May 9, 2025 • 15 mins
Author, speaker and podcaster Jill Baughan is a skilled storyteller with a deep desire to help people find joy, however difficult their current situation. Friday, she will join Mornings with Eric and Brigitte, to encourage us with Scripture, prayers, and personal stories, to find pops of joy instead of dwelling on the difficulties.
No Matter What: 90 Devotions for Experiencing Unexpected Joy in Tough Times
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:02):
You're listening to mornings with Eric and Bridget here on
Moody Radio 89.3.
S2 (00:06):
One aspect of life that seems to bring so many
joy are animals like pets. Specifically, I love when Gibbs
and I are out for a walk and just seeing.
The other day we saw a boxer, you know, Big Dog,
and she was so cuddly. She came up and was
like sniffing us and wanted us to pet her. So
then got a conversation with her owner. Because pets and
animals can really bring joy.
S1 (00:28):
Yes, but they're also a little bit of a tricky
issue at times. We have two cats. We got a
cat a while back and it was a very calm,
gentle cat. It would sit next to you. It was.
It was an old soul, let's put it that way.
We got another cat. It is very curious. And it
yesterday we lost the cat. Like where did it go?
(00:50):
And it's time to go to bed. And we're like,
we don't know where this cat is. If it was
the first cat, we would have been like, he'll be okay.
He'll turn up tomorrow. The second cat, we're like, we
can't leave him alone in this house, or it will
be destroyed because he's just into everything and it's a mess.
So you just you have to be careful with your
with your pets because some are more curious than others.
S2 (01:12):
But you eventually found him, right? Where? Where did you
find him?
S1 (01:16):
It came out of my daughter's room. I don't know
where it ended up, but it was in my daughter's
room somewhere because I walked in there and I looked
around and did not see. I don't know where he.
S2 (01:22):
Was in the corner of the closet. But we say
all that because although animals do bring joy, I never
thought of a chimpanzee to help bring me joy. But
Jill Bond is with us. And Jill, you apparently rented
a chimpanzee to come play at your house.
S1 (01:37):
Let me just say, I don't see this as a
good idea, but go ahead. Why'd you do this?
S3 (01:42):
Uh, well, it turned out to be a great idea.
This was years ago. We were at the Virginia. I
was at the Virginia State Fair with my mom, and
we walked past this place where you could have your
photo taken with a chimpanzee for $5. And I begged
my mom begged her, and she just kept saying, no,
(02:03):
Excuse me. And I have to tell you that I
was not a child at this time. I was like,
35 years old and a mother begging my mother to
let me get my picture taken with a chimp. But
she refused, and I finally I said, why not? And
she said, well, somebody might look at it someday and
think that it's a three generation photo. And she was
(02:25):
not trying to be funny. That was a big concern
for her. So we didn't do it. We missed that opportunity. Well,
20 years later, my family from Indiana was coming to
my home in Virginia for a big family event, and
I had to do something with all these people. I
was lying in bed one night thinking, what am I going?
(02:46):
How am I going to occupy them? And I thought
about this opportunity from 20 years before, and I wondered,
I wonder if I could find a chimp, you know,
a photographable chimp. So I put out the network feelers,
and I actually found one that a man in our
county owned a zoo. And so I called them up
(03:07):
and I said, please don't think I'm crazy, but this
is this is the story. He loved it, but he said,
it's December. You don't want to bring your mom. Who is?
She was 88 by that time. You don't want to
bring your mom out in the cold. Why don't I
bring the chimp to your house? And you could not
have said anything that would have made me happier. So
I said yes. Yes, it's a great idea. So we
(03:29):
had a photographer and we had a backdrop, and my
mom thought, well, we're just going to take family photos.
But when I saw the handler come up the sidewalk
with the chimp, I said, mom, put on some lipstick.
I got a surprise for you. They walked through the
door and I said, do you remember 20 years ago? Absolutely,
she remembered. But she'd mellowed a lot by this time.
(03:51):
She was all about it. And for 90 of the
most joyful moments of our lives, I'm telling you, we
frolicked around with that chimpanzee. We lay down on the floor.
She rolled over like logs and she would take grapes
from our mouths and, you know, jump and roll and somersault.
(04:12):
90 minutes and 300 pictures. It was awesome. But the
sweetest moment of the day, aside from taking a family photo,
was when my mom and I sat down for that
photo with the chimp, and I tell people that I
keep that picture on my dresser even now because for
(04:34):
two reasons. Number one, it reminds me of a wonderful time.
But the second thing is, it reminds me that there
are moments in this day that are to be had,
and I don't want to miss them. So, um, just
a little PS to that story. My mom passed away
(04:55):
when she was 99.5 years old. My brother and I
were talking to the minister, talking to the funeral director,
and the funeral director said, okay, we want to put
out a little brochure as they do often, and he said,
we need a picture. And my brother looked at me
(05:17):
and he said, I have an idea, but it might
be inappropriate. And I said, inappropriate is our middle name.
Let's go for it. So on my mom's funeral brochure,
there's this picture big of big as life of her
with a chimpanzee. And we got to laugh and tell
that story at her service and explain that picture. And
(05:41):
I said, is there a more perfect picture of joy
and sorrow in the same space? We held them both,
you know.
S1 (05:50):
So not to overstate, not to overspiritualize this, but you
know what? As you were telling that story, I was thinking, God's. No.
Today might be a greater yes, 20 years down the road.
S3 (06:02):
There you go. That's a great. Yes. It's true. You
never know. You never.
S1 (06:07):
Know. You just never.
S2 (06:07):
Do. And I love that. Um, you know, it was
a missed opportunity once, but you were able to come
back and like you said, she mellowed out. She was
okay with it. And so even though, like you said,
it was a no at first, but that it wasn't
a missed opportunity in the long run, that you guys
still had that memory and probably even better than it
would have been just at the fair a few minutes.
(06:28):
This was a far above and beyond what you can imagined,
and what a special story that you'll always keep and
remember of your mom and this chimp. And you also
said something there towards the end of that story, you
said joy and sorrow can really occupy the same space.
Just expound on that a little bit more.
S3 (06:47):
Well, everybody knows that, that there's always something going on beside,
beside the good times. And I also tell people, I
learned that when I was a kid on the tilt-a-whirl
at the street fair in my hometown, and I said,
it's the first place I realized that a human being,
(07:08):
it was possible for a human being to laugh and
throw up at the same time. There again, the good
times and and the tough times. I think we just
have to be very, very intentional about finding the joy
that's always there for us to pick up. That's not
(07:28):
to say that you pretend that there aren't tough times,
that you're not going through a terrible time, but but
it is always there for the taking somewhere.
S1 (07:40):
Okay, but if I'm on a seesaw and I'm on
the bottom of that seesaw, I need to start piling
things up on the other side of the seesaw to
lift me up. What are what are those things I
can put on the other side of that seesaw to
start building me, to remind me of this joy. To
bring me up.
S3 (07:57):
Oh, you know, I will tell you one of my
favorites and ways. And my husband's too. In January of 2020,
which even just saying the word 2020 just brings up
all kinds of feelings. We started this little practice in
a one line a day journal. I don't know if
(08:19):
you've seen them, but you can find them anywhere online.
It's a journal, and a lot of people will say, oh,
I don't keep a journal. I can't keep it up.
But all this is it has a little space every day,
and it goes on for five years. So you can
look up at the previous year and the two years
before that when you finish the journal in five years.
But we decided to use it this way. Every night
(08:43):
before we go to bed, we think of one thing
that brought us joy that day. And it can be
tiny and sometimes it's tough. You got to root around
in there for it. I know I got sick on
a road trip one time. It was awful. It was
15 hours of driving and sick and we came home
(09:03):
and all I could think of to put in that
book was didn't die, but, you know, didn't die. There
you go.
S2 (09:10):
There you go.
S3 (09:11):
I just it has been the most wonderful thing. Now
we've we've started our sixth year to look back. And
for us, there's nothing better to put in your mind
before your head hits the pillow than than the goodness
of God. And you see, now we have hundreds and
(09:33):
hundreds and hundreds of tiny shots of joy, good things
to be thankful for. And we went through some terrible
times during that five years Covid, um, just all kinds
of things. So that's one way, um, you know, another
way I love to do this and encourage people to
(09:55):
start a list. And you can start you can start
on your phone if you want. I prefer paper, but
wherever you can gain access to it really fast because
you want to add to it as time goes on
of things that bring you joy, things that feed your soul. Um.
And I just keep a list on one side of that.
(10:17):
Then when things get tough, or it doesn't even have
to be a terrible, terrible time, it can be a
task that you hate doing. If you can inject, I
call it a cross-reference list. You just inject one thing
that gives you joy into that tough time. Uh, sometimes
(10:38):
you just need a list to the multiple choice. Yeah.
You know, I love to be outdoors. When was the
last time I was outside? Even for five minutes or
stopped for just a minute. And I'm going through this
horrible time. I know, um. And I wish I could
remember the book, but I don't. But this lady loved
(11:01):
the outdoors very much. A hiker. And she lost her
best friend. Her best friend died. And she said in
response to that, I had to go into the woods
because no other arms were big enough. She had tapped
into what? The way God created her for joy and
(11:23):
and gave herself a shot of that. So those are
those are two ways. Very concrete ways and easy. They're
just you just have to be intentional about it.
S2 (11:33):
Jill Bowen is with us. And her resource that we're
talking about is no matter what. And it really is
about finding joy in the midst of pain and even sorrow.
But for the person who's saying, I'm in that season
right now, and their question that's running through their mind
over and over again is where is God? How do
you find God in those seasons?
S3 (11:53):
Um, you sometimes have to look for him. And I
have said before, my father died when I was just
a child, but I do remember I was ten years
old and I said, I remember seeing him finding him
after his service in a Jell-O salad. I found him
(12:16):
when I looked for him in the embrace of people
and the care of people. Sometimes he works through others.
I know my husband's father, um, had Covid contracted Covid
in April of 2020 and we could not see him
(12:36):
for three weeks. He was in the hospital and it
was bad and he was 91. And at one point
he was with a nurse, and this angel of a
nurse used her own phone to let us FaceTime with him,
which was awful and wonderful at the same time. She
(12:57):
played hymns for him on a computer that she found somewhere.
She had no idea that that's how he fell asleep
every night since his wife had died 12 years earlier.
She talked to us and we could see at that point,
you know, she was dressed up in what looked like
a hazmat suit. She wasn't allowed to touch him, but
(13:18):
she had a gloved hand that she would stroke his forehead.
Tell him what a sweet man she was. Tell us.
She assured us he is not alone. And she was
a Christian lady. And so she prayed with us. And
when the time came, she called us and said, I
think we're getting close here. And she held up her phone.
(13:41):
I don't know how long. It was a long time.
And when his chest failed to rise and he wasn't
breathing anymore, he had said before, I'm ready to go.
And my husband watched him and he said, I think
he's gone. And she looked at us and she checked him,
(14:02):
and she nodded her head and she cried with us.
And she said, God is in this place. I said,
it was the most terrible, beautiful full thing I had
ever seen in my life, to watch him take his
(14:24):
last breath on FaceTime, of all things, but be able
to usher him in to the arms of God. And
and this lady cried with us. She was with us. Uh,
I will never stop thanking God for this nurse. We
thanked her over and over, but often I think he
(14:45):
provides us with people and and a presence that you
can feel even in the darkest times.
S1 (14:52):
We just have, like, 30s left. But we're not talking
about being phony or fake when we're talking about joy.
This is this is a real emotion, but it comes
in different waves, is what you're saying, I think correct?
S3 (15:02):
Absolutely, absolutely.
S2 (15:06):
Well, there's a beautiful devotional that Jill Bond has put together, uh,
to help us recount and really find God and joy
in the midst of sorrow. It's called No Matter What.
And we have a link to it at our website.
Eric and bridget.org.
You're listening to mornings with Eric and Bridget here on
Moody Radio 89.3.
S2 (00:06):
One aspect of life that seems to bring so many
joy are animals like pets. Specifically, I love when Gibbs
and I are out for a walk and just seeing.
The other day we saw a boxer, you know, Big Dog,
and she was so cuddly. She came up and was
like sniffing us and wanted us to pet her. So
then got a conversation with her owner. Because pets and
animals can really bring joy.
S1 (00:28):
Yes, but they're also a little bit of a tricky
issue at times. We have two cats. We got a
cat a while back and it was a very calm,
gentle cat. It would sit next to you. It was.
It was an old soul, let's put it that way.
We got another cat. It is very curious. And it
yesterday we lost the cat. Like where did it go?
(00:50):
And it's time to go to bed. And we're like,
we don't know where this cat is. If it was
the first cat, we would have been like, he'll be okay.
He'll turn up tomorrow. The second cat, we're like, we
can't leave him alone in this house, or it will
be destroyed because he's just into everything and it's a mess.
So you just you have to be careful with your
with your pets because some are more curious than others.
S2 (01:12):
But you eventually found him, right? Where? Where did you
find him?
S1 (01:16):
It came out of my daughter's room. I don't know
where it ended up, but it was in my daughter's
room somewhere because I walked in there and I looked
around and did not see. I don't know where he.
S2 (01:22):
Was in the corner of the closet. But we say
all that because although animals do bring joy, I never
thought of a chimpanzee to help bring me joy. But
Jill Bond is with us. And Jill, you apparently rented
a chimpanzee to come play at your house.
S1 (01:37):
Let me just say, I don't see this as a
good idea, but go ahead. Why'd you do this?
S3 (01:42):
Uh, well, it turned out to be a great idea.
This was years ago. We were at the Virginia. I
was at the Virginia State Fair with my mom, and
we walked past this place where you could have your
photo taken with a chimpanzee for $5. And I begged
my mom begged her, and she just kept saying, no,
(02:03):
Excuse me. And I have to tell you that I
was not a child at this time. I was like,
35 years old and a mother begging my mother to
let me get my picture taken with a chimp. But
she refused, and I finally I said, why not? And
she said, well, somebody might look at it someday and
think that it's a three generation photo. And she was
(02:25):
not trying to be funny. That was a big concern
for her. So we didn't do it. We missed that opportunity. Well,
20 years later, my family from Indiana was coming to
my home in Virginia for a big family event, and
I had to do something with all these people. I
was lying in bed one night thinking, what am I going?
(02:46):
How am I going to occupy them? And I thought
about this opportunity from 20 years before, and I wondered,
I wonder if I could find a chimp, you know,
a photographable chimp. So I put out the network feelers,
and I actually found one that a man in our
county owned a zoo. And so I called them up
(03:07):
and I said, please don't think I'm crazy, but this
is this is the story. He loved it, but he said,
it's December. You don't want to bring your mom. Who is?
She was 88 by that time. You don't want to
bring your mom out in the cold. Why don't I
bring the chimp to your house? And you could not
have said anything that would have made me happier. So
I said yes. Yes, it's a great idea. So we
(03:29):
had a photographer and we had a backdrop, and my
mom thought, well, we're just going to take family photos.
But when I saw the handler come up the sidewalk
with the chimp, I said, mom, put on some lipstick.
I got a surprise for you. They walked through the
door and I said, do you remember 20 years ago? Absolutely,
she remembered. But she'd mellowed a lot by this time.
(03:51):
She was all about it. And for 90 of the
most joyful moments of our lives, I'm telling you, we
frolicked around with that chimpanzee. We lay down on the floor.
She rolled over like logs and she would take grapes
from our mouths and, you know, jump and roll and somersault.
(04:12):
90 minutes and 300 pictures. It was awesome. But the
sweetest moment of the day, aside from taking a family photo,
was when my mom and I sat down for that
photo with the chimp, and I tell people that I
keep that picture on my dresser even now because for
(04:34):
two reasons. Number one, it reminds me of a wonderful time.
But the second thing is, it reminds me that there
are moments in this day that are to be had,
and I don't want to miss them. So, um, just
a little PS to that story. My mom passed away
(04:55):
when she was 99.5 years old. My brother and I
were talking to the minister, talking to the funeral director,
and the funeral director said, okay, we want to put
out a little brochure as they do often, and he said,
we need a picture. And my brother looked at me
(05:17):
and he said, I have an idea, but it might
be inappropriate. And I said, inappropriate is our middle name.
Let's go for it. So on my mom's funeral brochure,
there's this picture big of big as life of her
with a chimpanzee. And we got to laugh and tell
that story at her service and explain that picture. And
(05:41):
I said, is there a more perfect picture of joy
and sorrow in the same space? We held them both,
you know.
S1 (05:50):
So not to overstate, not to overspiritualize this, but you
know what? As you were telling that story, I was thinking, God's. No.
Today might be a greater yes, 20 years down the road.
S3 (06:02):
There you go. That's a great. Yes. It's true. You
never know. You never.
S1 (06:07):
Know. You just never.
S2 (06:07):
Do. And I love that. Um, you know, it was
a missed opportunity once, but you were able to come
back and like you said, she mellowed out. She was
okay with it. And so even though, like you said,
it was a no at first, but that it wasn't
a missed opportunity in the long run, that you guys
still had that memory and probably even better than it
would have been just at the fair a few minutes.
(06:28):
This was a far above and beyond what you can imagined,
and what a special story that you'll always keep and
remember of your mom and this chimp. And you also
said something there towards the end of that story, you
said joy and sorrow can really occupy the same space.
Just expound on that a little bit more.
S3 (06:47):
Well, everybody knows that, that there's always something going on beside,
beside the good times. And I also tell people, I
learned that when I was a kid on the tilt-a-whirl
at the street fair in my hometown, and I said,
it's the first place I realized that a human being,
(07:08):
it was possible for a human being to laugh and
throw up at the same time. There again, the good
times and and the tough times. I think we just
have to be very, very intentional about finding the joy
that's always there for us to pick up. That's not
(07:28):
to say that you pretend that there aren't tough times,
that you're not going through a terrible time, but but
it is always there for the taking somewhere.
S1 (07:40):
Okay, but if I'm on a seesaw and I'm on
the bottom of that seesaw, I need to start piling
things up on the other side of the seesaw to
lift me up. What are what are those things I
can put on the other side of that seesaw to
start building me, to remind me of this joy. To
bring me up.
S3 (07:57):
Oh, you know, I will tell you one of my
favorites and ways. And my husband's too. In January of 2020,
which even just saying the word 2020 just brings up
all kinds of feelings. We started this little practice in
a one line a day journal. I don't know if
(08:19):
you've seen them, but you can find them anywhere online.
It's a journal, and a lot of people will say, oh,
I don't keep a journal. I can't keep it up.
But all this is it has a little space every day,
and it goes on for five years. So you can
look up at the previous year and the two years
before that when you finish the journal in five years.
But we decided to use it this way. Every night
(08:43):
before we go to bed, we think of one thing
that brought us joy that day. And it can be
tiny and sometimes it's tough. You got to root around
in there for it. I know I got sick on
a road trip one time. It was awful. It was
15 hours of driving and sick and we came home
(09:03):
and all I could think of to put in that
book was didn't die, but, you know, didn't die. There
you go.
S2 (09:10):
There you go.
S3 (09:11):
I just it has been the most wonderful thing. Now
we've we've started our sixth year to look back. And
for us, there's nothing better to put in your mind
before your head hits the pillow than than the goodness
of God. And you see, now we have hundreds and
(09:33):
hundreds and hundreds of tiny shots of joy, good things
to be thankful for. And we went through some terrible
times during that five years Covid, um, just all kinds
of things. So that's one way, um, you know, another
way I love to do this and encourage people to
(09:55):
start a list. And you can start you can start
on your phone if you want. I prefer paper, but
wherever you can gain access to it really fast because
you want to add to it as time goes on
of things that bring you joy, things that feed your soul. Um.
And I just keep a list on one side of that.
(10:17):
Then when things get tough, or it doesn't even have
to be a terrible, terrible time, it can be a
task that you hate doing. If you can inject, I
call it a cross-reference list. You just inject one thing
that gives you joy into that tough time. Uh, sometimes
(10:38):
you just need a list to the multiple choice. Yeah.
You know, I love to be outdoors. When was the
last time I was outside? Even for five minutes or
stopped for just a minute. And I'm going through this
horrible time. I know, um. And I wish I could
remember the book, but I don't. But this lady loved
(11:01):
the outdoors very much. A hiker. And she lost her
best friend. Her best friend died. And she said in
response to that, I had to go into the woods
because no other arms were big enough. She had tapped
into what? The way God created her for joy and
(11:23):
and gave herself a shot of that. So those are
those are two ways. Very concrete ways and easy. They're
just you just have to be intentional about it.
S2 (11:33):
Jill Bowen is with us. And her resource that we're
talking about is no matter what. And it really is
about finding joy in the midst of pain and even sorrow.
But for the person who's saying, I'm in that season
right now, and their question that's running through their mind
over and over again is where is God? How do
you find God in those seasons?
S3 (11:53):
Um, you sometimes have to look for him. And I
have said before, my father died when I was just
a child, but I do remember I was ten years
old and I said, I remember seeing him finding him
after his service in a Jell-O salad. I found him
(12:16):
when I looked for him in the embrace of people
and the care of people. Sometimes he works through others.
I know my husband's father, um, had Covid contracted Covid
in April of 2020 and we could not see him
(12:36):
for three weeks. He was in the hospital and it
was bad and he was 91. And at one point
he was with a nurse, and this angel of a
nurse used her own phone to let us FaceTime with him,
which was awful and wonderful at the same time. She
(12:57):
played hymns for him on a computer that she found somewhere.
She had no idea that that's how he fell asleep
every night since his wife had died 12 years earlier.
She talked to us and we could see at that point,
you know, she was dressed up in what looked like
a hazmat suit. She wasn't allowed to touch him, but
(13:18):
she had a gloved hand that she would stroke his forehead.
Tell him what a sweet man she was. Tell us.
She assured us he is not alone. And she was
a Christian lady. And so she prayed with us. And
when the time came, she called us and said, I
think we're getting close here. And she held up her phone.
(13:41):
I don't know how long. It was a long time.
And when his chest failed to rise and he wasn't
breathing anymore, he had said before, I'm ready to go.
And my husband watched him and he said, I think
he's gone. And she looked at us and she checked him,
(14:02):
and she nodded her head and she cried with us.
And she said, God is in this place. I said,
it was the most terrible, beautiful full thing I had
ever seen in my life, to watch him take his
(14:24):
last breath on FaceTime, of all things, but be able
to usher him in to the arms of God. And
and this lady cried with us. She was with us. Uh,
I will never stop thanking God for this nurse. We
thanked her over and over, but often I think he
(14:45):
provides us with people and and a presence that you
can feel even in the darkest times.
S1 (14:52):
We just have, like, 30s left. But we're not talking
about being phony or fake when we're talking about joy.
This is this is a real emotion, but it comes
in different waves, is what you're saying, I think correct?
S3 (15:02):
Absolutely, absolutely.
S2 (15:06):
Well, there's a beautiful devotional that Jill Bond has put together, uh,
to help us recount and really find God and joy
in the midst of sorrow. It's called No Matter What.
And we have a link to it at our website.
Eric and bridget.org.
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