Lifted to Hope

Parenting can be an incredible privilege and joy to experience. It can also be one of the most emotionally demanding responsibilities you'll ever take on. And if you are a parent, you know it's usually a mix of both on any given day.  In this episode, I've invited Christopher Keck, LPC, DBH, and President and CEO of Open Hearts Family Wellness to help us explore what makes the parent-child relatio...

While not every one of us in this community is a parent, we have certainly all been impacted by the presence - or absence of our parents. When parents allow shame to drive their patterns of relating, they becomes self-focused and out of touch with the needs of their children. While it can feel uncomfortable to examine the negative traits of our own parents, doing so gives us the chance to forgive...

This is just a quick holiday greeting to let you know I'm taking a break to refresh and be with family, as I hope you are too! You'll hear about some ways to work with me and what to expect as we continue our journey here on this podcast in 2024. I am so grateful and honored you've joined me!  Many blessings to you and your family! 

Even as much as Devry adored the opportunity to be a very safe and emotionally present father and husband, he quickly discovered how costly his need to be right was. In this episode, Devry is back to share how God revealed to him his need to stop controlling how he was perceived by those around him.  He shares the miracles that happened when he was willing to accept the damage he had done and allo...

Habitual or compulsive sins can make us feel so powerless at times. Yet when diving into the deeper story, we often find that the sin began in an attempt to get a legitimate need met. For my guest this week, that need was for both physical and emotional safety. Devry will share his complex relationship with an alcoholic father growing up and why he learned to believe that failure of any kind was u...

Over many past episodes, we've explored what it looks like to use self-protective strategies to avoid facing our sin. But when we continue to mature in our journey with God, there usually comes a point in which we grow tired of how ineffective these methods are. We come face to face with the fact that these attempts to control our reality only bring pain to us personally and to our relationships. ...

The teenage years of parenting can make you feel powerless at times. Emotions run high and the ways they connect are not as easy to identify as they may have been in the past. In this episode of the podcast, Sara Brown is back to share why we need to embrace our children's behavior as communication. When we can get curious about the why behind the behavior, we can get clarity around a need that is...

In this episode, I am joined by a dear friend and gifted therapist, Sara Brown. As she has matured and grown in her understanding of God's unconditional love for her, she has been able to process a traumatic childhood with a mother who struggled with mental illness. Sara has done the challenging work of separating the ways she was loved and provided for while at the same time naming the ways she w...

When someone gives you negative feedback, how do you typically respond? Or if a circumstance exposes your weakness, what do you do with the shame that rises up? When we are unwilling or not ready to face the truth of where we fall short, we often turn to forms of denial.  In this episode, I'll share examples of how we can try to outrun our shame through blaming, minimizing, and justifying to avoid...

In this episode, Trish is back to share how her healing journey continued and inspired her to walk alongside other women who desperately needed a second chance after incarceration. The unexpected gift of training to be a social worker was how much time she would invest in healing from her own trauma and shame.  While her criminal record may have kept her from being employed in some settings, it wa...

People-pleasing can seem like a harmless and common habit. Yet there are times when the fear that fuels our people-pleasing behavior can have unimaginable consequences. In this episode, I'm joined by LCSW, Trish Plum who has allowed a nightmare of a season to be redeemed by God in incredible ways. Trish will explain how the pain of an unmet need to belong and be loved unconditionally prompted her...

If you've developed a pattern of people-pleasing, it can feel impossible to break free of it, especially in our core relationships. It often begins when someone in our childhood in authority communicates that their needs trump our needs. We become driven by the need to avoid conflict or deflect from the shame we feel about ourselves. But when we don't look for other ways of relating, we can stunt...

In this second part of Neesie's story, she unpacks how the reality of her trauma continued to play out in her life and relationships. She clearly describes how the emotional intensity of unaddressed wounds can overwhelm and surprise us. While this shame took Neesie through depression that was completely unmanageable, God had prepared a way out.  Neesie explains why healing requires unbelievable pa...

It is such a heavy burden to carry the weight of generational abuse. When people who are designated to care for us neglect our need to be nurtured, it is easy to believe we aren't valuable. In this episode, I am joined by Neesie Cieslak, speaker, author, and family life educator, who shares the first part of her story, telling about her experience of abuse and how it affected family life as she gr...

We are all created with a deep desire to be uniquely and personally loved. If we have learned to allow God to meet that need, we have the ability to appreciate our own strengths and those of others with ease. And at the same time, we can also show compassion for others in their areas of weakness.  Yet when we are uncertain of our value, we have a natural tendency to criticize and label others in a...

Anger is one of those emotions that rarely acts alone. If we are embarrassed, disrespected, or afraid, anger often follows faster than we ever expect. Yet if expressing anger becomes a pattern for us, the added guilt and shame make it so difficult to get to the root of our pain. It is so hard to trust what God says of us in these moments.  In this episode, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, R...

In order to take a deeper dive into how and why anger surfaces in our hearts, I've invited Licensed Therapist and Counselor, Russ Yost to help us find some practical solutions in our weakest moments. Anger can be fueled by many situations, but we often come face to face with it when something exposes the shame we carry.  If you struggle with anger, the good news is that God is not surprised at you...

Anger is a complex and confusing emotion, regardless of which side of it you find yourself on. It often emerges from a deep sense of powerlessness, tempting us to believe that reasserting control through displays of anger will bring us justification and a sense of security. However, when we neglect to address the pain within our own hearts, we inadvertently wound others. The allure of a power trip...

For many of us, the means by which we learned to escape difficult emotions as a child follow us straight into adulthood. But as we mature, we can learn to recognize the behavior and call it out in ourselves. In this episode, Jacob is back to share how he has come to see his patterns of escape as an opportunity to pay attention to the check engine light on his soul.   What I love about this convers...

When our circumstances bring fear, chaos, and loneliness, the desire to want to escape makes sense. It's our brain's way of protecting us. But many times we learn to rely on those coping mechanisms early in our lives, having no awareness of how it could lead to so much emotional, spiritual, and even physical bondage.  In this episode, Jacob shares how having an absent father and a mother who strug...

  When the pressure of life overwhelms us, we naturally want to hide. While we all hide in different ways, we are all seeking relief from the intensity of our emotions. We trick ourselves into believing that if we can numb or escape, we can pretend that the pain and the pressure don't exist.  And while these methods can work in the short term, these patterns of coping only threaten our relationshi...

If you identify as a perfectionist, you've probably discovered that hiding this way can work in the short term, but eventually, life becomes unmanageable. In this episode, Janelle continuesher story and shares how parenting and marriage exposed her, making it impossible to control the narrative any longer.  Discover how God invited Janelle to face the tasks and challenges that seemed impossible to...

Last week we explored the ways a perfectionist can try to control how those around them see and value them. These attempts can help us cope in the short term, but prevent us from experiencing deep relationships with God and those we are closest to. In this episode, I've invited Janelle to share how she actively avoided any task that didn't come easily to her. If she hadn't tried, then no one could...

If you or someone you know considers themselves a perfectionist, it can often be confused as a strength, when in reality it's a self-protective strategy to project our ideal selves 100% of the time. It's just one example of our sophisticated fig leaves.  If we use this strategy to survive, shame and fear of being exposed are the motivators for almost everything we do. On top of this, we become ext...

It can be a lonely feeling to realize that you are the only one fighting for the relationship any more. While Connie and her children did nothing to deserve to be neglected, she was faced with the harsh reality that even with two young kids, her husband was unwilling and unable to engage in any form of a healthy relationship any longer.   In this episode, Connie continues to share how she was able...