S3 EP21 Dealing with the Voice of Brokenness and Healing with Ms. Anna

Hello and hello. Welcome back to God's diamonds in the rub. We are so excited, yet again, that God has graced us to see this day. We hope that all is well over wherever you are, amen. We hope that you are seeing the Lord and referencing the Lord and just honoring him on today. Michael is out right now. He is actually working today, so you have me, but I also have. I'm going to call her my co-host today. Her name is Ms Ann, a man, and she is a woman of God, which I would call encouraging the Proverbs 31 woman, and so we're excited about the fact that she is here and, you know, ready to serve you and just be the blessing that God has called her to be, and you want to say hello before we go and pray, yes, yes, wonderful Hello to all of your people.

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me, catherine.

We are so glad to have you here. Okay, so, as we always say, here, you know we've got to do, we got to pray. So, father, we thank you so much for your grace and your mercy. We thank you, god, for allowing us to see a day we'll never see again. Father, we pray that for every here and every heart that is here, that you will bless them with whatever it is that they need. Pray, god, that we can speak a word that will bring them forth life, that will bring them, for some, out of darkness and into your marvelous light. Father, we pray that the blessings of the Lord will continue to be upon our lives and that you will continue to use us to your glory. I pray, god, that we can all see the diamond that you see in us. We bless your name and we say thank you. In Jesus Christ's name. We do pray, amen, amen, amen. So, miss Ann, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself before we go into our topic of the hour?

Absolutely so. My name is Anna McLaughlin. I am a homeschool wife and mom. We are investors and entrepreneurs as well. I've been in business for myself for about eight years and prior to that I was a corporate lawyer. I've been a Christian since I was about 11 years old, so almost 30 years with the Lord, and just to really have experienced I was raised in a non-Christian home that there had been kind of several generations of non-Christians on one side of my family and so really had some healing and deep unpacking to do in really every facet of my life relationally, financially, my confidence, my view of myself and so I love speaking to women who are on that journey, especially in the busy season of maybe working or motherhood, and just encouraging women along the path to a deeper healing and a deeper knowledge of the Lord.

Amen, Hallelujah. So with the fact that you grew up in, you didn't grow up in, I would say, the traditional church, what not? How has your relationship with Christ, I guess you would say shaped that turning point or, you know, when you first realized that there was a thing of Jesus, of God, of the Lord? Can you speak to that?

Yeah, so for me, I was 10 years old when I was given my first Bible. I was in a church that did not really speak to Christ as Lord. It was more of a be a good person kind of like model. And so I remember when I got the Bible from our church funnily enough they gave it to us, even though they weren't really necessarily preaching it as the word of God I remember reading its pages and feeling like here is in Christ. Here was a man I had, in a way, kind of always known. There was a homecoming feeling, but I didn't know it was him. You know. It was like oh, there you are. And so I feel, looking back, that he had his hand on me from an early age, and I'm a big believer that God is a God of the generations, that he works through family lines. I had a great grandmother who, I found out much later, professed Christ and had a Bible that she signed, that she was going to bring Christ to the masses and all of this stuff, and so she died tragically when my grandfather was young, but I always felt like I was her kid spiritually, that the Lord had been gracious enough to put his hand on me without me doing anything to deserve it, just like all of us. But you know, I felt really singled out and so thankful that that he found me and he showed himself to me. So I was very young, you know. I was 11 and kind of alone in my family line. As far as this is what I believe, I don't really understand it. I don't know what it looks like to be a disciple, didn't even know what discipleship was, but I was his nonetheless, as messy as that looked in those early years and for quite some time after.

Right, that's powerful because you know we have so many men and women who they feel like they're crazy and like, kind of like you know me, like I hear a voice, you know what I mean this happening, that happened in my life and you know they can't quite grasp it as to what is really happening and then, especially, and it often happens when they're young, you know what I mean and so it's like, and, like you said, you didn't have anybody modeling in your life. That's this type of lifestyle and it's like what is that? And I can say that about myself. I feel like God always had his hand on me from my youth. I, you know, I got baptized because everybody else did. You know, I did what I did and I went where I went in regard to the church, because this is what they did, but they didn't live it outside of the church. Does that make sense? Yes, I saw it in the church, but outside of the church I didn't see that. But there was always something around me, a spirit around me, that would never let me go. But so far, and I can say that I was a broken individual for a long period of time because, you know, because I didn't understand what was happening to me. I know now that it was whole. God amen.

But can you say that?

I mean, I know you can relate to what I'm saying, because you know absolutely. So how would you describe brokenness?

I would describe it as coming face to face with the reality of our own unique falling condition and, by the grace of God, typically relatively short gap between I see myself in all my sin, in all my humanity, in all my fallenness and inability and I haven't yet felt the grace that is already catching me. I haven't yet felt this promise of, and it's okay, and he knows what to do with it and he knows how to make me whole. And I say short. Sometimes it's a long experience, depending on how much we have to heal from, but the arms are there immediately. It's like we just need to see the truth first. It's just like Christ said I came for the sick right. I didn't come for those that are all patched up and pharisaical and just fine. Thanks very much. I don't need you, god. I came for the ones who know their depravity and their lostness and their inability, apart from me.

Amen, you know. Can you put an image in our mind Because me and my husband we try to do that all the time put an image in our mind so that people can understand words like grace, words like mercy, words like, for today, brokenness. Give them something that they can see. That can really. You know how somebody has a question in their mind and they are not sure about the answer. They've gotten the answer, but they're not sure that that is the answer. Can you put a picture in their mind that would show symbolically something that is broken, so that they can realize that they are, so they can begin the healing process?

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, when I think about brokenness, you know I think of this. It's not just I don't know how it's like I cannot, it's the shattered glass, every fragment, every. You know you think about dropping out. Dropping out, you know, a glass bowl or cup on the kitchen tile, on the hard kitchen tile, and the pieces are just everywhere. And then someone says we'll put it back together and you're like there's a thousand pieces, there is shredded, there is shattered, and so it's that place of there is no doing this by man-made efforts. And yet what God offers is it won't just be a glass when I'm finished, it's going to be cut crystal right, like it's going to be this. It's going to be more valuable than when it started. It's going to be more beautiful, more perfect, more refined, more glorious, because it has my fingerprints on it. And so you know it's impossible in the natural, but with Christ, that's all. He knows how to do. He can't help himself. It's his business. That's why he came.

Amen. So you know, with that being said to you, know, to every heart and to every listener, you know what we are really trying to bring home to you is that the brokenness brings your value. It brings, it brings it brings to the table, really, who Christ desires you to be. So the breaking was necessary for the wholeness. You cannot be whole without the breaking. That's right. It's necessary it is a necessary thing. You know as much as we don't want to go through it. As painful as it is, as hard as it is, it is necessary for you to find really who he created you to be. You never really know how strong you are until you're in moments, places of weakness.

Does that make sense? Yes, yes, yeah. And there's this beautiful imagery in scripture that comes up again and again this idea of our scars actually become our beauty marks, like that. I think Isaiah has this passage where it's like instead of the, instead of the thorn, bush, the myrtle will grow. It's like two or three different contrasting points of just like growth in nature, these beautiful trees that come where there used to be thistles and and you know, kind of just sharp and jagged edges and like this idea of it's actually you're going to minister out of your places of that were pain there we go from pain to healing, to service, and it's always in that progression. And we can be kind of dangerous if we try to minister from a place where we never really had any wounding or we never acknowledge the wounding because you know we often you know if we haven't acknowledged that it's probably still there, and then we can get into a lot of like, we can bend too too closely into that, like, well, we're just going to you just take these steps, follow this formula, super simple, and we've taken the spirit out of it and it causes damage to people because it doesn't work.

Yeah, it's not. It's like it's because it's not rooted from the heart. Yes, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's a fabrication. It's almost like a fabrication, kind of like. You know, you're looking at the impact of a person that dealt with it, but you've never been through it and you're you're looking at what happened to them outwardly. Then you're building this, building this, this, this, this thing. This is how you fix this, based off of what you saw out of somebody else which you never experienced, and I think it devalues the, the, the, the emotional impact that it had on the person, that they just took a surface view and built something from.

That's right, that's so good.

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, speaking to you know, speaking to everything that has been said thus far, it's like don't be, don't allow, don't allow the enemy to have power in shaming you. Yeah, that's right. Because you know, this is how, this is how that shame turns into all of these other things. Did you, did you experience in that brokenness that you experience Things that I would guess, that I guess I would say elevate to anything else, like, say, bitterness or envy or anything like that?

And yes, yeah, I mean at different times, all of those. A big one for me was hopelessness. I reached a point of just there had been so much damage, so little repair, that I spent a season asking the Lord to take my life. I said I don't know where we go from here. I've made a mockery of your gospel. I've made a mess of things. I've hurt people. Most of the nonbelievers in my life look better than I do as far as you know how they seem to love and you know I know more about that now. But there was so much just devastation and loss in my life that I didn't. I didn't feel like I could, that he could make anything of my story anymore, except just to end it. And so deep shame, deep embarrassment. There was a deep sense of loss and I will say I received such a good word from a prayer minister at one point where she said the enemy is going to whisper to you and he's going to tell you who you are and, like in the natural right, you've done this, you've done this, you've done this because he doesn't see the heart right, but he can see our behaviors. And and she said stop trying to justify yourself and just say you know what You're right, but my God, my God, redeems my story. But my God knows what to do with my brokenness and my mess. Because where we get into trouble is when we try to justify ourselves before the enemy. Because we all know the truth, right, we know that we've just got these filthy rags to bring, so like, ok, you're right, totally fine, say what you want to say to me, but I know who my God is. And then, when we glorify him, we've completely obliterated any weapons that the enemy has against us.

Come on, you better tell me about it. I know this, right. I know that's right. Yes, I love it. Amen, I love it. You know, I love it because you know, when you have come through the storm, you've come through the trials of life and you're, you know you're in a good place, you're in a, you're standing on the solid rock and you begin to look at what you've been through and then you can carry that, that perspective, and carry it the way that Jesus desires it to, desires you to. You know, you can feel in your spirit and in how you carry yourself, the fact that he tells us that we are more than overcomers. You can see it. You not only do you see it, but you can walk in it. Amen, diamonds. You got to see it the way that he sees it, in order to be able to not only live in it, but to be able to walk in it, you got to give his idea, give his theory, his, his I want to say his language, a chance to speak into your heart. And that's what you know. That's really what surrender is about. I always say when you surrender in your life, you just allow Jesus to drive Amen. But surrender is even bigger than that, because you decided, god, I'm taking your ways, I'm adopting your ways. Now I truly am a son, I'm truly am our daughter, because no longer do I think like the world, no longer do, no longer that even in my mistakes and even in the afflictions that I bear, I still don't see it, the world, the way that the world sees it.

That's right.

Hey man.

That's right.

Oh yeah, jesus. So you kind of touched on it. You are the touch on it previously, but I had a question written down and said can you go forward without healing? You touched on it, but can you expand on it? Going forward without healing?

Oh it's, it's as a house of cards. Right, there Can you? Yes, but only with the tools that will. Ultimately, you're just going to go back to the last place of healing. Ok, right, so that's where we get into control and manipulation. That's where we gaslight. Right, that's where we shame other people. Ok, so our fruit is not, is not bearing what we want, when we have not allowed the healing. And I mean I did a significant portion of my healing. I did get very deep, beautiful healing before I got married and had children, but a lot of my healing came while I had little ones at my feet. And so I think sometimes, when we wear a lot of hats, especially hats that require competency, like motherhood, like homemaking, like being in the business world I was a corporate lawyer in getting healing, we feel like, oh, I can't open that box, it is going to, it's gonna take me down, it's gonna take me out. God knows what you have on your plate and he can do those surgeries, he can clean out wounds and then unlike well, I don't really know what it's like to be in an operating room, but I would imagine you can't really stop, but the Lord in his kindness can say okay, we're just gonna put the lid on it for today. We've had our time together in the morning and now I'm gonna give you the grace to go out and operate like you're not just being unglued right now. And so I think so often we put our healing on hold because we feel like, well, I don't have time for that, I can't go there. If I open this door, I'll never get back up again, and God just is too kind for that. He doesn't want you to just patch yourself up and duct tape yourself together until the kids go off to college. And in the meantime because here's the deal with relationships God's going to I mean, we're generational people God's going to allow us opportunities to practice with our children, with our spouses. I mean, the number of times lies that I believe have come out of my daughter's mouth, yeah, and I'm like, oh, it's catching, I've got to work on mine so that she, so that I can help her heal, and so, yeah, don't wait, don't wait, and it's never, as we're not going to relive the whole trauma because Jesus is right there with us in a way that can. It's not, and that doesn't mean I truly believe Godly counseling and our healing, deliverance, prayer ministry. All of those things are so important. But whatever that road may look like, he's not going to leave us to ourselves, even if it's just he and I in the mornings.

Do you think that some people want to hold on to their trauma? Do you think there's a sense of unwillingness to let it go?

Yeah, I think it's. We don't want our. I think we always want to give significance to our pain, and so there can, and especially, I think, in culture today, where there has become this, it used to be that the majority, that the power, culture, power, gender, whatever it was, was the one that was elevated, and now it's reversed, right, we're always looking for who's the victimized one, who do we need to kind of carve out a place for? And that can be done in a way that can be healing, or it can be done in a way where it almost re-victimizes people, where it's like oh look, you're significant because of your marginalization, you're significant because you were wounded, and it can kind of create an inflated sense of identity where I am the wounded one, whereas what God really is inviting us into is I am the healed one, right?

Absolutely.

And so, yeah, we have to be willing. It can become an idolatry where it's like this pain was so big. We almost feel like, who am I without it? Right, and it can be scary and for me I have really had to wrestle with I would really lean into incompetence as an almost like a, like a mental break of just I mean Curled up on the floor or something's wrong with my mind. I can't handle it. These are real things that were going on, some hormonal, some spiritual, like there was a lot to it. But when I started healing, there was this scary Period where I was like that was my way of protecting myself. Those were my boundaries. You know I didn't know how to say honey, I'm tired, can I go take a nap? I didn't. I didn't know how to give myself permission to Ten the garden, you know day-to-day, and so instead I'd be like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, and then I kind of unravel and so so we have to learn these, these. You know big grown-up skills like, like communication and and you know honesty, self reflection, and you know managing our own boundaries when we need. You know when we need a minute like I'll. You know it used to be that my kids knew I needed a minute, when I was screaming at them and I had to level up into leadership and be able to look at them and say, whoo, I'm feeling a little maxed out right now. I'm gonna need to take a minute, and you know, I had to do that hours before before the wheels fell off. Right, I'm gonna take a minute. You guys get to watch a show, right, and so now I don't get to indulge in my anger and my poor behaviors. So it's scary, it's scary to level up like that and I think that we start to feel like we're not sure that we're going to be able to navigate at that higher level. But again, the Lord's kindness, he, he takes us step by step and we become, we become the, the, the woman, the man who is able to operate at that higher level. But it does take time and it does take laying down the safety of that kind of Trauma induced behavior. Right, like, oh, whenever I need space, I just break down. No, like we don't want to be that anymore right.

So sounds definitely like intentionality is, as a thing, in those moments when you know you could explode but you don't want to explode, you're trying to, uh, put that fire out. You know, I'm talking about putting it all the way out, not smothering it, but it's still burning. But putting that fire out I'll. We get ready to come to a close. But I have another question, before we actually leave and and wrap up but what do you think about tears? Because when I think about tears I think about healing waters. What do you think about tears?

Oh, I love that so much. Yes, yes, so, um, I have just a beautiful picture. What do I have to add to that? But I mean, I, I agree, when I cry, it's often, you know, the so often our presenting emotions are anger, frustration, you know, accusation, um, maybe a guilt trip. But when I get to tears, I'm like, oh, there's the real feeling. I'm sad, you know, I'm sad, I'm, I'm grieving, I'm lonely, I feel, I feel afraid, you know, and so it does like. I feel like oftentimes for myself and for my children and my husband is well, you know, he doesn't cry, cry quite so much, but you know, like that, whenever I see tears, it's like, okay, now we're in, now we're in reality. The, the real are real, the true are real.

Right, because we live in a world where, if you cry, you're weak, especially for a man. Especially for a man. They're, they're, they're trained and they're taught. Oh, you got to be strong. You can't cry. If you cry, you're nothing but a little girl or whatever have you. Um, and then, as women, we tend we always associate crying to pain. Why? Why we can't? Why don't we uh associate um, tears with joy, tears with, you know, with the excitement, um, again rejoicing. Uh, that's right, you know, I just I, just I, I just realized, and I just know that God wants us to associate, you know the things that typically we would take a negative continent or, you know, take a worldly view on To look at it. Look for the spiritual, that tears for me, I associate them with healing waters. You know what I mean. I don't cry so much now. Why? Because it's places that I used to cry boohoo all the time, but that's because I was broken. You know, I was broken in those areas that I would cry about. So I don't cry so much now, but when I do cry it is because, like you said, I'm in pain, but I'm I'm starting. I'm beginning to cry now because I'm excited, because I'm rejoicing, because I'm happy for somebody or something. You know what I mean.

Oh, it's okay.

Yes, that's right tears tears can definitely be a good thing. Now, uh, you have appeared in caravagin the proverbs 31, woman. Um, and With that concept and with what the scripture says about the private proverbs 31 woman, can you, as a final thought, before we pray, Give our diamonds what the Lord has given you out of that passage of Proverbs 31?

So Proverbs 31 was often when I was growing up, it was kind of the passage we all shied away from, because it just we'd almost roll our eyes and we're like she's too perfect, she's got you know, she's in business, she's a wonderful wife and mother, her house is incredible, she's got these servants, she's got this wealth, and so it felt it felt a little like out of reach. And what I have come to find in the, in that passage it has become one of my favorites is it is actually it is the culmination of Another of my favorite passages in scripture, which is the parable of the talents. It is the culmination of a woman who has been faithful in little, day after day. She rises early, she does her work, and as she does that, and the years become decades and the decades become generations, and she lives, and then her children live, and then their children live, on and on and on. It may not happen, even in my own lifetime, but the promise that I have from God, the way that he works, is that when I get up tomorrow morning and I put my hands to the things that he has given me to do, he will advance his kingdom through my family, and so that, for me, is what this, this Proverbs 31 passage, and the group she considers a field, which is from the passage that I, that I shepherd on Facebook. It's what it's what it's about. We get up tomorrow and we seek to be brave with our lives and to serve In the places that the Lord has given us. We try to. There's a wonderful book that's the. It's a secular book called atomic habits that talks about the process of becoming 1% better every day. And who better to endeavor to do that work than the people of God? And so, as we take these steps, we have a promise waiting from the Lord that we will transform Through, through like, with his power. We will get to be agents of transformation in our family's lives and in the lives around us, and what could be better than that?

That was good. Hey, man, let's go ahead and we're gonna pray, father. We thank you so much, god, for your word. Thank you so much for bringing this relationship together. We thank you, god, so much for Every word that has been spoken to encourage your diamonds. Pray, god, that, as we continue to go for in our ministries and we go for in our day-to-day activities, god, that we can be your women, your Diamonds that might be going through rough patches in life, god, but we would be totally dependent upon you to bring light, to be like for us when we cannot see. Father, we are so very grateful, so very thankful for all that you're doing in the season of our lives and we pray the blessings of the Lord be upon everyone, everyone. God, your blessings would be there Chasing after us. God, father, continue to have your way. We bless your name, we say thank you and we say bless you, god, in Jesus Christ name. We do pray. A man, hey man, hallelujah, and a man. Thank you so much, miss Ann I know, we surely do appreciate you, a man.

Thank you so much, catherine. It's wonderful to be here.

Yes, it was. So you hang on right there, don't go anywhere. Y'all diamonds. Y'all know how, how Michael always says I'm gonna try to do it as good as he do it. Remember that you are a diamond in the rough, a man, until next week. Y'all be encouraged and are blessed in his name. Hallelujah to God, be the glory.