When Surrender is a Springboard

Carry shells season two. Episode one. Carry shells with Catherine Grimes. When surrender is a springboard. So I was in a place where physically and mentally all I could do was cry out to him to help me. I was desperate to be healed. I was crying out daily, "Heal me, God, heal me, take this away. I can't bear it. Look at my friends. They're in relationships. They're in their jobs. They're thriving and here I am at almost 24 and my life has fallen apart. What are you doing? Why are you allowing this? How can I bear this?" And every single time I just allowed that tumult of emotion and truth, raw truth to come out in my conversations with God, he would say to me, "Catherine, I have not abandoned you. I am here. I am enough. Trust me. This is for a season." Well, hello and welcome to Carry shells. I'm Catherine Grimes. I'm your host and this is the beginning of season two. It's fantastic to have you listening in once again. I hope you've really enjoyed season one and had a beautiful summer break as I have. And yeah, there's a little bit of a twist on today's Carry shells. I'm actually not going to be the host. I'm going to be the guest this time round. So I thought it was time to give you a bit more information about my stories as well because you know you've had a taster, but there is more to share. So I'm going to hand over to my lovely friend Emma, who has agreed to do this episode with me and you may recall that she and I shared some of our stories in season one. I think it was talking about the impact of baby loss in our lives. So Carry shells is a place for you to connect with women of faith to be encouraged to be empowered and without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Emma. Hello Catherine. Thank you very much for inviting me here today to interview you. Oh, it's a pleasure, Amber. It's lovely to be here with you. Lovely to be here with you as well. So what an interesting interview, listening to some of your stories. Obviously you introduce season one. You have shared at least one of your stories on season one. And you've spoken a few times and obviously you've shared when you're interviewing the lovely women. So that's 21 different women that you've interviewed through season one, which is incredible. That's amazing. Wow. And obviously as you've been talking to them, we've got a bit of a feeling of who you are and yeah, definitely a bit of an insight into some of the things about you, but there's definitely a sense of significantly more under the covers. I'm nervous, Emma. I'm nervous. So let's give a bit of a bio about you. You start all of your episodes with a bio about the ladies that you're introducing. So Catherine comes alive when Jesus, community, words and creativity get thrown into the mix. A family girl at heart, she lives in Surrey with her husband Paul and their beautiful neurodiverse daughter. She's also stepmumpties to adult children. If not recording another episode of Carrie shells, Catherine can often be found juggling the school run, waiting through puddles with an over enthusiastic retriever, offering freelance editing and writing services, spontaneously texting a friend or just curling up with a good book. She is passionate about her local church and the worldwide church, grabbing every opportunity to encourage or empower others in pursuing Jesus. She loves crime novels and long walks with her husband. She loads almost all types of chocolate. Never met anyone who loads chocolate. I'm weird, aren't I? Let's just a special Catherine quick. So today is about you Catherine. Yes, it's about what you want to share the parts of you, the parts of your stories that you want to share with your amazing listeners. Okay. What is it that you really want to get across today Catherine? Oh Emma, I think I massively want to encourage everyone listening to see the beautiful things that God is writing in their life circumstances. That is the vision for Carrie shells and that's why I'm doing what I do. I'm just excited about taking the opportunity to point all of us to Jesus. That's what it's about. Okay. Well let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your family's setup in childhood Catherine. Okay, so I am one of three children. I am the middle one. So a little new teenage issues going on with being the middle one. I grew up in a fabulous home where both my parents were very committed Christians. So from the outset, I just had an amazing sense of being surrounded by God's love. My dad was actually working for the Navy throughout my childhood, which meant that we had a very, very mobile upbringing. We moved house about every two or three years depending on his different postings and we actually went around the world. So I spent two to three years in Fiji in the beautiful Pacific Islands and I also lived in Muscat in Oman in the Middle East just at the beginning of my teens. I moved all over the UK to various settings but I was born in Plymouth, which as listeners may know is a naval town, Plymouth Ho with all the ships there. So yeah. Indeed, did you find it hard moving around that much? Yeah, I did. As a young girl, I didn't really have a choice in the matter and I just simply went with with each move. I remember that I had a choice to sort of dig into each place where I was and build friendships and I became quite adept at adapting to situations. We moved so frequently that I wanted to maintain friendships through snail mail. I miss those things. I know which I did and I was very good at writing letters, something I still do to this day. It was definitely challenging from the perspective of education, moving schools so frequently and I was enormously fortunate in my teens to have the opportunity to go to a boarding school here in the UK and the reason I was able to do that was because the Navy gave a grant to allow children to have continuity while their parents were serving overseas. Okay. Do you think that made a big difference then being able to go back and visit your parents during the holidays but having the same school and friendship group to return to during the term time? Yeah, I absolutely loved it. My school was in the Lake District and it was a girl's school actually, so we had a lot of fun. I really felt like I had many sisterly friendships growing up there for five years between 13 and 18 and I used to jump on a plane head for the Middle East, arrive with the anticipation of knowing that I was going to dive into a beautiful glassy surfaced pool in the moonlight and have a midnight swim as my welcome to muscat each time I got off the plane. That was incredible. I think I waited all dream of doing that. We certainly were. I still do dream of it actually. But sorry Emma, I think I need to say just a little bit more about my upbringing because I talked about the fact that my parents were really rooted in God right from the word go. But I think I didn't realise the impact of that at the time. It's with hindsight you look back and you see how amazing it is that you have grown up in a home where both parents are totally sold out for God. And so you imbibe those values, you imbibe those key things about life that actually really put you on a solid path from the outset. So I know I'm enormously fortunate to have had that upbringing and it really felt like growing up with God. You know, he was just part of our family. I actually made a commitment myself aged five and I was living in Fiji at the time and I remember having a real sense of looking at my parents seeing the way they did life and thinking there is something that is extra different about you. And I remember talking to my mum and saying, you know, I know that we have God in the family. But I'm not sure that I've got God myself. And my mum said, well, you can have him. You can have him indwelling in you by the presence and power of his Holy Spirit. But you need to ask him in. You need to invite him to live in your heart. And this is age five. This is age five. This is age five. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember has sitting down with me and she showed me the gospel, really, the story of the Bible. But in very, very simplistic terms. So it was a series of different colours. It was a book that consisted of four pages and each page was a different colour. And the first page was green and she talked about creation and the fact that God had made this beautiful world. And then the second page was black because actually Adam and Eve decided to disobey what God had asked them. And as a result, Sin came into the world, which destroyed the beauty and the verdency of God's green beautiful world. And then the third page was actually read. And that represented the blood of Jesus, literally coming in and eradicating the impact and power of sin from the world. And because of the black being eradicated by the red, it was then possible to have the white which meant a fresh start and purity and beauty and wholeness with God. And actually there was one back cover as well, which was yellow, which was the sense of heaven being in his glory and all beautiful. Wow, that sounds beautiful. Yeah, so I understood that as a child. And because of that, I said to my mum, I would love to ask Jesus into my heart. And we prayed together and I did. And I haven't looked back. So was the boarding school you went to a fateschool? So that's interesting. You say that, Emma, because historically, yes, the school was a fateschool from the perspective that I think it kicked off in 1823. And it was at Cowan Bridge. And it was actually a school that was set up for daughters of clergy at that time in the in the 19th century. And actually the Bronti sisters went there. The famous Bronti sisters who wrote weathering heights and Jane Eyre and many others. And so Christianity was very much at its heart. And there was an expectation that each people would attend a chapel. So there was chapel on a Thursday morning. And then there was also a Sunday morning service in the local Anglican church. But as something that listeners are probably familiar with, there's a big difference, isn't there, between going to church and actually loving Jesus and allowing him to impact our lives and our lifestyle. I had friends who were like-minded with me. And we just tried to encourage one another in boarding school life. And I simply sought to not hide my Christian identity. So all the people in my year group knew that I was a believer. And I would take the opportunities when they came to talk about God. And they probably had a bit of a like- a void Catherine. She's going to talk about God again. But I had an amazing network of support through my teen years, which was again through my dad's association with the Navy. I don't know if you know that the armed forces have a brilliant history of creating a Christian union. And they have residential holiday camps for children. And so every Easter, I used to go for a whole week to Easter camp run by the armed forces Christian union. And I would be alongside other services children between 11 to 18. And we would just have an amazing time with loads of activities. And that ultimately growing in our faith together. So I would say that was what got me through my teen years. Yeah, fantastic. Well, so with what you just shared and also you've consistently hinted in episodes of season one that God's always been a central stand in your life. Tell us some of the key moments of your faith journey. Okay, so I've known God since I was five, as I've said, and I'm now 40. So that makes 35 years of following Jesus, which is quite amazing. And should be celebrated indeed. Yes. And I do have to say that every year my mum, in particular, my dad is no longer alive, but my mum sends me a card on the same day in the year that I made that commitment to us Jesus into my heart. So she calls it my Christian birthday. And every year I recall how many years old I am in Jesus. So that's always been a beautiful thing. But I really want to say as well, I'm indebted to the amazing legacy of faith that I have from both of my grandparents, eternal grandparents and my maternal grandparents, both absolutely loved the Lord with all their heart. And they were such an incredible influence on me as a child growing up. Remember that we're moving so often between places. A child looks for constants and looks for consistency. And so my grandparents were pivotal in providing those constants. And they were remarkable. They were really men and women who you would say were prayer warriors and were just oozing God, oozing Jesus. And I remember having some very pivotal conversations with them. One was with my grandfather, my mum's dad. And I remember saying to him, 'Grandad, I want so much to hear God speak.' And I looked at him and I said, 'And you've known God for so many years and you're always talking to him.' But does he talk back? How can you hear him speak? And I remember my granddad looking at me and sitting me down and saying, 'Catheryn, there's something really important you need to know. Before you can hear God speak, you've got to learn to listen.' Wow. And I just remember him saying this and thinking, 'What does that mean? What does that mean? Surely I'm listening. Of course I'm listening.' How old do you think you were at that point? I was about seven years old. Okay, so two years since you'd made your commitment. Yeah. But that really stuck with me, that gem of wisdom that he shared, that really stuck with me. And I guess I sort of was on this quest to unpack what it really meant to hear God's voice, you know, to tune in to what his voice sounds like. And I really did deliberately seek to pray more, and deliberately read my Bible in private just me as a girl. But I think it wasn't until I was about 14, 15 in my teens that I began to step into what it meant to hear God speaking. And I was really deeply challenged by the lyrics of the songs that I was singing at the time, both in church and at this residential camp I told you about called Easter Camp. And there was one song that again and again seemed to say, 'Lord, I give you my all, I give you my dreams, I give you my fears, I give you my passions, I'm surrendering all of me.' And that word, surrender again, just hit me, that that was the key. That was the key to going deep with God, that it was about letting go and letting him be fully in me. Because I figured, even as a young girl, that essentially the less there was of me, the more there would be of God. And that's what I wanted most of all. So I would say, my grandfather's words, you need to learn to listen, paired with this sense of, 'I've got to surrender, what does that mean?' were two keys that really catapulted me into a quest of just pursuing Jesus. And each quite mature themes for the age that you actually were, like these are things that some of us struggle with in adulthood. How can we hear God? Yes, yes. Are we really ready to invite him truly in? Yes. And you would do this through your youth? Yeah, you're right Emma, it's really interesting you say that because that hadn't even really occurred to me because if I was to talk to the child, I was then. I think that child would simply say, 'But it's obvious if there's less of me, there's more of God'. It's obvious that I need to listen if I'm going to hear what God's voice sounds like, you know, that these are, from a child's perspective, these things actually make sense. Sometimes the simplest things seem the hardest and maybe actually the fact that you were a child helped you in some ways because it was okay to accept the simple. Yes, yeah, and to dig deeper into that as an adult we try and make things very complicated, don't we? We do, we do. So I guess that was my childhood and my teens. And then you really learnt to surrender, didn't you? Tell us about or having to really learn to surrender. My goodness, yes, I know that listeners have an inkling of what I'm about to say. But when I was 23, 24, I suddenly was catapulted into chronic fatigue syndrome or what's called ME. It's a story in itself and I have actually written a book about that story in order to record it for me, for my sake. Haven't published it. Maybe I'll do something within the future ever. But yeah, that season for me of complete physical debilitation and mental anguish was a game changer. That was a time when all these prayers that I had prayed sincerely as a girl, a 14 Lord Jesus teach me what it means to surrender. Suddenly I had the opportunity to make them come true. Did you realise that straight off the bat? You and I have talked and we'll some of this will come out as we continue talking about your conversations with God during that time. But in those early stages, did you connect the dots between asking? Because when we ask for patience, we don't just become patient, we get lots of experiences to become patient. And we ask like, "I want to learn how to surrender to you, God." Did you realise in those early stages that this was part of that journey? No, definitely not because I was on this trajectory as a young woman of 23 of building my life. Thank you very much, the way I wanted to do it. Now God was very much a part of that life, but I would say before I hurtled into chronic fatigue, actually I was drifting. So I was living abroad in Spain at the time in Pamplona. I was a graduate and I decided the world was my oyster. I was invincible. I was going to do exactly what I wanted to do. And actually, as I said to my parents, I'd moved house enough. Thank you very much. I was going to live in the place of my choosing. So I went to Spain, I taught English as a foreign language and I really lived it up. I think I pushed all the boundaries in terms of what my body could physically do. So I was up at sort of 5.30 in the morning, ready to get a bus to go and do a 6.30 AM lesson for workers in a factory. And then I would survive through the day by taking Caffeicon Lecce, which was my absolute favourite coffee shops. And then in the evening I would head into the town and I would meet up with some Spanish friends who I had met in the first few weeks. And I would basically just live it up until about 2 in the morning and then head home for some sleep before getting up again. So you're sitting there laughing at me ever. And of course, as a young woman of 23, you really do think that you're invincible. But God showed me that I wasn't. And I wasn't putting him first, I would say. I was choosing to do things in my own strength and I was attending a church, a Spanish-speaking church which was very precious and a beautiful place to be. But with hindsight looking back, I know that God wasn't central. So tell us more about your experiences with faith wrapped up in your struggle with me and chronic fatigue. So I need to rewind briefly and say what happened to essentially kickstart the ME was all that I've explained. But then I had a period of fainting. I wasn't able to continue doing my teaching. I had to resign from my job. I got taken into hospital in Spain. I was there for three weeks and they did a systems check of every part of my body. They couldn't necessarily decipher what was wrong. So my parents came out and they took me back home with them to Scotland where they were living at the time. And I felt so incredibly gutted. I felt like the life that I had started to build for myself was just utterly disintegrating. It felt like I was powerless and originally I looked at my parents and I said I know I'm not well. I was just a little bit more convinced that I was going to be able to do my own thing. This independent, vivacious, determined young woman who had wanted Spain to be her particular piece of life. And suddenly it felt like I had nothing. I felt like everything was taken out of my hands, all control, all capacity to even be with people in the same room. So at my worst, things were really, really difficult. I felt overwhelmed from a sensory perspective in terms of light and sound. My symptoms were so severe that I just had to be in a room by myself with the curtains closed and no sources of sound and light. And I just had to lie quietly and just rest and just be. There were other days where I was able to get up out of the bed and be taken to a different room in the house. And I just remember so clearly the feeling of complete debilitation, complete powerlessness to do anything to help myself. And by this point, the medics had said to me, "We believe you've got a chronic fatigue syndrome now. Much is still not known about this condition and to be honest, it could be that there's a company to you throughout the rest of your life. And we can give you strategies to start to learn how to manage it. Or it may be that actually it's a question of 10 years or 5 years. But they, I really felt when they told me that, that they put a noose around my neck. As a young woman with all these dreams, it just felt like everything was taken away from me." I've got this picture of you almost bouncing off a springboard over a swing pole that life in Spain is you leaping off the board and then just landing belly flop on the water. And just all of this, me experience is the belly flop, just it did not go to plan. No, it did not go where I wanted it to. No, I felt that there was such a reversal of my quality of life. I was dependent on my parents as I told you. So all the independence that I had relished as a young woman making her way in the world was gone. Um, physically I remember I couldn't lift a cup of tea to my lips, myself. All my muscles were atrophied and I couldn't unscrew the lid on the toothpaste bottle. I mean now I think that's absolutely ridiculous but I couldn't, I couldn't manage the pressure of the wrist twisting that cap on the toothpaste bottle. And I just felt like my life had ended, you know. The same act we take for granted in what our body is capable of doing right down to the simplest just, yeah, unscrew. You wrote a poem? I did, yes, yes I did. Well quite a long time after I spoke as you were covering? No, it was actually while I was in the midst of it, there were days where I just felt so desperate that there was one thing I would do which was try and write what I was feeling. I'd always loved words and I thought I just have to let these expressions out, you know, granted they were in wobbly handwriting. Right. But I've since incorporated some of them into the book that I was telling you about. So yeah, shall I read you this poem? Would you like to? I think the readers would love to hear it Catherine. Okay, so this is called a lament of empty hands. Empty, my hands are empty. There's absolutely nothing in them now, not even a heartbeat. Bereft, my hands are bereft, a thousand precious somethings lie scattered in the dirt once the sound of my everything. Empty, my hands are empty and I have no treasure map to secure again what was wrestled from their hold. Treasure is found in unlikely places, little one. I hear your voice speak through the murk of hurt. Well God, prove it then. Teach me yet to hope though my hands be empty. That's beautiful Catherine. And quite incredible that you were able to write that. I hadn't fully taken on board that it was during the depths of the despair. Yes. You were able to write that. Yes. Because of course it was it was mental battles I was facing as well, you know, when your body is so physically incapacitated as many listeners who have experienced this or other conditions will know there are massive mental battles that go on in just seeking to combat depression ultimately because it's so easy to fall into that slide that says, you know, woe is me. Look at my circumstances. They're appalling. They're horrendous to the watching world. I'm justified in feeling awful and sorry for myself. But actually as soon as you entertain what I've learnt to call that worm of self pity, you are on a downward spiral and you are giving the enemy ultimately a hold in your thoughts. Hmm. So how much were you talking to God during this time? All the time. I was talking to him all the time. I don't think there's ever been a season in my life when I have needed him more and I've learnt as well even through it that actually I fervently believe that God reveals himself most clearly and in the greatest physical kind of sense of his presence to those who are in the direst need. So I vividly recall one time when I was spready gawd across the carpet in my parents sitting room and they had moved me to the sitting room outside of my room. And I remember being across the carpet and I was battling these black bleak thoughts of depression and the tears were streaming down my cheeks so much so that they had become salt on my cheek and they had stuck almost like abrasive sand, you know, just it was stuck and gritty and painful and merged with the salt of course was mucus because when you cry and when you wake, you're no longer. starts to ooze the mucus. So I felt physically a complete wreck and a mess. I was lying on this carpet and I just had zero strength. I couldn't hold up my body weight. I felt like I was a rag doll who just didn't have any capacity to even sit up. And it was just me in the room and I just remember crying out in my heart and saying, Jesus. And that's all I said. It was just this cry of Jesus, how much I need him. And in that moment, Emma, and I still recall this with absolute clarity, he was there. He was right next to me on the floor. And it was like he just took me in his arms and he just held me as a father, hold to child. And he just whispered my name and he said, Catherine. And that was all I needed. And I just had this incredible sense that in the depth of my pain and my despair, actually, Jesus hadn't abandoned me. He was there. Powerful. I'm speechless. So I suppose what I really want to ask then is obviously you were talking to him. You were struggling physically and mentally more than ever before or ever since. How long did this go on for in total? Yeah, so it was 18 months in total. But at the time, I had no idea when the end date was. Absolutely. How do you see that your relationship with God changed during those 18 months? You spoke to him the whole way through. But if you think back to how your relationship was with him before you got ill and then through that time, do you see it changing? Yes, I did. I saw it, I saw it changing in terms of just deepening my level of trust in his ability to carry me through every single moment. I was crying out daily. Heal me, God. Heal me. Take this away. I can't bear it. Look at my friends. They're getting married. They're doing further education. They're thriving. And here I am at almost 24 and my life has fallen apart. What are you doing? How can you? How can I bear this? And every single time I just allowed that tumult of emotion and truth, raw truth to come out in my conversations with God, he would say to me, "Kathrin, I have not abandoned you. I am here. I am enough. Trust me. This is for a season." And I remember hearing that clearly in a way that even through my teens I hadn't heard God's voice so clearly. But it was almost like the cessation of all of my activity and the silence that was literally around me was this breeding ground for my heart being so attuned to that still quiet voice of God speaking. So I could clearly detect what he was saying to me. And when he said, "This is for a season." My heart just plummeted. And I said, "A season is an indefinite period of time. How dare you?" So you didn't see it as this will pass and I will be out the other side because it's a season. You saw it as this indefinite period of time. I did. I saw it as a season. Ultimately, it doesn't have a clear beginning and end. You're right. And I just felt like God was copying out that he wasn't giving me a clear answer. And I said, "But I can't bear not to know when you're going to bring me out of this." And all he would respond was, "Trust me. I am enough. Trust me." The number of times I heard that word, "Trust me." Oh my goodness, Emma. And I would rail and despair. And the only thing I could do, which of course brings us right round to the conversation of what God showed me when I was 14, was surrender. The only thing I could do was surrender and say, "Okay, God, through grit teeth, through tears streaming down my face through a complete lack of understanding of what you're doing in my life and why you're allowing this. I am going to trust you because at the end of the day, you're my creator, you're my savior. I've been made by you. And my purpose is in your hands. Even if this is what life looks like. I will trust. And as you started to surrender and started to trust, did anything change? Yes, there was an incredible gear change moment when God woke me up in the night and said to me something which was just utterly mind-blowing. At the time, he said, "I want you to take a piece of paper. I want you to write out on it. I will be healed." And I want you to walk along the corridor to your dad's study, turn on the shredder, and I want you to shred that piece of paper. And I want you to do it knowing that I'm good, that I'm good, that I'm here, that I love you, and that I can heal you. But I'm asking you to surrender that belief you have in me that I can heal you and that I will heal you. Now, I wrestled in bed thinking there was very clear instructions, but I am not going to do that. That would just be suicide. Because I'm clinging my life boat here is this conviction that one day you will heal me. Absolutely. And I had said to God, "If you're going to heal me, Lord, and I believe you can in your time, I need you to heal me completely. There's not going to be any relapses into this. I'm going to trust that you're healed me completely." So even that sense of him saying, "Because he'd heard my heart's cry." So he knew what I was clinging onto. And he said, "No, you've got to surrender that too." So I obeyed him. I shuffled along carefully to that room. I found the shredder, turned it on, found a piece of paper, put my piece of paper carefully into the shredder. All of these things physically I was able to do in that moment of obedience. And then I walked back and I went back to bed. And I slept. And the next morning I woke up with this sense of blank. Well, that's it. I've got nothing further to hold onto. No further hope. This is it. This is me. I'm a blank canvas. And it was actually the most incredibly liberating feeling. And I wrote another poem where I just talked about being like a blank canvas waiting to be painted on by a master artist or a set of staves with music not yet composed. And I just had this sense of God, my life is completely in your hands. You're the one who's going to write my story for me. I've got no capacity to contribute right now at all. And there is freedom in that. So unbelievably, that was actually the gear change that then set me on a trajectory towards healing. And that is another story which will save for another day. But God did heal me. And He did show me the end of that season of Emmy. But in the wake of that healing, what happened next? So I thought that I would just be able to do everything and anything I wanted. And actually it took me by surprise that I almost had to rehabilitate into real life again because I'd been out of it for 18 months. And you know, I'd obviously I'd interacted with people to some extent people had come and seen me. I'd even gone to a friend's wedding, which was an absolute red letter day. But after that, I had been in bed again for weeks. The effort of actually being present for that wedding had just taken it all from me. But I didn't realize the simple things that I would need to learn how to maintain conversation with someone again. I would need to learn how to time my shoelaces, how to put a boil, egg in the saucepan, how to drive a car. All these things that you take for granted. And I had to teach myself again to acquire these skills. Because actually it was almost like I didn't have the muscle memory. And yeah, it took time. So I decided to go to a Bible college because I wanted an environment where I could just gently recuperate. So Spain after two to three months was suddenly no longer? Yeah, Spain was off the cards. Spain was off the cards. But remarkably, I did actually make it back to Spain. And I did tell the church that was there about my healing subsequently. So God did take me back for a different time. But this Bible college was enormously valuable for me because it meant I was in a controlled environment where I could start to. once again cultivate those life skills and just expose myself to real life. Again, I'd been a spectator of life for 18 months and suddenly I was allowed to participate again and it was quite a shock. Yeah, and gain your confidence doing what previously with a day-to-day things of living? Yes, yes. And I did hint that all around me, my friends were in relationships, getting married, etc. I felt like I was put on the shelf and so it took time for me to rebuild my confidence in me as a woman as well. So I applied for a Bible College year with LST, London School of Theology and I did a course in Missional Leadership, which I absolutely loved and a really beautiful bit of that course involved a lot of time spent in a prayer room. And in that prayer room was a place where I just really felt God rebuild me in my confidence in who I was as Catherine. Fantastic. So after this year at Bible College, what happened for you next? So I was thinking through what I would love to do and the idea of returning to Spain obviously came up but I felt God very clearly say no, that wasn't where He wanted me next and I realized that I wanted a job, well, anybody wants a job, don't they, which is something they're passionate about, something they love doing. And as I think I said to you earlier, I love words, I've always loved words. And so I started looking at publishing opportunities and God eventually gave me this wonderful job where the publishing firm, a Christian publisher, in the southeast and it was a role I absolutely loved. I was deeply contented and yeah, it was a fantastic place to be and work and I just loved life. How incredible how things turned round in those 18 months or after those 18 months, your season, it was long. Yeah. But it was a season and it did end. So after you got this job as an editor and you were loving life, what was the next most important thing to you? I've always been a firm romantic, hopeless romantic and I really felt like I had been put on the shelf without me in terms of relationships, friendships, but particularly of course with men and I'd really lost my confidence. So I think those hours I spent in the prayer room, I think God just really enabled me to kind of see who I was as a young woman that he'd made me beautiful that I had something to offer and that I could enjoy pursuing friendships which might develop into more serious relationships with the opposite sex. And basically I made a decision which I covenanted with God and I said, okay, God, you've been challenging me on this, right? Well, I'm going to give it a go, I'm going to go online, I'm going to set up a dating account. Now this is the time, remember, when it was still quite taboo to be honest to do the online dating scene and I joined something called Christian connection and I was on it for about nine months and I met a whole series of different men and during that time I really felt it crystallised in me who I really wanted to be with and it was a sense of saying the man I spend the rest of my life with needs to be someone who loves and follows God as I do but also someone who has been through struggles in their faith and had their faith tested and tried and come out the other side. So that was my first key. My second key was that I wanted them to really love being masculine. I love being a girly girl and I wanted them to be wholly masculine and the third thing was that I just really wanted them to be very caring and compassionate in their nature. And so that was my inner prayer with God and each time I went for a date with all these different individuals, you know, sometimes we hit it off, sometimes we didn't, I learnt a lot about myself, I learnt a lot about them. And I decided I'd had enough. I went on one evening to my account and I said to God, "That's it, I've been out with an average of about two men every month and I've had enough and I'm going to take myself off this account and just be me." And I kid you not that very night. I was about to press delete on my account and upflashed, "Woo, hello!" And I looked at this and I thought, "Ugh, it's automatic chat, someone's saying hello." "Oh fine, I'll just respond and say hello." So I responded and a conversation ensued between myself and this man. And when we got to the end of the conversation, basically he said, "Oh, well this was nice, shall we do it again sometime?" And I went back and I said, "No." And so I had this poor thought, "Well, there you go." And this question came, "Well, why not?" And of course you can't see anyone's body language, can you on screen? It's just the words. And I went back and I said, "Because I'm leaving this site tonight." "I'm signing off, I'm signing off, I'm leaving this site." And this response came back and said, "Oh, okay, can I take you for a date?" So I sat there for a few seconds and I thought, "Really?" "Mmm." And I said, "Okay, why not?" So I went back and I said, "Okay, I'll be free in three weeks time." Which was absolutely true. I genuinely wasn't playing hard to get, but it's quite funny now looking back. So anyway, what happened was I met this man three weeks later. It was a whirlwind romance. We had seven weeks of knowing one another and it was amazing. I just felt like God had united me with my best friend and that was it. And he proposed after seven weeks of knowing me and we got engaged and a year later we were married. Amazing. Amazing. When you know you know. But I love that it needed you to close the doors to everybody else, for God to give you the last man. Yes. Ultimately, the last man, the man you married and that's life. Yes. So still open and looking for a relationship, there may be you to buy past, maybe it needed you to be closing off and saying, "Not here anymore." And you know, it's interesting actually because my husband later told me that that was the very first time he had logged on to Christian connection. So God just caused us to converge. His first time, my last time and there we were. Incredible. You were very happily married, but you weren't just a wife where you care, Thryn, you also became a stepmom. I did, yes. And that was a facet of the relationship that at first I was really uncertain about even before we got engaged. I was falling in love rapidly with this man and I knew his family circumstances because he'd been honest with me from the outset. But I also knew that it meant that I would become a stepmom and I've always loved children and I wanted so much to be able to give complete love to whatever children were in my family when I was married. And I felt the sense of, well, would they accept me? Would they want me to be their stepmom and what would that look like? But God was really, really gracious and we did get married and the children did accept me as a stepmom figuring their lives. But it's not all plain sailing. A stepparent is enormously challenging at points and of course you're navigating the relationship between all the carers of those children. So my husband's ex-wife was their mum and very, very involved in their lives and really loved them a cared for them. And I just wanted to effectively come alongside her from the perspective of saying when the children were in our home between me and my husband, I wanted them to know that I could be a second mum figure to them in that home. But I think looking back now with hindsight that may have caused some antagonism, that may have caused some uncertainty, possibly even that the children imbibed and I think I just always wanted to love them ultimately. That was my desire but it's not always been straightforward. Yeah, well, we both know that. I know what that's like. Yes, you always don't mind too. Having someone else's child in your home. Yes. It's different and it's challenging. Yes. Okay, so we've talked about your Emmy. We've talked about you becoming a wife and a stepmom. What happened next? What happened next? Gosh, life was very full Emma. Well, do you know what? When I turned 30, I honestly thought that life was going to be just a complete ball. I was so excited to be 30. I'd married Paul when I was about 27. We had conceived our first child and we had a little girl, my first daughter and she was a real sense of glue in bringing our family unit together with the stepchildren and my daughter and Paul and myself. I thought that everything would be rosy. And actually, we entered into a period of our lives where there was bereavement after bereavement, after struggle, after tragedy. And it was enormously challenging. So much so that I look back now at my 30s and say, gosh, that was a decade of painful situations to wade through together as newlyweds, ultimately, as young married. And so I look at my husband today and I say, gosh, we've been married almost 13 years, but it feels like 23. So much has happened. So to give you a bit of a snapshot, I know listeners are familiar with my story of having lost my second little girl Abigail in 2016. But that same year was a year we would never wish to repeat as family. That same year we lost Abigail in March and then reeling from that loss in April. We received news of my dad having a double cardiac arrest while he was overseas, having a hypoxic brain injury as a result, which meant that his symptoms were akin to brain damage, but we couldn't determine how much. In June, my paternal grandfather, who was a real pillar of my childhood, not the one who had told me you need to learn to listen, but the other one who really taught me the power of pressing into prayer, he died, and also a beautiful great aunt in my family. In July, I had a little nephew who was born, and there were massive concerns about his heart and whether he would pull through. Thankfully, he did months afterwards. But my husband and I looked at each other and we just felt like we were under this barrage of tragedy and pain and difficulty. That was an incredibly tough year, Catherine. And in these kinds of situations, it's natural for us as believers to blame God and to run away from him, accusing him of being unloving and allowing us to suffer. What was your reaction? And what would you say to anyone else going through multiple layers of grief and loss like you and your husband had to? So I would say, first of all, that grief is a journey. I would say it's a journey that is distinct for every single individual. There is no right and no wrong about the way that you process and deal with grief. I think we anticipate and hope that it will be linear, but it's far from linear. It's dips and peaks and curves and scoops. And yeah, it's ongoing. So I've known grief both since 2016 and before, and it's come in many different guises. We lost my father-in-law very early on in our marriage to Alzheimer's. And then a month after he died, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought it courageously for eight years, and then she died very sadly. And more recently, I also lost my dad after eight years of his own battle with the hypoxic brain injury. And I lost my grandfather, the one who had taught me that incredible gem of wisdom about choosing to listen, learning to listen in order to hear God's voice. So it's been tough. There's been a lot of my family who are no longer here. So many of my family are now in heaven, and that really hurts. But it's incredible to know that they are in heaven, that they all had living authentic relationships with God. And that one day I firmly believe that I will be united with them as well. Yeah, and I recognise that grief is part of life. So what would I say? I would say be very kind and gentle to yourself and your expectations on what you're able to do in the immediate wake of losing someone. Don't give yourself a timeframe for recovery. Don't say in six months, I'm gonna be fine. Be really, really honest, not just with yourself, but absolutely with God. And also with your family and your friends. Tell them where you are at if you're having a day where the pain is just excruciating and you can't function, then just tell them, send an SOS by text and pray that someone will come and just give you that support you need that day. But equally, if you're having a day where actually you're really experiencing a sense of joy in that moment and there's something beautiful to celebrate, really relish and enter into that fully and don't allow any guilt to cloud your enjoyment of that moment. I found a great deal of comfort in digging into the Psalms in the Bible, which are expressions of just real authentic prayer to God from David and others in the Bible times. Some of them are enormously raw and tragic in the words that he uses. And I felt I really identified with a lot of that. He talks about feeling like he's broken like a piece of pottery. But actually, he still trusts who God is and that God is able to hold him and carry him through. And I would say that I learned that grief is part of life here on this earth, tragically, that there is suffering. And although we would wish to avoid that actually, incredibly, it's often in those points of such pain and such loss that we experience God's love most profoundly. And as I said to you when I had the Eme, that sense of his presence is tangibly given. And the Bible says in God's presence, there is fullness of joy. Thank you for sharing that, Catherine. So I want to say it's been an absolute privilege listening to some of your calorie shells, some of your heart breaking stories and the outcome, the relationship with God after you go through the trauma, the grief. And you've shared so many personal things with us today, the real ones and the metaphorical. Is there anything further you would like to say to encourage our listeners in their own pursuit of God? Yeah, definitely. I think one of the key things I want to say is that there is no situation in your life that God is not able to take, transform and bring beauty out of. I fervently believe that he is so talented at planting beauty and treasure in unexpected places, which is the very ethos of calorie shells. And I really want to encourage listeners to persistently look for that beauty. Whatever you're going through right now, however despairing you may feel for whatever reason God hasn't abandoned you, God is there with you. He's just a prayer away. All you need to whisper is Jesus and He's there. He's right there with you. But also He is able to take what looks like such ashes of your circumstances. And if you let Him, He will turn it into something beautiful. Do you know what, though Emma? There's something that I do want to add to our conversation. And it's just reminded me actually you spoke previously about almost seeing me like a diver, poised to dive into life and really excited and loving my independence in Spain. And then, wham, there was a belly flop when all the pain and all the debilitation of the ME hit me and the restrictions on my life. And you are absolutely right, like we said. But looking back, there was something else that God showed me and it was actually quite remarkable. One of the whispers that God spoke to my spirit was that I needed to see things from a different perspective. And I wrote a poem that was all about my circumstances being like a tightrope that I was just on this taught tightrope. And I was precariously balanced trying so hard just to put one step in front of the other to walk along this tightrope of pain and uncertainty. And I felt God say to me, actually, this tightrope is not a tightrope, this tightrope is a springboard. I have intentioned and designed it to teach you to fly, to teach you to let go of all of those what-ifs, all of those question marks, all of that pain and uncertainty and just dive off and know that my everlasting arms are underneath and will catch you. But I also want to say that I'm just so incredibly honored to do carry shells. In hindsight, looking back at my 30s, I feel like with all of the pain that we went through in our married life together, God handed me a bucketful of empathy. And I feel like he also whispered to me several months ago, even before I started carry shells, that part of the reason that I could do this with him was that he'd entrusted those circumstances to me so that I had that bucketful of empathy. And my prayer is that with every episode that we do, that listeners really feel affirmed and listened to and valued and cared for, you know, that as women to have empathy together is such a powerful thing that we can really come alongside one another and we can really, yeah, just support and care for one another. So I'm really honored to interview every woman I speak to. And you said to me ever at the beginning of this episode, well, I might just drop a surprise bomb in this one, Catherine, maybe I'll ask you your favorite episode. (laughs) And I felt completely, oh, no, what do I say? The truth is that I don't have a favorite episode. I really don't, because I just love being in the moment with each woman I'm talking to, hearing their stories, seeing the hand of God etching something incredible through their life circumstances. And I'm challenged. I come away every time challenged by what they have shared. And I hope that listeners do too. So, yeah. - And this episode leads us into a whole new second season of episodes. - It does, yes. - Congratulations on your season one. I very much look forward to listening to the stories that come out of season two. So, I think this is the bit that we wrap up. - Okay, great. So, what do you think we can pray for today? - Hmm, I think I would love to pray for women to pray that prayer that can be the point of breakthrough. Pray that prayer that says, "God teach me what it means to surrender." Now, it's a scary prayer. Don't get me wrong. But I do believe it is also a life-giving prayer. And I think in today's society, we as women who love God and follow God, have such an opportunity to point others to Jesus. And actually, one of the best ways we can do that is to unmask our vulnerabilities and show how God's meeting us in the midst of them. So, I think it's really important to keep praying that prayer. Teach me to surrender in these circumstances, help me show me what your purpose is through these circumstances. I'd also love to pray for women who don't have to pick all nuclear family setups. We did talk about the challenge that comes through step parenting. And I think, again, in today's world, a nuclear family isn't the norm anymore, sadly. But I think that it's really important to pray for every woman in that situation to be equipped with God with his daily grace in their family circumstances. And I think we've talked, obviously, about debilitating physical conditions. And we've also talked about grief. So, I'd just love to pray for women who are going through that God would assure them of his presence with them, and that he hasn't forgotten them. Holy Spirit, thank you so much for this amazing opportunity once more to point to you, to point to the beauty that you are weaving in our lives. God, I ask that you would give each of us courage and boldness to consistently pray that prayer, Lord, teach me to surrender in my circumstances. And God, I ask that that prayer would be a precursor to such incredible blessing in their lives that there would be a freedom that they tasted that they haven't tasted before. And I pray that others around them would see the amazing ways in which you are active in their lives. Lord, I pray that they wouldn't shy away from their vulnerabilities, from their struggles, but they would be authentic about them, they would be honest about them, and they would see how you spotlight your grace through them. Father, I pray for women who don't have a typical nuclear family setup. Lord, you know how challenging it is navigating a mix of relationships in the family home with step children, with step parenting, whatever it is Lord. I ask that you would come alongside these men and women today, Lord, that you would empower them, you would give them your perspective and help them to be so gracious in all their communications. Father, I ask for women who are grieving at this time, who are battling with bereavement. Father, I ask for women who are feeling so imprisoned by physical debilitation or conditions. God, would they know that you are right next to them? Would they know that you are holding them up, that you are their source of hope and that you still have a plan and a purpose for them and it is good? God, I ask that you would encourage them today and for every listener, no matter where they are at and listening to this episode, Father, would your words seal into their spirits? And anything that I've said that isn't of you, Lord, just let it fall away in Jesus name, Amen. (gentle music) Thank you so much for listening in to Carry Shales today with me, your host, Katherine Grimes, and our beautiful guest. And a big thank you to all the women who make Carry Shales podcast possible for your generous support, you know who you are and we are eternally grateful. A big thank you goes out to David Campion of Open Sky Media for editing and producing this episode. And this is where you come in. If you have enjoyed listening to this episode, please help us by growing the Carry Shales community of women of faith. You can leave a review or a rating, pass the stories on and look for the stories in your own life as well. Thank you and look forward to talking with you next time. (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]