Can something that’s really difficult also be really good? Lisa Whittle joins Julie Lyles Carr for a frank conversation about managing feelings, letting something be hard while also looking for the good, and how we get to decide how we see the difficult circumstances in our life.
Interview Links:
Lisa Whittle: Online | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Podcast
Book: The Hard Good
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: You’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast where you’ll find encouragement, information and inspiration for the life you’re living, the kids you’re raising, the romance you’re loving, and the faith you’re growing. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. Let’s jump into this week’s episode. Today on the AllMomDoes podcast Lisa Whittle is with me in the home studio. Lisa, we’ve had you on once before, so glad to have you back. Thanks for coming all the way to Austin to come see us.
Lisa Whittle: Oh, thank you. It’s fun. I’m glad to be here in person.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah. I mean, Austin’s a fun place, but you live in a fun place too. So tell the listeners where you live, where the kids are out, all the ages and stages. And what brings you to Austin this time around.
Lisa Whittle: I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m trying to remember the questions. My brain doesn’t remember things. Well, Charlotte, North Carolina, and, yeah, I I’ve been married 26 years, three kids. One just got married two in college and gosh, yeah, I’ve been writing for, I don’t even know how long now. 10 years, 12 years, 15 years. Something like that. It all always together.
Julie Lyles Carr: Were you one of those who always wrote, were you a kid who always was, had a little, little side going on where you had a story going or was writing something that came to you more in adult?
Lisa Whittle: Yeah, I, you know, looking back I did right. And communicated well through you know, even if I was writing my parents like a letter to get me out of something, I was always communicating better through, through writing. And then, you know, like in high school it would be, oh, Lisa’s paper was the one that they would show as the model for whatever. And then college kind of followed that same train, but it still didn’t dawn on me well, maybe that would be a path to follow. I wasn’t looking to do anything like that. You know, I was the same kid as anybody in college, trying to just write papers and make it through. Right. So writing wasn’t on my radar, but yeah, but here you are.
Julie Lyles Carr: You know, not to get too heavy too quick, but you went through a situation that I myself went through in 2013. In 2017, you lost your dad. And for those of us who have been through that experience, and for those of us who have been daughters of men who were kind of bigger than life, did some really big stuff. Your dad in ministry was well known, was very beloved. My dad was in rocket science and so they, it was a whole world that was germane to him that I felt very attached to. Obviously for anyone who loses their father, even if they don’t have great relationship, even if it’s been complicated or if it’s been something that’s been your identity, that you are the daughter of so-and-so, it’s a seismic event. And for you, as long as you’ve been in ministry, as many books, as you had written, all the things, it ushered in a whole new world of questions and hurt that sometimes for those of us who walk in faith, particularly if we’ve been a leader in a place of faith, don’t always feel the right to ask. What were some of those questions for you when you went through this?
Lisa Whittle: Well, yeah, I think for me, it was a lot of figuring out who was I apart from my father in the sense of legacy DNA, because I was, as you say, already involved in ministry. A lot of people would say you’re so much like your father and they minute in the gifting sort of way. They would see a lot of similarities in, in those kinds of things. But for me, because my father went through a very public ministry fall, it meant you’re going to also potentially have those kinds of complications in your life in ministry. And so I had spent a lot of my life feeling that complication of, you know, who am I apart from this? Will I be going down that same road, you know, and running away to a degree from a call that God had on my life. And so I think a lot of people that maybe they don’t relate to that, but they do relate to this piece of it, you know, who am I outside of my DNA? Who am I outside of sort of this legacy piece? I feel good or bad from the way that I was raised, from the way that I was brought up. And so in that sense, it ushered in this real discovery place with me and the Lord of figuring out what God wanted me to do with the information that I knew from watching a man, my father, who was, as you say, bigger than life in many ways. Struggle with hard things in his life that he would instead of embrace run from. And so that really was a big catalyst in sort of this piece called the hard, good book, although it’s much more than that, but that was a lot of the initial process.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. I love this thing. You’ve tapped into this concept of the hard, good. And it’s a place that I think we have to be so tender, wandering into, because I’m sure you’ve seen, and I know I’ve experienced, that you go through something really, really difficult, and you have those people who pop up in what we now are identifying is what we might call a toxic positivity. Well, the Lord is going to work all things together for good, and everything’s gonna be fine. How did you begin to tread into this land of wanting to be very raw and honest about the things that are hard and yet helping us also see purpose in it, see plan and it, in a way that doesn’t trivialize or make frivolous the really hard things that people go through.
Lisa Whittle: That’s a great question. I kind of come into life and every topic as a skeptic because that’s my natural bend. So for me, it’s difficult for me in my own life to see good. So when I, when I write something like this, I so deeply wish people knew my own process is difficult. It’s not, I don’t come into this from like a Pollyanna. I don’t come into this with just, oh, it’s, you know, but God, you know, it is from a deep faith process. And so I feel like I come into this from, with a skeptic eye, with a skeptic, bend. And so I find it so important to attack that and to address that because we know from scripture that life will be full of hard things. That’s not Lisa Whittle’s idea. That’s John 16:33 says in this world, there will be trouble. So we know that and because we know that for me, I’m also a pragmatist. If my life is going to have hard things, I believe the Bible that it is then I want that pain and I want that hard to yield something and to mean something. I don’t want to just endure and be in this sort of pain cyclone my whole life while I’m living here and then just, oh, suddenly then I go to heaven. I know God has a plan for me here. Like he asks for everybody else. And so diving into this idea of hard good, it was what are the, the spiritual transformation things that will make me the most kingdom usable while I’m here. And in doing that, it’s not charity work like, oh, well let me just be usable for you, God, but I get nothing out of it. It is, it also because God is good and he attaches good to anything that he purposes. It will also bring me the best life. So I don’t have to just endure down here. I’m also able to have a, a wildly fulfilling life that means something, even while I do face hard things. And so that’s really what the process was all about.
Julie Lyles Carr: It’s a beautiful, poetic thing to change those two words just a bit, because we often talk about, well, You know, it’s, it was hard, but it was good or it’s a good thing, but it’s hard. And so to actually align those two things that we often see as opposing forces and understand that they can work in tandem is just such a brilliant concept to me. Okay. So I’m going to ask you a riddle, this pandemic that keeps going, because here we are, we’re recording as we head into fall of ’21 and who would’ve thought we’d still be in the blazes of this. Is the pandemic a hard, good. I mean, how do you, how do you see that at this point?
Lisa Whittle: That’s a great question too. I don’t know, Julie. I mean, you know, sure. I think can God use it? Yes. I, and people can disagree with me on this, I don’t think that every hard thing that we go through in our life necessarily is a, what I’m calling a hard good, because to me, these things that make the book are things that I have found to be through conversations with other people, my own experience, searching scripture, the highest transformational process things that, that I believe God can use. If we allow him, by the way, we don’t have to let him right, to change us, make us usable for the kingdom of God while we’re here, does a pandemic fit into that? I certainly think there’s some things you could pull out of that. I think, you know, as we surrender, as we wait on God, as we accept things that we wish were something different, which I talk about in chapter one, I think a pandemic could fit into. But I, I guess for me, it’s less topical things that we go through. And more just in general. I mean, for me, yeah, I think over the last two years, I’ve had to accept this pandemic to a degree that I’ve wished were different. I’ve had to walk my daughter through that who as a senior in high school has so wished for a normal whatever that is air quotes senior year. I think that is something that as God works with us through that it profoundly changes who we are if we allow him to. So, yeah. I mean, maybe you could use that as a, as a, as an example.
Julie Lyles Carr: It sounds to me that there are a lot of places where we actually are the ones who make the decision on, if something is going to land in the category of a hard, good, or just hard.
Lisa Whittle: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I do think there are things that. You know, he, it’s not that God can’t use anything cause he can, obviously he can redeem anything. I believe that because I believe scripture, but I do think that there are things that are on a different level that change us inside in a different way that move us up a notch. Not like there’s this weird ladder that we’re climbing to get to. I don’t mean to create that kind of visual, but I mean, I know for me in my life, take for instance, I talk about in chapter two, cheering for someone when they get what you want. Right. I know for me and my life, as a woman, when I’ve dealt with my jealous feelings that has changed the person that I am in a way that maybe something else in my life that I’ve gone through, that’s hard hasn’t been on that same level. But I think something that we struggle with, that’s innately difficult for me, when we allow God to change us in that way, it would make sense that then that would change us more profoundly. Right. And so that’s the kinds of things that I talk about in the book.
Julie Lyles Carr: You have a concept that I really love. Looking forward to unpacking with you because I saw some really unique insight in this, which is this idea of managed feelings instead of what you call bossy emotions. And this goes back into that area, similar to where we, at times, as people of faith have, maybe not been the most sensitive to something that someone’s going through, that’s really hard. And we’ve been a bit trivial with their feelings. Well, this kind of goes into that same lane for me because there are times that I feel like sometimes in our communities of faith, we try to talk people out of their feelings, how they’re really feeling. And we try to drive them too strongly to something that feels more acceptable in faith lanes. But managed feelings, that phrase has a different feel to me. So I want to hear you define what it is to you and why it’s important to distinguish it in a way that doesn’t deny the feeling, but as you say, doesn’t allow it to just boss you around.
Lisa Whittle: I’m so glad you’re bringing this up and in this way, because I think what’s happened, Julie, is because of what you just mentioned because in the faith community, In churches, we haven’t done the best job of, of allowing people to have feelings. And by the way, God gave us feelings. He gave us emotions, right. So we need to honor them. But because we haven’t done that because maybe there’s been fear attached or whatever, culture has swung the pendulum the other way and sort of like this unspoken rebellion to say whatever I feel I’m going to do. Whatever I want to feel like you can’t tell me how to feel, and so, because of that, it’s swung the pendulum the other way. I think all of us know what happens when we allow our feelings to boss us. It doesn’t do us any favors because then we live in this sort of pile of regret over I wish I hadn’t said that because now that relationship is broken and I, I can’t undo that. I can’t undo those words. Like, you know, all of those things, which is what happens when feelings become sort of what I call a god rather than a gauge. And when they’re under the holy spirit control, when they’re under the Lord’s control, He’s the genius that created us with feelings so it makes sense that he would know how best to use them… being engaged is so powerful because that gives us information. We need to know what’s going on, you know, under the hood what’s going on inside of our souls, that needs attention. And it has been hard for our lives. And for many people, way past two years, it’s not like the pandemic is the first hard thing we’ve been through. So, you know, we have feelings attached to these hard things in our lives. It’s inevitable. These things need to be dealt with. They can’t be stuffed. That’s, what’s caused historically a lot of our problems in the faith community. So I’m not a proponent for that we bury our heads in the sand. But when you have managed feelings are managed under the control of the holy spirit, they are a gauge rather than a god. They are. They give you information that you need to know so that you can deal with those feelings. They’re just really, really powerful and they can help us be the people we were created to be that are feeling people, that can help each other through these hard things. And, and even ourselves as we go through them, we’re able to have this better perspective rather than just being so controlled. So consumed. So bossed by the feelings, which then colored decision-making it colors relationships between us. And like I said, then we live with a lot of regret. Carry around this, mop, this, you know, imaginary mob, because we’d have to clean up after how the feelings have bossed into certain things. And so, I just believe we can live a lot better than that. And I want us to do.
Julie Lyles Carr: An area that I think this idea of managing feelings is so important is really being able to hear from God on certain things instead of being led by emotion. And I’ve experienced myself, I’ve seen people, I love go through it where they really want a certain outcome. They develop a lot of feelings about wanting that. And then somehow that wanting can get translated into this is God’s direction. God’s going to do this for me. How do we make sure that we stay clear that lane to allow God to continue to be God and to not put declaratives at times being full of faith, but not putting declaratives on things. If you really dissect them might be emotions.
Lisa Whittle: Yeah. Well, and that’s, that is tricky. Cause you, you know, we w a lot of time and a lot of people voiced that they say, you know, I, I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s God, right. That’s sort of the universal issue that everybody wants to know. Is that me making the decision is God making the decision? And in the chapter about disappointing people to do what God wants, I do address some of the ways we know if God is, you know, telling us to do something which people want a template for and I can’t really give that. Right. Right. But at the same time, I do think there are some telling signs that maybe God is in that versus you and your emotions. I think that dealing with our emotions so that we’re not living reactionary is a very powerful way to eliminate constantly being in the mode of letting our emotions be the decider. So whether that is processing those with a counselor, whether that is, dealing with what I call in chapter one, the stifling, what ifs, which usually center around what what if they, what if God, where we just started spending a lot of time constantly asking ourselves things that we can’t change. Things that we may never know, but ways to rewrite history all the time, and just looking at what is now and, being there I think is really important. So it’s certainly important to separate emotions from God. And, Clear template on how to do that you could probably make some good headway with the counselor, but I do think it is important to begin to lean more into what is God saying to me? That clears out a lot of, what am I actually saying to me? Right. Because the more I focus on what God wants me to do, the less worried I am about what I’m actually feeling that is, can be changed, can change contemporary. Cause I don’t know about you, but I feel one way, one day, the next day I may feel very different or even in the same day within hours, I feel differently. And listen, I’m also, I will mention in menopause, so I might feel very differently within a few seconds. Yeah. You know, there’s, there’s all kinds of things at play here.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah. That, that hormone shifting you and I are in similar seasons of life. And that, that actually is kind of its own category, but talks to you. Interesting voice that gets added to the chorus, trying to figure out what to do. You know, Lisa, one of the things I love about your writing is you take these big concepts that can feel a little esoteric and spiritual, and you, you get it down to the practical forest with questions, we can ask ourselves things to think through, ways to dissect this information and then apply it. I want to go back to something you said earlier, a circumstance, a hard thing. When someone gets something that you really wanted, you’d been asking the Lord for whether that is a marriage or a baby or a certain lane of ministry, you and I being in ministry and writing, it’s a weird spot because there are things that you’ve probably sought the Lord for that I have too. Opportunities that we thought, man, this would be great and I could really go do this thing that I know God’s laid on my heart, and then you don’t get picked for whatever reason. How do we take a circumstance, whatever that is that we’ve wanted and we’re not getting, and that jealousy feeling that arrives and understandably arrives because that. Part of our human emotions. Right. And how do we get that to a place that it can be categorized freshly, not just as hard, but a hard, good?
Lisa Whittle: Well, I think that it takes, time and practice, but I do know from my own personal life and experience that it gets somewhat easier the more time goes on that you address it. What I, what happens is, is when we, when those jealous feelings come on, we don’t want to deal with them also historically again, and I love the church, but sometimes I think we haven’t discipled women well, in that way, instead, we’ve kind of shamed that emotion and said, you just don’t need to feel jealous. Now just cheer for people. And I understand that in theory, that’s great, but we, as women do feel those things and we do feel jealous sometimes, and it’s hard, with our own insecurities and, and we’ve worked hard for something, or whatever the case may be. We may have talents that we feel are unrecognized, whatever. And we may long for a baby. And so, as you mentioned, we were always planning the baby shower. Those things are very real. And I think one of the things that’s most important, it was to me in writing this chapter was to, to just give voice to it and acknowledge and say, I know that those things are real. I’ve dealt with those things myself. And so that’s, I think one thing that’s been powerful. The other thing is to let women know that it is going to come down to a bit of a strategy and to encourage women to say, you know, if you’re waiting on a magical moment that you’re just going to not feel jealous, I certainly want you to pray for it, and I do believe prayer helps and prayer works, but a magical moment that you’re just not going to feel jealous? I don’t know. I mean, I’m not young and I’ve never had that moment. Sometimes they, it just comes up for you even when you’re in a very healthy, emotional place, we get those things. So what I’ve learned is to take the beast on and to tackle it. And in that moment that I feel jealous of a woman, I find a reason to think that she’s amazing. And I find a reason to compliment her and, and mean it, you know, in my spirit. And also the Lord has really shown me that because he has confronted me in moments that I’ve been jealous and I call it chosen generosity. And so you, you, you pick generosity over jealousy and you literally offer with your hands, something generous. It’s wild. It’s wild to do it, but it is the way to combat. And you defeat it. I almost look at it, literally, this is going to sound silly, but I look at it like I’m going into a boxing ring and I’m like, like, I’m going to defeat you jealousy. I’m going to take you down before you take me down. And I’m going to choose jealousy and so I’m going to box you and I’m going to win because generosity always wins over jealousy.
Julie Lyles Carr: I love that as a strategy to choose something that could feel counterintuitive and yet is a good thing. Generosity is always a good thing. In your research on this topic, is there one emotion that you feel like from women you hear from, because there are, there are things on this list that I would say, oh yeah, that’s one that I would wrestle with, but I don’t always necessarily find that I’m the best canary in the cage, in the, in the coal mine, beyond some of these, because I’m like, oh, I guess I don’t feel like a lot of women I’ve always laughed. I used to laugh when I first went into women’s ministry, going, God, I think I’d be better at men’s ministry. Like, I’m not sure. So is there one that showed up for you that was a little bit of a surprise that you found that there were women who seem to be wrestling with that feeling that they needed to manage that feeling more in a way that maybe felt a little bit different than your own personal constitution?
Lisa Whittle: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, you know, disappointing people to do what God wants is not a huge struggle for me because I’m not a huge people pleaser. So, but I can certainly tap into times that, you know, I I’ve still wanted, I still haven’t wanted to disappoint people. Right. But that is a struggle for a lot of people. It’s been interesting because that has been one of the chapters that people have really resonated with a lot, because you have people that have well-meaning folks in their life, they have family members that have loved them, and they’ve said, I think I’m going to do foster care. And they’ve had, you know, family members that have said, oh, I don’t know if you should take that on or whatever. And it’s not that they don’t love Jesus or that they haven’t loved them, it’s just that they haven’t understood the call of God on their life. And, so I got email after email when I was doing some research for this and putting it out on social media saying, Hey, do you struggle with this? Do you struggle with this? This was one that would come up and they would say, I’m struggling because I want to honor my family or I, I, you know, I’ve had pushback on this, but I really feel God leaning me in this way. And, and I will say I’m all for wise counsel. I don’t think we should be foolish. You know, I’m very much again, a pragmatist. But I also know that there are times in life where God is calling us to do something that will make not, not a lot of sense to someone else. And so I think that one was maybe more of a, an issue for some other folks than it was necessarily for me, but I could certainly still write on it because I would not say that I have any of these tackled.
Julie Lyles Carr: I think it’s important for people listening to this podcast, to know that we need to hear from you. Like, we want to know the things you wrestle, because I want to be transparent with the things I struggle with, but I’m also keenly aware that that doesn’t mean that that’s something that is something everybody wrestles with. And I want to hear, and sometimes when it isn’t something that you wrestle with as much, sometimes you can be a really great resource to help someone because it’s not quite so embedded in you in the same way. That’s where we can really be a real resource for you. You know, we talked about that a lot of times in our communities of faith, we’ve struggled to give appropriate voice to feelings, whether that is acknowledging them or letting them run rampant in a way that maybe they shouldn’t, or all of those different swings that we can make one way or the other. What are some conversations that you think we need to be having more of in our communities of faith when it comes to this concept of the hard good?
Lisa Whittle: Oh, gosh, well, we need to have multiple conversations that are hard, and I think we are having some of those. I would definitely say that. I wouldn’t put everybody in the same category, but by and large, we need to be talking about, you know, marriage, we need to be really continuing to focus on strengthening marriages. We need to talk about racism, and, and issues there. We need to be talking about, You know, being pro-life in every aspect, womb to tomb. Those are certainly things that I believe you, you ha you can make a case for, with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh my gosh, the list is so, so long. I just think that there are so many things we need to talk about celebrity in the celebrity culture in Christianity, that I think has been very damaging in many ways. And what are we, what are we really seeking in when we are seeking personalities and personality driven churches and, Gosh, don’t get me started. Julie, I’ll go all day long on all the things we need to talk about and then go off on a rabbit trail.
Julie Lyles Carr: But, you know, I feel like in some ways what, what I would identify as a hard good in this season that we’ve been in these last couple of years were so many things have come to the surface, I would have told you Lisa, a couple of years ago that a lot of the people I was sitting alongside of in the pews, I assumed we all were kind of on page for the most part. And the last two years have really revealed to me, oh, Oh, wow. No, not by a long shot. Right. And so for me, a hard good that has come through these last two years is I think these were conversations that either had not found the spark to have yet, hadn’t really had the impetus to have. And there’d been a lot of assumption that we were all rowing the same direction, but we couldn’t understand. The churches weren’t really growing. We were concerned that younger people weren’t really remaining and communities of faith and we couldn’t figure out some of these things. And I feel like a lot of this has lifted the lid off of it. And I don’t know where some of these conversations will end. Yeah. But I would say this is a hard good. It is okay for us to begin to identify. Wow. We have not been rowing the same direction on a lot of topics. And if we want to be in a place where John talked about, you know, he has no greater joy than to hear that his children are walking in the truth. And then what is that going to mean moving forward? And have to have those conversations now, or continue to realize that we’ve been built on some sand for awhile.
Lisa Whittle: Yeah. And, and, you know, I, and then I talk about this in that chapter as well about, having, hard facing heart truth and having uncomfortable conversations. I think one of the things that has bothered me for a long time about, about the church is that it it feel as felt like that there’s been a lot of fear surrounding our willingness to even talk about things. And so, you know, for me, I’m thinking, you know, if we are confident in our, our love for the Lord and our love for each other, which our love for the Lord drives that love, we cannot have love for each other without love for God. It’s just not possible. If we’re confident in that, if we’re confident in our belief, in the Bible, There’s just no fear in having conversations. There really isn’t. And, and, and so for me, I’m thinking, why are we afraid to talk about things? Why are we afraid to talk about things that really matter? Because culture is willing to have conversations, but they’re having conversations, devoid of truth. And so my, my, my real poll and my real call to believers in this let’s not allow culture to have conversations without us. Let’s lead the conversation so that they’re getting truth in that. And then, and then drive the conversation and do it in such a way that, that they’re drawn to it. And so I just really don’t want us to be afraid. There’s nothing to fear in these conversations, not at all. And this is coming from a person who, if you like the Enneagram, you know, I’m an Enneagram eight. I, I can have very, very strong opinions about things. But I also believe in the power of the holy spirit to come into a room and allow me to even be quiet, which I’ve watched him do. All of our personalities can be better than what they are in our natural flesh. And there’s just really nothing to fear when we have that grounded-ness of what our real goal is, which is to lead out in conversations that lead to Jesus, which is the good in every situation.
Julie Lyles Carr: Absolutely. Yeah, the hard good. Lisa, thank you so much for taking time to be with me today. Where can listeners find you and engage with you? Tell me.
Lisa Whittle: Yeah, well really I’ve made it easy. It’s lisawhittle.com. But, and they can get the book fair. They can get the Bible study there, which is really important to me as well. All free stuff, speaking, podcast, all of that. So lisawhittle.com is the best place for it.
Julie Lyles Carr: And we’ll get that in the show notes again. It’s so fun to have you in my town. I hope you’re back again soon, or I’m out your way. And thanks again for being. We’ll have to get the previous episode that you did and have Rebecca get that so people can check that out, at least a little, the hard good. Thanks so much for being here today. Check out the show notes for all the links, info and other goodness from this week’s episode with a big thank you to our content coordinator, Rebecca. I’ve got a request, please go like, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does make a difference in helping other people find the show. And I’ll see you next week here at the AllMomDoes podcast.
