Ep 003 | When Loss Hits, Your Real Theology Surfaces | feat. Melissa Baker

You can quote the verses. You can teach the truth. But when the worst day of your life arrives, what you actually believe about God will rise to the surface.

In this episode, Colt sits down with biblical counsellor and author Melissa Baker for an honest conversation about functional theology, the gap between the faith we profess and the faith we live. Melissa opens up about the year that dismantled her life, when she lost her husband, her church, her job, her home, and the country she had adopted, all within twelve months.

You'll learn how driven leaders tend to quietly medicate with work and status, why daily surrender matters more than ambition, what most Christians get wrong about grief, and how to stop performing the answer to "how are you?" Melissa is candid about the questions she wasn't allowed to ask and the theology she had to unlearn before she could rebuild.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Melissa Dawn Baker is a biblical counsellor, writer, and founder of Daughter of Grace LLC, a ministry walking with women through grief, anxiety, and the long work of rebuilding faith after loss. She is the author of To Cast My Cares, a Scripture-rooted study used by churches and individuals navigating hard seasons.

Raised in a pastor's home and called with her husband to Ontario in 1980 to help plant a church, Melissa spent three decades in full-time ministry and music education across Canada before relocating to North Carolina in 2020. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she writes openly about the kingdoms in her own heart that had to fall, and points readers to a faithful God who brings beauty from ashes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We all have what we say we believe. And then we have what Paul David Tripp calls functional theology because this is actually how I live. I can say, Oh, God loves me. I know God loves me. I can quote you all the verses, but I can live in insecurity, shame, and fear. And that's my functional theology. And how do people get what it says, what we say we believe? How do I live like it?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to The Driven, the podcast for faith-based individuals seeking to explore hidden motives, the engine behind living life in the fast lane, and the cost of living day-to-day in what we call the red line. Our hope is in these interviews with leaders that we would see a shift happen from destructive mindsets, destructive identities to a peaceable pace that produces eternal impact. I'm your host, Colt Charlebois, and today our guest, Melissa Don Baker, biblical counselor, author, and mother, grandmother, a woman of many identities, is here with us to share an important story, a somewhat heavy story, but a valuable story that'll elevate all of our leadership as we served to have a greater impact. Melissa, I'm so thankful to have you on the show today. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Well, thank you. I am honored and privileged to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Well, I have to start by just telling a little story about how we connected because it was absolutely wild. I don't know if you remember all the pieces that I shared with you, but we met in none other than Charlotte, North Carolina earlier this year. And I had been going through some health challenges at the time. And as the plane was landing, I was a little bit nervous to take the trip because in the airport, I just felt like I was gonna faint. I felt like really terrible physically. And I just had to pray and say, Lord, am I supposed to even get on this plane? And I felt the Holy Spirit just nudge me and say, I have wheeled this trip. And so we in faith, I get on the plane. About 30 minutes into the flight, I start feeling like myself again. And so, glory to God. Now, we're about to land in Charlotte. My wife and I are attending a writing conference that you were also attending. But as we were landing, the wheels hit the tarmac, and I feel this sense in my spirit that says, go to the hospital. And I'm like, goodness gracious, what the what do we do with this, God? I'm on the way to the conference, I'm with my beautiful bride. And here I am now with this notion I should go to the hospital. I don't feel like it's this minute, but I'm holding this in the back of my mind. So I'm just praying, when, God, when? And so we get to the hotel. I'm secretly looking up how close the hospital is. I'm hoping my Canadian insurance covers whatever needs I might have. And there's no real space to go to the hospital, Melissa. And I end up going to the conference, and I'm thinking maybe on the next morning we'll drive by the hospital and I'll show up at the front door, get another message. This is how I walk with God, by the way. And these utterances. And so we arrive at the conference and there's a little bit of a break. And they said, by the way, if you need any refreshments, if you need any direction, if you just need a hug, come to the hospitality room. Okay, they say this from the front. And as soon as I hear it, what do you think happens? The hospitality, oh, I didn't have the full message. I need to go to the hospitality room. Amanda and I are like make our way over to the hospitality room. We're standing in this room, we're looking and smiling at people. We're there about three minutes, and we're like, Lord, what do you want us to do here? And doesn't Melissa Don Baker walk in the room and connect with us? And within five minutes of speaking, you start sharing something that is really profound and really deep as it relates to your story. And I was just struck with this message. And I thought, wow, more people need to hear this. And you're, I'll let you speak here. You see, I don't usually open with this. And I said, the Holy Spirit is at work among us. So, anyways, I just thought I'd tee us up with just how wild our introduction was.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

So Amanda and I had just been in a line for something else together and just turned. And it was like, where are you from? Where are you? Oh, you're from Canada. Oh, I lived in Canada 30 years, and we had that connection. And then when you came in the hospitality room, I had just finished talking to another woman, and we had talked for quite a while, and I had never shared with her what I shared with you within five minutes. What was that? The Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Oh, goodness. Now you're a counselor. Tell us a little bit about the people you help because you've gone to Master's University. You've got a master's degree, in fact, that makes at least a double master, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

I never thought I would be here as a biblical counselor. I didn't go to study that. I went for me because I had a lot of questions because of where I was in my life. And I just wanted to learn, and that's how I am, that drivenness, I will just go after this. And people would say, Oh, you're gonna help others, and I'd be like, gotta help myself. And that seems so selfish, but there's a point in our lives when sometimes we have to stop and say, God, I need you, and I really have to go after this. So now I had the absolute privilege. Just this morning, met with a woman for an hour and a half who's going through a horrendous time, broken, hurting. And I got to wrap my arms around her as she cried and we talked and give her hope and let her know she will make it through this. The people I meet with can be often young wives and mothers who are overwhelmed in the world we live in and trying to keep proper priorities, and it's hard. People have gone through trauma, anxiety, a lot of anxiety in today's world. And it's just such a joy that I can now open God's word, but practically help them with what we'll call functional theology, because we all have what we say we believe, and then we have what Paul David Tripp calls functional theology, because this is actually how I live. I can say, Oh, God loves me. I know God loves me. I can quote you all the verses, but I can live in insecurity, shame, and fear. And that's my functional theology. And how do people get what it says, what we say we believe, how do I live like it? And that's a joy.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I like that term functional theology. And I feel like there's a place where I'm experiencing a new level of theology around faith. Because I've told a friend recently, I said, I feel like my doctrine around healing has been totally upside down in this. So as I've encountered these strange medical symptoms that the doctor doesn't really know much about, I start getting into the scriptures and reading how everyone that went to him Jesus healed. And I said, What don't I understand here? I've got a theology from the church that says, well, if God wills it, he will heal it. And so I can't say I'm through the finish line on my thinking and theology on this, but I also read the scripture of a woman reaching out to him and drawing his power from him and say, wait a second, he didn't will that. So what's available to us that we are not fully accessing as a body of Christ? So when you talk about this functional theology, I'm in this space right now, real time.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Yeah, and and getting in and saying, what do I need to unlearn that wasn't in the Bible? And what do I need to relearn? It's kind of that's a good yoda, doesn't he say we have you have to unlearn? Wasn't that a yoda quote? You got to unlearn to learn or something. But yes, and just really get down. Many things I had to do that with.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

I think that is one of the most humbling and difficult things for a seasoned believer to understand they have to do. Because hey, I've been in the church whatever the amount of time, right? For me, it was since 2010, but others will have 20, 30 years invested so they get to a place where they say, wait a second, I don't know that this is really the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

And something's shifting in me. And it takes a lot of humility to say, Wait, I might need to unlearn something I've believed for 30 years.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Yes, we have a lot of man-made beliefs and things that it's not grounded in God's truth that we or we've just taken a truth and then we've added to it, like Pharisees and added to it and added to it. And so we have to be very careful about that. Yes, I was raised in a pastor's home. I'm a mainly a Christian school kid, and I knew the verses. People could hand me the verse, and I know that verse. How do I how do I live like I believe that verse? That's what I want to know.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Now, speaking of drivenness, you've had clear ambition and goals, presumably your whole life. Give us a little bit of a milestone walkthrough on what that looked like. And where do you think the motives came from for you?

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Well, I wasn't the child that had the lemonade stands and sold rocks door to door. I was never an entrepreneur. I was idealistic. I would be the more the Mother Teresa, change the world. I was intrigued with the teacher's red pen in second grade. And then I got to grade four and I wanted to be a teacher, seventh grade, a music teacher. And I went on and got a bachelor's and a master's degree in music. And I taught music for almost 40 years. So it was like the goals that were just set, finishing a job. But then I was a big reader. My parents encouraged that. They had a rule that for every three or four books I read, I had to read an autobiography or historical something. They wanted to keep me out of the dream world all the time. But I mean, I read about Marie Curry and just great people, wonderful missionaries. And so they inspired me. And I wanted to change the world. And so within the culture I was, that's where I adapted and how I how could I do that?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Okay, now you mentioned the red pen. And I'm that's kind of still my mind. What was the motive behind the red pen? Is it authority control?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Oh, there was power. Like she could mark there was a C for correct or it was wrong, and she knew. She knew all the answers. I wanted all the answers.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

This is like the excaliburist. I gotta get that pen out of the rock. I gotta hold this thing. I know power in the pen. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

And there's not that that much power in that pen, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And so when you look at drivenness in society and whether it's people you're counseling, whether it's systemic problems, what is the what's the real root of it? Where do you think a lot of this comes from?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

We just get down to the heart of the matter, just pride. God gives people, certain people, more ambition, I believe, than others. There are certain personality types who have that. So that's not a it's not wrong to have that. But drivenness can get just so deeply rooted in our own ambitions. They it morphs over time. We have to be so careful. Our culture, North American culture, just having the lifestyle that we want, it takes over. A lot of things come into play here.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So in hearing that, I feel like there's a lot of people that don't necessarily see a problem with it per se. So, hey, I've been blessed or granted with a little bit more ambition than the person beside me. What's wrong with that? So what? I'm going after something. Where does, for you, your perspective, where does the problem genuinely exist or start to tether out?

SPEAKER_02 11:34

It's not wrong if God made you that way. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God foreordained before the world began. So he has things for you to do, he wants you to do. When the story Jesus told of the servants who heard, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, they took what the master gave them and they developed it. So we really are to do that. That's a command. So where does it go wrong? Is when we start doing it for ourselves, for our own glory, to look good in the eyes of other people. And so our gauge gets off, and suddenly we're not doing things that will result, as it says in 1 Corinthians 3, gold, silver, and precious stones. It's wood hand stubble because the motive is off.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

I really like the thought of you know the craftsmen who built the temple, you know, these anointed craftsmen, and they were doing it for God's glory. So the idea in what I'm picking up here is not that the gifting, the craft, the desire, the hunger to do something wonderful, do something beautiful even, is not wrong. It's when it starts to become about how I'm perceived, you know, what it might, what I might attain through this, what others might celebrate me for, what authority might be given to me through my success in this endeavor. So if there was a way to capsulate this, a lesson, a forewarning perhaps, for the driven entrepreneur out there, what would you want to share with them in all your experience?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

The need to really daily surrender that ambition to God. It's yours, God. Direct me, help me to do what I do for your glory. And sometimes that means we're gonna mess up because that will bring him the most glory. It doesn't have to be done perfectly. I give you this day. Yes, it's mapped out, but maybe at the end of the day, I won't do everything that I had on my map, but I gave it to you, God. So it became your day and you directed in. I think that we also have to be so careful that we aren't looking to find our worth in outward sources and what we do and how we do it and what others think about us. We can't. Our worth is because the blood of Jesus Christ covers us as believers. And so God looks down, he already sees I couldn't be worth more to him. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, I just have to give it all to God and let him shape and mold. And it's amazing. It is amazing what he will do with what we give him.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

I love what you're saying, and I feel like I'm very connected with you in a theologically, the term used or the practical theology is what we need here. The idea of surrendering day-to-day. Okay, so let's talk about as a leader, as a business owner, you have someone that is is driving towards a goal. They've got people that are responsible for them, they've got things to get done, they've got to get out of the house early, they have a family that has needs and they want to be present for as well. Could you give me a snapshot of what you perceive this practical theology would look like for a day-to-day submission of these desires, this ambition?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yeah, I think definitely it's carving out sometime, hopefully at the start of the day, to have some people might say meditating on God's truth, to just have that prayer time, looking at some truth, so it's directing your day. Some people would have more time than others. Even a young mother whose ambition is to have her home, she's the CEO of her home, she can have limited time and it can be interrupted. So definitely, first of all, is just carving the time priority-wise, making your priorities straight. Then you're off and running. And the question is what I'm doing going to give others a reflection of who God is. So am I loving the people who are under me? Am I really considering them? Am I loving them? Am I helping them develop as individuals? Am I growing them? Because that's what God does for us. It's a whole mindset that you just say, God help me to love others like you love me, be a good steward of my money, get my priorities straight. It it takes, it's you never come to a point where you have it down. It's always a process.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Take us back, Melissa, if you would, because we're talking, again, a little bit theoretical here about drivenness, but you have a very practical experience with it other than your own. And this is part of what we discussed when we met is your story in drivenness and your kind of front row seats being married to a very driven leader. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about what you've experienced.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

My husband and I, we were kids, 21 and 22 years old, fresh out of college. I was expecting our oldest daughter, and we received a call to come help a church plant that was taking place in Whitby, Ontario. And we prayed about it and we saw it comes. I mean, it was tiny and they couldn't pay us much. I mean, it was a survival, and we learned to really budget. But we crossed with so much excitement crossed the border, anticipation, hope for the future. They had no idea what we were doing. I mean, we were Americans coming over, and we had sought advice on that too. We just were excited to see what God was going to do and help the church grow and had our first daughter tiny church plant, and it did grow slowly. Seven years in, there came a point where it was so interesting. I was, I had just given birth to our second daughter, and I felt like my heart had just really, it took several years to fully settle. I mean, I was like red, white, and blue through and through. And then I was like really embracing Canada. I loved the people God had called us to serve. Don't get me wrong, I did. And I love the people, but I just had to, there's a culture shift, a big culture shift. And my husband said, either something has got to happen, he said, I don't know what, I'm not sure. He said he had an unrest in his soul, or I just think God is going to call us someplace else. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? I just got really used to this. I'm really embracing this, but okay. And it was like two weeks later that the pastor of the church resigned and felt God calling them to something else. And then the church called my husband a pastor. So there it was, like, wow. And the church really began to grow under my husband's leadership. We had building programs. It was just, it was an exciting time. We had a wonderful staff, and the years went on, our girls grew older.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

How long after the move to kind of senior leader of the church, lead pastor, whatever the title was?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

But 22 years, I guess. Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

So he had been in the role? Yes. Of a lead pastor for 23 years?

SPEAKER_02 19:09

20, I think 22, something like that. 22 years.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

So it wasn't like a couple of years after he took on lead role for its episode.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

No, no. And the church was honestly doing so well as far as by outward standards, we would have said, you know, it had all the growth markers for our corner of our Christian culture world, being a very conservative corner, it was doing well.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

You know, for business leaders listening, one of the things that it took me a while to recognize, and I admit this shamefully now, but is that I really had an elevated lens on the business world and community. And that took a few years to shift after I came to faith. But I almost saw church and church leadership as a lesser exchange. Okay, I was a newer Christian, so give me some grace here. But and over time, what I recognized was that leading an organization is leading an organization. Okay. You're organizing people to do certain functions, and there's a lot of crossover between leadership and business and leadership in church. However, where it's very different in building a church is that, like you suggested, there's very little budget. You're working with mostly volunteers and a large army of volunteers comparable to a small business that would have a couple of people working for you. So it requires a tremendous amount of leadership, which brings up a tremendous amount of people challenges and situations. So when I hear about 20, 30 years of building into an organization, because the people are constantly cycling in and out, they're volunteering, right? And there's challenges with each of them coming in. Some of them are coming in for the wrong reasons. And so there's a lot of weight to that, but you carried on for quite a long time building this church.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yes. That's true. All of that is really true. Limited budget. We did have a staff, and they were honestly great people. I had some questions you sent, and one was what was the event that most got your attention that made you come face to face with your drivenness? And it was the event that really came to face to face with my husband's drivenness, also. So when you deal with trauma, there is what they would say the event, the actual event. Then there's the experience because that covers, and then there's the effect. So trauma is really what happens after the event. But the event is that even though I would ask questions, I would try to talk to him and say, What's going on? What's happening? And he always had a reason. He always too. I loved my husband, and I want to be very careful, very clear about that. He did a lot for the Lord. But in the end, I was gaslit and lied to. It was just that was it. But I don't throw out his whole life because of that. I want you to understand he was a good man. He was a wonderful dad. But in the end, I was just confused. It was my menopause. It was me going through empty nest. It was me. It was not him. So one day, as I was in the States helping my mother get it moved into a new house, I received a phone call with the shocking, completely unexpected news. If you'd known my husband, he looked like he had it all together. He it was incredible, but he had taken his own life and his body had been found. And I just was hardly stunned to speak. Too so too stunned to speak. I literally stood up front of the couch where I was at, and my sister held the phone. She happened to be with me too. I walked into the bedroom. I'd stayed, I sat down in the corner of the room, pulled my knees up to my chest and sat there staring at the wall. I mean, I just could not comprehend. Took me several hours to get home. Two airports, two different planes, trying to get to my kids, trying to get home, trying, just shaking like a leaf. And by the time I got home, I found out that he had there's had been involvement with another woman. So in that day of really in my heart, and for many years to come, complete rejection and betrayal, that was that day just catapulted me into a series of changes and really soul searching. Because you can think in my, you might say, well, school teacher, I wasn't making money, no, but building the ministry, music coordinator, working with all of that, pastor's wife, full in 100%, trying to be the best wife I could, mom, pastor's wife, friend, all the things, organizing, leading women's ministries, doing all I could to help him be a success, to serve the Lord, and to have it all slammed down. And I just felt like an utter failure. How could I not have seen, not have known? I should have been able to stop this. So none of that drivenness had stopped the worst possible thing that to me could have happened at that time.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Thank you for sharing that, first of all. I can't imagine even trying to put myself in your shoes in that, especially in that moment. Where were you? You weren't physically home. And what was the context of what was going on in that time?

SPEAKER_02 24:24

My mother, who had lived, she had her own place attached to our home, but she had remarried just three months earlier, and she had moved back to the States. So I was in the state of Georgia, and that's and I had just flown down to help her, and my sister had also come, and we were helping her get settled into her new home and just see where she was living and have mother-daughter time. But my husband had planned it out meticulously for when I was gone. So there I was, and I could, it's a long story, I won't get into everything.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Does it make it harder though? Just that he had planned it versus it being impulsive.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

It was so him because he was a planner, he was so organized, he was driven and a perfectionist. And the thing is, I had enough of that in me that I understood and I could see the downfall. And there were times we talked, and he worked to get a grip on those high standards. He held to himself. Then in the end, his way of dealing with in his life, what was happening was just it was an all-or-nothing option to him. And of course he planned it all. And he thought he planned it really well so that no one would find out certain details. But in God's only way that God could do it, we did find out things, and that is just it. I don't even know where to go from there. It was devastating in less than a year. I lost my marriage, my husband by suicide, my church. The church didn't know what to do. And it was made clear by certain leadership that I needed to go. And I knew it would probably be best for the church as a new pastor and his wife came in. We'd been there. So I knew that. But to feel like I was that I had no choice was very hard. My job, my house. And then what had become my country? Because we had become citizens. I thought Canada was just there forever. And so then I went back to the States to a new area. I've been gone for 30 years, and I had a new job with people I didn't know. And yeah, I cannot tell you how everything, just the noise surrounding it. What I can tell you is this I trusted Christ when I was 13 years old. And right prior to my trust in Christ, I had been in a dentist office looking at a Life magazine. And if you all your older people will remember Life magazine, it was iconic for its day. And if I remember correctly, on the front, there was a picture of these hippies in San Francisco. And I had just transferred that year, seventh grade, from a little Christian school to a massive, I mean, we were the baby boomers, massive seventh grade public school. And I had come face to face with what was I gonna choose? And I had doubted my salvation for years, though I'd made a profession of faith. And I read the article in the magazine, I was reading all the time, so I read it, and I made the decision. I was like, I'm gonna go to San Francisco to become a hippie, or I am gonna trust Christ. That was ridiculous. I would never be a hippie, I was a big coward, I was so quiet and shy, but in my mind, that was the choice. Become exactly like the world and be that peace-loving, maybe they have the answers, or trust Christ and become like my parents, which is such a tribute to my parents because my dad is a pastor. I had friends whose dads were pastors and they their homes were a mess and they did not like it, and they walked away from the Lord. And that's not true. My siblings and I to this day, five of us loved the Lord. My parents weren't perfect, but they would admit when they messed up. That was just they showed me what being a Christian was, and by God's grace, I trusted God. I made that decision. It was all in, and God had proven himself to me over and over. I was 51 when my husband died, and all that happened, and I knew there was no other way, but man, did I have questions? And unfortunately, in the circles, a lot of people, I was not really allowed to ask the questions. They wanted to just hand me a verse. I gave I have given everything I had to God. I don't understand, and I just had more questions than that. I mean, I read book after book. God was always there with me.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

You had a sequence of events unfold, and each of them in their own right, very challenging, very traumatic, very painful. Which for you was the hardest? I mean, you've lost your husband, then you find out he was having an affair, and this was part of the his shame and cover-up for it. Then you kind of get exiled from the church. Uh if there was one, or I mean what made it betrayal.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

I think I felt betrayed by a lot of people, starting with my husband. And I think that even went down to I think I felt betrayed by God. And sob my way, I'd go teach all day in my new job and drive home and beat my steering wheel sometimes, saying, I hate that. And then I would five minutes later say, I'm sorry, God, I know I have so much to be thankful for. I'm so sorry. Because I did. I just didn't understand how I was allowed to grieve and how God would hold me in those times, and I could just stop and grieve. And he did make a way for me to do that, but it took a few years. God was so gracious to me, but I felt betrayed. That's the short answer to that.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

You said something there, you know, it's like I didn't know how to grieve. And you're in counseling. Tell us what could you have told, what would you have told your younger self? What is it about grief that you didn't know?

SPEAKER_02 30:27

That I didn't have to put on a front, that I wasn't a failure. Because when someone said to me, How are you? I didn't feel like saying, Fine, good, God is good. And that was what was expected of me. I mean, I would literally walk past people and they would never notice, how are you? And I'd say, Well, how are you? And they'd answer, because I could ruin someone's day if I said, I'm devastated, I'm falling apart. And it was okay that I could fall apart and I could cry and I could slow down. I didn't have to prove that it wasn't my fault. I didn't have to do that. But there was such a it was like a yarn of well, a ball of yarn of many different colors, and it was all wound and twisted, and it just took it had to be one thing at a time that I worked on, and it was really a years in process, and God was always with me. And I was teaching Bible classes at an academy at that time, and it wasn't fake. Every word I said was true, but that was God's gift of grace to me. And it was like the first year I taught, we were going through the character of God, and for me to just go through that over and over, I listened to sermon after sermon. I I cried face down on my floor a lot of times, but I just had to untangle some really faulty theology that I had picked up along the way. And I want, you know, I had grieved before. I had lost when I was 25 my best friend. She and her husband were going to move to Canada in the next year and work with us. And she got hepatitis, and within seven weeks, I sat by her bedside and she took her last breath. Then five and a half weeks after that, I found out my dad had cancer, and eight months after that, so within one year, and my dad was just 55, I sat by his bedside and watched him take his last breath. I had had grief and I knew, but it was always the show must go on. You just keep going forward, keep my and this time I kept going forward as long as I could, and then I just until God just stopped me in my tracks. And it was his gift to stop me in my tracks.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Now you said this one statement, the question, the qu I've come to be frustrated with, I don't want to say hate, but this question that you mentioned has been so difficult for me to answer is how are you doing? And it's because for most of my life I've been a poser. I've been someone who is just the fake it till you make it was the golden rule for me. And then as my relationship with the Lord grew and my intimacy with him grew, it's like I understood the power of truth in its essence. And just I didn't want to be fake anymore. And so I balanced this authenticity versus how deep do we go? How much time do you have? Right. So wanting to communicate, where am I at really? And then how do you capture that? Because in one moment, hey, I'm doing phenomenal in this one area of life. I see so much blessing. And in this other area, I'm crushed completely. And so, how do you answer that question? How are you doing? It's so simple and so cultural.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

When they say, How are you? I would say you're some functional theology. Well, first of all, you need to consider who is asking you because some people don't, they really don't want to know. And most people, it's just a standard. And so you could probably get away with, hey, it's good to see you, or hey, how are you doing? They won't even notice that you have an answer. That's what I learned. But there are other people who do want to know. And we can say there are various things that I've learned to say, struggling with something right now, but I'm good. I know God's gonna see me through, or not so great today. Really tired if you're tired physically. I could use your prayers in a prison's really close. And I've had friends who say, Let's pray right now. And it's just such a blessing. Let's pray right now. And so I've grown to do that with you know, people. Can I pray with you right now about that? And it people do not say no, they're like things, but um gauge who you're answering and then go from there.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Like that. And yeah, some of them I've come up with is yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad to see you, right? It's that's the quick shift, right? But to your point, when someone offers to pray for you, sometimes it feels very well, we just always do this in a church setting or among Christians. But the truth is that when you're hurting or you're fearful, or there's these buckets of your life that are unanswered, in those moments when someone says, Hey, can we pray right now? It's they are so wonderful and very rarely offered. That's what's interesting, is that very rarely does someone say, now I have some, I'm sure you do too, have some dear friends that always ask and always offer on the spot, and they're the blessing. But among the larger group of people that I truly know within the body of Christ, very rarely do we stop and just say, hey, to me, talk about theology, it has to do with what do we believe about prayer? Is it some nicety that we're just offering someone? Like, I don't know what else to say. Let's just pray about it, or we do we really believe that we're partnering with the power, authority, grace, love of Christ that has been given to us through his death. We just celebrated Easter here. So do we really see this union and communion with the greater Alpha and Omega?

SPEAKER_02 35:54

He is a really great book. Um, just came out in the last year, but the best Christian book I've read on anxiety is by a man named Johnny Artavanus, quite a last name. And it is consider the lilies, and it is really learning to take our anxiety and root it in the character of God. This is God. Do you really comprehend who God is and how much he loves you? And I grew up with God loved me, but he was a little holier than he was loving, and he was really up there, you better stay in line. And here are all the rules. And it's like we view God, we don't know him. And it's like you said, the God of the universe, his power, and he says, please come boldly to the throne of grace. Come, pour your heart out.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

I, as it relates to this conversation, anytime I see a fellow brother or sister, that's driveness, in drivenness, they're talking about the results, they're frustrated with others. I know in my heart to ask them a next question. Now can't ask it in every setting, but what I want to get to is how are you medicating? Anytime I see this is a term I learned from John Eldridge, wild at heart, but in our drivenness, this idea that medicating always follows. So when I see someone that is clearly just living life full throttle, I want to know how they're medicating. Because under that, there's always a coping mechanism. There's always a way that when we're not satisfied, we're driving harder, there's always a way that I need to let off the gas with something, and I can't do it on my own. Because to do so would be to admit a failure, right? So I need to just escape the mechanism for a second. And now I think people medicate in all different forms. Some of it is culturally acceptable and legal, and some of it isn't. Some of it's hidden, some of it's public, and some of it's celebrated. Like people who medicate with work and productivity are culturally celebrated in North America.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

And we're and it's in our churches too. Oh, that man is, and they'll say, oh, they own this company, or they do, or she is, and we're celebrating their status and where they work or the money they have, rather than, as God says, faithfulness, just simply developing what I gave you. And across our stages of life, that's gonna change. Trust me, at 68, I don't have the energy level that I did at 38 to develop. But I still have been handed, here, Melissa, this is what I've given you, be faithful in it. But no one is gonna stand in church and say, Oh, have you seen Melissa's massive house? It's not gonna be that way, but that's what we do. We elevate in the world and in the church. That's what we elevate, and we will cope. And my husband, he was actually when we got married, a phys ed major. So he wanted to be a coach and phys ed teacher. That was fine by me. And then he felt the Lord calling him to be a pastor, and he changed his major. I was like, okay. And then we moved to Canada. He'd been in all these sports, like all kinds of sports, and very good at it. And then he was in no sports. And I remember asking him, like, what are you gonna do? And people would say, What are your hobbies? And he said, Oh, I don't need hobbies. I have, and it was work in the church. And no, you can't live that way. You cannot live that way. You have to learn to enjoy richly all things that God has given us.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

That is something fundamentally, I'm so thankful you shared that, because here we have so many individuals that are, including myself, that are they're driven for good reasons. Like the fundamental purpose of my drivenness isn't always selfish ambition that I'm aware of. It's that I want to see this church grow. I want to see this business grow to impact others. I want to fund the kingdom of God. There can be all of these truths that I'm operating out of, but when I can't let off the gas and I'm in the red line, there's something fundamentally off with why I'm doing what I do. And where it shows up in the coaching I do it, so I'll do this, they call a wheel of life in coaching, it probably categories, seven different areas of life. I call it the seven summits where we're looking at the journey of life from seven different perspectives. And the one summit that is always rated the lowest, as you would guess, recreation. And how I define recreation with them when they're filling it out is what are you doing that you're not measuring that puts a smile on your face?

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Oh dear, you are preaching to me now. It's hard for me not to have a purpose even in my relaxation, but I'm working on it. I am working on other than zoning out if I'm watching a movie or something, because then I'm just exhausted. It's like, but no, what brings a smile to my face and I'm relaxing. That's yeah, so needed.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

This is a perfect segue here because Melissa, you are an author and you've wrote a wonderful book centered around scripture called To Cast My Cares. Can you tell us a little bit about the book, the heart behind it?

SPEAKER_02 41:19

It took years, literal years, in the writing of it. So, not to talk about results, but I was always checking my heart as I wrote as to why I was writing it, but it started in my own heart. When I moved here in 2020, right during COVID, started an LLC, found a new church. I do have a brother and sister-in-law who live in town, so that family was here. But oh, bought a house built in 1920 that to work on, and I'm not a handy person at all. So it was like I was sitting in my front chair reading my Bible one day, and I'd finished reading a book. And this one chapter was challenging everyone to do something for 40 days straight, something for 40 days straight. And they gave all these suggestions, but and it could have been running or walking, but one thing was read a passage of scripture that deals with something you're struggling with. And I could feel anxiety, and I had terrible anxiety in year five and six, seven after my husband died. That's when God He helped me to stop and He stopped me so completely I didn't know how to stop. And anxiety and I didn't have a map for my life, and everything took over, and it was horrible. Oh, no, I would not sleep for nights in a row. But God was trying to unwind me, he was graciously helping me because Melissa clearly didn't know how to do it herself. So he was just stepped right in, heard my prayers. So as I sat in the chair in 2020, I was like, I'm gonna read this passage every day for 40 days because I don't want that to come back. And I know that I have some things I could just kind of whispers of, are you crazy? What are you doing? And boy, that 40 days turned into 80 days and then more. And I took each verse and then words from the verses and cross-referenced, and then I was remembering how God helped me in my deep anxiety, and I started using it with my clients, just different things with my clients. And then I thought, man, I have a lot of material. I mean, I could just put a mini Bible study. Well, the mini Bible study I'll show you is 170 pages long, and it has eight, not that I'm driven or goal-oriented, has eight videos included with it. It's been used by several churches. I'm so grateful. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn. This is God's grace because I never thought I would do anything. I mean, I wanted to be a writer of, you know, books that stirred and inspired. I don't want. Got to use my brokenness. Of course not. We want to be the heroes. God has different plans. Recently I had a woman come up to me and she said, Melissa, I've spent hundreds of dollars on counseling. And she said, this book, she said, I feel like is worth all that counseling. And that's just because it's God. But it is my privilege to have done that as far as working on anything now. I am. I won't say because it's still in the prayer stages, but that's I am goal-oriented and it helps me. But my purpose has changed. My purpose was always to honor the Lord. The day my husband died, it was ingrained in me. I turned to my sister and I said, please don't let me do something that dishonors the Lord. I haven't been perfect in my grief and I have blown things. But my view of what it looks like in my work life and work-life balance has changed so much who I am in Christ and my motive, why I'm to just check every motive, but not live in fear. Can I say that to you? Because I was like, am I only writing this because I want to be so? I mean, I was like, no, I'm not going to do it. And I mean, it took years. 2020, I started doing that study. It is 2026. And a lot of times it was just fear holding me back. And that's not right either. So when God has told you to do something, do it.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Well, I'm thankful you shared that. And I was going to ask you if you would pray for the listeners using the scripture that the book was centered around in 1 Peter. But I'm actually going to maybe just ask that you would pray for me. And I think that I have cares to cast in sharing this message. Our producer said, if this is just for us, this is going to be a win. So first I want to just say thank you for coming on this episode and sharing your story so vulnerably. It is, yeah, it is heavy, like you said, and yet to see what God's doing with you through it and how you're writing a book that people can receive counseling from.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Thank you that this is such an opportunity to share what God has done and is doing in my life, because He's continually working and will be till I take my last breath. And it will be my honor to pray for you and pray for both of us.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

Oh, precious Heavenly Father, thank you for how you brought Colt and Amanda and I together. That was incredible, Lord. Lord, you're working big things in Colt's heart and life. And I know he doesn't see not even a grain of sand yet what you're doing, but I ask you to please help him, as these scriptures say here in 1 Peter 5, 6 through 11, to first keep humbling himself, to just trust the weight as he waits on you, to look to you as you lead him, and to just trust that in your time you will lift him up, as your word says. Help him to cast every care on you, every anxiety on you, knowing that he is an object of your care. That none of this has slipped your mind, Lord. That this has you saw this from the beginning of time. And you've prepared him for this time. And you're gonna lead him through. Help him to remember that that he needs to be sober-minded, he needs to be watchful because there is a very real enemy that wants to stop him from doing what you have for him. I ask you to please now as he is in this area and it is suffering, Lord, we're so easy to discount. Oh, I don't I'm not because uh others around the world are suffering more. But Lord, when we sit in this holding pattern and we can't see what you have for us, we long. We long to do more for you, and you are asking us to wait. Well, that's a definitely a challenge for us. So I ask you to please help him to remember that he's not alone in this, that he has a wife who's by him, he has godly friends, and that his suffering will not last forever because you have promised that when all is said and done you will strengthen him, you will establish him, you will confirm him, you will restore him, Lord, as he does everything for your honor and glory. And so we hand his health to you, we ask you to restore that or to use it for your glory. We hand his marriage to you, his business endeavor with this podcast, that it will reach many and encourage their hearts. We hand it all to you in Jesus' name, amen.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

Amen, amen. Melissa, this has been so special. Thank you for coming on. I hope we get to do this again sometime. May the Lord bring us together on this side of eternity for more powerful conversations, healing conversations.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I would love that. And if you're ever my way in North Carolina, my doors are open to you. And who knows, maybe I'll be in Ottawa someday.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

I love that. We welcome you back to Canada anytime. Listeners, if you've taken something out of the show, if it's helped you, if it's encouraged you, if it's possibly even healed you in some respect, we expect to have more wonderful guests like Melissa. So go ahead, like the show, subscribe to the show. This is just the beginning as we unpack drivenness so that we can have a greater eternal impact together. God bless you all. Have an amazing week.