“Especially when grief is fresh, it is going to sneak up on you.” – Chrystal Evans Hurst

Have you ever experienced accumulated grief? This is when you have multiple losses within a short period of time.

Maybe you’ve experienced accumulated disappointments or struggles? This would be when you face one difficult situation after a while.

Whether you’ve experienced accumulated grief or disappointments, I have no doubt you’ve experience difficult circumstances that have broken your heart in some way.

I have such an important episode to share with you today. We are talking about times when life gets hard, and specifically, we are talking about how to hold on to faith when life breaks your heart.

I asked Chrystal Evans Hurst to join me for this conversation. Chrystal is a wife, mother, speaker and the best-selling author of the books She’s Still There and Kingdom Woman. She is also the daughter of Dr. Tony Evans, a preacher whose sermons were aired across the country in the ’80s and today airs on more than 1,400 radio outlets in over 130 countries.

In the last few years, the Evans’ family has dealt with eight deaths, disappointment, and the struggles of life. As a result of walking through this, Chrystal’s heart is to share their journey openly to help others navigate their own journey of grief and struggle. She and her family’s most recent book, Divine Disruption is about navigating pain on this side of heaven.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • The impact of experiencing multiple hard things in life
  • How to acknowledge what you need while you’re grieving
  • Why emotions are there to inform us but not to guide us
  • How to respond when we feel like God has disappointed us

Whether you are currently in the middle of something hard or not, this is a conversation full of truth that you really don’t want to miss.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

My Key Takeaways:

1) Hard things have a cumulative impact on us. We all too often forget to give ourselves a little extra grace when we have experienced multiple hard things, especially if those things happen in a short period of time. We don’t anticipate what those hard things will take out of us and as a result, we can feel overwhelmed and start blaming God. It’s during these times that we need to realize that these events are hitting our lives like a stack of dominos. They start to have a cumulative impact. If you are in a season like this, give yourself permission to not be okay. God is big enough to be there with you when you are overwhelmed and He can handle your questions. It’s okay to not be okay.

2) Emotions are there to guide you, not to govern you. Have you felt like you either need to ignore your emotions entirely or become a slave to them? Well, neither of these two extremes is healthy. Our emotions let us know where we are at today. We may be grieving, we may be sad, we may be disappointed, or we may be happy. Regardless of how we are feeling today, we should not make long-term decisions based only on our snapshot feelings. Instead, we need to look at the big picture, much like a strategist does when buying on the stock market, and inform our path forward based on truth with the acknowledgement of how we’re feeling.

3) Give yourself space to learn the signs of grief and acknowledge what you need. When we are experiencing grief, it is important to become aware of what we need. It will take some time to learn what you need in order to allow the waves of grief to come and go. It’s alright if you don’t recognize them right away. What is important is that you don’t try to ignore processing your feelings. Grief needs an outlet and when we try to keep it inside, it is damaging to both our body and our soul.

About Chrystal:

​​Chrystal Evans Hurst is a speaker and best-selling author. She has co-authored Kingdom Woman with her father, author and pastor Tony Evans. She is passionate about reaching a wide audience through speaking at conferences, sharing on her blog, “Chrystal’s Chronicles,” writing for Proverbs 31 Ministries, and teaching and leading women at her home church. Chrystal and her husband, Jessie, adore their three very hungry boys, two adult girls, one son-in-love, and one gorgeous granddaughter. She resides in a small town just outside of Dallas, TX. Learn more at https://chrystalevanshurst.com/ —

 

 

Would you like to be notified by email when a new No More Perfect Podcast episode releases? Just fill in your name and email and we’ll make sure you’re in the know!