June 16, 2024 • 32 mins
In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, host Rodney Olsen engages in a profound conversation with Melinda Patrick, a woman whose life story is a testament to resilience and faith amidst trying circumstances. Melinda shares her journey from doubt and despair to hope and joy, emphasizing the transformative power of living in response to God rather than reacting to life's challenges. As the host of the Even While podcast and the author of The Daring Rescue, Melinda offers invaluable insights on navigating the complexities of waiting, especially for Christian parents with LGBTQ-identified children. Her mission is to inspire others to see beyond their current circumstances and discover the hidden treasures that God has for them.
Throughout their discussion, Melinda and Rodney explore various forms of waiting, from health issues to relational struggles, and the pain that often accompanies these periods of uncertainty. Melinda's personal experiences, including the poignant story of her first husband's end-of-life journey and her ongoing prayers for her wandering child, illustrate her deep understanding of waiting on God’s timing. She shares practical advice on how to live abundantly even in the waiting, highlighting the importance of trusting God’s perfect timing and maintaining a strong faith. This episode is a source of encouragement for anyone feeling stuck or in a season of waiting, offering hope and practical wisdom for moving forward with faith and purpose. WEBLINKS Melinda’s Website Facebook Group Instagram
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
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 to today's episode.
You'll find Bleeding Daylight on a range of social media platforms.
Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
Please share episodes with others so they can kick at the darkness too.
What do we do in the waiting?
How do we move forward when circumstances make it feel like our life is on hold?
Whether the waiting is around a relationship, a wandering child, a health issue, or any other reason, today's guest invites you to live abundantly.
(01:01):
Today I'm in conversation with Melinda Patrick.
Melinda's journey from doubt and despair to hope and joy is truly inspiring.
Melinda has discovered the transformative power of living in response to God rather than reacting to circumstances.
Now she's on a mission to embolden and equip others to see beyond their circumstances and discover the hidden treasures that God has for them.
(01:27):
She hosts the Even While podcast, helping others to live life to the full in the midst of waiting.
In her book, The Daring Rescue, Melinda shares invaluable insights and principles for Christian parents navigating the complexities of loving their LGBTQ-identified child while staying true to their faith.
(01:50):
I'm so pleased to have her join me today.
Melinda, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's a joy to be here with you today.
You talk about living a full life while waiting, and that kind of waiting can cover, I guess, a range of seasons in our lives.
I often think of it as the in-between, when we're not quite at one place or the other.
(02:11):
Help me understand the kinds of waiting that you're talking about.
Exactly that.
Waiting can be for anything.
It could be waiting to get married, waiting to purchase your first house, but then it can go to waiting for your loved one to come to know Jesus in a real and personal way, or waiting for test results to come back with our health.
(02:37):
Waiting for everyone, it's just like when they say pain, no one's pain is greater than someone else's.
What we're walking through is pain to us, and it's a reality.
Waiting can be painful and frustrating at times and lead us to feeling like we're lost, or we need to put our life on hold regardless of what we're waiting for.
(03:00):
There's a kind of waiting that I guess all of us become familiar with at one time or another, and that is when we know that there's a loved one who is nearing the end of life, and we're not quite sure when that will happen.
We're in that waiting period.
We certainly don't wish that they're going to pass away, but we know that life is on hold in that time.
(03:23):
That's a very difficult in-between, isn't it?
Do you address that kind of waiting for people?
I absolutely do.
In fact, three years ago, my children and I walked through that with their father, with my first husband.
Just in that waiting, knowing that there was nothing else that could be done here on earth to bring healing to him, and we had to surrender that outcome to God and let Him show up and be God in that situation.
(03:55):
He actually wrote a story that we never would have expected.
It was a long wait.
He was actually someone that I had prayed for, for over 30 years, to come to know the Lord.
In the last few months of his life, he finally surrendered his life to the Lord.
God answered my long, long prayers, but He didn't answer in a way that I expected or in the time I expected.
(04:21):
But He was still faithful, and He showed Himself to be true in that situation.
That's a difficulty that we all face, where we ask God for something, and we haven't worked out in our mind exactly how God should answer this prayer.
When it doesn't happen like that, it can sometimes seem that God is absent.
(04:43):
Is that a common experience with those that you're working alongside and helping?
Absolutely.
I experienced that myself.
Even though I was raised in the church, I came to know Jesus and received Him into my life, or gave my life to Him at the age of 12.
Then I prayed and prayed for my husband to come to know the Lord.
(05:07):
I prayed for him for over 30 years.
In those times, we ended up divorcing.
I found myself questioning, God, do you hear me?
Are you going to answer?
Do you even care?
Where are you?
I believe that's a very common question for someone, especially in a long waiting season, whatever you're waiting for.
(05:28):
For some, it may be somebody wanting to have a child and continues to experience infertility.
For me, waiting for a loved one to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and just walking through that and coming to a place where I really had to wrestle with God.
Who are you?
Where are you?
Do you care?
He showed up.
(05:49):
He showed up.
I wonder for a lot of people who have been brought up in the church, whether they feel they have the license to ask those big questions.
We certainly see it in the Psalms where people are calling out to God and say, hey, I feel abandoned.
That's the sort of thing that you're talking about.
God, are you even there?
Do you really care?
(06:10):
Do you think sometimes we don't feel that we have license to ask that of God?
Oh, 100%.
After my first husband passed away, and it's a whole God story right there because by then I was married to my husband now, but through God writing his perfect story, I became one of the caregivers, one of the primary caregivers of my first husband.
(06:37):
And so I was able to walk that through with him and our two children.
And I remember after Michael passed away, he had surrendered his heart to the Lord.
He was able to share his testimony and his heart with our children, encouraging them to turn to the Lord.
I ended up speaking at his funeral and seven people gave their hearts to the Lord.
(06:59):
I had recorded him sharing his testimony before he passed away.
I played that at his service.
So he basically preached his own service.
But I found myself, Rodney, in weeks after that, a little angry at God because he finally answered my prayer, but it wasn't in a way that I had expected.
(07:21):
It wasn't in the timing I expected.
He had finally given my children the father that they were wanting.
And then he took him.
A friend of mine recommended that I read the book, A Sacred Sorrow by Michael Card.
And it's basically talking about the lost language of lament.
(07:41):
Too often in our waiting seasons, we're afraid to ask the hard questions and we just keep pushing through life.
But there comes a time if we really want to go deep with the Lord, if we really want to enter into that place of intimacy, of knowing him, we need to sit with the hard questions and we need to ask him the questions, but then we need to sit there and wait.
(08:04):
And I think about the two men on the road to Emmaus.
It was after Jesus Christ had been resurrected and they were walking and they were just saying to each other how disappointed they were that they thought Jesus was the king.
What had happened over the few days before did not look like him entering into being a king.
(08:25):
As he walked with them, they didn't recognize him.
And he was asking what was going on.
And they were like, do you not know?
Are you not from around here?
Have you not heard?
We thought that he was the king and things are not like we expected.
And Jesus continued to walk with them.
And he walked with them through the scriptures as he was there with them and told them back in what had gone on with Moses and why what had taken place must have taken place.
(08:56):
It says that when the men got to where they were going, Jesus was going to continue on, but the men invited him into their home.
And it says, I love this scripture, as they sat down with him and he broke the bread, their eyes were opened.
And when we're in waiting seasons and God isn't answering in the time that we want or in the way that we want, we can quickly just get up and not want to take the time to sit at the table with him and ask the hard questions.
(09:24):
But it's when we pause everything else in life and say, God, I'm frustrated.
I'm angry.
I don't see you.
I feel like you're absent, but I'm going to sit here.
I'm going to sit here in this waiting, and I'm going to grieve where I need to grieve.
And I'm going to trust that you're going to reveal a deeper part of you in this season.
(09:46):
And when we choose to do that, God is faithful to open our eyes and reveal himself to us.
He is not a God who stays hidden from us.
There might be little seasons where he does, but God wants to be known just as each of us want to be known.
But are we willing to enter into that place and just sit and wait and give him time to respond?
(10:10):
You mentioned that the story of the man on the and it was in something simple, something as mundane as breaking bread.
At that moment, their eyes were opened and they saw Jesus for who he was.
And I know that you've been through seasons where it's really hard to find joy.
It's been really hard to go on where there have been fractures in family, broken dreams.
(10:35):
What was it for you?
What was maybe the mundane thing that suddenly opened your eyes to the reality of all that God could be in these times?
He does love to show up in the mundane.
If we are praying, we need to be watching for him and expecting.
And I believe one of the mundane things for me is that I had to choose to live in those seasons of waiting.
(11:00):
I'm still in seasons of waiting.
I have a child who's wandering out in the far land right now, and I am continually praying and interceding and waiting and watching.
God doesn't offer us abundant life when we get to heaven.
That abundant life when we have surrendered our heart to him begins today, even in the muck and in the mire and in the mundane of life.
(11:24):
When we begin to live with eyes opened, expecting him to show up, that's when we're going to be able to see him.
Tell me about this whole idea of moving from living in reaction to circumstances to living in response to God.
One of my love languages is games.
(11:46):
A lot of times in the evening after dinner, my husband and I will play a game.
This night we were playing Chinese checkers.
I can be a little competitive.
We were playing and I had my men moved out.
You've got marbles and you jump men in order to get to the other side.
(12:08):
I had everything planned out, but then all of a sudden I looked down, Rodney, and I was losing.
I was like, how could this be?
I knew what I was doing.
On the inside, I was like, don't panic.
It's going to be okay.
So I looked at the board and my husband jumped, and then I jumped, and then he jumped three of my men.
(12:29):
I was like, okay, something's going on.
Finally, I was like, I need to call a timeout.
You don't get timeouts in Chinese checkers.
I said, well, I don't know, but I need to call a timeout.
I said, I do not understand what's going on.
It was in that moment the Lord said, Melinda, you're lost in this game because you're playing in reaction to Him and not in response to how you had thought it would go.
(12:57):
He said, but in life you're lost.
You are living and moving in reaction to the circumstances around you, and you are not moving in response to me anymore.
It was in that moment I had to take a good look at my life.
At that time, there was a lot going on around us, a lot of circumstances and painful things going on around us.
(13:21):
I found that I had shifted my focus from God to the circumstances and the people around me.
I was now moving in reaction to them and not in response to God.
When we do that, that's when we begin to find ourselves lost in life.
That's when we find ourselves lost in the waiting.
(13:43):
I will be the first to admit it's easy to shift our eyes, to move our eyes to what's happening and take that focus off, but we've got to be intentional.
If we want to live in this season of wait, it begins with getting quiet before the Lord and moving in response to Him.
The interesting thing is, these are the sorts of lessons that we need to learn again and again.
(14:07):
When we suddenly realize, oh, I'm doing it again, we think, how could I do that?
Yet God is always there faithfully bringing us back to what He may have taught us many years ago.
Do you find that that's continually what goes on through the cycles of life?
Absolutely.
I have a great illustration of that.
(14:28):
I speak on waiting.
You would think that, oh my goodness, she's been speaking on waiting for at least 10 years.
She would have it down.
She would know exactly how to move and to react and to respond in waiting situations.
But just last week, I was waiting on Amazon to approve a book I just wrote.
(14:50):
I thought, well, in order to help the situation along, I took matters into my own hands and pushed publish on that book while I was waiting on Amazon because I thought, well, surely everything's going to come back correct.
Well, my proof copy of my book came back with errors in it, but I had pushed publish.
(15:11):
Now my book, once Amazon approved it, it was out into the world for anyone to purchase.
I found myself thinking, why did I not wait?
I know taking matters into my own hands is not a good thing.
When will I ever finally get this lesson so I don't have to relearn it over and over?
When you look at the big schema of things in life, waiting on a prodigal, waiting for things, maybe healing in your marriage, pushing publish on a book isn't a big deal.
(15:42):
But I just could not get over the fact that I have not learned this.
I am still being tested in something, and I'm still struggling to just wait in God's timing and trust the process.
I mentioned in the introduction your book, The Daring Rescue.
Tell me about that book and what went into writing it.
(16:04):
So The Daring Rescue, joining Jesus Christ in his pursuit of your LGBTQ identified child's heart.
This is a labor of love that's very, very close to my heart.
I have a My daughter actually is living in the LGBT community.
She came to me in 2011 sharing with me that she experienced same-sex attraction.
(16:31):
The book is lessons that I have learned, a small portion of our story that we've lived out over the last 12 years.
You would have hoped that everything would be fine right now and that she would be walking with the Lord, but she's still out there in that community.
But we've come to a place of agreeing to disagree.
(16:52):
We've come to a place of respecting one another and understanding that we need each other, that we love one another and our lives are worthy of each other's time and love and respect.
And so over the last 10 years, I've been given the opportunity to speak and encourage hope to parents, Christian parents who are walking this journey out as well.
(17:18):
It's difficult, especially at being a follower of Jesus Christ.
How do we walk in the tension of holding firm to biblical truth and standard while loving our child well?
I lay out the lessons in this book, the ones that God has taught me over the last 10 years.
One of the interesting things in our society today is this whole thing of tribalism, that there's an us and them, and we seem to be more divided than ever.
(17:48):
And what that really in effect does is if someone disagrees with me, then I say, they hate me.
And yet that's not the case.
And in this case, you have a disagreement with your daughter.
Your daughter has a disagreement with you, and yet you found a way to say, we don't agree with each other on this, but we can still coexist.
(18:10):
We can still show love to one another.
Tell me about some of the lessons that you've learned as far as that's concerned.
Probably one of the biggest lessons I have learned, Rodney, is that my child is not a problem to fix, but a person to love.
And the Lord has taught me along the way.
I've made many, many mistakes.
And there are things that I have had to go back and ask for forgiveness for from her.
(18:36):
And there are things that I have had to repent of over the course of time.
And I'm sure there will still be mistakes I've made.
We're human.
We're never going to get this 100% right.
My child is not a problem to fix, but a person to love.
She needs Jesus just as much as I did.
And I've learned along the way that there are roles that the Holy Spirit takes on, and then there are roles that I take on as a mom.
(19:06):
When I begin to move in the lane of the Holy Spirit's roles, what I'm doing then is I'm getting in His way.
That causes a collision.
It causes confusion.
It causes me having to wrestle with the waiting again.
And so over time, I've learned to come to the place of understanding that I'm not going to be the one to open her eyes.
(19:29):
I'm not going to be the one to create within her a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
I'm not going to be the one to bring sanctification to her life.
I'm not going to be the one to convict her of her sin.
Those are all roles of the Holy Spirit.
My role that God has clearly laid out for me as her mother is to love her, biblically love her.
(19:52):
Sometimes that means standing for truth and speaking truth to her, but I am to biblically love her according to 1 Corinthians 13.
I'm also to pray for her.
I'm to pray for her according to Scripture and according to God's leading and guiding in my quiet time with Him.
I am to enjoy her.
(20:14):
He entrusted her to me.
Psalm 139 says that before He formed us in our mother's womb that He knew every day ran out for us.
And so He knew before He placed her in my womb.
He knew exactly the days that we would be facing.
And so He knew the mom that she would need, but He also knew the daughter that I would need.
(20:38):
And so God has used her, although I would never want this story for anyone.
I don't want this story still to this day for us, but God has used this season in our life to transform me, to refine me, to make me look more like Jesus.
There have been some very humbling moments on my end, moments where I have had to surrender and submit and say, Father, I am so sorry.
(21:04):
I thought my way was best, just like I did with hitting publish.
But this is a little bit more because this involves another life and this involves the impact on eternity for her.
And so I've had humbling moments.
I've had to realize that God has entrusted her to me.
As a follower, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I need to be a good steward of what He has entrusted to me.
(21:29):
I get to enjoy just her as a person.
When she first came to me with her same-sex attraction and then her choice to embrace an LGBT identity, I struggled with seeing her beyond that decision.
Every time I was around her, all I saw was homosexuality and sin and the choices that she had made.
(21:50):
And it was putting a wedge between us.
I was not able to show up as her mom, fully just engaged and just loving her and being willing to sit with her and to talk and to be a safe place for her.
And so I began to pray, God, give me eyes to see her as you see her.
In that time, God reminded me that she's still the daughter that loves to bake and to cook in the kitchen.
(22:16):
She's still the daughter that loves to rock climb.
We both have Jeeps.
We love to take the soft tops off our Jeep and go back roading.
Those are things we enjoy doing together.
And God reminded me, we can focus on our differences and that's going to keep us separated or we can focus on what we have in common.
(22:42):
And so I began to shift to focus on the things that we have in common.
Because right now, my daughter needs to experience Jesus.
And she has the opportunity to do that when I am with her and I have surrendered my heart to Him.
He then is able to live through me and minister to her.
(23:03):
It's been quite a learning lesson.
I've learned that I need to patiently wait again and trust His timing and leave the outcome to Him.
We know that there are certain aspects of those who identify as LGBTQ that are different to certain other lifestyles.
(23:25):
But we also know that anyone living a lifestyle outside of Jesus is not really fully embracing the life that God has planned for them.
So do you think that your book, The Daring Rescue, holds out hope for parents who are seeing their children living a range of lifestyles that don't include Jesus?
Absolutely.
(23:45):
My book has been in the hand of almost 100 launch team readers right now.
And those 100 people, some of them have a child in the LGBT community, but the majority of them do not.
And what I'm hearing back is, Melinda, this book is hitting home for me, even though I'm not living this out with a child or a loved one in the LGBT.
(24:10):
I am able to apply these principles to me as I'm praying for my prodigal or for my one who has chosen to walk away from the Lord.
I talk about three principles in my book, and they are engaged.
We must be engaged with God, ourselves.
We must be honest with ourselves where we are.
(24:34):
And when possible, we need to be engaging with our child.
We have been entrusted as followers of Jesus Christ, regardless of what we are facing in our life.
We have been entrusted with the full gospel, and it is our responsibility.
We are ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is our calling, our responsibility to handle the gospel well, to know the gospel, to live the gospel out, and to share the hope of the gospel with others.
(25:06):
And we've been entrusted with our child.
We've been entrusted.
Maybe you don't have a child in the LGBT, or you don't have a child that's wandering in a far land, but you have been entrusted with whatever you're walking through right now.
We are called to be good stewards with whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, and then we're entrusted with our story.
(25:30):
God moves and works in our lives, not just for us to hold on to what we have learned or experienced with Him in this, but God moves and works so that we can share our testimony.
We can share the story that He's writing in our lives with other people walking similar journeys.
What He has done in our life speaks to others that this God who is faithful to me and has been faithful in my life will be faithful to you.
(26:00):
And then we have been equipped.
God has equipped each of us for whatever we're facing in life, and so we need to move into that position.
And one of the best ways to walk out that equipping is to put spiritual disciplines, to practice spiritual disciplines in our life.
It goes back to what we talked about a few moments ago about the reacting versus responding.
(26:27):
When I am living life on my own, when I am getting up and choosing to do things my own way, I am living in reaction to the circumstances around me.
But when I choose to put spiritual disciplines in my life and move in that like prayer, fasting, times of silence and solitude, worship, personal worship and corporate worship, community, celebration, there's a whole list of spiritual disciplines.
(26:56):
When I live my life in response to Jesus, the best way to do that is through disciplines.
Disciplines set us up.
They are not the work, but what disciplines do, they put us in the position so God can transform us, and that leads us to being equipped.
I want to touch on your podcast, the Even While podcast.
(27:19):
Tell me a little about that and some of the people that you've been speaking to.
The Even While podcast, living life while waiting well.
One of the things that I discovered in my own waiting season is that I had stopped living.
It can be any season that you're in.
Like I said, you could be waiting to have a child.
You could be waiting to be married.
(27:40):
You could be waiting on a new job.
You could be waiting on a next step in life, whatever that is.
You could be praying for a prodigal.
But what we tend to do is become so focused on that, that we put our lives on hold and we stop living.
That abundant life that God promises us, it's not just for when we get to heaven.
(28:01):
It's for today, right here in the mundane, in the middle messy.
I speak primarily to women there in a waiting season, just encouraging them to live.
Your podcast is on bleeding daylight, kicking against the darkness.
I think one of the biggest ways that we can kick against the enemy in a waiting season is to continue to live our life and allow God to live through us.
(28:25):
What happens when we are choosing to live our life, others that know we're walking through a waiting season or a difficult season, they're going to look and they're going to wonder, how is she so happy?
How is she continuing in life when it seems like everything else is falling down around her?
How can she keep moving forward when she's still waiting on this?
(28:48):
I encourage women to embrace the life that we have today in this waiting, to dig deep with God and then to begin to live.
It's a great opportunity for people who are in that waiting period to hear some amazing stories from people that are going through that.
I also know that there's going to be a lot of people that are going to want to get hold of your book, The Daring Rescue.
(29:12):
I'm going to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
If there's one thing that you would leave people with today in that waiting period, what would your words to them be?
Dr. Charles Stanley, the late Dr. Charles Stanley, he has a quote and I have found it to be true.
(29:33):
This quote is, the only thing worse than waiting is wishing you would have.
Oftentimes in waiting seasons, we get tired of waiting on God and we take matters into our own hands.
Then we turn around and realize that what we just did has really messed things up or put a hold on what God was doing.
(29:58):
If I could encourage anyone in a waiting season, continue to wait on God.
Be open and honest with your feelings.
Get real with Him, but then sit there with Him.
Give Him the opportunity to respond back to you.
It may not happen in that moment.
It may be days or weeks before you hear His response, but our God is a God who speaks.
(30:24):
He is the same God who spoke all throughout scripture.
Our God is a God who longs to be known.
He's not keeping you in the season of waiting out of punishment or out of ignoring you.
He has a better plan in mind.
Use this time to come to know Him in a deeper way and know that He has your best interest at heart, but He also sees the bigger picture.
(30:52):
When we're in a waiting season, we see just what's going on around us.
But I think about when you go up in an airplane right now, I can see my backyard, my side yard.
My world, my visible world right now is very small.
But if someone flew over me right now in an airplane, they're going to see the whole landscape.
(31:15):
They know what is going on beyond this little bit that I can see.
That's God.
He's not just interested in us.
He's interested in the whole picture.
Eternity is a long time, and God is focused on eternity.
Oftentimes, we become so focused with the temporary.
So trust Him in the process.
(31:36):
I believe Dr. Charles Stanley is correct that the only thing worse than waiting is wishing you would have.
Melinda, it has been an absolute delight to talk to you.
I want to say thank you so much for your time and sharing your story on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Thank you for inviting me on.
(31:56):
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.
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 to today's episode.
You'll find Bleeding Daylight on a range of social media platforms.
Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
Please share episodes with others so they can kick at the darkness too.
What do we do in the waiting?
How do we move forward when circumstances make it feel like our life is on hold?
Whether the waiting is around a relationship, a wandering child, a health issue, or any other reason, today's guest invites you to live abundantly.
(01:01):
Today I'm in conversation with Melinda Patrick.
Melinda's journey from doubt and despair to hope and joy is truly inspiring.
Melinda has discovered the transformative power of living in response to God rather than reacting to circumstances.
Now she's on a mission to embolden and equip others to see beyond their circumstances and discover the hidden treasures that God has for them.
(01:27):
She hosts the Even While podcast, helping others to live life to the full in the midst of waiting.
In her book, The Daring Rescue, Melinda shares invaluable insights and principles for Christian parents navigating the complexities of loving their LGBTQ-identified child while staying true to their faith.
(01:50):
I'm so pleased to have her join me today.
Melinda, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's a joy to be here with you today.
You talk about living a full life while waiting, and that kind of waiting can cover, I guess, a range of seasons in our lives.
I often think of it as the in-between, when we're not quite at one place or the other.
(02:11):
Help me understand the kinds of waiting that you're talking about.
Exactly that.
Waiting can be for anything.
It could be waiting to get married, waiting to purchase your first house, but then it can go to waiting for your loved one to come to know Jesus in a real and personal way, or waiting for test results to come back with our health.
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Waiting for everyone, it's just like when they say pain, no one's pain is greater than someone else's.
What we're walking through is pain to us, and it's a reality.
Waiting can be painful and frustrating at times and lead us to feeling like we're lost, or we need to put our life on hold regardless of what we're waiting for.
(03:00):
There's a kind of waiting that I guess all of us become familiar with at one time or another, and that is when we know that there's a loved one who is nearing the end of life, and we're not quite sure when that will happen.
We're in that waiting period.
We certainly don't wish that they're going to pass away, but we know that life is on hold in that time.
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That's a very difficult in-between, isn't it?
Do you address that kind of waiting for people?
I absolutely do.
In fact, three years ago, my children and I walked through that with their father, with my first husband.
Just in that waiting, knowing that there was nothing else that could be done here on earth to bring healing to him, and we had to surrender that outcome to God and let Him show up and be God in that situation.
(03:55):
He actually wrote a story that we never would have expected.
It was a long wait.
He was actually someone that I had prayed for, for over 30 years, to come to know the Lord.
In the last few months of his life, he finally surrendered his life to the Lord.
God answered my long, long prayers, but He didn't answer in a way that I expected or in the time I expected.
(04:21):
But He was still faithful, and He showed Himself to be true in that situation.
That's a difficulty that we all face, where we ask God for something, and we haven't worked out in our mind exactly how God should answer this prayer.
When it doesn't happen like that, it can sometimes seem that God is absent.
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Is that a common experience with those that you're working alongside and helping?
Absolutely.
I experienced that myself.
Even though I was raised in the church, I came to know Jesus and received Him into my life, or gave my life to Him at the age of 12.
Then I prayed and prayed for my husband to come to know the Lord.
(05:07):
I prayed for him for over 30 years.
In those times, we ended up divorcing.
I found myself questioning, God, do you hear me?
Are you going to answer?
Do you even care?
Where are you?
I believe that's a very common question for someone, especially in a long waiting season, whatever you're waiting for.
(05:28):
For some, it may be somebody wanting to have a child and continues to experience infertility.
For me, waiting for a loved one to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and just walking through that and coming to a place where I really had to wrestle with God.
Who are you?
Where are you?
Do you care?
He showed up.
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He showed up.
I wonder for a lot of people who have been brought up in the church, whether they feel they have the license to ask those big questions.
We certainly see it in the Psalms where people are calling out to God and say, hey, I feel abandoned.
That's the sort of thing that you're talking about.
God, are you even there?
Do you really care?
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Do you think sometimes we don't feel that we have license to ask that of God?
Oh, 100%.
After my first husband passed away, and it's a whole God story right there because by then I was married to my husband now, but through God writing his perfect story, I became one of the caregivers, one of the primary caregivers of my first husband.
(06:37):
And so I was able to walk that through with him and our two children.
And I remember after Michael passed away, he had surrendered his heart to the Lord.
He was able to share his testimony and his heart with our children, encouraging them to turn to the Lord.
I ended up speaking at his funeral and seven people gave their hearts to the Lord.
(06:59):
I had recorded him sharing his testimony before he passed away.
I played that at his service.
So he basically preached his own service.
But I found myself, Rodney, in weeks after that, a little angry at God because he finally answered my prayer, but it wasn't in a way that I had expected.
(07:21):
It wasn't in the timing I expected.
He had finally given my children the father that they were wanting.
And then he took him.
A friend of mine recommended that I read the book, A Sacred Sorrow by Michael Card.
And it's basically talking about the lost language of lament.
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Too often in our waiting seasons, we're afraid to ask the hard questions and we just keep pushing through life.
But there comes a time if we really want to go deep with the Lord, if we really want to enter into that place of intimacy, of knowing him, we need to sit with the hard questions and we need to ask him the questions, but then we need to sit there and wait.
(08:04):
And I think about the two men on the road to Emmaus.
It was after Jesus Christ had been resurrected and they were walking and they were just saying to each other how disappointed they were that they thought Jesus was the king.
What had happened over the few days before did not look like him entering into being a king.
(08:25):
As he walked with them, they didn't recognize him.
And he was asking what was going on.
And they were like, do you not know?
Are you not from around here?
Have you not heard?
We thought that he was the king and things are not like we expected.
And Jesus continued to walk with them.
And he walked with them through the scriptures as he was there with them and told them back in what had gone on with Moses and why what had taken place must have taken place.
(08:56):
It says that when the men got to where they were going, Jesus was going to continue on, but the men invited him into their home.
And it says, I love this scripture, as they sat down with him and he broke the bread, their eyes were opened.
And when we're in waiting seasons and God isn't answering in the time that we want or in the way that we want, we can quickly just get up and not want to take the time to sit at the table with him and ask the hard questions.
(09:24):
But it's when we pause everything else in life and say, God, I'm frustrated.
I'm angry.
I don't see you.
I feel like you're absent, but I'm going to sit here.
I'm going to sit here in this waiting, and I'm going to grieve where I need to grieve.
And I'm going to trust that you're going to reveal a deeper part of you in this season.
(09:46):
And when we choose to do that, God is faithful to open our eyes and reveal himself to us.
He is not a God who stays hidden from us.
There might be little seasons where he does, but God wants to be known just as each of us want to be known.
But are we willing to enter into that place and just sit and wait and give him time to respond?
(10:10):
You mentioned that the story of the man on the and it was in something simple, something as mundane as breaking bread.
At that moment, their eyes were opened and they saw Jesus for who he was.
And I know that you've been through seasons where it's really hard to find joy.
It's been really hard to go on where there have been fractures in family, broken dreams.
(10:35):
What was it for you?
What was maybe the mundane thing that suddenly opened your eyes to the reality of all that God could be in these times?
He does love to show up in the mundane.
If we are praying, we need to be watching for him and expecting.
And I believe one of the mundane things for me is that I had to choose to live in those seasons of waiting.
(11:00):
I'm still in seasons of waiting.
I have a child who's wandering out in the far land right now, and I am continually praying and interceding and waiting and watching.
God doesn't offer us abundant life when we get to heaven.
That abundant life when we have surrendered our heart to him begins today, even in the muck and in the mire and in the mundane of life.
(11:24):
When we begin to live with eyes opened, expecting him to show up, that's when we're going to be able to see him.
Tell me about this whole idea of moving from living in reaction to circumstances to living in response to God.
One of my love languages is games.
(11:46):
A lot of times in the evening after dinner, my husband and I will play a game.
This night we were playing Chinese checkers.
I can be a little competitive.
We were playing and I had my men moved out.
You've got marbles and you jump men in order to get to the other side.
(12:08):
I had everything planned out, but then all of a sudden I looked down, Rodney, and I was losing.
I was like, how could this be?
I knew what I was doing.
On the inside, I was like, don't panic.
It's going to be okay.
So I looked at the board and my husband jumped, and then I jumped, and then he jumped three of my men.
(12:29):
I was like, okay, something's going on.
Finally, I was like, I need to call a timeout.
You don't get timeouts in Chinese checkers.
I said, well, I don't know, but I need to call a timeout.
I said, I do not understand what's going on.
It was in that moment the Lord said, Melinda, you're lost in this game because you're playing in reaction to Him and not in response to how you had thought it would go.
(12:57):
He said, but in life you're lost.
You are living and moving in reaction to the circumstances around you, and you are not moving in response to me anymore.
It was in that moment I had to take a good look at my life.
At that time, there was a lot going on around us, a lot of circumstances and painful things going on around us.
(13:21):
I found that I had shifted my focus from God to the circumstances and the people around me.
I was now moving in reaction to them and not in response to God.
When we do that, that's when we begin to find ourselves lost in life.
That's when we find ourselves lost in the waiting.
(13:43):
I will be the first to admit it's easy to shift our eyes, to move our eyes to what's happening and take that focus off, but we've got to be intentional.
If we want to live in this season of wait, it begins with getting quiet before the Lord and moving in response to Him.
The interesting thing is, these are the sorts of lessons that we need to learn again and again.
(14:07):
When we suddenly realize, oh, I'm doing it again, we think, how could I do that?
Yet God is always there faithfully bringing us back to what He may have taught us many years ago.
Do you find that that's continually what goes on through the cycles of life?
Absolutely.
I have a great illustration of that.
(14:28):
I speak on waiting.
You would think that, oh my goodness, she's been speaking on waiting for at least 10 years.
She would have it down.
She would know exactly how to move and to react and to respond in waiting situations.
But just last week, I was waiting on Amazon to approve a book I just wrote.
(14:50):
I thought, well, in order to help the situation along, I took matters into my own hands and pushed publish on that book while I was waiting on Amazon because I thought, well, surely everything's going to come back correct.
Well, my proof copy of my book came back with errors in it, but I had pushed publish.
(15:11):
Now my book, once Amazon approved it, it was out into the world for anyone to purchase.
I found myself thinking, why did I not wait?
I know taking matters into my own hands is not a good thing.
When will I ever finally get this lesson so I don't have to relearn it over and over?
When you look at the big schema of things in life, waiting on a prodigal, waiting for things, maybe healing in your marriage, pushing publish on a book isn't a big deal.
(15:42):
But I just could not get over the fact that I have not learned this.
I am still being tested in something, and I'm still struggling to just wait in God's timing and trust the process.
I mentioned in the introduction your book, The Daring Rescue.
Tell me about that book and what went into writing it.
(16:04):
So The Daring Rescue, joining Jesus Christ in his pursuit of your LGBTQ identified child's heart.
This is a labor of love that's very, very close to my heart.
I have a My daughter actually is living in the LGBT community.
She came to me in 2011 sharing with me that she experienced same-sex attraction.
(16:31):
The book is lessons that I have learned, a small portion of our story that we've lived out over the last 12 years.
You would have hoped that everything would be fine right now and that she would be walking with the Lord, but she's still out there in that community.
But we've come to a place of agreeing to disagree.
(16:52):
We've come to a place of respecting one another and understanding that we need each other, that we love one another and our lives are worthy of each other's time and love and respect.
And so over the last 10 years, I've been given the opportunity to speak and encourage hope to parents, Christian parents who are walking this journey out as well.
(17:18):
It's difficult, especially at being a follower of Jesus Christ.
How do we walk in the tension of holding firm to biblical truth and standard while loving our child well?
I lay out the lessons in this book, the ones that God has taught me over the last 10 years.
One of the interesting things in our society today is this whole thing of tribalism, that there's an us and them, and we seem to be more divided than ever.
(17:48):
And what that really in effect does is if someone disagrees with me, then I say, they hate me.
And yet that's not the case.
And in this case, you have a disagreement with your daughter.
Your daughter has a disagreement with you, and yet you found a way to say, we don't agree with each other on this, but we can still coexist.
(18:10):
We can still show love to one another.
Tell me about some of the lessons that you've learned as far as that's concerned.
Probably one of the biggest lessons I have learned, Rodney, is that my child is not a problem to fix, but a person to love.
And the Lord has taught me along the way.
I've made many, many mistakes.
And there are things that I have had to go back and ask for forgiveness for from her.
(18:36):
And there are things that I have had to repent of over the course of time.
And I'm sure there will still be mistakes I've made.
We're human.
We're never going to get this 100% right.
My child is not a problem to fix, but a person to love.
She needs Jesus just as much as I did.
And I've learned along the way that there are roles that the Holy Spirit takes on, and then there are roles that I take on as a mom.
(19:06):
When I begin to move in the lane of the Holy Spirit's roles, what I'm doing then is I'm getting in His way.
That causes a collision.
It causes confusion.
It causes me having to wrestle with the waiting again.
And so over time, I've learned to come to the place of understanding that I'm not going to be the one to open her eyes.
(19:29):
I'm not going to be the one to create within her a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
I'm not going to be the one to bring sanctification to her life.
I'm not going to be the one to convict her of her sin.
Those are all roles of the Holy Spirit.
My role that God has clearly laid out for me as her mother is to love her, biblically love her.
(19:52):
Sometimes that means standing for truth and speaking truth to her, but I am to biblically love her according to 1 Corinthians 13.
I'm also to pray for her.
I'm to pray for her according to Scripture and according to God's leading and guiding in my quiet time with Him.
I am to enjoy her.
(20:14):
He entrusted her to me.
Psalm 139 says that before He formed us in our mother's womb that He knew every day ran out for us.
And so He knew before He placed her in my womb.
He knew exactly the days that we would be facing.
And so He knew the mom that she would need, but He also knew the daughter that I would need.
(20:38):
And so God has used her, although I would never want this story for anyone.
I don't want this story still to this day for us, but God has used this season in our life to transform me, to refine me, to make me look more like Jesus.
There have been some very humbling moments on my end, moments where I have had to surrender and submit and say, Father, I am so sorry.
(21:04):
I thought my way was best, just like I did with hitting publish.
But this is a little bit more because this involves another life and this involves the impact on eternity for her.
And so I've had humbling moments.
I've had to realize that God has entrusted her to me.
As a follower, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I need to be a good steward of what He has entrusted to me.
(21:29):
I get to enjoy just her as a person.
When she first came to me with her same-sex attraction and then her choice to embrace an LGBT identity, I struggled with seeing her beyond that decision.
Every time I was around her, all I saw was homosexuality and sin and the choices that she had made.
(21:50):
And it was putting a wedge between us.
I was not able to show up as her mom, fully just engaged and just loving her and being willing to sit with her and to talk and to be a safe place for her.
And so I began to pray, God, give me eyes to see her as you see her.
In that time, God reminded me that she's still the daughter that loves to bake and to cook in the kitchen.
(22:16):
She's still the daughter that loves to rock climb.
We both have Jeeps.
We love to take the soft tops off our Jeep and go back roading.
Those are things we enjoy doing together.
And God reminded me, we can focus on our differences and that's going to keep us separated or we can focus on what we have in common.
(22:42):
And so I began to shift to focus on the things that we have in common.
Because right now, my daughter needs to experience Jesus.
And she has the opportunity to do that when I am with her and I have surrendered my heart to Him.
He then is able to live through me and minister to her.
(23:03):
It's been quite a learning lesson.
I've learned that I need to patiently wait again and trust His timing and leave the outcome to Him.
We know that there are certain aspects of those who identify as LGBTQ that are different to certain other lifestyles.
(23:25):
But we also know that anyone living a lifestyle outside of Jesus is not really fully embracing the life that God has planned for them.
So do you think that your book, The Daring Rescue, holds out hope for parents who are seeing their children living a range of lifestyles that don't include Jesus?
Absolutely.
(23:45):
My book has been in the hand of almost 100 launch team readers right now.
And those 100 people, some of them have a child in the LGBT community, but the majority of them do not.
And what I'm hearing back is, Melinda, this book is hitting home for me, even though I'm not living this out with a child or a loved one in the LGBT.
(24:10):
I am able to apply these principles to me as I'm praying for my prodigal or for my one who has chosen to walk away from the Lord.
I talk about three principles in my book, and they are engaged.
We must be engaged with God, ourselves.
We must be honest with ourselves where we are.
(24:34):
And when possible, we need to be engaging with our child.
We have been entrusted as followers of Jesus Christ, regardless of what we are facing in our life.
We have been entrusted with the full gospel, and it is our responsibility.
We are ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is our calling, our responsibility to handle the gospel well, to know the gospel, to live the gospel out, and to share the hope of the gospel with others.
(25:06):
And we've been entrusted with our child.
We've been entrusted.
Maybe you don't have a child in the LGBT, or you don't have a child that's wandering in a far land, but you have been entrusted with whatever you're walking through right now.
We are called to be good stewards with whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, and then we're entrusted with our story.
(25:30):
God moves and works in our lives, not just for us to hold on to what we have learned or experienced with Him in this, but God moves and works so that we can share our testimony.
We can share the story that He's writing in our lives with other people walking similar journeys.
What He has done in our life speaks to others that this God who is faithful to me and has been faithful in my life will be faithful to you.
(26:00):
And then we have been equipped.
God has equipped each of us for whatever we're facing in life, and so we need to move into that position.
And one of the best ways to walk out that equipping is to put spiritual disciplines, to practice spiritual disciplines in our life.
It goes back to what we talked about a few moments ago about the reacting versus responding.
(26:27):
When I am living life on my own, when I am getting up and choosing to do things my own way, I am living in reaction to the circumstances around me.
But when I choose to put spiritual disciplines in my life and move in that like prayer, fasting, times of silence and solitude, worship, personal worship and corporate worship, community, celebration, there's a whole list of spiritual disciplines.
(26:56):
When I live my life in response to Jesus, the best way to do that is through disciplines.
Disciplines set us up.
They are not the work, but what disciplines do, they put us in the position so God can transform us, and that leads us to being equipped.
I want to touch on your podcast, the Even While podcast.
(27:19):
Tell me a little about that and some of the people that you've been speaking to.
The Even While podcast, living life while waiting well.
One of the things that I discovered in my own waiting season is that I had stopped living.
It can be any season that you're in.
Like I said, you could be waiting to have a child.
You could be waiting to be married.
(27:40):
You could be waiting on a new job.
You could be waiting on a next step in life, whatever that is.
You could be praying for a prodigal.
But what we tend to do is become so focused on that, that we put our lives on hold and we stop living.
That abundant life that God promises us, it's not just for when we get to heaven.
(28:01):
It's for today, right here in the mundane, in the middle messy.
I speak primarily to women there in a waiting season, just encouraging them to live.
Your podcast is on bleeding daylight, kicking against the darkness.
I think one of the biggest ways that we can kick against the enemy in a waiting season is to continue to live our life and allow God to live through us.
(28:25):
What happens when we are choosing to live our life, others that know we're walking through a waiting season or a difficult season, they're going to look and they're going to wonder, how is she so happy?
How is she continuing in life when it seems like everything else is falling down around her?
How can she keep moving forward when she's still waiting on this?
(28:48):
I encourage women to embrace the life that we have today in this waiting, to dig deep with God and then to begin to live.
It's a great opportunity for people who are in that waiting period to hear some amazing stories from people that are going through that.
I also know that there's going to be a lot of people that are going to want to get hold of your book, The Daring Rescue.
(29:12):
I'm going to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
If there's one thing that you would leave people with today in that waiting period, what would your words to them be?
Dr. Charles Stanley, the late Dr. Charles Stanley, he has a quote and I have found it to be true.
(29:33):
This quote is, the only thing worse than waiting is wishing you would have.
Oftentimes in waiting seasons, we get tired of waiting on God and we take matters into our own hands.
Then we turn around and realize that what we just did has really messed things up or put a hold on what God was doing.
(29:58):
If I could encourage anyone in a waiting season, continue to wait on God.
Be open and honest with your feelings.
Get real with Him, but then sit there with Him.
Give Him the opportunity to respond back to you.
It may not happen in that moment.
It may be days or weeks before you hear His response, but our God is a God who speaks.
(30:24):
He is the same God who spoke all throughout scripture.
Our God is a God who longs to be known.
He's not keeping you in the season of waiting out of punishment or out of ignoring you.
He has a better plan in mind.
Use this time to come to know Him in a deeper way and know that He has your best interest at heart, but He also sees the bigger picture.
(30:52):
When we're in a waiting season, we see just what's going on around us.
But I think about when you go up in an airplane right now, I can see my backyard, my side yard.
My world, my visible world right now is very small.
But if someone flew over me right now in an airplane, they're going to see the whole landscape.
(31:15):
They know what is going on beyond this little bit that I can see.
That's God.
He's not just interested in us.
He's interested in the whole picture.
Eternity is a long time, and God is focused on eternity.
Oftentimes, we become so focused with the temporary.
So trust Him in the process.
(31:36):
I believe Dr. Charles Stanley is correct that the only thing worse than waiting is wishing you would have.
Melinda, it has been an absolute delight to talk to you.
I want to say thank you so much for your time and sharing your story on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Thank you for inviting me on.
(31:56):
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.
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