Hey there, Friend!
Thanks for continuing to check out all our amazing guests who made the Top 25 most-listened-to podcasts of Season One on the Heal Podcast! I hope you’ve enjoyed re-listening or listening to some of these guests for the first time, and I don’t think today’s guest will disappoint, either. Sarah Bessey is a sought-after speaker and a critically acclaimed author for her books Out of Sorts and Jesus Feminist, but today she takes us on the personal journey that inspired one of her newer book, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things.
One of the reasons I was stoked to get to talk to Sarah is because her story spans both experiencing complete miraculous healing as well as living in unrelenting chronic pain that has not been healed. With both of these experiences, Sarah is able to both speak to the power that our God still works in miraculous ways, as well as to his grace when he does not heal our physical pain and limitation like we wish he would.
Sarah’s chronic pain journey started a few years ago when a car accident thrust her into the earth-shattering world of recovery. She found herself not only trapped inside a body that no longer felt like her own, but also with questions that shook her faith to the core. You’ll be able to tell both in how she speaks and in how she writes that Sarah is a beautiful wordsmith. The title of her episode is so appropriate, because I believe one of the trademark messages of her testimony is showing people how truly beloved they are.
In her own journey, Sarah talks to us about what it was like to re-establish her identity with God, and I think you’ll love the golden nuggets of wisdom she has learned along the way (combined with her sweet Canadian accent, too). In addition, Sarah shares a little about the profound loss of one of her best friends, author and speaker Rachel Held Evans, who passed away suddenly after a traumatic health struggle in 2019. As someone who has experienced the depths of loss our finite bodies possess both as a friend to one whose physical trauma took her away at age 37, as well as with the life-altering chronic pain that has changed her own body, Sarah is able to dive deep into those wounds to talk to us about our own pain and God in this episode.
Sarah and I also talk about her newest book, A Rhythm of Prayer, where she has honored the prayerful tradition through writing prayers that help us all present the weights we carry to God. She specifically wrote this book for those who feel overworked, over-pressured or close to burnout. Since I figure some of you might be struggling with those emotions, too, I’ve linked that book below with some more resources from Sarah.
We're all in process, but Sarah is the compassionate friend who will reassure you that you can be both sorely bruised and irrevocably beloved at the same time. Listen to this one with an open mind, and ask God to teach you something about himself in this episode.
Listen to learn more about:
· What Sarah’s take is on how she has experienced miraculous healing of much of her body, and yet still lives with much chronic pain from other traumatic injuries not healed.
· How you can be injured, bruised (literally and metaphorically), and traumatized, but that does not change how beloved you are by God.
· How prayer and the beauty of words have helped Sarah through periods of unraveling in her life.
Listen now:
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Click here to listen on Amazon Music.
Favorite Quotes:
· [speaking of her dad] “And he will have his own questions over this suffering. He will wonder where God is in the pain. He will think that if it weren’t for love that filled him and sustained him, he wouldn’t have bothered. He will learn what it is to hear your own heart beat and know that it’s a miracle. He will learn what it means to love God and to endure unanswered prayers and unexpected grace for suffering. he will being to understand the miracle of healing is wider and more expansive than it was 30 years before, when he dared God to heal him one prairie night. He will learn what it means to pray on the other side of a strange and painful ordinary miracle.” -p. 46, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things
· “I think some of the things I wish I would’ve known were that you don’t need to be afraid, that you are loved and deeply beloved, deeply valued, made in the image of God, not in spite of these things but sometimes even because of them. There’s a passage in Isaiah that talks about how [Jesus] is a ‘bruised reed, but does not break.’ And I think about the tenderness of God towards those of us who are often overlooked or swept aside, trampled over because we can’t keep up. I would have loved for someone to say, ‘Your belovedness is not tied to your productivity, that whether you have a good day, and you’re able to get up and do the things and check the boxes and get the gold stars, or you have a day where you cannot get out of your bed, you are wholly beloved, and precious, and worthy on both days. You’re not earning a single ounce of your belovedness.” – Heal Podcast, Episode 52
Links from our conversation:
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For freedom,
Tera