When Loss Changes What You Believe About God

Loss doesn’t always come in one defining moment. Sometimes it shows up quietly over time—through closed doors, shifting relationships, unmet expectations, and seasons that don’t unfold the way you prayed they would.

In this episode of Healer & Hope Giver, Kim reflects on the many ways loss has shaped her life, not just in what was taken away, but in what was formed underneath it. Through honest storytelling and lived experience, she explores how loss can change what we believe about God… and how, over time, it can also change what we believe about ourselves.

If you’re navigating a difficult season, wrestling with unanswered prayers, or trying to figure out how to trust God when life doesn’t make sense, this Christian podcast episode is a place to sit, breathe, and remember that you are not alone—and that God is still present, even here.

📖 EXPANDED SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kim walks through the layered experience of loss—not just the obvious, life-altering moments, but the quieter losses that shape us over time. From relationships that didn’t last to seasons of lost confidence, health struggles, and unmet expectations, she shares how these experiences have influenced her understanding of both God and herself.

She also speaks honestly about the tension of faith in hard seasons, including moments of frustration, confusion, and even anger toward God—and the realization that He can hold all of it without turning away.

As the episode unfolds, Kim reflects on how loss has shaped the way she shows up for others, how it formed her ability to sit with people in difficult moments, and how it led her to understand her role not as someone who has all the answers, but as a witness to what God has done in her life.

This episode gently shifts from story to invitation, helping listeners recognize their own experiences within it—especially those in-between seasons where life feels uncertain, healing feels slow, and clarity hasn’t arrived yet.

Rather than offering quick answers or easy explanations, this conversation creates space for reflection, emotional healing, and the reminder that even in seasons of loss, something meaningful may still be forming beneath the surface.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hey friends, today we're gonna sit in something that all of us have experienced but don't always know how to talk about out loud, and that's loss. Not just the kind of loss that comes from one big defining moment, but the kind that shows up throughout all of your life in different ways. Closed doors, relationships that don't last, plans that don't unfold the way you expected, or seasons where things don't just don't turn out the way that you prayed they would. You know exactly what I mean. When I look back over my life, loss hasn't been one isolated chapter. It's been woven all the way through. There have been seasons where I've lost friendships, seasons where I've lost confidence, seasons where I've lost parts of myself, and seasons where I've lost things that I wanted so deeply and believed would happen. And I think when we walk through those moments, it's natural to want to understand them. We want to make sense of what's happening, to figure out what God is doing or why something is unfolding the way that it is. But if we're honest, or if I'm honest, I've learned over time that God doesn't always answer the why questions the way we would hope that He would. And that can be a really hard thing to sit with. Most of the time I didn't understand it in the moment, and I couldn't see what was ahead, but I definitely could see, couldn't see how anything good would come from what felt like a closed door. It's only been with time and distance that I've been able to look back and recognize that if one door hadn't closed, another one wouldn't have opened, and the life that I'm living now would look very different. And I don't say that in a neat, tied up in a bow kind of way. I say that as someone who has had to live it. What I've come to realize is that loss has a way of changing what you believe about God. But it also has a way of changing what you believe about yourself too. And somewhere along the way, I started to see that loss didn't just take things from me, it revealed things in me that I didn't even know were there. When I really started thinking about this, I realized that loss hasn't shown up in my life in just one way or even in just one season. It showed up in a lot of different forms over time, and not always in ways I recognized right away. There were friendships that didn't last the way that I thought they would, relationships that ended, and seasons where I walked away from things that I thought would always be part of my life. And if you've ever had one of those moments where a relationship shifts or ends and you didn't see it coming, you know how disorienting that can feel. It's not just the loss of the person, it's the loss of what you thought that that relationship was going to be. There are also seasons where I didn't realize that I had lost something until much later, like confidence or a sense of who I was. You just keep going, doing what needs to be done, and showing up the best you can. And then one day you look around and realize I don't even know who I am in this season anymore. I've walked through the loss of my health, seasons where my body didn't cooperate the way I needed it to, and times where I had to relearn how to trust it again. And that kind of loss is hard in a different way because you can't step away from it. You're living in it every single day and trying to figure out how to function while also trying to understand what's happening. I've experienced loss in my family too, losing people I love deeply and learning what it looks like to keep going while carrying that kind of grief with you. And anyone who has lost someone close to them knows that life doesn't stop. The world keeps moving, even when part of your world feels like it's standing still. And when there are losses that come from things that you hoped would happen, but didn't. The plans that you had, the directions you thought your life was going to take, and the things that you prayed for and believed would come to pass. Those kinds of losses can feel especially confusing because they don't change just your circumstances. They change what you thought your life was going to look like. And when a I look at all of those different seasons together, they don't look like the same thing on the surface, but they can carry a similar weight. There's a moment where something shifts and you realize life is not going the way you thought it would. And you have to figure out how to move forward from there, even if you don't feel ready. And I don't say that as someone who's always handled these moments well. There have been times when I've questioned, times when I've wrestled, and times when I've just tried to put one foot in front of the other to keep going because I didn't know what else to do. And sometimes that's all you can do. But when I look back now across all of those different kinds of loss, one thing has been consistent. I was never alone in any of it. And I don't think that I fully understood that at the time. And a lot of those moments, I didn't feel like I wasn't alone. It didn't feel like I wasn't alone. It just felt confusing. It felt heavy. And if I'm being a hundred percent honest, there were times when it felt really quiet. Not in a quiet but peaceful way, just in a quiet God, where are you in this kind of a way? And I think that's something we don't always talk about enough. The reality that faith doesn't mean you always feel close to God in the middle of the hard things. Sometimes it just means that you're still showing up, even when you don't understand what he's doing. Because there were definitely moments for me where I wasn't calm or composed or full of faith-filled words. There were moments where I was frustrated or I was overwhelmed, and there where I told God exactly how I felt about the situation I was in. I've had moments where I've been angry, moments where I didn't understand, and moments where I laid it all out in front of him with absolutely zero filter. And the thing that I've come to realize is it doesn't matter because God can handle it all. He can handle the big moments, he can handle the questions, he can handle the frustration, the grief, the anger, the confusion, all of it. And unlike some people, he doesn't turn away when you bring those things to him. He doesn't pull back when it gets messy. He doesn't require you to clean it up before you come to him. If anything, I've found that he leans in. Some of the most real moments in my faith journey haven't been the polished ones, they've been the raw ones. The ones where I didn't have the right words, where I wasn't trying to say the right thing, and where I was just honest about where I was. And sometimes in those moments, that's where he shows up in the big ways that I didn't expect. Not always by changing the situation right away, but by giving me a sense of peace that didn't make any sense in the middle of it. Or by giving me just enough clarity to take the next step, or even just a small glimpse that there was something ahead that I couldn't see yet. But when I look back now, I can see that he was there in ways I didn't recognize in the moment. He was there in the people who didn't show who showed up just at the right time. He was there in the strength that I had on days that I didn't feel strong at all. He was there in the way I kept moving forward, even when I didn't have clarity or answers for the next clear step. And what's interesting to me is that some of those seasons happened before I fully understood what it meant to have a relationship with him. And even then, looking back now, I can see his hand was clearly in it. I can see the way he was making a path, even when I didn't know to call it that yet. There's a verse that talks about God going before us and making a way. And for a long time I thought it meant that I would be able to see it clearly when it was happening. Like I would understand exactly what he was doing and where he was leading, but that wasn't really my experience. Most of the time, it's only been in high hindsight that I can see how he was guiding, protecting, redirecting, and sometimes even closing doors that I didn't have the strength or wisdom to close on my own. And I think that's one of the hardest parts about loss. It doesn't just take something from you, it removes your ability to see clearly in the moment. It shakes your expectations and it shifts your direction. And it leaves you trying to figure out how to trust God when you don't fully understand what he's doing. But over time, what I've come to see is that even in those seasons where I felt unsure or confused, or like I was trying to get through the day, God was still present. He didn't leave me when things got hard. He didn't step back when I didn't understand, and he didn't require me to have it all figured out before he stayed close. He was there every step, every loss, every closed door, quietly walking with me, even when I didn't recognize it yet. I think one of the things that I see more clearly now looking back across all those different losses is that they changed the way I showed up in the world. I did not just, I do not just mean that they made me stronger or more resilient, because honestly, I think those words get overused. I mean they change the way I sit with people, the way I listen, the way I understand what someone may need when life has knocked the wind out of them. Years ago, I think I probably would have felt more pressure to help people feel better. I would have wanted to say something useful, something comforting, something that could tie it up a little bit and give them something to hold on to. And that comes from a good place. But when you've lived through enough hard things yourself, you start realizing that most people do not need you to rescue them from the moment. They need you to be willing to sit in it with them without rushing them out of it. That kind of understanding did not come from reading the right book or hearing the right message. It came from living through things I could not fix, could not control, and could not hurry along. It came from sitting in my own grief, my own confusion, my own disappointment, and learning how much it matters when someone makes you feel seen in the middle of it. When you know what that feels like to be seen in that place, you stop offering quick answers so easily because you know firsthand that answers do not always touch the deepest parts of the pain. I think that is part of what all these losses were forming in me, even before I had the language for it. They were teaching me how to recognize pain and other people without being afraid of it. They were teaching me that I could stay present when something was uncomfortable. They were teaching me how to that being with someone in their grief is often holier than trying to explain it away. And I did not know that what was happening while I was living it. At this at the time, I was just trying to survive my own season, but later I can start to see that God had been building something in me throughout it. For a long time though, I still thought that if I was going to talk about faith or talk about what God had done in my life, I needed to have everything lined up neatly first. I thought I needed to be able to answer the hard questions, explain the contradictions, and to make sense of it for somebody else, make it all make sense to somebody else. I put a lot of pressure on myself that way, probably because I did not want to say something wrong, and probably because sharing your story can feel vulnerable enough without also worrying that somebody is going to expect you to be their theologian, counselor, and customer service representative for God all at once. But then I heard someone say that as Christ followers, we are called to be witnesses. And that landed different for me than it ever had before. Because if you think about what a witness actually does, they are not the attorney in the courtroom. They are not there to argue the whole case or prove every point or make every person make sure every person in the room agrees. A witness is simply there to tell what they saw, what they what they lived, and what happened to them. And that gave me language for something that I think I had been feeling for a long time. My job is not to make every part of my story make sense to someone else. My job is not is to defend God. Wait, my job is not to defend God with a perfect explanation for every painful thing that has happened in my life. My job is to tell to tell the truth, to say, this is where I was, this is what I lost, this is how broken or confused or angry I felt, and this is how God met me there. And that is what I can speak to. That is what I know. And when I look back at the full picture of my life through that lens, I can see all of those hard seasons were not only things I endured, they were also places where God has quietly shaped the person that I'm still becoming. I did not set out to become someone who talks about healing and hope. I did not think that anyone signs up for that by asking for a life with enough loss to understand grief from multiple angles. But that is part of what God has done with my story. Through all of the closed doors, heartbreaks, disappointments, and valleys, he has formed in me a deeper compassion for people and a steadier faith in his presence, and a clearer sense that my part part of my calling is to be honest with what healing can look like when Jesus is the one carrying you through it all. That's where this language of healer and hope giver began to make sense to me. Not as a title I gave to myself, but as something God has been writing into my life for a very long time. I think this is where it starts to connect beyond just my story, because loss doesn't show up the same way for all of us. But the experience of it, the way it unsettles things, the way it shifts what you thought your life was going to look like, that part is a lot more shared than we sometimes realize. You may not have walked through the exact same kinds of loss that I have, but I can almost guarantee that there has been a moment in your life where something didn't go the way you thought it would. A door closed you were sure was supposed to stay open, a relationship changed, a plan that fell apart, or a season that took a turn that you never would have chosen for yourself. And it's not always the big, obvious losses that stay with you the most. Sometimes it's the quiet ones, the ones you don't always talk about, the expectations that you had that didn't come to pass, the version of your life that you thought you would be living by now, or even the version of yourself that you thought you would be at this point. And then when those things happen, it can leave you in this space where you're trying to move forward, but something still feels unsettled. You're showing up and you're doing what needs to be done, but underneath it, there's a quiet question of what now? Or where do I go from here? Or even did I miss something along the way? And if you've ever felt that, if you've ever been in that space where life doesn't look the way you expected it to, and you're trying to figure out how to keep going without clear answers, you're not the only one who has stood in that same place. And I don't just mean that in a general sense. I mean that there are people who understand that exact feeling. The kind where you're not falling apart, but you're not quite settled, the kind where you're functioning on the outside, but internally you're still trying to make sense of what changed. You may be in a season right now where something has been taken away or something didn't happen the way you prayed that it would, and you're still sitting in the middle of that. You may not have been the benefit of hindsight yet. You may not be able to look back and say, Oh, now I see what God was doing. You may just be in it. And if that's where you are, I really want to be careful not to rush you past that because I know how frustrating it can be when someone tries to hand you a meaning before you're ready to receive it. So instead of trying to explain it or wrap it up in a bow or tell you what this season was going to become, I just want to remind you of a few things that I've had to learn slowly over time. You're not behind. You didn't miss your moment. And this isn't the part of your story where everything stops. Even if it feels unclear, even if it feels unsettled, even if you don't know what the next step looks like yet, something is still moving forward in your life, even if you can't fully see it. And I know that doesn't always take away the discomfort of the moment, but it does mean that this season, as confusing or as painful as it may be right now, is not the end of your story. I think that as I've walked through all of this, and especially as I've had the chance to look back across so many different seasons of my life, what I've come to understand is not that loss suddenly makes sense or that everything ties together in a way that feels easy to explain. It's not that I can point to every hard thing and say, oh, that's exactly why that happened. Because most of the time I still can't do that. What has changed for me is not that I have more answers, but I have a different kind of trust. I don't look at lost the same way I used to, and I don't look at God the same way I used to either. There was a time when I thought that if something didn't work out the way I had planned or prayed for it too, prayed for it too, or if a door closed that I really believe should have stayed open, that maybe I had misunderstood something or missed something, or that somehow things had gotten off track in a way that couldn't be recovered. And I don't see it that way anymore. Not because I figured everything out, but because I've lived long enough now to see what God does over time. I've seen now how he stays in the middle of things that feel uncertain. I've seen how he continues to move even when I can't see it yet. And I've seen how some of the hardest seasons of my life didn't take me out. They didn't disqualify disqualify me and didn't derail my story in the way I once thought that they might. I might have earned another tiger stripe, though. If anything, those seasons became the places where something deeper was formed, even when I didn't recognize it at the time. And I think that's where this has shifted the most for me, because I don't see loss now as something that I that took things away from me. I can also see how it uncovered things in me that I may not have ever seen otherwise. It revealed places where I was holding on to tightly, places where I believed things that had to look a certain way, and places where I didn't yet understand how God, how to trust God without having clarity. And slowly over time, those places, same places, became places where my faith deepened, where my perspective changed, and where I began to understand what God's presence in my life, that God's presence in my life was never dependent on whether things were going the way I expected them to. It is dependent on who He is. And that has changed the way I see myself too. Because when you walk through enough seasons where things don't go according to your plan, you realize that you're still, and you realize you're still standing and still moving forward and still being carried in the ways that you didn't recognize at the time. It begins to shift how you see your own story. It begins to shift how you see what you're capable of walking through. It begins to shift how you understand what God might be doing in you, even in the middle of things that feel unfinished. So if you're in this season right now where something has been lost or something hasn't turned out the way you hoped it would, I don't want you to rush past that. And I'm not going to try to explain it away for you. But I do want you to hear this clearly. Just because you can't see what God is doing right now doesn't mean he's not doing anything. And just because this season feels unclear or unsettled or not at all what you expected, does not mean that your story has stopped moving forward. Sometimes it means you are part of the story, that you are in a part of the story where something is still being formed. And you may not have language for it yet. You may not be able to see it yet, but that does not make it any less real. Because if there's one thing I can say with confidence, not because I have all the answers, or be but because I've lived it, is that God does not step away from us in the middle of our hardest seasons. He stays. And over time, in ways that we often only recognize later, he begins to reveal not only who he is, but who you are becoming in him. If this resonated with you, you might want to also sit with episode. Episode 16, healing after you've been strong for too long, or devotional 14, learning the difference between warning and worry. They hold this idea of walking through hard seasons in slightly different ways, and they may meet you right where you are. Thank you for spending this time with me today. I know it isn't always the easiest kind of kind of conversation to sit in, especially if you're in a season where things feel unclear or unsettled. So the fact that you chose to be here and stay with it really does mean more than you realize. And if you've been here for a while, you're kind of part of this little corner of the internet with me now. So I'm really glad that you're here. If this episode resonated with you, I want you to keep, and I and you want to keep walking through this kind of content, I'd love for you to follow the podcast wherever you're listening or over on YouTube. That helps you to stay connected as new episodes release, but it also helps us this message reach more people who may need it. And if the podcast has meant something to you, leaving a quick review, especially on Apple Podcasts, actually makes a bigger difference than most people realize. It helps more people find the show and it helps this little ministry grow in a way that reaches beyond what I could do on my own. If you're watching on YouTube, liking a video or leaving a comment does the same thing. It tells the algorithm that this is something worth sharing, and it helps create space for more people to step into these conversations. And if you're someone who likes processing things a little more deeply, I do have a free resource available for you. It's called Quiet Authority Devotional, and it's a seven-day devotional, and it's designed to give you a place to sit with some of these themes in a more personal and reflective way. You can download that by using the link in the show notes. And as always, if you know someone who might need this today, feel free to share it with them. You never really know what someone else is carrying, and sometimes just being reminded that they're not alone can make all the difference in the world. I'm really glad you're here, and I'll see you in the next one.