What happens when you are willing to face your deepest fears? Ellie Holcomb, beloved musician and mom to three, joins Julie for a candid conversation about how her two-year journey of dealing with her unfaced pain has taught her something new about her relationship with God.
Listen to “#182 – Finding Strength in the Midst of Pain With Ellie Holcomb” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
- Follow Ellie Holcomb Online | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
- Check out Ellie’s children’s books
- John 7:38: Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.*
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: I’m Julie Lyles Carr. You’re listening to the allmomdoes podcast, part of the Christian parenting podcasts. Today on the allmomdoes podcast. Ellie Holcomb is here. This is a reunion for me. We got to see each other a few years ago at an event and I fell in love with this girl hard. So down to earth. So talented. So kind everyone, Ellie, it is fantastic to have you here.
Ellie Holcomb: It’s so good to be here. I fell in love with you too so when I saw your face today, we were like good to see you.
Julie Lyles Carr: Well, it’s amazing to have you on you are the mom to three little ones now. Tell me about them. Tell me about your husband living in Nashville.
Ellie Holcomb: Absolutely. So I’ve been married, we’ll hit 15 years, this June, which is really fun.
And Drew, my husband is my best guy friend that I swore I’d never date. So we’re 15 years in after that. I’m like, God has a sense of humor. Also swore that I would never marry a musician. So I’m literally like that’s two for two to 14. I don’t swear. I’m not going to do things anymore. We have three little kids, Emmy Lou’s eight, Huck is five, and then River’s, who is our joy tornado, is two and a half. And all of those babies have been on the road with us. We do music, my husband and I do music together and then separately as well. So every single kid has been on the road at about two or three weeks. And then. Then just there, there, there were a traveling family.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah. Yeah. Last time I got to see you. The middle one was a little bitty and you had it down to a system. I was really impressed. I mean, you came home on in just you and your drummer and you were like, we got this and I’m up okay. It was absolutely incredible to see you juggle all the things I want.
Ellie Holcomb: Slept in strollers and car seats. Yes. Yes. That was their main crib.
Julie Lyles Carr: We called that cribs at our house too. I’m totally with you. I want to hear more about how you did the whole dare we say, Monica and Chandler thing of you were big buddies with Drew and you weren’t going to be a romance. And then you were, I mean, tell me about how that transition.
Ellie Holcomb: You know, it’s so interesting. He was always kind of in, you know, he’s like, oh, we’ll see about that later. I was married. Another guy that didn’t work out. I’m so grateful. You know, those things that you’re like, oh God, you knew. Hmm. And I actually got to a place where any time any guy would want to take me out on a date, I would start crying.
Cause I’m like, well, if I start dating that guy, I’m not going to be able to be friends with Drew anymore. And mom and mom actually said it. She was like, That is very clarifying. She was like, you need to at least go on a date with Drew to like, see about that. Right, right, right. Sure enough. I went on that first date and I just always viewed him as my brother, you know, like, and he held my hand walking across the street; he was so put his hand on the small, my back walk. We went to see a show Ryman…
Julie Lyles Carr: The small of the back maneuver. I mean, oh, a combo small of the back maneuver and the Ryman nicely played Drew. Nicely played.
Ellie Holcomb: At the end of that content. I, it was like, it went like is walking in, I’m like, I don’t know, this is so weird.
We’re not like this. And by the end of that concert, I was like, Oh, my gosh. I didn’t know that you could be in love with your best friend and I’m going to marry this guy. I knew it on the first date. I was like, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life and I’m so excited, but that’s a strange thought. I’m always telling my sister and other girls I’m like, Just maybe give the guy a shot. You may not be able to see it, but who knows what’s going to happen? And the first date something may shift. Yeah. And it really did for me.
Julie Lyles Carr: My son married his best friend, the girl that he had just been dear, dear friends with. They had seen each other through relationships and all kinds of things. And they’d never been single at the same time.
They’d always had somebody, they were dating. And then if one of us had broken up with a significant, other than that, wasn’t at the same time as the other one. And, and then all of a sudden, and I was. I was kind of like your mama. I was behind the scenes going, I really think you need to think about Lily. And he would just clutches pearls and mom.
No, she’s like my best friend. Why would I, you know, and then when it all came down, oh yeah, it was listen to your mama. So, but I think it’s a great reminder because we have this sense in our culture that we should be able to recognize right off the person who would be a great person for us to be with who we would have, you know, fantastic, fantastic live with.
And we think we’re supposed to recognize that immediately but when you hear about these love stories that begin in a deep seated friendship and lots of different experiences and seeing each other through all kinds of things and then grow into a romance, it’s really a beautiful thing to get to hear.
So thank you.
Ellie Holcomb: Well, and I think so much of marriage is friendship, right? I mean, it’s, the romance is like, that’s a beautiful part of that as well, but really the main thing is your it’s like your partner. You’re doing life together. And so it, it actually really helps. Yeah. If you want to be good.
Julie Lyles Carr: If you’re dating somebody, you would never be friends with, you might just take a pause, a little pause, but you’re so right.
My husband and I have remarked recently, we’re coming up on 32 years by the grace of God. And we’ve talked about the fact, yes, the romance and the friendship and we’re family. So that becomes even an interesting transition that we don’t talk a lot about in our culture as well, where you realize, wow, I mean, we’re, we’re deep in this thing now, you know, which I mean, you know, but then there’s a place where you really start to know.
And I think it’s a really interesting transition. I love your love story. So, so powerful. You have this beautiful walk with God that comes out in the things you seeing and things you write in the things you say. And part of what I’ve always loved in the things that you’ve shared in that place is you to me come across as fearless person. Who just tackles the world and go and so positive, but you’ve been really transparent about the place of fear in your life and where you’ve really wrestled that thing and wrestled it with God. So unpack that for me, how you live in this place, where you do feel so anyone who’s around you feels that you feel so free.
You feel so confident in the most humble way. It’s this gorgeous combination. And yet to know leu to fight fear. Like I do. I mean, tell me about that place.
Ellie Holcomb: Yeah, absolutely. So I there’s so many kinds of things that you just said about me and, but Oak it up. Probably my favorite thing is that you’re acknowledging that I’m transparent about the fear cause I just think, I just think there’s so much freedom and us showing up as we are with each other, because there’s just this relief that we don’t have to have it all together. I think for so long growing up in the church in the church, especially, I don’t know why this is, but I I’m like maybe, you know, but like the sense that you have to be together, you, you know, the right answers, you know, the right way and you should do it all the time, and it’s like, Oh, my goodness, Lord, give me mercy to do it. I want to do that, but it’s, I feel like Paul all the time. I know the things that I should do, but the things I don’t want to do, I do. And so I’m like, I just, there’s been so much freedom in my story. Um, I’m a seven on the Enneagram and I don’t know if you’re an Enneagram person, but that’s, for those of you who may not be, um, that’s the enthusiastic.
And so I love being alive. I want to do that. It all. Um, but I hate pain and I have avoided it for a long time. And so I actually just took a journey, uh, really in the past two years of I have been in counseling for a long time now. I’m so grateful for counselors and for what they do and for how God has used them in my life.
Um, and so I have acknowledged pain in counseling before, but I’ve never done I’ve never let myself really grieve it. The wounds, the deepest ones in my story and so this past year I learned to go back to the places of pain that I’m like, no, I acknowledge those and we’re good. And now we’re moving on.
Julie Lyles Carr: There it was close the door, turn the lights on.
Ellie Holcomb: Oh no. So if you don’t grieve things that grief eventually starts to come outside ways. And that’s what I started seeing in my story. And so I basically spent time in the past two years, visiting the deepest places pain and my story, and then grieving there. And what happened as I just let myself breathe sometimes weep in those places of pain is I encountered the presence and the tenderness and the empathy of God. Who’s who we know Jesus as the man of sorrows well, acquainted with grief. I found this sense of companionship and the very places that I thought would kill me. Only the places that I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid, um, really spending much time at all.
It’s actually been in visiting in those places and breathing there that I have, I have, in, as I breathe out sorrow and lament, I have breathed in the tenderness and the empathy and the healing of God. And so what actually happened is I’ve been missing out on the powerful work of healing that God wanted to do in those painful places by avoiding them.
And so all of a sudden, um, I, the biggest places of fear have now started to become just in the past two years, places where I’m, oh, this is where you work. This is where you show up the water goes to the lowest place.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right, right, right.
Ellie Holcomb: And there is living water that will run. And this is the whole, the whole record that are just wrote.
I actually had written a whole record about this process just individually, but what happened is in 2020 hit, I’d written this whole record about this process. March 3rd, 2020 tornado tears through our neighborhood in Nashville, right behind her house. Woke up. All three kids are houses, shaking scariest night of my life, honestly.
And then a week after that, Rebuilding and beauty that happened in the wake of that storm were quarantined. Right? So even it felt like community and rebuilding and hope innocence was quarantined right after that. And so what I got to see as I kind of learned how to lament and grieve, and so I let myself lament and grieve a lot of the political tension, the racial tension that we’ve been in, and all of a sudden this sense of me seeing this beautiful gospel thought was a raindrop, God’s like, oh no, no, no. It’s the ocean.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah. Yeah.
Ellie Holcomb: Oh my goodness. This, um, I felt emboldened to lean into some of the pain and the sorrow that we experienced collectively last year cause I’m like, you know what? God is in the pit of the valley. He’s in the pit of our pain too. And look what happens when we learn how to sing in a valley, right.
It echoes off of all the broken pieces of that wall. And so. And it’s multiplied. And so I think there’s been this sense, um, that I’m not afraid to be afraid anymore because I know God’s with me, that I’ve been learning. Right. And so it’s not that I’m like, so I’m never afraid anymore. Right, right, right.
But I heard somebody say recently you have to be afraid to be a little bit brave. Like if you’re like, right. And God is a God who can meet us wherever we are. And so it’s been a really beautiful. Uh, I feel this kind of nuisance of healing, more complete healing. And then, um, some even new layers of freedom.
It’s okay. I could show up with my broken self and, and God’s going to hold me wherever that is.
Julie Lyles Carr: That’s beautiful. Beautiful. I love that you went through the work of identifying what the fear actually was and you got to the place of you were afraid of pain, you know, for some of us, it’s a fear of rejection. For some of us it’s a fear of disappointing someone for some, you know, we. These places that we need to go just a level deeper sometimes to really understand what the fear is about. And so that you were willing to do the work to figure out that it was afraid of being in any kind of pain is a really big deal. And so often we get stopped sometimes in our church communities and I don’t think there’s ill will intended or anything else, and we tell people fear, not which are biblical words, but we kind of stop there sometimes in our faith communities. And we do engage that place of, well, if I’m struggling with fear, then I’m not walking in faith. And so I just want to be quiet about it.
So I love that you’re proclaiming it and letting people know. In that process of discovering that, okay, it’s the pain that I’m fearful of and that’s the thing I’m going to have to lean into a little bit. How did you begin the process of allowing yourself to grieve properly and do it well, but not stay in the pit.
That’s one of the things that we see people, I think sometimes people are afraid of dealing with their fear because they think I’m going to stay in the pit. If I, if I let myself go there, I don’t know that I can ever climb back out. And so how did you manage that?
Ellie Holcomb: Yeah, that’s a great question. I, because I mean, that was my fear too.
I’m like, I may never come out really Gollum down in the cave. Yeah. Skip right over that part. Yeah. On the mountain top. It feels great up here. Um, that’s a great question. So I have, um, I have some amazing counselors and so I, I, I do feel like that’s a gift to have somebody with you so, you know, you’re not doing that process alone. I process a lot with my husband.
And then I just, I’ve got it open right here, but like, The Word of God has been so, so powerful to me and I, and I think because it tells this story. And it’s so crazy, you know, as we grow in our level of understanding and our eyes are open to things, I’m like, I read this differently than I did, because as it turns out, Jesus is always saying like, you are going to struggle.
You are going to have pain in this world, but take heart I’ve overcome the world. And so I always skipped over, I’m just like overcomer and to do this and that same thing. Like, I can do this with so many verses John 10:10, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, but I’ve come to give you life and life to the full.
And so I always looked at that verse like, yeah, God just wants to give us this full life full of and adventure and blessing, and I’m like, that is a part of it but as I’ve grown older, as I’ve visited pain, and my own story is I’ve been willing to look at the pain in our nation, in our churches, in the world.
What I think that means is actually we have the full presence of God. The full presence of his mercy, the full presence of his love, the full presence of his kindness, the full presence of his faithfulness in the full spectrum of what it is to be a human. Uh, to, to ache, to grieve, to lose, to doubt, to struggle, to overcome, to succeed, to laugh, to cry, to rejoice.
So there is like a shift that’s happening in my mind of he’s present and all of it. And so, yeah. I think there’s been an understanding as I’ve held onto his promises, there’s a deeper understanding. They go deeper than they used to. Ooh, yes, I’m holding on to this little light. And I’m like, oh no, this light goes into the pit of darkness and has brought me through. It’s grounded me and given me a lot of hope and it runs deeper than I realized that it did before. And so I think holding onto some of his promises and then, honestly, coming with my full self to Jesus. I felt like I had to clean myself up for so long before I came to him and to know that that’s not the gospel. To be in that continued journey of understanding. And so it’s actually just, breathing has been a super power too, in this of not staying in that pit. I feel like kids have walked through anxiety and fear this year in a way that they have not. And so as a parent, that’s one of your worst fears is for your kids to hurt or to have anything that would make them anxious.
And so it’s actually been in learning to breathe I’ve gone to a counselor for my little girl to help her when she was fearful, this, you know, year or so to help her learn how to breathe. And so first we have to breathe and ground ourselves and I’m like, that makes so much sense. God’s the one who put breath in our lungs.
Anyway, go back to Yahweh to that burning bush and who should I, who should I tell Pharaoh? Like, what name should I tell him that I should release all of his slaves? And he’s like, Yahweh. And when you go back to the Hebrew of Yahweh. It’s just breathing. We just let ourselves breathe. It takes, I mean, just scientifically it takes like when we’re, when our heart’s racing, we’re at the enigma, which is fight or flight, but then when we breathe, we can actually even think rational thoughts.
So it’s like I have to even breathe to be able to speak truth to myself where I can even rationally comprehend it. And so it’s been such a beautiful thing. I’ve actually had to learn to breathe with my daughter. You know, we’re doing the tracing, your fingertips. Yeah. Yeah. Or take a sip of the soup, blow on it.
It’s too hot. And so we have learned all, I, I got all these tools from this amazing counselor, Sissy Goff. I don’t know if you’ve ever had her. She would be a great person on the show because she’s like this kind of like bad a Mr. Rogers character. She’s like on the science for where our brains and our heart, you know, how everything works, but then also this beautiful truth of who God is, even in the midst of that.
And so half the time I thought she was telling me how to help my little girl and my little, my children through this last year, but even on her Instagram stories, she gets on there and talk through things and I’m like, you’re sneaky, cause you’re telling us how to help our kids actually actually you’re retraining the mama, which is know retraining.
And so it’s been such a beautiful thing, uh, to just to even have empathy for ourselves when we’re afraid and to allow space to just breathe. And to know this feeling of fear, this feeling of loss, like this is not who you are and we actually get to separate ourselves from those feelings. And we get to be the boss.
I mean, she talks about little kids, you get to boss the worry around, you get to boss the fear around. And so. Um, that’s been something that I’ve used in my own story. And, and so I feel like with the help of counselors and community with breathing, and then with just God’s word in his presence, all of those things together have helped me know this, this pit is not your, your identity, and this is not where you’ll stay, but it’s an important place to visit and you will experience the power of God if you invite him into those places. And I’m just so grateful.
Julie Lyles Carr: I love that phrase, visit that ability to go into it. But to know that it’s not meant to be a permanent residence, that it’s a visit.
That’s a really beautiful distinction. When we talk about being willing to go into those things that maybe we’ve been trying to keep at arms distance, you know, I think underneath all of it, every fear that we can identify, whether it’s rejection, whether it’s pain, whether it is all these different litanies of things, I often wonder that really what’s even one layer below that to borrow an inception metaphor of taking the elevator all the way down is I think we actually really fear that God will not be enough when it comes to the things that we wrestle. We. Sometimes rephrase it. Right. Well, what if I’m not enough?
But I think underneath all of it, we sometimes worry that God will not be enough. And yet to hear somebody who’s been willing to take that elevator down and say, actually, as it turns out, he is. It was a great thing. He really is he’s here.
Ellie Holcomb: And that is like, that’s the, I think for me this last year, I saw that personally on this new level and then 2020 hit and I, I, I just was like, oh, this is not just for me. This is for all of us. This is even like, your love is even for people who have no idea who you are. You came for the world and that’s available to everyone. I went to the Grand Canyon this year when the numbers were low in the wake of 2020 in the wake of the tornado, in the wake of all the tension, and we camped on the Northern rim, we went down into the canyon and there are two things that our guide told us there that undid me. And this guy is not a believer. And I’m like, you are preaching the gospel. You just don’t know it. But he was like, the canyon walls told a story of disaster upon disaster upon disaster.
It’s a landslide, it’s a mudslide, it’s an earthquake, it’s a volcano eruption. And then there’s this big divide. And I felt like I was looking at a picture of all of our hearts, especially after last year. There, one beautiful thing about last year is there’s this collective communal sorrow and loss and pain.
And so the sense of like our connectedness and that way is in one, even though it’s hard, it’s a gift. Cause we all know what it is to suffer, but there in the middle of all of that, in the deepest part of the camp, There’s a river. Yeah. And Julie, it was hot. It was 110 degrees. It felt like it was so hot down there.
But because we went in August, which we’ve learned is not the time to go, you’re planning a trip, um, but that Colorado, the river water. 50 degrees. And so, as it turns out, if your fear is that God won’t meet you in that very low place there, like, I love that he knew that we might forget and so he left a trail of breadcrumbs all over creation. But water moves to the lowest place, like I was saying before, and so in the pit of our sorrow and the pit of our deepest fear in the pit, deepest loss in the pit of our biggest division, the water moves to that place. And if we can be, like my kids in the swim lessons, head back up to the sky, keeping your eyes on, you loves that arms open, we can let go. And if we can just breathe, the water will carry us.
That’s how we float. Yeah, it’s right here. I’m curious. We’ll only let it. And the other thing that happened then when we were down in that canyon, when we went to sleep on the riverbanks that night, he said, you need to pay attention because there’s this thing that’s going to happen called the rim effect.
Basically, when the moon sets below the rim, he said you are in the darkest place that you’ll ever be quite literally, because you’re farther away from the stars and you’ll ever be because you’re over a mile into the surface of the earth. Yeah. This will be the darkest place that you’ll ever be said, but because it is so dark and because there’s no ambient light, the stars will shine more brightly, and they will appear closer than they have ever appeared
before. I just start sobbing. I’m like, how does who God is. He is light of the world. And even in our darkest nights, he, his light shines brighter than any of the darkness in our own arts and the world around us that we’ll ever encounter. And I’m just so grateful for that truth.
Julie Lyles Carr: I love that you went to Grand Canyon and had church.
That’s pretty. It was a good man. Well, and that’s, I have to assume that that’s where a lot, the inspiration for some of your new music, including canyon came out and a lot of the places and things that you explore in that music. You know, you being willing to push past fear and be willing to reside in pain has allowed you to do some really beautiful work with the International Justice Mission,
and also to be part of, be the bridge in terms of racial unity. So how, what have you learned through those situations, maybe are exposing things that you haven’t personally gone through as a pain, but your willingness to walk into the pain of others? What have you learned there?
Ellie Holcomb: I think, honestly, Julie, I’ve seen the power of the gospel because IJM is going into, I mean, you get those updates.
Pain is pain. So we all have pain in her life, but these are people who are enslaved. There’s 40 million people still in slavery today. And when I, when I’m willing to lean into that and to link arms with the people who are saying, and this is who we get to be, ultimately we get to be the people who are, who joined up with the molecules of water.
That that is that current of life. That current of love that current of living water. We are invited to be a part of that current that can run like streams in the desert. That can go to the darkest places and we get to be light bearers, image bearers in those places. And so really what I’ve seen as I’ve leaned into the pain that’s in some of people’s stories who are, who are literally still enslaved today, and I see God show up there and bring freedom and light and life and healing, I’m encountered with the power of the gospels. Same thing with the story of racial reconciliation. That is, it’s so painful. It’s so awkward. We have gotten it so wrong. And as I’m willing to go repent and lament, and then to be about the work of rebuilding, like the Isaiah 61, the rebuilding ancient ruins.
That’s what we get to be. We get to be those people who do that. And as hard as those conversations are, as hard as it is to admit that we’ve gotten it wrong a lot of the time, man, I feel like what’s happened as I’ve leaned into the pain of other people’s stories that I missed, maybe haven’t necessarily experienced, is the gospel becomes wider, higher, deeper, more wonderful, more colorful, more powerful than I ever knew before.
And so I love the idea that we get to say, come all you are thirsty. Do you feel. I don’t know your life isn’t doesn’t matter enough. Do you feel like maybe a PR a sense of purposelessness? Look at the work of IJM. Look at the work that God is doing all over the world and, and know that you are invited to be a part of, of a story that’s bigger than even your own story.
And to be a part of building a kingdom. Uh, that’s coming. Right, right. Or we belong to, we know we belong to each other. We know that we belong to the one who made us in the first place. So I’ve just, I feel alive in a way that I haven’t felt before and leaning into some of those places of pain. And I’m so grateful that fear hasn’t kept me from leaning in because I think God meets us in the midst of, of the painful places. And that’s, I think where we see them the most powerfully. And so to get to invite people into work like that, into their own story, whether that be with join, visit the pain or in story with the counselor, or visit the pain in the world through IJM or through the work of Be The Bridge and our own in our own country here, man, to, for you to know there is going, it will be hard.
It’s hard going traversing down. You think about hiking on, into a canyon. Hard work, right? Some of the most beautiful work that I know. And, um, and there’s a current of life and love pulsing through there. Uh, and that will carry you and meet you in the places where you feel like you’re not enough, God’s more than enough.
Julie Lyles Carr: You know, it reminds me Ellie that our bodies are comprised mainly of water. And so when you talk about that, we are supposed to, you know, that God, that water moves to the lowest places. God is the water in the canyon, and we also are comprised of those very molecules that can come in and help people and sustain people and help them float when it feels that they are just drowning.
So I love this. Oh, well, you know, you’re the one who brought it to bear. So it’s just.
Ellie Holcomb: It reminds me of the, I mean, that’s like the John 7, is it 7:28 or 38? Look that up later. Yeah. Put that in show notes* I’ll put that in the show notes. Those who believe in me as scripture has said, rivers of living water will spring up, will well up from within them, and so there’s this sense that even in the most broken places of our story, that we wouldn’t want to share with anybody else, even when we are at our worst, God sees that. And he says, you believe in me, you call me just breathe. Say help. And I am right there. With, with, there are like these underground, hidden reservoirs of love and life and peace and healing that we have access to at any point, and what a relief to know that even when we’re in those desert places, we ourselves are comprised of water and there are, there is the opportunity to lean in and just say, God, help meet me here. And rivers of living water can come spring up. Yeah. And we, and we get to participate in that. We get to be part of that.
It’s such good news. And then there’s rapids. There’s all kinds of fun stuff.
Julie Lyles Carr: There’s the fun stuff for the seven in you. Then we can hit all that stuff, right?
Ellie Holcomb: We can jet ski can ski. We can flow. Paddleboard is going to be great. It’s going to be good. It’s good.
Julie Lyles Carr: Ellie. What a joy to get to be with you today.
I want listeners to go check out the new music video that was actually filmed here in Texas called Canyon. Go check it out at Big Ben Park. That’s an amazing allegory to all this that we’ve been talking about. Ellie, love you, girl. I know you’ve got a busy day of interviews ahead of you. Thank you for taking the time to be here for my listeners.
I know that they are going to be just as encouraged as I am by getting to hear your wisdom and insight. Gosh, what a blessing you are.
Ellie Holcomb: Thank you so much. Friends love you so much. Thanks for having me.
Julie Lyles Carr: Hey, if you love listening to the podcast, do me a solid. It is so great. When you go over and give us a five star wherever you’re listening to your podcasts, it helps bump it up so other listeners can find it as well. I want to send out a big thanks to Donna, our producer and Rebecca our content coordinator. Be sure and check out the show notes that Rebecca puts together each and every week, and I can’t wait to see you next time on the allmomdoes podcast.
