Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thank you for taking the time to listen.
Links to our social media channels are available right now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
Is this your first time listening?
There are dozens of other amazing guests at bleedingdaylight.net.
Make sure you hear their stories too.
Can we choose joy or is it something that just happens?
Is there a place for joy in the midst of heartbreak?
Today's guest is helping others to chart a course through times of grief and struggle.
(01:03):
I'm joined today by the remarkable Kim Gilson, whose life has been a journey of resilience and passion.
The sudden loss of her husband marked a profound turning point, leading her to navigate grief while caring for her two young sons.
Embracing her passion for teaching, Kim became a certified trainer, speaker and coach.
(01:24):
Since retiring from public education in 2022, she's dedicated herself to inspiring others to fulfill their God-given purpose with humor and zeal.
Today, we'll explore her journey and her book Made for Community, a biblical model to activate your purpose.
It's such a pleasure to welcome her today.
(01:46):
Kim, thanks for your time.
I am so happy to be here.
I have to tell you, we in America love to hear the Australian accents.
I know that you feel that you were born to be a teacher.
Tell me how that played out in your earliest years.
When I was a child, my brother and sister were 10 and 12 years older than me, which meant that I had a lot of time at home by myself.
(02:12):
I kind of had the best of both worlds.
In some ways, I was an only child, but I have these older siblings that I love dearly.
And I was pretty good at entertaining myself.
I would go to school during the day and learn things.
And then I would go home at night and line up my stuffed animals and teach them.
And I had a little white wooden desk that had belonged to my sister.
(02:32):
And I would sit there and grade papers and I would have parent-teacher conferences with my stuffed animals.
And if I got mad at somebody at school that day, then I would name one of my animals after them that night and take it out on them.
And then I had a chalkboard in my room and I was so excited when I had extra money, I would go buy office supplies.
(02:54):
So it was always, I think, in my blood and it's interesting because neither of my parents are educators.
So there was this feeling from very early on that this is what you wanted to do.
And sometimes we play at things in our earliest years and that's got nothing to do with where life ends up for us.
But for you, it was that lifelong passion and it continued to be.
(03:18):
How did it play itself out as the years went on?
Well, for a while, I actually thought I wanted to be an author and that never really materialized or anything.
But when I got into high school, I was really passionate about playing my clarinet and I was in the marching band.
Our high school in Texas had one of the best marching bands at the time.
(03:42):
And I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but high school football is king in Texas, which means the marching bands that play at their halftime shows are a very, very big deal.
I just fell in love with music and band and I decided I wanted to be a band director.
So I went to college and got my bachelor's in music education and I did.
(04:07):
I taught band.
I actually went back to my old high school and taught there.
And that's a great career, but it's a lot of outside hours.
And after I had my first child, I realized the schedule does not work with being a mom.
So I became a math teacher and taught algebra.
I did that for a while and had an opportunity early in the days of distance learning.
(04:30):
Before learning from the internet, they would connect people through satellite video.
And so you could have people in remote locations connected through video and you could stay in your own town and get a master's degree.
Having the ability to do that made a master's degree accessible to me.
(04:52):
And the degree they offered was in administration.
So like being a principal.
I really just wanted to get the master's degree.
I didn't really want to use it, but God kind of got me into that.
I was a high school assistant principal for five years.
And then I went to central office for five years.
One day, the phone rang and this woman from a regional education service center called and said, Hey, my job is open.
(05:17):
Do you want it?
It was my dream job, but it was on the other side of Dallas.
So a really big commute.
And I told my husband about it and he said, Oh, this job is perfect for you.
I don't care about the commute.
I don't care about the money.
You need to take this job.
So on July 1st, 2014, I started my new job, had a three hour a day commute.
(05:42):
And on July 2nd, my husband died of a blood clot.
My second day on this new job.
So it was, it was an interesting journey to that point.
Were there any warning signs up to that point that there was any issue?
We know that blood clots can act very quickly and they may not be warning signs.
Was there any indication at all?
(06:04):
That is such a great question.
He was a bodybuilder.
He had the body of a Greek God.
I mean, his biceps were 18 inches and he had a background in physiology.
He was doing a lot of driving with his job, which we know can lead to blood clots.
And he kept complaining of a Charlie horse and his leg.
(06:24):
Just kind of a, a knot could be from dehydration or whatever in my leg.
And because of his background in physiology, if he said he had a Charlie horse, he had a Charlie horse.
Well, it was actually a deep vein thrombosis, a DVT that broke free from his leg.
Those take you out pretty quickly.
(06:45):
Whenever we lose someone, there's always such a series of things that we go through in the process of grief.
And there's always those, what if questions, those questions in the back of the mind, if we'd only done this or only done that, how much did those things play on your mind?
(07:05):
I would lie if I say that they didn't, but I was in such a position, I didn't really have time to dwell on it.
I decided to keep the new job.
The first call I made was to his parents.
That is a horrible phone call to make.
And the second call was to my prior boss because they had not filled my old job yet.
(07:26):
My parents sat down with me that night and we decided I would take the new job.
My word became forward.
I didn't have time to dwell on it.
I had to provide for my children.
I was able to look back over the previous year and I could point to things God had led us to and through to prepare us for this.
(07:50):
I could see his hand and his preparation.
And as much as I didn't like it, as bad as it hurt, I knew that we were in God's hands and his care.
And the night my husband died, I laid in bed with my boys and my younger son said, the God of the universe is going to take care of us, Mom.
(08:11):
We're going to be okay.
I had to pick that.
I had to pick surviving and thriving for my kids.
You're left in a place where there's not only your own grief that you're having to work through and process, but for your boys as well.
Tell me about that tension.
(08:31):
I mean, great that one of your sons automatically says, hey, God's going to look after this.
But what was it like for you trying to manage your own grief whilst helping your sons process their grief?
Yeah, that was seriously a juggling act.
We were about in the middle of summer vacation.
My children were 13 and 15 at the time.
(08:52):
The 15-year-old was just learning to drive and had marching band starting August 1st.
That kept him busy.
He was with friends.
He had activities.
He was tired at the end of the day.
My other son had a really long summer.
He was in junior high school.
He didn't have some of those things.
(09:14):
They were kind of in two different places that way.
My parents stepped in.
I have a phenomenal family support system.
The immediacy was trying to keep them busy.
I broke every rule.
They say don't make any major changes right after you lose somebody, but we had a really large house that was not easy to get to from town.
(09:37):
Neither one had their driver's license yet.
I put the house on the market.
By the end of August, I sold a house, bought a house, and moved.
The boys were very much in favor of that.
They wanted a new house.
They wanted that fresh start.
Their bedrooms were very near mine.
We were all on the same side of the house.
(09:58):
That gave them comfort.
Over the course of time, I went through grief share, as did one of my sons.
It is a phenomenal Christian non-denominational grief recovery program.
I can't say enough good things about it.
Two of us went through that.
I offered counseling.
One of them took up the counseling.
That has been on the table ever since.
(10:21):
We're 10 years into this.
I'm sure that I made mistakes, but we gave each other grace.
Anytime anybody screwed up, we didn't hold grudges.
We gave each other grace and space to be mad, to cry, to be sad.
I can tell you that 10 years later, we are incredibly close still.
(10:44):
My boys will tell you that they are each other's best friends.
I recently got remarried back in March.
My younger son gave the most beautiful speech.
He talked about how he didn't appreciate until recently, looking back, what I went through for them, how hard it was for me, and all that I did to provide for them to give them the lives they have today.
(11:09):
There was not a dry eye in the house.
The other son gets up to the microphone.
We're all thinking, I can't handle any more of this.
I'm going to be a puddle of ooze.
The other son picks up the microphone and says, Don, thank you for taking our mother antique shopping so we don't have to.
(11:29):
The entire room burst into laughter.
It was just such a testament to their resilience and the fight for joy that we picked.
We were committed to coming out on the other side of this as whole, good, joyful people.
That was one of my proudest parenting moments ever.
(11:52):
I just want to pick up on something you said, that you made mistakes along the way in the process of grieving and of how you work that out with your sons.
I'm wondering how often people are caught in the process of grieving and unsure of which way to go that they end up becoming frozen and don't move forward at all.
(12:16):
Have you seen that in the experience of others?
I certainly know it is something, and you do see it.
It's very, very sad.
I think it's hard to get somebody to see that in themselves.
I think group grief recovery is so very important because that is one night a week you get to take the mask off and be you.
(12:43):
You don't have to pretend for anybody.
You can be with other people that are in your boat.
It gives you a sense of community that I'm not alone in this.
You can see people at different stages in their grief.
It shows you different models that you can follow, different actions that you can take.
(13:05):
It's one thing to go through the process of grief and then come out to be okay, but you actively wanted to reclaim your joy.
Tell me about that journey.
The night I laid in bed with my boys, so many thoughts are going through your head.
I was 43 at the time.
I've had a good life.
(13:26):
My husband always said he was going to die young.
I found out at his memorial service from kids he grew up with that when they were kids, he said, yeah, I'm going to die at a young age.
I, on the other hand, fully intend to be here until at least 100.
I've got really good genes in my family.
I laid there in bed that night, and I thought, I don't know how people carry this intense pain the rest of their life.
(13:50):
I mean, I could have another 60 years.
I can't carry this intensity, this rawness for 60 years.
I've had 43 really good years, which is 43 more than a lot of people have, but I don't know how to live unhappy.
I don't want to be unhappy the rest of my life.
The second part of that was, I don't want my boys to say this was the last good day they ever had.
(14:18):
From here on out, my life was over.
I don't want them to spiral downward.
I don't want them to be a statistic.
I laid there that night, and I vowed we will fight for joy.
I will do whatever it takes because I want them to have joyful lives.
If they're going to have joyful lives, number one, I have to show them it's okay.
(14:40):
Being sad the rest of your life is not going to bring your daddy back, and it's not going to change anything.
Number two, I had to show them how.
I remember it was like I saw this really dark tunnel in front of me, but if I squinted really hard at the end of that long dark tunnel, I could see this tiny, tiny flicker of light.
(15:01):
I knew the only way to the light was through the tunnel.
We couldn't shortcut it.
We couldn't go around it.
We couldn't go under it.
We were just going to have to go through it one day at a time.
There are people that just try and push down the emotions, and they push them to one side.
I fear that they go after moments of happiness rather than going through it and finding what you're describing, which is joy.
(15:28):
Tell me about the difference between those.
Yeah, so the happiness is circumstantial, and those are great things.
I love to go to Disney World.
I love to go to live concerts.
I'll tell you, when I was a little girl, we would go camping on the weekend.
I would have such a good time that on Sunday, I would wake up sad, and I would cry all the way home because the trip was over.
(15:51):
Temporary circumstances made me very happy.
The joy behind those trips was the love of my parents, and my brother, and my sister, and that stayed with you.
You really have to look at the things that matter, and the things that last, and the things that stay.
(16:11):
My church family was incredibly important in all of this, and I'm not going to lie to you, we certainly enjoyed happy occasions.
Many of those were bittersweet.
There was a family wedding 10 days after the death of my husband in the church where we got married.
You don't want what's just happened to you to dampen that experience, and so I played the role of me, and I did that many times.
(16:38):
I've got to go play the role of me for this particular circumstance.
But when you find joy, it doesn't go away.
When the party is over, and the balloons have been popped, there is still something inside of you that looks forward to tomorrow.
I love that idea that you say, I had to play the part of me.
(17:01):
Can you help me unpack that idea of sometimes when we have to play the part of me, it might seem to some people like we're just faking it, and yet we're actually trying to use that muscle memory of, hey, let's get back into how things should be.
There is a danger that it can be just acting, but on the other hand, I'm sure that it is a way to actually get back to some sort of normal and to reclaim joy.
(17:29):
It is.
I will say this.
It is a necessary survival mechanism at times.
You don't want to be fake all the time.
Nobody wants to be around somebody who is crying and moaning all the time, either.
There are social situations where you do kind of have to put on your happy face for the sake of other people because it's not all about you.
(17:54):
I certainly came through what I call my survival season with some very selfish habits, but there's times that you have to realize, you know, this is somebody's birthday party.
They deserve to have a good time.
Let me go set aside the sadness that I'm feeling right now.
Let me look for some things to be happy and joyful about in this circumstance, but you just have to be careful that that is not your norm, that you give yourself the space and grace to be real and to own all the feelings that you're feeling.
(18:29):
Grief is such a layering process.
We can't handle all of the grief at once, and so I believe that God exposes us to a little bit at a time, and as you process one layer of grief, you might kind of reach a landing place for a little bit, and then another thing comes along.
(18:51):
Okay, well now I've got to deal with this layer, and so there's very much an ebb and flow, and sometimes are easier and sometimes are much harder.
We've already discussed the fact that teaching is in every fiber of your being, so naturally, as difficult as this season may be, I know that you wanted to then teach others how to go through it.
(19:13):
So what came next as far as learning better ways to actually teach this to others?
Let's go back to God's plan and God's goodness.
In our education system, kids take these tests every year, and then they get all this data, and there's these accountability systems where the data is used to rate schools.
(19:34):
I was really good at it.
The job that I had was serving like 125 school districts where I would teach and support this complex system that was very boring, that nobody liked, nobody wanted to go to a training on the state assessment and accountability system, but I found out I was really good at it.
(19:59):
So I was teaching adults, building presentations, and building trainings, and making people laugh in the process, and after a few years of that, I went, I want to do this for something that matters.
I want to do this for the kingdom.
I want to use my skills to teach people.
So in 2019, I became a certified Zig Ziglar trainer and coach, and then COVID happened, right?
(20:25):
And at that point, I had left the commute for a job closer to home, and I was the chief academic officer, which is, you know, this really big fancy title of a school district, and the whole, let's figure out how to learn online.
Yeah, guess who got to lead that effort?
Everything was sidelined.
I mean, it's so many people's dreams were.
By the end of 2021, I had had it.
(20:47):
I felt like God can help me do hard things.
I can do hard things.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, but this is killing me.
Like, I've had seven years of doing hard things.
This job is killing me.
I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack on the job.
I had a dream one night, and I woke up, and I said, okay, God's given me the release.
I can say enough, and I retired from public education.
(21:09):
I wasn't ready to go teach yet.
I wasn't ready to really pick up the dream.
I just wanted to coast.
That's all I wanted to do.
I got a job less than a mile from my house as the curriculum director of a Christian daycare.
You talk about a great retirement gig.
Tomorrow is Noah's Ark day, and we're having a parade, and I have a shark onesie I'm going to wear, and I'm going to go circle around all the kids when they get Noah's Ark tomorrow.
(21:38):
I can't wait.
I had been retired about three weeks, and I go to church one day, and I just kind of have this experience, this insight.
It turned into a sermon that turned into a book, and I'm like, okay, this is it.
This is what God sent me here to do.
I've had those skills.
I had that opportunity.
I got to develop it in the job, and then it was how do I do this for the kingdom?
(22:02):
The grief is a part of my story.
It is a part of who I am.
I can't teach anything without that context, but I don't want grief to be my legacy.
I don't want that to be the only thing I can talk about.
Everything that I teach now that's in there because it's such a part of me, I don't want to be limited to that story.
(22:29):
You came to write your book, Made for Community, a biblical model to activate your purpose.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
Explain the premise of the book for me.
I told you that after I retired, I just wanted to coast.
One Sunday morning, I decided I would go to our ladies' 9 a.m. Bible study before church started.
I was so excited, and I could not wait.
(22:52):
Are we going to talk about Paul?
Are we going to do a gospel?
Are we going to do David?
What are we going to talk about?
I get in there, and they're discussing a social issue that had come up, but I didn't understand why we were making a deal out of it.
I didn't see the big deal.
I didn't agree with their viewpoint on it, and I kind of had this mini panic attack.
One of these things does not belong here, and it's me.
(23:14):
I'm not as good of a Christian.
Clearly, there is something wrong with me, and I don't belong in this group, and so I'm not kidding.
I go to bend over to get my things to leave, and I hear this voice say, you sit right there.
You were created in my image, and my image is too great and too vast for any one person to represent all of me.
(23:37):
You sit right there and contribute your part, and that is where the book was born.
You see, we are designed to be the body of Christ and to exist in community, and where is the enemy going to attack if that's our design?
He's going to come after that, and he's going to isolate and divide us.
(23:59):
In America, our U.S. Surgeon General has declared loneliness an epidemic.
The World Health Organization is saying this is a huge health crisis, and I was doing a little bit of studying, and it appears that Australia is also experiencing this crisis of loneliness.
(24:20):
So I think we need to come back and have a reset on how we view community.
The first part of the book talks about some statistics and the need for community, but then it walks us through an individual, almost an inventory, of how did God design me to contribute to community.
(24:46):
First of all, I've got to realize He did design me to contribute to community, and I have very special things I bring to the table.
A lot of people don't think they have value, or they've never really thought about the value.
Then the next part of the book talks about the biblical model.
I believe we are designed to live in reciprocal relationships, where we pour into and receive from each other like pitchers pouring into cups, but at some point the cup overflows and becomes a pitcher itself.
(25:25):
And so it's where these intersections occur.
This is what I have.
What do you have that I need?
How can we bless each other, and how can we view each other in a new way to fight back against the darkness of division and isolation?
(25:46):
It's interesting that that is so counter-cultural these days, because we've been told for so long, you can be anything you want to be.
You go for it.
You're the most important person in your life, and yet you come along and say, well, actually, yes, there is stuff that we need to work on for ourselves, but it's only so that we can connect better with others, that we were actually created to connect with others.
(26:14):
Do you find that people find it takes them a little while to get their head around this idea, because it is so counter-cultural?
Yes, definitely.
The day that I got the idea for the book, I went to one of the leaders at church.
I'm on the preaching team there, and I said, hey, I got a message.
It went from a sermon, but then it turned into a class.
(26:36):
We had a session, and it was Easter week, so Resurrection Sunday had happened, and this was Wednesday night.
We did a session called The Lies We Believe, and it's the things that we believe about ourselves that go against God's word.
Just Sunday, we were singing, hallelujah, Jesus died for us, we're going to spend eternity with him.
(27:02):
Now, Wednesday, it's like, nobody likes me, I'm not good enough, I've got imposter syndrome.
People really have to identify the lies they believe about themselves, and then the lies they believe about other people, and recognize.
We all want to hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant.
(27:24):
If you believe that God has purposes for your life, it's a light bulb moment when you realize, I can't achieve his purposes for my life, unless I am helping other people achieve his purposes for their lives.
It's an amazing interdependence that we're called into.
(27:45):
We even see in the Trinity that there's this interdependence, there's this community there that we so often lose in our day-to-day walk.
As you've written this book, as you've shared this message, what sort of response have you had when people have finally thought, aha, I get this now?
(28:07):
Two people initially whose feedback meant so much to me, well, let me say three people.
One of them I talk about in the book, my spiritual gifts are exhorter and teacher, you know, hers is prophet.
She's the black and white, she's all about righteousness, and together we just have the coolest friendship.
(28:28):
She was a huge encourager, but I know the book spoke to her, and so because she's so very different from me, that meant a lot to me.
But then my mother is one of the most godly women I have ever known, one of the sweetest women.
When I was in high school, everybody wanted my mom to be their mom.
(28:49):
She is 85 years old and still just doing great, and she said my book made her rethink things about herself.
And I went, if I can make my mother love herself more, it's all worth it.
If nobody else ever read the book, that one thing would be worth it.
(29:13):
And then I had another very special family member, it's actually my late husband's mother, she's still my mother-in-law.
She talked to me about the chapter on forgiveness.
She talked about specific examples and how it really made her rethink forgiveness.
(29:33):
When you can bless people that you love that much, that means more than any Amazon review you could ever get.
Who do you really feel is the best audience for this book?
There is an age range of people, and I think COVID did such a number on the social lives of the people who are maybe in that 18 to 25, 27 kind of that age in there.
(30:04):
They were in maybe their high school or their college years when they should have been making those really deep lifelong friendships and connections and finding interest to connect them to people, and they were sent home in isolation and they weren't allowed to develop that.
And so now they're out there going, we're lonely, we don't know how to meet people, we don't know what to do.
(30:28):
This is a group of people I would really love to see embrace this, because I think they just got the shortest end of the COVID stick when it came to socialization.
So there is certainly that demographic, those young people that didn't get the opportunity right at that crucial moment in their lives to connect with people.
(30:52):
But as you say, there are people that are into their 80s that are actually saying, this is helping me go forward in life.
So I imagine there's a wide range of people that will really benefit from reading the book.
Well, I certainly hope so.
One of the big things, like with my mom, I want them to greater appreciate the way God designed them and to strengthen the vertical relationship they have with God, and then let that flow into their horizontal relationships.
(31:27):
Kim, I'm sure it's going to be a book that will bring light and life to many people's lives.
I'm going to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can get hold of the book.
Also pointing to your website so people can connect with you there.
But I just want to say thank you so much for sharing some of your journey today on Bleeding Daylight.
(31:48):
It has been an honor.
And again, it is just always a blessing to hear those beautiful Australian accents.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.