Part 2 of the Interview with Laurie Christine
Have you experienced God’s peace?
In part 2 of the podcast interview with Laurie Christine, she explores the meaning of God’s peace and how it overpowers understanding. We talk about how God’s peace affected her situation with her son’s heart condition.
Listen to Part 2 of the interview here:
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Laurie Christine: I thought, okay, we’ve been through this before. We’ve done this three times, and now we can do this. I felt at those moments when we got that news, this is really bad. We’re going to have to do this.
But those were the moments I felt God’s peace.
The verse in Philippians says don’t worry about anything, pray about everything and you will experience God’s peace. In the King James version, or what I memorized when I was a little girl, it said the peace that passes understanding. I never understood what that meant.
What is God’s peace that passes understanding?
What is the peace that passes understanding? I didn’t understand the peace that gives us understanding. It didn’t make sense.
But, as I grew and have been exposed to other versions of the Bible, the New Living Translation says you’ll experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand. It’s the peace that surpasses understanding.
It’s the peace that God gives us that we can’t understand.
Like, where did this come from? This is a terrible situation. I should be very anxious, but I’m actually experiencing God’s peace.
I feel that I’ve experienced the promise in that verse.
We will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and your minds as you live in Christ Jesus. So just in aside from Elliot’s story, I definitely felt God’s peace that surpasses understanding in those situations.
Anyway, back to Elliot’s story, but I have to throw in those little nuggets of truth.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Yeah, for sure. It’s the best.
Laurie Christine: So they ended up doing the fourth open heart surgery. They fixed the aneurysm and put in a different valve. This is the third one now in that same position. They put in a third valve that was actually bigger.
It worked out well in the end because they could put in a bigger valve, which would not need to be replaced for much longer.
So that was now seven years ago. Elliot was five when that last surgery happened, and he’s now 12. He has been doing really well ever since.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s fantastic.
God’s design.
Laurie Christine: He has very few restrictions on life. I think by God’s grace, he doesn’t really love sports. But people always ask me if he can play sports and does he have any restrictions.
I’m like, well, he doesn’t like sports, so that actually worked out okay. He could play sports if he wanted to, but he couldn’t get hit in the chest. He has a very weak sternum and rib cage. So contact sports would not be the best for him.
But, the way God designed him, he doesn’t desire to do that. So it all worked out, but we still see the cardiologist. First, it had been every three months and then every four months. Now it’s every six months.
It’s a journey, but God’s peace prevails.
They continue to monitor everything. There is still a possibility down the road, actually a likelihood, at some point in his life, that he’ll need additional surgeries as he outgrows something in his heart.
He had a conduit placed in his heart and a valve replaced. He’s got some coils in his arteries, so as he gets older, some of those pieces may need to be updated or replaced. If a valve fails or something like that.
But it’s not anything on the schedule. It’s not anything anticipated at this point.
I often tell people it’s kind of like your car. You know you’re going to have maintenance on your car at some point, but you don’t know when the muffler’s going to go out. You take it to get a checkup every couple of months or once a year, and then they tell you. Time to replace the muffler.
That’s how it will be with his heart. I want to say that I’ve put all worry and anxiety behind me, but …
Kelly Jo Wilson: Not for mama
Laurie Christine: For the most part, that is true. We’re not living daily in the reality of his heart condition.
We continue to trust God through the anxiety.
A couple of times a year, when we go to the cardiologist, I am a little nervous. I think, this is when they say you need to head up to Boston again. Or something is not going right, so you need to check this out.
There’s always that underlying little bit of anxiety. But we continue to trust God, that he’s good, in control, and that He loves Elliot. He is working in Elliot’s heart. His physical heart and his spiritual heart as well. We continue to trust God with him.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s wonderful. That is such a good picture of the journey itself. I mean, it’s never the one thing, like you said, and it’s been seven years since his last surgery, but every six months, every three months, it’s always a reminder.
I can imagine how in that time it’s like, here we go, God, I need you to do it again.
But I love that you guys are so faithful. I think it’s so important and so sweet that you said the peace that passes. That’s how I’m going to remember that going forward, is the peace that passes.
It’s interesting that you say it was an overwhelming peace. I’ve heard other people in different situations talk about that too. I’ve actually experienced it myself, for a heart issue for my son who just turned one.
Jesus shows up.
Just a quick little story.
We went in, and they did the ultrasound at the five-month mark when they check the anatomy. We had about six different people trying to find the large vessels in his heart. By the second group of people, I was looking at my husband like this is not good.
It took a long time to find, and they didn’t see the major vessels in his heart. So they thought maybe he didn’t have them. They weren’t able to visualize it correctly.
You were much more graceful in what you shared about how you guys were in those moments.
At that moment, I was like, “Jesus help us!” Literally screaming out of my soul. I can tell you that minutes later, he showed up because the doctor suddenly said, “oh, I see them. I see them. It’s okay.”
It was very intense. But, it is interesting, the overwhelming peace. It’s how it is when you live through that, and hard to describe in words sometimes.
Being your friend, I love that you guys could experience that, and it didn’t have to be an overwhelming peace with a different decision that God had made with Elliott’s life.
I just love that he’s doing well now and that you guys are taking the journey each step at a time.
There was one thing that I wanted to point out from your podcast episode. I thought it was so wonderful, and I was hoping you could share it with the listeners.
Everybody always says in times like this, very challenging times where you have to trust God, that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. I love what you said about that. Would you mind sharing that? What your take on that is?
God does give you more than you can handle.
Laurie Christine: Sure. You hear all the time that God won’t give you more than you can handle. But I don’t believe that’s true. I think that God definitely gives us more than we can handle.
I actually have a scripture verse to back it up.
Many times people quote the verse in first Corinthians 10:13, which says, “no temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”
I think many people take that out of context and say, well, this applies to any situation I might be struggling with.
But that verse is specifically talking about temptation. So I think when we are tempted to sin, God gives us a way out. He does give you an option. You don’t have to give in to that temptation, but this verse does not apply to other challenges, struggles, or trials.
Because God definitely gives us more than we can handle. Anyone who’s gone through something like this says, “I can’t handle this. This is too much.”
We aren’t equipped, that’s why we need God’s peace and strength.
When someone tries to tell you, “God knows that you, he chose you to go through this because he knew you could handle it, or he knew that your character was really strong.”
Anyone on the other end of that conversation is like, no way. I know that that’s not true of me. I know that my character is flawed, and my character was not anything special that God chose me to go through this.
There’s a verse in 2 Corinthians chapter one, and it was Paul writing to the Corinthians about a trial he was going through. He said that “we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure,” far beyond their ability to endure so that “we despaired of life itself,” they wanted to die.
This was such a difficult situation that they were going through, and he said we felt that we had received the sentence of death.
I know some of you listening may have gone through situations where you have gotten news of a diagnosis or a tragedy, and that’s what it feels like. Your despairing of life. You feel you’ve received a death sentence beyond your ability to endure.
But the next verse says, “but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God.”
We might not rely on ourselves but on God. I absolutely think that God gives us more than we can handle, but his goal is to cry out to him and rely on him, and we come to a point in our life where we realize that we can’t do it.
We need God’s peace.
We can’t handle this situation on our own or do it in our own strength. His strength is what we need.
We need God’s peace, joy, and love.
That’s what we experienced going through the situation with our son Elliot. I called out to God, saying, “God, we can’t go through this on our own we need you.We desperately need you to walk through this with us, to be right beside us, to give us the strength, to give us peace.”
We definitely saw God’s faithfulness through the situation and God being faithful to give us his peace.
We saw God being faithful to give us his joy, and I hesitate to say that God was faithful in healing our son because no matter what the outcome had been, God is still faithful.
You know, we are very thankful. We’re incredibly grateful that God chose to heal our son. He chose to give us the outcome we had been praying for, but God would still be faithful. Even if that had turned out very differently.
Kelly Jo Wilson: For sure. I love that you highlighted that and shared the scripture too. I can’t wait to put that in the show notes so everybody can go right to that scripture and say, yes, he does give us more than we can handle to rely on him because, in our weakness, he is strong.
With God’s peace and compassion, we comfort one another.
Laurie Christine: I’ll just point out real quick right before that verse, and if you’re, if you’re wanting to dive into 2 Corinthians chapter one, it says God is the father of compassion and the God of all comfort. I love that verse that promises God gives us comfort.
“He comforts us in all our troubles and has compassion on us.” It says, “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
I see how we went through this really difficult situation. Still, now here seven years later, I am here talking with Kelly. I can share God’s goodness and faithfulness, able to offer comfort to other people because God has comforted us.
I just wanted to encourage you all with that.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That is a huge encouragement. Thank you so much, Laurie. You’re so right, absolutely. That’s the purpose of this podcast: to comfort one another with how God has comforted us in the challenges we’ve gone through and how it builds your faith and relationship with him.
I appreciate you sharing, especially about your baby boy. I’m so happy that he’s doing well now.
Really quick just to wrap up. If another mother is listening today and struggling with a similar situation in her child, what takeaway would you want her to remember from this episode?
What is the one thing that you would give to encourage her?
God is with you, even when it’s really hard.
Laurie Christine: Just remember that God is with you in your struggle. It doesn’t mean the struggle or the situation will go away, but that God will walk with you every step.
I would encourage you to be in the scriptures, to be in God’s word. That’s how God communicates to our hearts, through his spirit to our hearts. Through his word. That was lifesaving for me when I was going through the situation with Elliot.
Clinging to those promises of God and to the scriptures, reading them over and over again, memorizing them, meditating on them, and just claiming those promises to be true.
Even when the situation around me felt really, really hard.
Resources for you
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s beautiful, Laurie. Thank you so much. I’m sure that’s a huge encouragement. I will definitely share the verses Laurie has shared with us today in the show notes to give anyone listening to that encouragement. You can pick specific scriptures to help you along the journey as well.
Laurie, we can find you on your website, but I also wanted to just talk about your website. You have so many wonderful resources to share with moms with different focuses.
Is there one of them to share with the audience today or just to talk about? I can put a link to it in the show notes.
Laurie Christine: Sure. Like Kelly said, I have a lot of free resources on my website.
Where to find Laurie Christine
You can find those at www.LaurieChristine.com. Things like how to have family devotions with your kids, how to pray for your kids, and a lot of different bible stories for families.
The one I’m most excited about is a recent book I wrote that is available for free.
It’s a free download on my website right now, especially for boys. So if you’re a mom of boys, I’d love for you to go check out my podcast, Redeeming the Chaos.
Kelly Jo Wilson: It’s great. Check it out.
A special book for your son
Laurie Christine: Also, if you have boys between the ages of 8 to 13-ish, I have a devotional book specifically for boys, and it’s called Rise of the Enemy, and it’s the first book in my Dragon Slayer Bible series.
It’s an action-packed adventure that’s a retelling of a Bible story. There’s a devotional and a short Bible study. The whole theme of this first book is spiritual warfare. Putting on the armor of God and teaching our boys how to defend their hearts against the lies of the evil dragon.
Right now, it’s a free download on my website. You can get it for free, but later this year, I’m hoping it will be available in print for you to purchase.
If you want a free copy now, head over to my website, and you can download it at www.dragonslayerbible.com.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Wonderful. It looks like a very exciting book! I cannot wait to download it and read it with Jake. It looks fantastic.
Thank you so much, Laurie.
I appreciate you talking about your journey through Elliott’s heart condition and your faithfulness, and the grace God has shown you and your family with us today. I’m sure that it’s going to be encouraging to a lot of people. So thank you so, so much.
Laurie Christine: Well, thank you for having me on the show, Kelly. It’s been really great chatting with you, and I appreciate being here.
Listen to part 1 of this episode here.
Links:
Free books and resources for you
Rise of the Enemy: Dragon Slayer Bible Book
