Bonus Episode: Of Wings and Dirt with Kimberly Phinney Unscripted | Words with Writers

Hey friends, it's Jen. And I'm so excited to share with you another special episode And as many of you know, this bonus series is in celebration of my poetry collection, A Beckoning to Wonder, which is Christian poetry exploring God's story.

I've been talking with different writers about our writing process and how that brings beauty into our lives, how it helps us process hard things. I'm continuing that conversation today with my guest, Kimberly Phinney, closing out our Words with Writers series here on Good God Talks. And it's kind of a unique format all to its own because my guest and I are interviewing each other. And so you're hearing this here and she'll also be sharing this episode on her podcast, The Way Back.

You'll hear from Kimberly a little bit about herself, but to introduce her a bit more. Not only is she an author and a poet, she's also the founder and editor-in-chief of The Way Back to Ourselves. She's an editor and a counselor and a professor. Kimberly's poetry collection is called Of Wings and Dirt and it's a beautiful read. And I know this conversation is going to leave you encouraged. So let's jump into it.

Well, Kimberly, I am so excited that we're doing this kind of co-interview podcast episode talking about God and poetry and the journeys that we've been on with the Lord. Thanks so much for doing this with me.

I know I am so excited to do this with you. And we were just trying to navigate before we hit record because this is kind of going to be an inventive podcast that I hope everybody sticks with us on. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun, because we're going to interview each other through authentic conversation.

Yes, God, poetry, faith, life, grief, hope, all of those things. Oh, and then the other cool thing was I was looking on Amazon because our books came out almost back-to-back and they were hanging out together. I was like, Oh, that's a beautiful cover. Look at the art. I love what it's called because some of our themes overlap. So just a lot of twin things that have kind of crossed and it really piqued my interest. I wanted to get to know you and learn more about your process.

Yeah, same. I'm excited to continue learning from you. There's so much depth and richness in your writing. I found new favorite poems as I read your collection. So thank you for it.

Oh my goodness. Thank you. Yeah. I think that when you talk about depth, I think probably two big things that brought me to that space. One was my illness, which we've both gone through things which forces you to your knees. It brings you to deep, dark places. And when we have faith in the Lord, we have to be grappling to find that light. And so I think my life experiences at the time plummeted me into that depth and then trying to find the light and to find the light and then to write about that.

And then the other thing is that I have taught English for about 20 years and now I'm an English professor. And so chewing on the greats and talking about the greats and learning from the greats and reading from the greats for 20 years. Even though these are people who've been ahead of us 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, 200, 400 years ago, if we're talking about, you know, Shakespeare, I feel like I learned at the hip of the greats, and you just end up soaking in it.

And so even if you can just get a little shred of them. You know, that really can help make writing significant.
I feel like that gives such great context already to you and a little bit of your backstory, but also your passion for the written word. Would you go ahead for those who are listening over on my podcast and maybe are just meeting you for the first time, and share a little bit more about yourself?

I would love to do that. And then, because this is a co-interview, I would love to flip it and let everybody at The Way Back To Ourselves hear about you and your huge heart for God and poetry.

So, a bird's eye view for me is that, yes, I've taught English in different capacities for the past 20 years, and I got extremely ill right when COVID happened. And I always say, like, as the world was shutting down, so was my body. And it was really just a very crazy time. So there's tension externally and there's tension internally. And it's stage four endometriosis. I'm in remission right now. I had to go through four different surgeries in a few years.

I lost my ability to walk. I lost my ability to have children. It's a miracle I'm here because the scariest season in it was in the middle, which was in 2021, because I had post-surgical complications from my second surgery. I got sepsis. I was hospitalized twice for it because they sent me home too early and it was really scary.

It was a very scary, complex time. I ended up losing my job, losing my community, losing belief. Because it's really hard for people to wrap their mind around the fact that how is a high functioning 37-year-old in a wheelchair overnight? Like, how does that happen? Yeah. And I think that young people in our culture, we have a hard time dealing with grief and giving grace for grief and giving space for grief.

And so when we talk about the depth of our writing and our faith journey that has informed me, more than anything else over the past few years.

I was desperate for wholeness and healing and not just for me and my family, but for our culture, for our community, for the world. Working with teens and young adults, you've seen the depression, anxiety on the rise and families are fractured. Communities are fractured, politics fractured, and I was just hurting.

And I said, Lord, you know, in the, in a fever dream, like, how do we get back to ourselves? And so. I founded the Way Back to Ourselves. It kind of started as a thesis and a little blog and the rest is history. And while that was happening, I was writing poetry to survive. And not because I was like, Oh, I'm going to go write a book now.
You know, I wasn't. I wasn't thinking that at all. I was up at two o'clock in the morning, extreme pain, writing to get my mind off of things, writing to find God in the dark corners, you know? So that's a brief overview of me. And I would love to hear your story about how you got to where you are right now and what brought you to write your book.

Oh, this is going to be a tension for me of wanting to ask you follow up questions probably this whole time because there's so much power that's packed into that. I really came to writing this poetry book because I knew that there was something about wonder, that God invites us into wonder, that it is necessary for our daily lives and for our faith.

And I was trying to write it in a nonfiction book format because I am an author and a Bible teacher, and it just wasn't actually evoking wonder. It didn't really work that way. And so the poetry journey for me really started from that place in feeling challenged in a beautiful way by the Lord to share it differently.

Never did I ever think that I would write poetry to share publicly, which it sounds like you can even relate to some of that of just the, the poetry was part of your survival. This was a very stretching exercise for me. Even for months writing the collection, I couldn't even come to call it poetry.

I called them sentences broken over lines because I was like, I don't, I don't have the training for this. Sounds poetic. Sentences broken over lines. I love it. Does it qualify as poetry? I don't even know. Like that was a lot of my tension for that. And so more of my backstory, I've always loved the written word.

I grew up in the church and had an awareness of God saving grace but had no clue about relationship for many of my years as a believer. So a lot of what I get to do now is helping others experience life with God, because a lot of what I lived through and even can kind of default back to sometimes is living for God, like trying to do the things I think He would want me to do or recognizing, okay, I live under His authority, which is true, but missing the awareness or the understanding or the noticing of how every part of life, including the really hard and heavy things can be an expression of experiencing relationship with him and of life with and alongside and in partnership with our God who loves us.

And so my podcast, Good God Talks, our regular episodes are these really little devotional moments of themes and verses and questions that we can go and ask God because he is closer than I realized for a long time. And part of his closeness is in those conversational moments with us. And my life testimony includes all sorts of ups and downs from several different types of chronic illnesses, mostly annoying ones.

I'll say it that way. I've had migraines since I was a teenager. I'm actually in the process of fixing TMJ right now, which is a big contributor to the migraines. I've had some unexplained things going on with gut health for years, trying to get those energy things and the fatigue under control and my husband and I had unexplained delayed fertility and infertility issues. So we have two sons that are elementary school age that we get to raise, and we have two babies that we lost during pregnancy that we'll meet one day in heaven. And then even in January of last year, my mom passed away from cancer.

I'm so sorry. I was whispering it, but I need to be audible, because I didn't want to interrupt, but, yeah, I just wanted to pause to hold space for that. It's a lot of grief to carry.
It is. And there's beauty in how the Lord meets us in all of it.

And sometimes I share those things because I feel like the hope that I have found in him can feel too fluffy. It can feel like, Oh, well, maybe you haven't gone through hard things to talk about life with God in that way. And it is hard, and he meets us in it, and I have hard days like anyone does. And the hope that we have is in how God meets us in those hard times. That's so much of the wonder that I'm trying to share in the poetry collection of the already and the not yet and the beauty of how God meets us even in the brokenness of our day-to-day circumstances.

I just want to pause to hold space for that grief and the collective grief that we experience as human beings. And I know for a fact, there are listeners who are nodding their heads, who know what infertility is, miscarriage. Cancer diagnosis, loss of a parent, you know, broken dreams. And yeah, I just wanted to pause for that and also to what you were saying that you didn't come to your feelings and your belief because of something fluffy, you came through hard knocks.

And I think that actually is, It's the true beauty of our faith. It's rugged. And one thing that kind of came to me when I was writing too is like bloodied saints, we are his children. It's not promised that’s easy. And we know that through Christ and his storyline and the life he lived and scars on his hands.

That's something that I have meditated on a lot, you know With all the surgeries that I've had. And so the scars that we have can be literal and figurative, but just speaking physically, I have 14 scars across my abdomen now.
And every time that I look at them, now, rather than feeling pity for myself, I'm also working on accepting the body that I have now. But thinking about those scars and thinking about the scars that Christ had and the beauty that they bought.

When we were kind of brainstorming what we wanted to do in this podcast, what we wanted to generously give to our listeners with our conversation. I think that our scars, our grief, they're all things that we can offer up. And that good, beautiful things can come out of them because we saw that by what Christ did.

There wouldn't be a resurrection. There wouldn't be the beautiful sacrifice. There wouldn't be redemption, rebirth, all of these things that the human spirit is calling for desperately moaning for if it wasn't for that pain that he willingly went through. And then the last thing that I wanted to say, I guess, is a follow up to you is you talked about wonder.

And that's something to that. When I saw your title, I have a whole chapter called wonder. Yeah. And, the wonder is attached to the wings and that we're spiritual creatures. And, you know, the Charles Spurgeon quote about, you know, that we aren't winged things. But if we believe we can be, Yeah. We've become winged, winged things, you know, and so I just, I love that.

And I guess so for me, I wanted to know what does that look like when we go to the Bible in our hard grief laden lives through poetry? Like how do you cultivate the wonder? How do you find it?

I love that question. I think it's different for me in different seasons. If I start thinking about the heavy times when my soul is tired, when I feel heavy laden, one of the practices for me is really, the habit of looking for God on display in scripture. And it felt too blatant in my face, like I should have somehow been aware of him before, but a lot of my default responses to the Bible really were for action items.
It was like, okay, well, what do I need to learn? What do I need to apply? And being transformed into Christ's image is true and real and beautiful and exquisite. But there was this tendency within myself to just look for almost a checklist or a homework assignment. And especially in those times when we're grieving, or we feel alone, or we are broken, and we need healing.

I needed to retrain my approach to the Bible to look for how God was on display, not to look for my task list that he somehow wanted me to pick up. I was already overwhelmed with the things going on in my world. And so to look at scripture and to see his constant character, to see how he showed up for people in the Bible one of my favorite memories to look back on was a time when I was reading the story of the widow of Nain in the gospel of Luke. And the Bible doesn't tell us very much about her. It doesn't tell us her name, even it doesn't tell us how long she was a widow, but it says that she was a widow, and she lost her only son.

Jesus meets her town walking with her outside the city and they're carrying her boy's body for burial. And Jesus comes up and raises the boy from the dead and Jesus gives him back to his mother. And there was a time in sitting and reading that story that I first saw her as a human. Like she wasn't just a two-dimensional character to teach me a lesson, but she was a real person, which I always knew. I just had never really felt it the same way or noticed it that way. And I wept over what Christ did for her, like she was my friend. like she was someone I knew in my daily life today.

And it was as if in my mind's eye and in my heart, I was watching this woman receive back her son. And I was imagining her turn her gaze to Jesus and what that would have felt like to be in his gaze that way, to be held In his presence.

I'm trying not to cry. It's really beautiful.

It's so beautiful, and then to realize that is what he offers to you and me right now.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so right now we are held in his gaze. And we can behold him caring for us the same way he cared for that widow. And our circumstances are different. Even how Jesus interacts and meets us in our circumstances will look different, but he is still the same and he is still with us with that same loving care.

That really transformed how I approached the Bible.
And actually that does evoke unbelievable wonder because how many times have I read the book of Luke or heard about that from a pastor in a Bible study and to listen to you retell it just now to me, it was like the first time I ever heard it.

Because you were pausing to be in the wonder of it and to really embody, like, what would it be like if I were her? And you know what's so crazy is we both have the infertility and miscarriage story in common. And you walk through that grief. You recognize that grief. And then I think when you go back into the Bible and you can actually reread these stories, it can just blow you back. Like, for instance, I have a little Ebenezer stone, I call it, on my nightstand.

It's a little stone that says, remember, and it's from Mark 534. Daughter, your faith has made you well. And it's when she reached out and touched Jesus's robes. Instantly she was healed. And this was someone that was bleeding all those years. And again, this is something that I read it since a little girl, you know, you're reading the Gospels, but it wasn't until I entered that type of suffering, that long suffering that those passages now just, they bring me to tears and wonder every time, you know, and then it's so funny that you, you shared that story in your heart because you wrote when you were calling into believing in reading and going into reading at the end, you said, when we go to read the Bible, it's not to be informed, but formed and that's kind of what you were talking about.
I just think that's really beautiful is that access of going in with wonder, going in seeking his face.

It's so much richer than I used to think it was. I genuinely thought that the best that God had for me in scripture was to inform me how I ought to live.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself. That I could do better for God. And instead he's like, come. Come be formed more in the design of your original intent. You've always been created for life in me and be formed in the way of Jesus.

And not in a way that is performative. I can default so easily to feeling like I need to achieve or prove myself to God. And he's like, no, just come and see me differently. Come and experience life with me. I hear that even in the echoing of your poetry too, I think it was in one of your haikus about the beautiful thing that runs through you is you. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like, I don't know if I just missed it or if I stopped it at some point and needed to start it up, but the awe of who God is and then we, as his image bearers, like it is, amazing.

The soul that is in you Is wondrous and the invitation I feel like that is present in every moment to just be at awe, of who God is and to be brought into awe and wonder at who we are, like, who you are It is wondrous to think about.

Absolutely. Yeah. those little haikus too, I was trying to walk through the mind body spirit as spiritual beloved beings of the one true God.

And I am getting my doctorate right now. I'm just a few classes left until I start my dissertation, but the idea of somatic healing and learning to be embodied and to be in our bodies. As spiritual beings, you know, when we access this information as Christians and not just, you know, good science.

I think that it becomes extremely wondrous and magical. I mean, as you and I are speaking, the blood in our body is being pumped through our veins. Yeah, like there's something magical happening right now. And that's that divine touch of God. And so, yeah, those little haikus, I'm so glad you picked up on that.

Cause that was the hope, you know to pack a punch. Right. Actually in speaking of it, I would love for you to maybe, to read maybe streams, cause we were kind of throwing around the idea of. reading some favorite poems. But that was one of the ones I loved. And then the end, I really loved the ones at the end that you did, but “Streams” I really, really liked.

And I think that the listeners would love to hear it.

Yeah. I'd love to. So it's called “Streams.”

“All our stories
are at home within God’s.

In the beauty and the pain
in the bounty and the poverty.

Even in times
when we refuse God’s story,
when we accuse His goodness,
when we don’t want to find Him,
when we want to find Him as different than He is.

We don’t abandon reality.
We simply limit
our vision
and participation.

It’s always our choice.
What stories we lend our attention
what we look at
train toward
believe in
give our hearts for.

Overlooking Him
doesn’t take Him away.

God,
with His grand story
Stays.
Doesn’t change.

God,
with His grand story
so expansive
offers
grace.
Space
for the streams of our stories
within His eternal current.

We
who live and move and have in Him
being.
We
who in moments of divine grace
stand, or sit, or fall apart
drenched
in awareness
of our loving Creator.
Our attention caught
corrected
captivated
to the point of response.

Like waves folded into the ocean
we’re held in His story.

These are not chance happenings,
serendipitous accidents to trip
us into Him.

We are not on perpendicular paths.
We live within—
every moment
good and bad
lived within—
God’s invitation to know and continue with Him.” (Jen Weaver, “Streams” in A Beckoning to Wonder)

So good. I love it. I love the streams, obviously that you named it after. And I really loved the emphasis that his story is still unfolding. And that we're a part of it because I don't know what it is. And maybe it's just because it's an ancient religion and we're modern people and we're so used to like bite sized content, but I feel like we think that the God of the Bible and all of those stories that they're static.

You know, it's in the history books and we intellectually understand that God is still God and he's still on the throne, but it almost feels like it's suspended. You know, and I loved that you kind of interrupted that. And so you did draw me into wonder because I was like, that's right. Like the story is still being written and we are a part of that story.

And I think I even wrote down a quote that I liked. Oh, here it is. You said the Bible is complete, nothing to add or take away yet. God himself is without end. His story continues even now. Yeah. I really loved that part. And then at the end of your book, you even asked like, do you know that you are a part of God's story? You're in his story.

Yes, we are and, I love the way you called it suspended. I love that description of it because We can feel like we're watching it, like I'm catching up on God's story somehow that's already taken place, but it's still taking place and he is not overcome or thwarted by the evil that's in the world or by the mistakes that we make or by the hard things that we go through, like the painful parts of our life experiences are still part of his story.

They're not disqualified. We're not removed. He's like, come I have space for all of this. You are in this eternal current of who I am. Notice me here. See my love for you. Experience yourself interwoven here in my story. And I feel like there's so much of a of an opposite narrative that is shared in society, like even to the point of: become the main character. Write your own story. Main character energy, all of this draw to find our own way. When we can be true to who we are and have this incredible vibrancy to our lives by recognizing that we're already part of God's story. That he invites us in that way.

It sounds so attractive in our culture where it's like, you're the main character. You're writing your own narrative. Ultimate freedom. But we end up finding out that we're in silos and we're actually lost and lonely. And one of the great existentialists, he's kind of like the father of modern existentialism Jean Paul Sartre. Now, of course, I'm not French. So I probably just really slaughtered his name. I try my best. But he talked about that idea of being a terrifying abundance of freedom. And so there's this thing out there right now that just “do you”, define whatever you want. And that somehow that's going to bring us so much happiness.

And it actually doesn't. You're out there, writing your own story. And then you realize that no one else is actually in your story at all, because they're all busy writing their own stories. And how fulfilling can that be? And then from a Christian lens, we get to say, we have dignity, and we are beloved as who we are, but we're also called into community and to be a part of the body and we're adopted in Ephesians.

You know, we're adopted into God's family as his children. I think that's a much more beautiful story. I'd rather be a supporting character in God's story than wake up tomorrow and think I get to write my own and I get to be the so-called leading lady, right?

Yeah. Actually, it reminds me of one of the favorite lines I had from one of your poems.

You were talking about how being alone or lonely are two different things. And I feel like so much of our experience can be that. If I'm trying to write my own story and you're trying to write your own story, we can be around each other. And so we're not necessarily alone, but we're lonely because we've lost connection to community, and we need that interdependency.

It's us together, not just me, myself and you yourself, but we together are being built together as the body. I don't know if you had a poem selected. I'd love for you to read one. I have many that were my favorites. Oh, I love that. That's so sweet. Thank you. I think the one that stands out to me the most is my monkish life.

Yeah, so you know what's so funny is, a lot of people have shared that one really impacted them and meant a lot to them. And what's so crazy and what I think is really beautiful about that. Is I did not write that one to set out to try to be scholarly or to try to do something that's impressive or, you know, really, really poetic. I was deeply struggling. And I wrote this one maybe about a year ago after another collapse knowing I was going to have to have a fourth surgery and it was a very, very dark time and I was getting less and less mobile. And so I was spending the vast majority of my days in bed or on the couch, not a lot of quality of life. And so I woke up one afternoon, really. Yeah, because I couldn't sleep. It was around noon. And I woke up and my house was empty and silent.

My husband was at work. My daughter was at school because my husband was taking her in. My old dog was asleep at the end of my bed. It was raining out and this poem just came. it comes from a place of being and suffering, but also being in a knowing and a wonder and a joy at the same time, which is the most crazy thing, but it is what we're promised.

And yeah, I just wanted to give it context. So here it is. My monkish life, I fell asleep late last night, reading Isaiah and dreamt about gardens and prophecy. I had nowhere I needed to be. When I woke, so I slept in bed until noon, listening to the rain hit the roof and when I opened my eyes, I witnessed the humidities do gather so gently and drop down the windowpane and cry tears like we do.
Then I watched my old pup awake with movements and rhythms to do her faithful stretches a happy baby, a downward dog. And she reminded me in her ease. That I should do more yoga because they say it's good for the pain. It's so quiet now. I can hear the prayers in my head and poetry lines run on and on.

So much so I can't catch them all. So I think I may drink my coffee in bed and learn to soak the silence in some more while my body rejects the world and what it used to do. And then I'll stop and write to you. Listen, I think I could hear God overhead because I finally understand I am not a performance or what others have said I am.
My worth is not measured by what I am not producing here in this bed. It's almost as if my monkish life is helping me to forget all the broken parts in my past and in my body. And those who have gone because of it. Time is good at making ha hazy fragments fog over like glass. And God is good at healing.

Yes, I think I'll drink my coffee in bed, turn the clocks face down, read some Romans or Rumi or Rilke out loud, and keep relearning. And maybe later, if I can get this ache in my belly to stop, I'll go study the clouds because for the first time in my life, I am living the art of now.

It's exquisite.

Oh, thank you. It was one of those ones that just kind of hit me, you know, when your emotions are just kind of bubbling, and things are so complex. I was just trying to process my grief, and also my wonder and joy and my faith and the beautiful things that I could still touch and know.

I love the line you have in that the living in the art of now and the way you speak of poetry. I feel like I probably know part of this answer already, but is poetry part of that habit for you to live in the art of now?

Oh, absolutely. if I take myself back, right. And I time travel back into my childhood, the very first things that I wrote, you know, truly, you know, creatively, there was a little short story I wrote.

that I remember about a wild cheetah that I found in my woods, and I tamed her, which is kind of poetic for an eight-year-old, but really, really, I just started writing poetry as a preteen and it just never, never stopped. Never. There've been dry spells. But here I am in my forties and I wrote a book. And you know what I know is true, is that I have a poet's heart. And I think there's a handful of us and it feels really validating when you get to meet people who kind of march to that beat.

Of that unique drum that there might not be a lot of us out there. Where I can just get lost in things, I'm supposed to be doing the dishes. The next thing I'm waxing poetic. The dishes become a metaphor, the water running over the plates and how they're cleaned and the cracks in the plates, the memories that they hold.

And I mean, my brain will just trail off. And so it always is calling you to be fully present and to take notice. And if you do those things, not only can you have more joy in your life, but there's more beauty, there's more gratitude. And then I think from that practice, that's where poetry can really flow.

And I know other artists talk about this too. that's where they feel the move to paint or speakers feel the need to speak, right, or perform, actors, drawers, sculptors, like I think that that's that bubbling, beautiful art of now that creativity that can come out of us. You know, God breathing through us breathing through gardens, breathing through children, rain, even your dog, you just can't get wrapped up in all the beauty of it.

I love the way you describe it because I think it makes space for those who would say, I don't know that I have that, but I would want that. In one of your poems you talk about carrying promises.

It says, and when did we stop carrying promises and start dealing in regrets? I feel like that's so relatable, even for someone who's like, man, I, I wish I got captivated by the dishes and the water and the possibilities in that. But I think in a tangible way, it's easier to understand, okay, at some point I started dealing more in regrets than I did in carrying promises.

Absolutely. And that's one of those really packed lines. I have a little notes on my phone. And over the years I would have these waves, like hit me of life lessons or little things that God was showing me. And I'm like, Oh, I can't lose that kernel. And so the quote that you just pulled from is called a series of wonders.

And it literally were things that I wondered about over several years that were in my phone. And I listed them. And I realized, you know, just as I was aging and like infertility and things like that. And I just, Was reading the Bible and I was like, man, it's really hard for me to carry these promises anymore, It's really hard for me to look out and get really excited about life right now.

I don't know You know what? I'm hoping for anymore what I believe because we go to those places as humans even when we're faithful, it can live with doubts. And Timothy Keller is really great about talking about that—and that helped me so much—that the best faith was paved by doubt.

It's us going to the Lord and vocalizing those things. Right. And so when did we stop caring promises can be a theological spiritual question. It can be a question of age and then asking yourself, and now why am I dealing in regrets? Like, why am I living in that space? And so. I mean, we all go through things, and we can have a pity party.

We can lament like all of those things are going to happen. We're human. And I'm not going to pretend that I don't. That's ridiculous. We all go through that, but I think it's what we do next. It's the next thought. It's the second thought. And I think that's a really healthy thing in psychology and in counseling is when you're washed with depression or anxiety or anger, that's a first thought.

What really matters is your second thought. Like, what am I going to do with this? How am I going to hold myself? How am I going to run to the Lord? What choices am I going to make next? How am I going to treat someone in this difficult situation? And so dealing in regrets, I agree. It's easy to look over our shoulders and go, I wish I was this way. I wish I was that. But you also have that second choice. You can wake up tomorrow and you can start to practice these small acts of noticing. Saying I am going to look for God today, which is kind of what you were saying. We're a part of his story.

So right it's unfolding in front of us, with us Or I'm going to look for hope today. What's that one tangible thing that I can hold on to? And I think that those little, tiny baby steps, we can string them together and then before you know it, you have some spiritual momentum.

If you've been struggling with depression, that can give you a little bit of reprieve because for some of us, that's a lifelong journey, you know, that we're going to have to walk.

Yeah. And that's so practical. It is that very next step. I think sometimes, especially if we're noticing, man, I feel light on promises today.

It can feel like, Oh, I need to somehow make this huge change right now, but it's okay. What's the very next step? What's a promise I can hold onto? What's a promise I can look for. What's a glimmer that I can try and be attentive to.

Absolutely. The visual I just got is like, you know, like leapfrog or like, you know, lily pads, like just make it to the next one, you know what I mean?

Don't look at the journey all ahead of you. Just like, how do I create that momentum or that force that can get me just to that next moment?

And a lot of times we don't see God with us in that large scary thing. We just see the big scary thing. We've suspended him somewhere else in our mind. We don't see him right there combating that with you. That's something that I also had to work through in my own faith because I feel like my faith was cerebral and very thought out.
Timothy Keller is, I always said, he's my pastor. He just didn't know it, rest his soul. He really brought me back into my faith. I think that before I got sick, I was very cerebral.

I loved God in a big, minded way, and I didn't have it in my core, in my heart. He wasn't pumping through my veins. I didn't know how to let things be in my body. And then it was actually ironic that when I was losing it is when I was able to start to embody the faith and to feel him right here in the core of me.

I love the way you talk about how poetry was necessary for you. What encouragement would you share with someone who just feels like they need tools like to help them as they navigate their own hard things?

I love that. And I would love to know what your answer is to, you know, from the Bible teacher perspective, and I can talk about it from the creative arts and then psychology perspective.

If you find yourself, you know, in your deepest valley, something you said earlier is the idea that it's not going to last forever, you know, when you were talking about finding the wonder and going through hard things and seeing God in the story. And so to be really tangible, here's something really tangible that we did.

So I was in my bed and alone a lot and having to be cared for and we printed out scripture promises, really powerful quotes, things that my husband was saying to me, my best friend Candace said to me, and we hung them on the wall in our bedroom for me to see. And earlier I talked about the Ebenezer stone, the little stone that I have on my nightstand.

I think that it is so important for people who are struggling to have something outside themselves that they can look to or look at. And it is just that touch point. Some of them are literally still hanging on my closet door right now.

I can't bring myself to take them down. But one said, you're coming back to life. My best friend would tell me that she said, you know, you're, you have to give yourself grace, you're coming back to life. And then having scripture, you know, when you go through deep waters, I will be with you. we can't carry these promises for ourselves sometimes.

taking time to make something tangible in your world when it feels really dark is really good. And then here's a really practical one I learned from a popular social psychologist, Martha Beck, that I read years ago. It's an eclectic perspective, but I want to add a Christian touch to it. When we're struggling with depression, anxiety, a lot of times we have recordings in our head, these internal truths and I'm putting them in air quotes because they're not, but they're real to us. And then our nervous system is trained to have a flood of responses to it. So for instance: I'm so broken, no one will ever love me again. Or if anybody knew just how broken or crazy I am on the inside, like they would be disgusted. They would run away. There's something wrong with me. I'm not lovable. Satan loves to get us in the dark alone. Right. So what Martha Beck talks about, and this is a really practical thing that you can do, is you have these nasty recordings, right?
And then in your brain with neuroplasticity is what fires together wires together. And so if you have this internal track that is telling you the opposite of what God says about you, I mean, just these horrible things.

You need to fire those voices. one, they're not from God and two, they don't have anything good for you. Now that's harder to do than for me to just say it, because if it was that easy, then none of us would be struggling the way we do. Right? So this is something that's really, really sticky in our bodies, but they're not from God and they're not you.

They're a part of you. And you have to get that distance, right? And then you, you fire all those nasty voices. You go, you know what? She calls it the everybody committee. You're fired. This is not from God and it's not of me and it's not good for me. And then you rehire your everybody committee and you learn what did they say to me?
What does my friend Jen say about me? What does God say about me? What does my husband, my child say about me? And those very things, I love you just the way you are. You know, come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. I am near to the brokenhearted. You are my precious child. you replace those vicious voices with a new committee.

I'm definitely going to have to go and look her up. I offer a similar thing, from the perspective of a Bible teacher, I talk about them as lesser stories. So what's the lesser story? What's the greater story?

Tell me this. I want to hear.

Oh my goodness. It's actually a really similar thing that I've learned. Oh gosh. Over the years. So I'm an Enneagram one. And I share that to say my inner self critic is super, super loud.

So I'm a one wing. I'm a nine and my one terrorizes me. So I hear you.

My goodness. And I didn't know until learning Enneagram, that everyone's internal critic wasn't the same volume as mine was.

Part of it came through that. Part of it came from my own healing journeys and freedom journeys and counseling and different things of recognizing that I would hold onto these stories, most of which originated from hard events that happened in my past. Things that were said to me that I've since repeated over myself so often, I now hear them in my own voice.

Just because I've repeated it so many times. And that's exactly the point is we have them, and we don't question them. Yes. They're there and they're just playing, and we accept them. Yes. And so one of the things that I love to encourage people to walk through is really just stepping back to take notice of the story.

What is that story and where did it come from? And what is that producing? And then we hold it up to the light of scripture. Does this line up? Does this line up with what the Bible says? And not just, okay, this one part of one sentence, but the context of the passage, the context of the whole of God's story of love and redemption, because scripture can get taken out of context, and we can even learn it out of context and think, oh, this is what this means, and hurt ourselves by doing so.

But also, okay, holding it up to God's character and nature, which is on display in scripture, but it requires a more specific look of, again, where is God on display in this passage? How can I see him? Does this story line up with him? And then the exchanging of the story, if that is a lesser story, which, I mean, sometimes they're just, you know, Flat out lies.

Sometimes they have a little bit of truth that's just been counterfeited or contorted in a way where I'm like, okay, well that was true of my perception of the event that happened. That might've even been true of the whole physical event that happened in my life. But that does not comprise the whole truth about me or about my value or my identity or about God. And so that still is a lesser truth, but I can hold onto it and give it an inappropriate place and significance in my life that it doesn't deserve. And so then it's exchanging, okay, Lord, well, then what is the true story?

And in the Christian perspective, like that's repentance, which depending on how we grew up, I grew up, repentance was a little bit of a scary word. Like it had a lot of condemnation. I condemned myself a lot when I messed up on something or I needed to repent. I felt like, Oh, I needed to earn back good graces with God.

It wasn't enough to say, Oh, I don't want to do that anymore. I need to do extra good things to come back to him. And. In its fullest form, repentance is changing your mind. It's thinking again and choosing a different course. It's the simple exchange of, I was carrying this lesser story.
God, I'm sorry. That's not true of you. That's not true of me. I want to exchange this. Can I trade up for the better story?

Yeah, it's pretty wild. You know what I love? And this is, this is, truth, right? That you're accessing this from a Bible teacher. And then the way that I'm accessing it is through my perspective, my education, my background, and we're coming to the same truth and it's God's truth.

You know, I have to remind myself too. And again, I'm not dealing advice out to people, someone who's not studying this and I'm and a co-suffer, right? I have a clinical depression, anxiety. So I don't want to pretend that these answers are easy, but there is truth to uncover. And what I'm saying about myself, what I'm believing about myself, it's a disordered thinking.

And when our thoughts are disordered, our brain can become disordered, and our body becomes dysregulated. And that is where the chemistry can really be involved. But we know now through science, which is so cool, in the Bible it talks about like, I'll renew your mind. Like there's redemption, there's rebirth.

all of it points toward renewal and renewing of the mind. And now. Psychologists, scientists, researchers are coming in and saying, Oh my goodness, the brain and the body can, the brain can rewire itself and the body can heal. And so what beautiful news for us. The promises that God gave us are true.

You can exchange the lesser story or your bad everybody committee for the greater story, or for the right story, for the right voices. Yes. So that way your body can know that it's safe again. that it's safe to heal and it's safe to be loved because I think at least for me and what I've studied and what I've experienced is when you are not positive that you're worthy and you're worth love and you don't actually know that deep, deep down, a lot of that does manifest and impact our mental and spiritual health.
And that's why the gospel is so important. This world is throwing all this stuff at us. Like we were talking about earlier, Oh, be the main character. And just go get yours. and, uh, you define everything, and you make it whatever you want. And again, that stuff sounds so attractive because it's pillaging from things that are good or beautiful. But you bring God into the equation and that's when you actually get whole. You can start to realize that no matter what anybody says about me, no matter what life looks like, whether it's good, bad, ugly right now, this world cannot take away my belovedness.

That's so true. And it offers us that hope because It feels very simple to say, Oh, you know, just exchange it, just kick out those voices and bring in the nice one.

No, no, it's in it. Sometimes you need help to do it. I know I did. I've been to a grief counselor. And I went in before all of this, I went to a counselor, so I don't say these things lightly at all.

The same, I mean, the kind of going back to what we were talking about a little earlier with community, it's, knowing that there's hope, you don't have to give up hope if you're walking through a hard thing, there are promises that we can hold on to.

There are communities we can seek out and trusted people to walk in journeys along with us and tools to support us I mean EMDR was huge for me when I was going through counseling and talking about like your brain rewiring, I needed to be able to stop reliving circumstances because every time I thought of them it was like I relived them, and I couldn't shake it Myself.
I needed support to come alongside. But my first step in that was really learning, oh, I don't have to live this way. Oh, I don't have to always feel like it's happening again when I think of this memory. so for anyone who's listening and you're like, okay, wait, this can't be this easy. We're not saying it's easy.

Please hear us.

It's possible though. That's the hope right there. Is that my impossible is actually possible. I would have never believed that. If you would have went to me three or four years ago in the depth of my illness. And you said, Oh, Kimberly you're going to go through more surgeries.
You're going to be back in your wheelchair. You're not going to want to live anymore. but then you're going to be okay. Okay. and you're going to heal and God's going to use you and you're going to find a new community and you're going to find new purpose.

I am telling you right now, I am not about cheap hope. This is real raw hope. Bloodied saints is what I'm talking about. And I 100 percent would not have believed that had disbelief because I wasn't in the place yet in my faith.
And then the healing journey to allow that to flow into my body, into my heart, deep down, deep, deep down and to believe it. And when that happened, that's when my real healing journey started.

It's not about loving God for the things that he gives you. It's loving the giver, not the given things. And when you are at that rock bottom and you realize that this is all I've got, that's when I think real love and real hope can really get ignited. And so sometimes. Our grief is a gift.

‘Cause God is sincere in the love and the hope that he gives us. We get to experience that in different ways when we go through heartbreak and devastation like that. I also think part of the gift that we get in those seasons is seeing Our hope fortified and our faith proven sincere. When you're walking through the fire and it's getting forged. Here we go, Lord, I need you. And I'm turning to you. And not that we have to do it perfectly, but that we do turn to him. It's that evidence of, Oh, this has made it to the core of me. This is true to me.

And if you bring in those eyes, you can see that, oh my gosh, like, In the Bible, it was in the deepest grief that people fell in love with the Lord and they were ready to receive what Christ had to bring. A lot of times it's in the deep, dark things when we're broken up and that we're ready to receive the greatest gift. And so I guess that would be one other thing. Of my last deep thoughts would be that when you're in that space of grief or the dark night of the soul, maybe a new set of eyes that you can see that the grief could be a gift.

It might be right here, that your awakening is about to happen. It might be right here that God is going to reveal himself. And I always like to say to the people at The Way Back To Ourselves, and as I counsel people, is that healing comes in shades and stages.

Yeah. It's really important, especially as Christian speakers, leaders, Bible teachers counselors, helpers, writers, that we don't try to sell healing wholesale. That if you pray enough, if like you were talking about, if you're good enough, if you check the boxes, if you read your Bible enough, you're going to get this American gospel.

You're going to get the American dream Christian style where you're not going to get sick. When you ask for healing, you're going to get full healing the way that we want it. And that's why I would say shades and stages, because sometimes it's not the body that the Lord's going to heal earth-side. It's going to be the spirit or it's going to be a relationship or it's a healing that's going to come after a loss.

And so when we were talking about wonder earlier, What a strange way to wonder, you know, that there's wonder in the grief, there are things to be found. Yes. And I just feel like Of Wings and Dirt is me living in that tension. Like there's unbelievable grief right here, like right here, but there's also unbelievable love and wonder and there's still something worth living for even in our brokenness.

I'm going to keep that with me. Shades and stages because that's so true. And the eyes to see those, I think part of that is even asking God for the eyes to see him. He tells us he's near to the broken hearted. And he binds up our wounds. So God, I need you to show me, help me sense you, help me see you, help me see you in the people who are around me.

Help me see you showing up in my doctor's appointments, in these heartaches, show me where you were, show me where you are, because he tells us that he's here. And we might get pictures in our mind's eye or a recollection of something or just a different vantage point, different eyes to see something that we've walked through to see, oh, God, I didn't see you there in the moment, but in my memories now, I see that you're showing me how you were here and how you've been with me.

Since then, since before then, even still.
I love that. So I guess I want to make sure I get in at least one more question for you.

Well, and I need to talk about the artwork on your cover.
Let's do that. Let's go that way. I would love to talk about the artwork because you partnered with an artist. And I really loved it because it added to your words. The way they were broken on the page with the artist. So I would love to hear about that. And then I can talk about my cover art. Does that sound good?

Yes. Okay. You're so kind. I'm like, your cover. You're like, your artwork. I had the joy of partnering with a friend, Michelle R. Acker is a dear friend of mine, and she did these exquisite illustrations. We got together because I had this idea of offering a beckoning to wonder visually broken up. I have all of the poems that are split over many, many pages, and I wanted it to provide a visual experience to aid the wonder. We decided, okay, we're going to do this project together.

And without having spoken with each other, we both came to this little coffee meeting with the idea of torn paper. I was like, I'm not going to say anything because I don't think I've ever seen Michelle do any work with torn paper. I don't even know if that was a medium she worked in.

And she brought it up and she said, what would you think about us doing something with torn paper? And so I love that God was kind of stirring this creative idea for both of us already. I feel like it adds such a richness to the collection overall. So all of the artwork in here started as photographs that she then ran through a program to watercolorize and then they're printed and torn and some she pieced together parts of a picture.

A lot of them are just total new designs that are crafted from torn parts of this picture and that picture and this picture. There's one of them, I don't even know which one it is anymore. There's a picture of the two of us and in there and like, I think our hair helped make a tree or something at one point.

Oh my gosh, that's so cool.

And then it's so fun, but I love it because I feel like it also speaks to the reality that we have in God. That even the things that we would think are just torn pieces of paper, that are scraps to be thrown away. He's like, no, I create. Look at what I create in all of these ways. Look at the stories that I'm crafting in you. Look how you are part of my creation and I'm on display in you. And so the wonder to even just sit down and marvel at the fact that our stories are part of God's story and that we are his beloved, that we can continue in that reality that it's, both.
It's both the tangible finite world we're in and also this invisible but perceptible reality we have in God that's on display in torn paper art that she, I mean, I couldn't do this. We did a crafting day together and my art looked nothing like her art.

And that's why we need each other, right? Yes.

Because if I made my cover art, it would not have turned out as well, right? So I also had a really great friend that I got to work with on the cover of my art. But I, I want to just share one God wink moment really quickly, because you said that when you and your friend got together, you both were moved toward using paper.

And that's just crazy, right? That's when you're like, okay, I'm on God's frequency right now. Yeah. And that's exactly the way back to ourselves, we're doing a retreat. It's called cultivate, and we're going to be in Winston Salem. We still have tickets available. It's going to be June 22nd through 23rd.

And I would love any of your listeners to contact me and we could help them out. I would even extend the early bird special to them. And it's also going to be virtual. But what you made me think of was that my friend, Matt Nash, who's a spiritual director, right away, he was the first person that's like, I'm doing this with you, like, let's do it.
Right. When I was kind of dreaming up the idea and we talked on the phone, and we were all excited. And. And then, okay, I'll, I'll talk to you later. I forgot to tell him that when I was praying, I'm like, okay, what should be called?
I forgot to tell him that I was kind of wondering, like the word cultivate just popped into my mind and all of the images we associate with and all of that. And so I messaged him later and I said, Hey, you know, what are you thinking about with theme? I was praying and the word cultivate just jumped at me and he just was like, what?

And in the text message, she's like, you're not going to believe this, but that's the exact word that I got. And I was going to tell you, and I forgot that I'm thinking cultivate. And I was just covered in goosebumps. And I was like, okay, we're going to do it.

And now like, you know, almost 40 people are involved, and people are coming and there's virtual people coming and there's presenters and it's amazing. So I just wanted to share that God wink because it's so cool to see same God, as you say, it's the same God that he was moving in you all, but back to the cover, I got an image again, like, you know, how the cultivate Popped into my head when now I'm knowing like, okay I want to put all these poems together and I want to Organize them in some cohesive way and all of that just fell together, too. Of Wings and Dirt. So obviously there's a chapter on dirt and it's in the beginning we come from the dirt Adam is the first man, and it means dirt, his name means dirt, right?
And then all the way through wings, which is us with the Lord, us transcending us being spiritual beings, him lifting us like wings can take on a lot of different meanings metaphorically and symbolically in the poetry book that I did. But in the middle, I walk through woman, wounded, and wonder.

I had all these images in my head, and I reached out to Steve Veasey, and he's another person I would say, you know, definitely wonderful, faithful, creative and a great person to work with. And I said to him, Oh my gosh, I got this image because I have a beautiful praying Mother Mary in my garden.

And that was like just again one of those Ebeneezer's. She's perpetually on her knees praying and it always reminded me to get on my knees and pray, you know, physically, metaphorically. And the image of that, I just kind of would sometimes see the wings, like, so she's in the dirt and my garden there, she is praying and wings.
And so I said to Steve, I said, I just got this image of, but it's, it's kind of like an amalgam of like me and my brokenness. Right. I'm sick. In everything bent over broken in the dirt, torn clothes, but the cloak of Christ and faith around and then the wings. And I said to him, I don't know exactly what it is, but I need to articulate it to you.
And he ended up creating this beautiful, beautiful cover. And so it was kind of like a combination of those inspiration points. And if you look really closely, you can see that she's covered. in dirt and the dress is tattered. She's kind of in a broken physical space and then, but yet wings. And then the best part of all is the sash that says “hodie mecum eris in paradiso” which is Latin four. On this day, you'll be with me in paradise, which is what Christ said to the thief on the cross.

Because no matter how broken we are. And how far gone we are and how lost we think we are. If we just have that mustard seed of faith, that shred of hope we're saved. We're redeemed.

Yes. Oh, that's beautiful. I love it even more now knowing the story behind it.

I love that she has dirt on her knees too. I feel like. I feel like it's so relatable to us. And yeah, we can ask him even if we're like, I don't even think I have a mustard seed. Ask him for one. Ask him for a mustard seed portion of faith.
Exactly. And then what's really cool is my poem, "Still Life", which is probably one of my most ambitious ones in there, has “hodie mecum eris in paradiso” in there.

So it's part of the idea that through Christ, everything is redeemed, you know, but through man, everything is falling apart. Though outwardly we are fading away, inwardly, we are being redeemed and we're being renewed day by day.

Yes. We can hold to that promise too.

Yeah, this has been so wonderful. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours. I feel like I've met a kindred person in you.

Yes, I feel the same way. I'm excited for all of the things that God is continuing to entrust to you and for the way that you share so beautifully from your story. I feel like we need that as the world, like I need that. Need people who will be genuine to who we are and just share from, the beauty within the pain that we walk through. And so thank you for the way that you do that. And I'll have links in all of the places where people can find you and connect with you. Any closing thoughts?

I will do the same because I want the way back community to connect with you. And I would love in the future for us to maybe team up for one of our poetry hours. I think that they would love to talk to you. And for us to have these conversations and you're faithful, creative, and that's exactly who we love to connect with and commune with.

And I think that I would love to encourage people to grab our books because I think they're really fun companions. Oh, look at that. I love it. Yes. And they were best friends on Amazon charts when they were new releases. They were walking hand in hand.

Our books are already friends. Guys, you got to buy them together.

This has been a real joy. And I can't wait to connect with your community, and I can't wait for the way back to ourselves to get to know you more.

Friends, thank you so much for joining us. I do have links here in the show notes for places where you can connect with Kimberly and with the Way Back to Ourselves, as well as where you can get your copy of her book Of Wings and Dirt.

Of course, I’m also going to recommend a beckoning to wonder if you haven't yet gotten your copy.

I encourage you as always, keep walking out the journey that you're on in partnership with God and ask him questions along the way. There's more that he wants to share with you. Thanks for joining me here on Good God Talks and we'll talk soon.

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