Mar 22, 2018
After the shocking death of her father a month before her wedding, Natalie experienced her first real loss. Then life took an unexpected turn when as a healthy young mother, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that paralyzed her face and vocal cords and took away part of her hearing.
Natalie chose to walk the road of grief and loss by turning
some of her thoughts, lessons, and hardships into a journal called
Beautifully You. We talk about the challenge of not becoming bitter
while battling the darkness, loneliness, and depression of losing
the very simple functions of blinking, smiling, hearing, and
speaking normally.
During this time, Natalie fell into a moment of despair. She
felt like she hit a brick wall with all of her efforts of praying,
thinking, wanting to be free of her physical ailments. Feeling at
the end of her rope, not having an answer of when she would be free
of the prison of a body, Natalie cried and fell into her husband’s
arms.
The profound reminder her husband gave her is that there is
nothing we can or cannot do that takes away what Jesus did on the
cross for us and it is ok to sometimes feel mad, sad, trapped, or
without hope.
If you’re looking for a hopeful, inspirational moment from
this episode, get ready. Natalie changed my perspective and gave me
a renewed sense of hope when she told me about a time she was in
church praying and weeping for the loss of her father. She was sent
a revelation of Jesus weeping alongside her and also seeing and
feeling the vision of Jesus celebrating along with her. This
revelation was a comfort that showed Natalie that Jesus feels our
humanity, even in His holiness. Oh, to be reminded that we aren’t
alone even in the most barren times! Jesus is right here, weeping
as we are weeping and rejoicing as we are rejoicing.
We talk about allowing a moment, a hardship, a difficulty to
change us. To learn something about ourself but also about
God.
And we also talk about the importance of rest. Human rest.
Meaning, sometimes, it’s ok to take a valium after surgery and
sleep off a difficult day.
But when it comes to getting better, we have a responsibility
to heal. Natalie shares with us the wisdom of being aware of the
hard times, choosing to learn from them, and having a story to
share that can help others. We figured out that this may just be
the key to hope during that tough time!
And for Natalie, healing did come! She will tell you that her
healing is a different definition than what she believed but she
does claim healing in her life. What I love about Natalie,
though, is that she hasn’t forgotten the lessons that God has
taught her in her darkest time. She has a new appreciation for
grief, and a new understanding of how God makes all things new for
us here on earth.
We talk about two of my favorite chapters in her book,
titled Honey I Shrunk my Dreams and The Responsibility to
Heal…two very motivational truths for people who are dealing with
especially tough times. The first one: God doesn’t want us to
abandon the dreams that have been put in our heart just because
where we are at feels small. And the second: Being stuck in our
hurts can cause us to turn a blind eye to the healing that God has
already provided in our lives and we have a responsibility in our
mind to choose, “Yes!” to God’s healing.
You’ll get a lot of comfort from this episode. Especially
knowing that once we take on the comfort from God, we have then the
ability to comfort others. We can be thankful for this because of
the lessons we have learned in our hard times.
I hope the position of your heart is open to shift because
there’s much richness to be found from Natalie in this
episode.