says, by my wounds,
you are healed. Like I'm gonna take all your wounds
on and so that you can be finally whole. And
so I just started to look at the life of
Jesus and go, wow, he runs right into our lives
and when he does, we are made more wold and broken,
(22:50):
and it's a beautiful thing. And it became a thing
for me where I wasn't just reading about it, like
I think we kind of treat the Bible like some
sort of like historical text where it's like, oh, Jesus
did this then, But actually, you know, when that girl
I was mentoring, she broad her twenty five college age
girlfriends over and we started meeting in my living room,
(23:11):
and like, as we were watching him heal these people
in the New test Andy, he started healing us. He
started showing up in our pain. And that was a
crazy thing. And that's what I've seen him do over
and over again, is that he's actually still healing today.
And if we let him enter the mess and enter
(23:32):
the pain instead of avoiding it and acting like we're
put together and we're good and we needed Jesus twenty
years ago when we gave our life him, but we're
good now, we don't need him. But we actually let
him enter it, he will make us more whole.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, that is such a powerful picture, just to see
him doing that, And it's convicting for me because I
guess everyone maybe, but I know for myself it's hard
to run into people's pain for lots of reasons. It's
it's uncomfortable. It's you're not sure what to do. Sometimes
you're not sure if you're going to make a mistake
(24:05):
or say something wrong, and so sometimes it's more comfortable
to stand back. And I'm thinking maybe with your mom
it was a similar thing where you had your own pain,
but then even after recognizing that she had her pain,
that had to be hard to engage. It's like, we
all have our own stuff, and so it's almost like
(24:25):
sometimes whether it's the busyness of my life, whether it's
my own baggage, it's like, Okay, my plate is only
so big, and I'm afraid I'm not going to be
able to if I even begin to enter into someone
else's pain, that I will not be able to see
it through, that it's going to be too much. And
so seeing Jesus, and Jesus had boundaries too, But seeing
(24:49):
Jesus running toward the people, like the people that he
made a bee line for were those who were desperate
and in pain because they were open, they were at
the end of them. So else Meanwhile, you have the
Pharisees who were full of themselves and had no interest
in him and in fact wanted him gone. So can
you talk about that process of not only let's start
(25:12):
first with the beautiful knowledge that God runs toward our
pain and accepting that. Can you just talk a little
bit about you know, why is that message so important
for women to understand that Jesus runs toward pain, He's
not afraid of it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I mean, with a little kid, we slap a band
aid on when they're crying and we're like, stop crying.
You have a band aid now, and they're trying to
stop crying, but it still hurts. I think we've been
told sweeping under the rug, move on, be strong, be tough,
pray and you'll be good. And that's not working. And
so any kind of unresolved pain, whether it's big trauma
(25:52):
or little hurts, if it's unhealed and unresolved, it's going
to come out sideways. And what I think is happening
if you look at your own life, or you look
at your friends or your family, look at your family
or people you know from work or school or whatever,
unresolved pain is wreaking havoc like wounded people, wound people,
(26:15):
wounds just travel. It's just a contagion. And so what
we have to recognize is that our avoidance of pain
is actually causing more of it. It's not working well.
You don't see a god who avoids pain. That's what's
crazy about Jesus. Like, look at what we know about Jesus.
He's on an all out pursuit. He's chasing down people
(26:36):
in pain. He's running towards the leopards, he's running towards
the blind people's He stops in a house party for
a paralytic that's you know, raised down by four friends.
Through the roof. He meets the hemorrhaging woman that I
was talking about. I mean, over and over again. He
touches and heals the man with a shriveled hand. He
goes to the guy by the stirring waters who's waiting
for the waters to heal him. Jesus is on an
(26:59):
all out pursuit to enter people's mess and pain, and
then he takes it on himself on the cross. And
so I don't understand why we've bought into the idea
that we're just supposed to sort of sweet pain under
the rug and it's gonna go away. The only way
that you can heal pain is by letting Jesus come
(27:19):
in and mend and restore it, the only way. And
if you don't give him your pain, if you don't
name your pain, if you aren't real about it, if
you're still buying into the idea that you have to
move on somehow because you're a Christian. I mean, look,
I spoke at a retreat once and there was this,
you know, beautiful thirty year old lady probably, and she
(27:42):
just she came up to me after every session that
I spoke at lunch during the break and it just
kept being like, I don't know, I'm crying, and I'm like,
I don't know why you're crying either, but it's okay
to cry and then it was like the next time,
I don't know why I'm crying, Like this thing happened
ten years ago, and I shouldn't be crying, Like I
have a savior, I'm good with God. And then finally,
when we had time during lunch break, I'm just like,
(28:05):
why don't you tell me what happened to you ten
years ago? You keep wondering why you're crying. You keep
thinking you should be good because you have God. What
happened ten years ago? And she said, well, I was
dating a guy and he didn't share the same faith
and values as me, and I felt like I was
supposed to break up with him, and I broke up
with him and he killed himself. And she said, my
(28:27):
pastors and my spiritual mentors told me you did the
right thing. You have God, you should be good, move on.
And I just said, when someone kills themselves, that's really sad,
that's so sad. You're sad. You're still sad because you're
still sad. And I think like we need to give
each other permission to be sad, to be mad, to
(28:49):
feel disappointed, to grieve, to name the pain you If
you aren't given permission to say, you know what I
experienced this and it sucks and it hurt and hard.
Then you're just going in her mind, the theology that
she believed was like God is good, so I should
be good, right, But her pain was leaking out sideways.
(29:11):
I can't imagine how that was impacting her marriage and
her kids because she had this unresolved pain. So I
think our avoidance of pain is not working. And God
is not a god who avoids pain. He's a God
on an all out pursuit to heal pain. So I
think we really need to shift, like, oh, my avoidance
(29:33):
is actually hurting other people. I'm actually my pain is
starting to hurt the people that I love the most,
and I need God to come in and heal me.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah. I mean it's kind of a like overused example probably,
but just you know, when you have this pain and
you just kind of mask it, like this woman I
think was encouraged to do or made to feel like
that's what she was supposed to do as a good Christian,
I mean, it just festers. It festers, and so what
does it practically look like? You know, you talk about
(30:05):
slowing down and meeting Jesus in your pain, what does
that look like practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, I mean that's such a big question with so
many answers. I mean, when I look at Jesus, he
meets all of these different people with different pain, and
so it always looks different. But one thing that I
would say feels like it always looks the same is this.
(30:35):
I think that we do one of two things in
our lives with pain. Besides avoid it. We when we
decide we want to heal it. We either go, oh,
God has to heal me. Like I'm just gonna wait
for God to wave a magic wand and I'm gonna
wake up on Wednesday. I'm gonna be healed. I'm gonna
be like someone's gonna put me on the prayer chain.
I'm gonna be the miracle they all prayed for, you know.
(30:57):
And that's great. And God can do miracle. He has
way more power than a magic wand. But the other
thing we do is we go, I have to heal me.
I have to do all the stuff. I have to
eat kale and I have to go on a keto diet,
and I have to, you know, make all these amends.
And like I have all this stuff I have to
(31:18):
do too, and the mistake I think in both of
those is that it's actually both. I think it's both.
And why I think it's both is when I see
Jesus colliding with people in the New Testament. And I'll
use the guy waiting at the Stirring waters as an example.
He shows up to this guy and the guy is thinking,
if I just do this one thing, if I just
(31:40):
get to these waters, and Jesus is standing there, and
it's fascinating. Jesus has already shown me as so much
power to heal. He is the healer standing right in
front of the guy. And this guy is still talking
about if I just do these things, so he's relying
on himself like to heal himself. And Jesus says, do
you want to get hold who? You want to get well?
(32:01):
And the word want is the word thilo, and it
means to not only want something, but to purpose it
to action. So he's actually like beginning to suggest that
we have to participate in the healing we long for,
that we actually have to want our own healing as
much as we want God to want it. We can't
just sit around and be like, oh God, I just
(32:21):
pray that you make my body healthy. But In the meantime,
I'm gonna snarf on nachos and drink three gien and
Tonics every night. Like that, that doesn't work. He wants
us to participate in our own health and wellness, but
also not to rely only on ourselves, but with him,
to walk towards to walk towards healing. So when you
(32:42):
see Jesus with this guy, he's been there thirty eight years.
That's so long to feel stuck so long, and Jesus's
pick up your mat and walk, I would imagine a
guy who's been sitting somewhere not able to move from
a stuck place for almost four decades. Is like, bro, Jesus,
(33:05):
did you not get the memo, I'm the guy who
doesn't walk. You're asking me to pick up my mat
and walk. I don't walk, and Jesus is saying, I'm
actually asking you to move. Part of healing requires that
we not only believe God has power to heal, but
that we are willing to participate in the healing we
long for. It is absolutely both. God empowers us and
(33:28):
gives us agency. And you can say, well, I've tried things,
I've tried things. Well, what is one thing today? You
can do that you have not yet done, And I
don't know what that is for each of us. It's different, right,
Like I mentioned, For me with my dad, it was
writing a letter I never planned on sending. That was
(33:48):
something I could do. It didn't mean that I could
make my dad change, but I could write about my
pain and the pain that I felt like he caused.
I could write to him and never plan on sending it.
But months later or a year later, whatever the time was,
when I wrote it and I read it to my therapists,
the next move, God asked me to make his actually
(34:09):
put it in the mail, to actually send that letter.
And so there have been different times in my life
where the move that God is asking me to participate
in looks different. And what it looks like for you
is different than what it looks like for me, because
we have different pain. But I think God, He's gonna
ask you if you go to him, he wants to
(34:31):
enter your pain. He wants to agree with you and
wants to weep with you. He wants to hold you,
he wants to listen to you and process and be
a safe space for you can name pain, and he
already knows your pain there's not a freaking thing that
you have experienced that he does not know about. But
he wants you, like a good dad, to go to
him and bring him your pain, and he's gonna hold
(34:52):
it with you. But he might ask you to make
a move. And if he asks you to make a move,
that move is one step closer to your wholeness than
you were yesterday.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, And I think sometimes we can get paralyzed by
not seeing the in between steps and thinking. You know,
you look at a person maybe who's on the other
side of healing, or you imagine what your life might
be like completely free from the bondage of your pain,
and you think that's impossible. And then but you know,
(35:36):
I love that you're saying, give yourself permission to take
one small step like you, I bet you wouldn't have
written that letter if God had told you were going
to have to send it. I mean, that would have
probably been really difficult. So to look for the micro step,
like what is the one thing God's asking me to
do right in front of me, and then let him
worry about how that leads to healing.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Know we're a prayer podcast. What kind of Yeah, what
kind of host would I be if I didn't ask
you about what role has prayer played in your personal healing?
And you talk about a partnership of not just saying Okay,
God heal me, but what role does prayer play on
all the levels of healing that you kind of have
(36:23):
talked about.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I mean, oh goodness, I'm thinking over the years
of all the ways. I mean, prayer to me is
really talking to God, listening to God, being with God.
And over the years, I've needed that for so many things.
(36:46):
And I remember when I was first going to a
Christian therapist. I didn't go to her because she was Christian.
I wasn't a Christian. I was twenty years old. I
was completely broken. I was no longer speaking to my dad.
My mom lived all the way across the country and
I hadn't lived with her since I was a kid.
(37:08):
I felt alone. I felt on my own. I didn't
believe in a God or a higher power. I not
only been wounded by my parents and other characters growing
up and hadn't told anybody the things that happened to
me for two decades. But I was starting to hurt
my own life and found myself withdrawing from class in
(37:31):
a hotel. I didn't want to live anymore. I mean,
I was as broken as they come. I ended up
in a counseling office. Someone recommended this counselor and she
was Christian, and she actually I was starting to seek
is there a God? And who is Jesus? And God
had kind of surrounded me. He was stalking me, is
how I like to think about it. He was just
(37:51):
surrounding me with all these Christians. And I was like,
oh man, I'd never wanted to give any Christians a chance,
and he was trying to get a hold of my life.
And here I was in this therapist's office who loved Jesus,
and she and I started talking about God and she
asked me if, she said, when you think of one
(38:13):
of the hardest things you experienced as a child, I
want you to think of that right now, which is
a hard thing to do in general. And it was
really weird because the imagery I got was not a
picture of violence. It wasn't a picture of you know,
seeing people using drugs or being scared people were after us,
(38:35):
or it wasn't any of this crazy stuff. I pictured
myself alone on this like purply plumb colored, old tattered
velvet chair petting my cat when I was a little girl.
And she asked me, why that's what I pictured and
I and I said, I used to spend so much
time being left alone every night, and like not every night,
(39:01):
a lot of nights during the week, and I just
I felt so alone in the world, and I had
no one else and I didn't have siblings, and I
would sit there and just wish I wasn't alone. But
I felt like I deserved to be alone, and I
didn't know why. And she said, could you invite God
to go back and sit on that chair with you?
(39:24):
And I was like, no way, There is no way,
I am if God was sitting on that chair with me,
why would I have ever experienced any of this in
the first place, Like, there's no way I can do that.
And to make a long story short, And I write
about this in the book Jamie, but probably some time
later after really like pursuing and learning more about Jesus
(39:49):
and seeing how beautifull he is and gracious and kind,
and the Jesus who wept with Mary and Martha, and
you think about Mary and Martha, like they called Jesus
to come and save their brother, and he doesn't come
in time, and he purposely didn't come, and then he
shows up and two days later and their brothers died,
(40:12):
and they both with this raw honesty, they each run
out separately to Jesus and they say, if you had
been here, our brother would be alive. And if you
had been here, my brother would be alive. And they
had these if you hads with God, and I think
we all do. We have these things and I had those.
My biggest hang up with believing there was a God
(40:33):
was where were you when I needed you? Why didn't
you stop the abuse? Why didn't you protect me? Why
didn't you give me a different story? Why didn't have
a different moment dad that I had? Why didn't have
to go through all this by myself? Where were you?
And what I experienced in that therapist's office eventually was
that Jesus can handle all of those things. He can
(40:56):
handle all our if you hads, he can handle me
saying you were a no show, just like my dad.
I don't feel like you showed up for me. I
don't feel like you were there for me. Where were you?
Why weren't you there for me? And I had this,
and this is prayer. This is prayer. I finally invited
him to come sit on the chair with me, and
(41:19):
I had this moment that just completely like Jesus came
and he sat on that chair with me, and he
held me and he weeped with me, and he said,
you were never supposed to experience this hurt. You were never.
You were never intended to experience being alone and feeling
like you deserved me alone. You were you were never.
(41:41):
You were never supposed to to feel this way. But
wounded people wounded you. And he was weeping too, and
he held me on that chair, and I had this
experience where it's like he started stitching me up and
I was his daughter and he was my dad and
it was a beautifu experience. And so I think prayer
(42:03):
can look like that. But prayer can also look like
you know, me on my couch even yesterday in my
journal and just saying, Lord, here are things that are
hurting my heart right now, and I just lift those
things off and I say, I'm handing these to you,
and I'm hoping that you're in them, and that you
(42:24):
can be with these people and be with these hard circumstances,
and so I think prayer can look all sorts of
different ways, and I love talking about what I can
look like. But inviting God into your your if you hats,
inviting God into the things that are hurting your heart,
(42:45):
making a list of all the people that you love
who are hurting right now and handing them to God.
I mean, there's so many things that prayer is really
just just an invitation to let God come into those
hurting places, and He's healing, just his presence is healing.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I love that you give us such a great spectrum
of how prayer can look in different seasons, in different situations.
But yeah, what a beautiful what a beautiful picture of
I have never heard that Lazarus story spoken of in
the you know, in the context of you should if
you had been here, then it wouldn't have happened, or
(43:29):
this wouldn't have been this way in the context of
things that have happened to us in the past. Can
you talk about with prayer during your healing journey and
really just prayer at any point? What is the importance
of prayer in the context of community. I mean, I
(43:50):
think of prayer whenever someone says prayer. For the most part,
I think about my personal prayer time with God, but
the Bible. Just the more I read the Bible, the
more I am just inundated with God saying it was
never meant to be done in a vacuum. This life,
this Christian walk, prayer, everything like it's in a context
(44:11):
of the body of Christ. So what does that mean
to you? And what has that meant to you? And
in your journey having that community?
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Oh man, I have so many fun stories, and we
probably don't have all day for me to tell them.
But there's been so many moments where I've heard the
voice of God while praying in community with other people
that shifted my trajectory. I mean, I think about this
whole collide thing wasn't something I was trying to start right,
(44:41):
And I don't know how many years in I was
actually offered a position at a church and I was
gonna They said, you could bring Colyde under our umbrella.
You can get a salary, you can have all the resources,
you can do all you can have all this stuff.
You can have office and health insurance. And at the time,
(45:02):
we didn't have an office and we didn't have a budget,
and we didn't have a staff, and I wasn't getting
paid and I'm working over full time and all this stuff,
and so I invite some of my community. And we
also invited my son, who was probably in middle school,
to come, and we did this sort of I think
it's a Quaker tradition where they come and just ask questions.
(45:25):
They just ask you questions for discerning and you answered
the questions, but they don't give any opinions, and then you.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Pray, okay, so give me. And so is this You're
in a room and this is kind of like this
is a church gathering of.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
It's not a church gathering. It's in my living room.
I invite in your living room, okay, people in my
living room if I did my son, because I believe
that God speaks to kids as well, and I think
your kids need to know that they have a spiritual
voice and God can speak to them. And I say
that because we did this whole discerning thing. They asked
me all these fantastic questions and I answer, and then
(46:02):
we go to pray.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
So you answer the questions. So they'll ask you a
question to get you to kind of be thinking, and
you answer verbally back to them, is that right?
Speaker 1 (46:13):
And then they ask more questions, okay, and more questions,
and then at one point we all prayed. And it
was the prayer of my son that made it so
clear that God was calling me to do something that
didn't make any sense on paper. And the thing God
was calling me to do was to believe that He
(46:34):
was doing something bigger with this collide, thing that I
could imagine, and it wasn't underneath the umbrella of one church,
but that He actually wanted to impact and change so
many lives further beyond even the city I live in
or the county I live in, but beyond. And so
it was going to be actually me having to continue
(46:54):
to trust Him, even if it meant no money, no health, interests,
oh resources, no office, no whatever. But it was through
like this discerning prayer experience. And I look back at
that and go, wow, like, there's nothing wrong with being
a pastor of a church. That's amazing. But God had
an entirely different plan for me that I don't know
(47:16):
that I would have recognized without the discerning community who
gathered around me and prayed. Another example I think of is,
and I'll give this advice because I think this is
advice is cultivate friendships when you are okay. Oh yeah,
so that when you're not okay, those people feel like
(47:37):
they have permission to comments around you when you need
it most. And I had done that, not knowing that's
what I was doing. It cultivated some deep friendships with
some women. And I didn't know all of a sudden,
three women and they're not all close, but I'm close
to all of them. They just are from different pockets
of my life. But so they don't know each other well,
(48:00):
but they know who each other is. My husband did
not think I was okay. At one point in time,
I was struggling, and he called these girlfriends and they
show up on a Saturday morning and I'm on the
couch in pajamas and I'm like, what are you guys
doing here? And they're like, we're worried about you. And
they're like on the sitting on the carpet by the couch,
(48:21):
like they're on the ground, sitting there, not in a
creepy way, but just like close, and they're like, we're
worried about you, and so we came over here today
because we want to pray over you. And I was
like I don't know. I think I was humbled. I
think I was emotional, like I felt like, oh, these
people are taking up their Saturday for me. I'm totally fine,
(48:44):
I'll be fine. But I was also like wow, like
I have those kinds of friends where they get one
call and they're like, we're there, you know what I mean,
And so they prayed over me, and I felt hell
and I felt carried, like okay, like I can make
it through this really hard season. I'm like so loved
(49:06):
and cared for. And sometimes that's what we need to know.
But it's really hard to go finding that or creating
it when you're not okay. Like sow seeds into the
kind of relationships when you have some energy and when
you have the emotional like ability to invest in relationships
so that when you need it, they're there for you.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Wow, that is such good advice. I Alana and I
talk about this in terms of prayer, like, when you
have the mental space and the place in life where
you're feeling pretty solid, cultivate those habits, maybe set up
systems that you can fall back on when you're not okay.
But for friendships, that's beautiful, Like that is so important
(49:47):
because you don't have the energy to, you know, brush
your teeth in the morning. Sometimes when you're not in
a good place much less find people like you need
people that can already have been found, that are already invested.
That is so good.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I mean. The only other thing I would say is
for moms who are listening when you are having a
bad day, when your heart's hurting, when there's something stressful
going on, or when that's true of your kids, don't
pretend like you're fine, don't pretend like you're strong, don't
act like you have it all together, but instead be
real with your kids, like I'm having a hard time
(50:26):
and I need to go to God right now. Will
you pray with me? Or you know, model for your
kids that you go to God when things are hard.
And the reason why I say that is I did that.
I did not raise my kids and hide my pain.
They weren't my therapists. I'm not suggesting that, but I
tried to be very real with them about what is
true real pain. They saw real pain, but they also
(50:48):
saw real healing. And the reason why I bring that
up when it has to do with prayer, is a
week or so ago, I it was the week my
book was releasing. I was to preach three times in
a weekend. And I was already feeling really like a
vulnerable hangover from putting this book out because it has
all these stories that quote unquote, I'm not supposed to
(51:12):
tell raw, hard stories that are being put out in
the world. And I was struggling with that. And then
I had, you know, a very short period of time
to prepare for these three sermons that I had to give.
And I got the day that I had to start
working on those messages, I started getting so sick. I
(51:35):
was got some sort of terrible flu. I was vomiting,
I mean, tmi, I know, diarrhea. I had all things, egges, headaches,
like it was terrible, terrible, terrible, And I thought, Oh
my gosh, Lord, I don't know how I'm gonna do
this assignment you have for me. I'm not well, like
I feel like the enemy's at me, Like I don't
know how I'm going to pull this off. I was
(51:56):
nauseous all the time. And my son, he's twenty three
years old, and he called me on the phone day
two of being sick, three days out from the assignment
where I had just show up and you know, bring
a message to impact lives. And he says, Mom, can
I pray for you? And I said yes, So I'm
on the phone and he says, Jesus, what do you
(52:20):
want mom to hear? And he stayed totally silent, and
I listened, and I was like, wow, you know, Aiden,
I said, you know what God just said to me.
I was supposed to preach on the foot washing and
the cross and on the whole idea of you know,
Philippians too, and Jesus he did not consulder her equality
(52:41):
with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing,
emptied himself and died on a cross. I'd been studying
all that and when Jesus, when Aiden said, Jesus, what
do you want Mom to hear? I heard God say,
You're gonna come empty. I'm actually emptying out your entire
body on both ends. You're gonna come You're gonna feel
so weak, You're gonna feel like you have nothing to offer.
(53:04):
You're gonna feel like you have nothing to give. You're
actually going to have to resonate with the very characteristics.
You're going to tell people that I lived in that
moment like it was like, not something I wanted to hear,
but again, prayer and community. My son he knows where
(53:25):
to go when things are hard. He knows where to
go because we did it together as whole childhood and
he prayed over me, and I needed to hear that.
It actually sounds weird, but I got excited even though
I felt terrible that I was going to come empty,
because I knew there was a purpose for it. I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna come empty, which means your
power is going to show up even though I'm empty,
because you told me this is how it's supposed to go.
(53:46):
You know what I mean. So I just share that
story that happened last week, and I share it Jamie
because the influence that you have as a mom when
it comes to prayer, not in a religious duty, obligatory
blah blah blah. I'm talking about going to God when
things are hard with your kids because where else you
going to go? And then when they're young adults, they
(54:07):
know where to go. Yeah, and that is awesome. That's awesome.
I'm so glad my son knows where to go, and
now he's leading me when I need to go there.
So I thought i'd shared that before we close up.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
I'm so glad you did. That's what a great story,
what an amazing story.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Well.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Can you just tell us a little bit about just
tell us where we can find out more about Collide,
where your ministry, Where we can find out more about
your book, your podcast, and just all of the things
connect with you on social media online.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, totally. So if you want to find out about
my ministry, go to week Collide dot net, or you
can go to my own website page, which is Willowweston
dot com. If you want to come hang out with
me on Instagram and we can share life together there.
I'm on there at Willow and Weston. And as far
as grabbing a book there where books are sold to Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, you know the places.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
All the places. Well, thank you so so much for
talking to us and just sharing your stories. And thank
you again just for sharing hard things, because, like you said,
I know it was not easy for you to talk
about and put out to the world a lot of
the things that you've been through, and just to do
(55:24):
that with the knowledge that God redeems it and is
going to bring healing to so many people. Is just
so wonderful. Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Thank you for having me on Jamie.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Well, I'm going to close us in prayer. How can
we pray for you today?
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Willow? Thank you. I will take prayer every day. How
do I need prayer? I think this is like the
week that this book Collide releases, And yeah, I think
I mentioned it earlier, but it's a little bit. It's
terrifying and exciting. I'm so excited to see how God
could use it to bring healing to hurting people. But
(56:00):
I also feel terrified by putting this stuff out there.
So if you want to pray not only just for
my fear and my heart in that, but also that
God causes this book to get into the hands of
the people who need it, I would love that.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
All right, will do well, let's pray. God, thank you
so much for a Willow. Thank you for her story
and for meeting her in it, and for being there
even in the hardest of hard times when she didn't
know you were there. God, thank you for being there.
Thank you for opening doors for her to use the
(56:39):
things the enemy intended for evil to bring about healing
and hope and peace and good and glory for you
and your kingdom. We just pray that you would be
with her as this book goes out into the world,
and that you would just surround her with protection from
any lies, from the enemy, from anything except the absolute
(57:03):
certainty and joy and knowledge that you are in this book,
that you are using it to reach more people than
she ever could have imagined, and that you are pleased
with her, and that you are just absolutely in this
and working through this book. We just pray that you
(57:25):
would open doors that weren't open before for the book
to reach the people that need it the most. We
pray that healing and salvation would come through the pages
of this book. We pray that there would be no
barrier for it reaching the people you've intended it for
it to reach. And we just thank you so much
for being a redeemer, for being a God who uses
(57:48):
each one of us, and just for Willow's testimony of
how you bring us to the point of emptiness when
we get to the end of ourselves, that's when you
and your power is made perfect in that weakness. And
we praise you God. We praise you that there's nothing
the enemy can take from us. There's nothing this world
(58:09):
can do to us that will keep you from working
through us and in us. We just pray that we
would be open to it and receptive to it, and
that through us we would be able to not only
receive your healing, but extend it to the world. Thank
you so much, and thank you for Willow's message today
in Jesus name, Amen.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
Amen, Thank you Jamie.
Speaker 2 (58:36):
We'd like to take just a quick second to thank
the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us
on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
you will find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in
their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
and so much more. That's lifeaudio dot com.
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