Be Well Presents: A Coping Conversation - "Faith"

Are you in need of faith? Listen in to our Coping Conversation with Stephanie, who shares her inspiring story of faith.

Announcement: This episode centers around the topic of domestic violence. If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, help is just a phone call away. You can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1800-799-7233 or visit them online at www.thehotline.org. Listener discretion is advised. 

Kevin: Welcome. I'm Chaplain Kevin, and today I'm talking with Stephanie, who, from an early age, suffered from domestic violence. Her journey towards wholeness brought her back to her most trying relationship, and through it all, she grew her faith. This is “Coping” Hello, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so glad to have you here with me today

Stephanie:  I'm glad to be here.

Kevin: One of the things that came up for me as I was reading your story was this idea of faith. How do you define faith? What does that word mean to you?

Stephanie: When I think about faith, I think about the mustard seed. That little seed is so tiny, but yet when it's planted, it just grows into this gigantic tree. 

Kevin: And it's hard to imagine something so tiny growing into something so gigantic. Where have you seen mustard seed faith in your life?

Stephanie: I've seen it since I was a child. I lived in a household of domestic abuse. My father was an angry man. And my twin sister and I lived in a constant state of fear. I just remember him coming home from work, being angry, shouting, not satisfied with the way things were in the home, whether it was we didn't do our chores or we did our chores, but not to his satisfaction, or he was just angry at my mom. It got as serious as us watching our mom being abused by our dad, watching that on her being hit. And I have this memory of coming home one morning and my mom was laying down on the porch and we thought that she was dead. 

I remember my sister having this overwhelming sense of just sadness and crying. And I remember my dad picking my mom up, taking her to the shower and her waking up and this relief that she wasn't dead. I just remember feeling fear all the time when he was home. Over the weekends, my mother would drop us off over to my grandparents home and we would spend the weekends at her home. For some reason, I just felt that even though all week long there was fear over the weekends, I had something to look forward to in the way of being loved and cared for and being a place of safety. And I just sort of just held on to the good. The good is what got me through. 

Kevin: So because you had that taste of good, no matter how bad things got, you still continually put your hope in that good that was to come? 

Stephanie: Exactly. Exactly. I held on to that. Yeah. 

Kevin: How old were you when that whole situation happened?

Stephanie: My twin sister and I were probably around six, seven. We were definitely under the age of ten at that time. 

Kevin: What then happened? I imagine things escalated from there. Tell me more about your childhood and your experiences from there.

Stephanie: I remember many times my mom putting us in the car and attempting to leave him, maybe going to stay with a relative but we were always right back home with our dad.

I have this memory of our dad taking us to dinner at this really nice restaurant and even though I didn't quite understand what was happening, when I look back on it I realized, oh, that was one of the moments where he was making up for or trying to get us back home with him. 

I remember the last one though, the moment that my mom left my dad for good and filed for divorce at that time. I remember that one because I was twelve. 11-12. I remember my dad kissing us, which he rarely did, hugging us and cried. That's how I knew it was the last time because it was different than any other time.

Kevin:  Wow. And where did you guys go?

Stephanie: So we lived at that time in Arkansas. North Little Rock. We moved outside of the Little Rock area. It was tough because my mom couldn't afford to have her own place, and we lived with my aunt who had five kids of our own, and then adding us to the mix and my mom. It was tough. 

We went without a lot of necessities. When I say necessities, I mean, like, toothpaste was hard, and we were really, truly fending for ourselves at this time. I remember my mom got a job working at a fast food restaurant to try to make ends meet. It was really tough.

Kevin: We'll be right back.

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Kevin: Welcome back. What did your mom teach you about faith throughout your childhood? 

Stephanie: She taught me about perspective, that your circumstances should not define how you view life. She taught me that your circumstances may be hard, but you have to look at the totality of your life, not just the hard, rough moments of life, because life is defined by your perspective and how you view life in totality, not just focusing on this one thing, which is this tough, hard thing. 

Kevin: Sure. Looking back, how do you see your faith developing throughout your childhood?

Stephanie: It was growing like that mustard seed. And obviously I didn't realize it at the time, but every hard thing you deal with and you get over that or you get through it, then you go through another hard thing and you get through it, but it becomes over time, your frame of reference says, oh, I got through that, so that I'll get through this too. 

Kevin: With every hard thing, your perspective is growing that mustard seed. Faith is growing over time. For you, faith is a lot about focus and what you're focusing on.

Stephanie: Exactly. And I didn't know it as a child, but my focus was on God. That was God with me every step of the way, building my faith, growing my faith, and me focusing not on the hard stuff, but focusing on the love that I got from my grandmother, the care and concern that I got over the weekends, that was nothing but God for me because he provided for me. Even through the rough, hard times he provided.

Kevin: Tell me a little bit about your journey after high school and into your early young adult years. How did your faith continue to grow?

Stephanie: I remember at church this woman shared how she was in a tragic car accident, and for some reason, impressed upon my heart about the distance that I had had from my father. I was estranged from him since the divorce, and immediately I just felt like this conviction to want to restore my relationship with my father. And so I started with first writing him a letter, but it didn't change anything. 

Kevin: How did he respond?

Stephanie: He was still angry. He was still his same difficult self. I just felt like he didn't know or wasn't capable of being the kind of father that I needed him to be to me. I just knew that he didn't know how to love me the way that I needed to be loved. Plus, I saw how he had anger, I had anger. And I could see how that anger was affecting my own family. I could see how it was affecting my husband. It was affecting my children. And I didn't want that as a legacy. 

I couldn't bear the thought of leaving this earth without trying to do something to turn that around. 

Kevin: You saw yourself embodying as a parent, the same type of anger that he had as your parent.

Stephanie: Exactly, and the only way to deal with that anger was to go to the source and face it. You can't cure something that you're not willing to face. And I was willing to face it, no matter how hard it was. 

Kevin: How did the relationship evolve over time?

Stephanie: It was just conversation. And mind you, I had to pray before I called him because he was not the easiest person to talk to. He had a lot of anger. He was always upset. But eventually the conversation started to shift, and I don't recall how long it took to get to that point, but eventually it did. I softened. He softened. Whereas I think that it started out as him seeing me as this twelve year old, but over time it grew into him actually seeing me as an adult and appreciating me as his daughter as an adult and it just grew over time. And now we're able to really appreciate one another and love on one another.

Kevin: And what do you say to those who are struggling in their faith right now?

Stephanie: That maybe their faith is only still the mustard seed. Or maybe there's not even a seed.

Kevin: What advice do you have for those that are struggling in their faith right now?

Stephanie: I'd have to say that struggling with faith is actually a good thing, because that means that you acknowledge that you can't do it on your own and that struggle is a necessary part of the journey of faith. If you didn't have that struggle. Then you wouldn't have that journey. That's faith. And I really try to make sure I don't let the hardship define my whole life. I know that I can move beyond it because I have in the past. If I did it in the past, I can do it again and again and again.

Kevin: Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for our time together today. I so appreciate you sharing so openly and honestly with me today. Thank you for your example of faith.

Stephanie: Thank you for having me.