When Healing Changes Who You're Becoming

Have you ever looked back at an earlier version of yourself and wondered how you became the person you are today?

Not because life suddenly became easy.

But because somewhere along the way... you began responding differently.

You became slower to judge.

Quicker to extend grace.

More comfortable taking up space.

Less driven by fear.

In this deeply personal episode, I reflect on the woman I was ten years ago—homeschooling two young boys while recovering from brain surgeries, navigating autism before we even had the diagnosis, and simply trying to make it through each day.

Looking back, I realize God wasn't just helping me survive.

He was quietly shaping who I was becoming.

Together we'll explore:

• The difference between survival strength and healing strength. 
• Why healing changes more than our circumstances. 
• Learning to release control without losing responsibility. 
• Seeing people through compassion instead of assumptions. 
• Why grace has become a better teacher than shame. 
• The freedom that comes from realizing you'll never "arrive"—and why that's actually good news. 

Healing doesn't erase your story.

It transforms the person your story is creating.

Extended Show Notes

Most of us imagine healing as getting back to who we used to be.

But what if that's never been God's goal?

What if healing isn't about returning to an earlier version of ourselves—but allowing God to shape us into someone we couldn't have become any other way?

In this conversation, Kim reflects on the ordinary moments that quietly changed her life: homeschooling two young boys after recovering from Moyamoya brain surgeries, navigating years of uncertainty before an autism diagnosis, learning to release control in marriage, discovering the power of compassion through personal pain, and finding the courage to use her voice even when fear never completely disappeared.

Rather than presenting healing as a finish line, this episode explores it as an ongoing journey of becoming.

You'll discover why survival isn't something to be ashamed of, how God uses even our hardest seasons to build empathy and wisdom, and why the person you're becoming matters far more than the person you think you're supposed to be.

Whether you're rebuilding after loss, navigating a difficult season, or simply wondering if you're growing at all, this episode is a gentle reminder that God is often doing His deepest work long before we recognize it.

Healing doesn't create a different person.

It reveals the person God has been patiently forming all along. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hey friends, have you ever looked back at an earlier version of yourself and almost felt like you were looking at someone else? Not because you don't recognize them, you do. You remember what they carried, you remember what they feared, you remember what consumed their days, but somewhere along the way, something changed. Not overnight, not because one conversation suddenly fixed everything, not because one prayer erased years of growth that still needed to happen. Just little by little, choice by choice, season by season, until one day you realize you're responding differently than you used to. You notice yourself letting go of something you once held tightly. You extend grace where you once became defensive. You recover more quickly after making a mistake. You find yourself listening longer before making assumptions. You discover that your definition of strength has quietly changed. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Because for years I misunderstood what healing was supposed to accomplish. I thought healing meant getting back to the person I used to be. Recovering, returning, finally putting the hard chapter behind me. But now, I don't think that's what healing does at all. I think healing changes who we're becoming. When I look back 10 years, I don't feel embarrassed by that version of me. Honestly, I feel compassion for her. She was carrying a lot. In 2015, my days looked very different than they do now. Every morning we'd get up, eat breakfast together, and head upstairs to our homeschool classroom. I had two little five-year-old boys. We'd work through Bible, reading, math, science, and social studies together. Some days we'd break up the routine with a trip to the zoo or the children's museum or the health museum. Those were the good days. Behind the scenes, there was another story unfolding. James was struggling in ways that we didn't understand yet. We were managing ADHD, not realizing it would still be several years before we'd learn autism was part of the story too. His body couldn't tolerate stimulant medications. One medication caused terrifying hallucinations where he saw spiders crawling on him. Another left him suddenly afraid of dogs, even our sweet Labrador Dixie. Every medication change came with anxiety, not because I was afraid of trying something new, but because I never knew what unexpected side effect might become our new normal. When we first moved back home after my moya moya surgeries, I desperately wanted life to feel normal again. A friend would invite us to story time at the library, and it sounded perfect until the meltdowns came. I didn't know how to help James through them, and if I'm honest, I didn't know how to handle everyone watching either. I've never been someone who enjoys being the center of attention. So after enough difficult outings, our world quietly became smaller. Home felt safer, wide open spaces felt easier. Places where the chaos blended into the background felt manageable. Looking back, I don't think I was hiding because I lacked courage. I simply think that I didn't have the capacity for much more at the time. And I think that's an important distinction because survival seasons ask different things of us than healing seasons do. They require different strengths. The mistake is believing that those survival strengths are supposed to drive us the rest of our lives. Because eventually God begins doing something beautiful. He doesn't erase who you've been, he begins transform transforming who we're becoming. And I think that's the conversation that I'd like to have today. One of the things that I've learned is that survival has a way of teaching us things. Sometimes we talk about survival as though it's something negative, but I don't think that that's fair. Survival isn't necessarily the enemy. In many ways, it's incredibly wise. It adapts, it learns, it figures out how to keep moving forward when life becomes more complicated than we ever imagined. Looking back now, I can see all kinds of strengths that were being built in me during those years. I became a planner. Not because I love having everything color-coded, although if you've listened to this podcast for very long, you know I don't exactly mind a good spreadsheet. I planned because life demanded it. Doctor's appointments, medication changes, homeschool lessons, therapy appointments, church meals, trying to remember which child needed what and when. Planning wasn't a personality trait, it was survival. I also became incredibly observant. When you've walked through medical trauma yourself and you're raising a child whose needs seem to change every few months, you learn to notice things that other people might miss. A slight change in behavior, a medication that suddenly isn't working, a look on someone's face, a shift in tone, your brain is constantly asking, is everything okay? Did something change? What am I missing? That kind of awareness can be exhausting. But it also helped us navigate some incredibly difficult years. I became dependable, not because I was trying to prove anything, because people depended on me. When you're homeschooling, there isn't anyone who's going to teach today's lesson if you don't. When your child needs an advocate, there isn't anyone who's going to sit in that meeting with the same love that you have. When you're recovering from brain surgeries, life doesn't suddenly stop asking things of you. You simply learn to carry them differently. And maybe more than anything else, I became someone who carried a lot. Sometimes more than actually belonged to me. If someone was hurting, I wanted to help. If something wasn't working, I wanted to fix it. If there was a burden lying on the ground, my first instinct was usually to pick it up before someone else had to. For years I thought that's what strength looked like. Carry more, work harder, stay prepared. Don't let anyone down. Keep going. And if and you know what? For a season, those strengths served me well. They helped our family to survive. They helped me keep showing up when quitting would have been so much easier. They helped me advocate for James before I even knew exactly what I was advocating for. They helped me rebuild after Moya Moya. They helped me keep teaching little boys who still needed their mom every single day. So I don't resent those years. I don't resent the woman I became inside of them. In fact, I'm incredibly grateful for her because she carried our family through seasons I wasn't sure we'd ever make it through. But somewhere along the way I realized something. The strengths that help us survive aren't always the same strengths that help us flourish. I think about learning to walk with crutches. If you've broken your leg, those crutches are a gift. You lean on them, you depend on them, they allow you to keep moving while you're healing. But if your leg heals and if you keep using crutches forever, something that once gave you freedom eventually begins limiting it. I wonder if some of our emotional habits work the same way. The ways we learn to survive weren't wrong. They were necessary. But maybe God never intended them to become permanent. Maybe healing isn't about criticizing the person who survived. Maybe it's about gently teaching them they don't have to carry life the same way anymore. I didn't realize that change at first because healing doesn't arrive with fireworks. It shows up in ordinary moments, little moments that on the surface don't seem important at all, until I realized they were actually changing me. One of the biggest surprises about healing is that it didn't change, just change the way that I lived, it changed what I needed in order to feel okay. For years, I needed control. Not because I wanted power, but because control felt safe. If everything was planned, maybe nothing would fall apart. If everything was done the right way, maybe I could prevent problems before they happened. I don't think I even realized how tightly I was holding everything until I started letting go. Every few years, my sisters Lynn and I would take a girls' trip together. It became one of those little traditions that we all looked forward to. Before we left town, my sister, or one of my sisters, would often have to leave detailed instructions for her husband, what the kids liked to eat, when the practices were, what needed to happen while they were gone. And it always made me smile, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because our house worked so differently. John never needed instructions. I'd leave, and honestly, the house almost seemed like to function better without me. I'd come home to happy boys, clean laundry, a clean kitchen, the house picked up, everyone fed, everyone alive, which to be honest, is already a successful parenting weekend. Now, were the towels folded exactly the way I'd fold them? Maybe not. Did the dishwasher look exactly like I would have loaded it? Maybe not. I would have organized a few things differently, possibly, but none of those things actually mattered because every single one of them told me the same thing. You don't have to carry all of this by yourself. Someone else loves this family too. Someone else is capable of caring for them. Too, someone else is willing to carry the weight with you. That may not sound like a profound spiritual lesson, but for someone who spent years believing strength strength meant carrying everything. It changed something. I stopped needing everything to be done my way. Not because my preferences disappeared, I still have them. Ask John. He'll gladly tell you I still have opinions, but somewhere along the way I realized relationships matter more than perfectly folded towels. Partnership matters more than perfectly loaded dishes. Being loved matters more than being in control. And honestly, that's incredibly free. Healing changed something else too. It changed the way I understand my own emotions. For a long time, if someone told me that's not what I meant, I automatically translated that into, then maybe I shouldn't feel this way. But those aren't exactly the same thing. Today I understand something that I couldn't have explained ten years ago. My feelings are real. Your intentions can also be real. Those truths don't cancel each other out. If something hurts, it hurts. That doesn't automatically mean that someone intended to wound me. Sometimes they might have, sometimes they genuinely didn't. Both situations exist. And healing has taught me to become curious before becoming defensive. I've learned to ask better questions. Can you help me understand what you meant instead of immediately deciding that I already know? Or immediately deciding that I must be wrong. That's changed so many of my relationships because I no longer need someone else to validate every feeling before I'm allowed to have it. At the same time, I also don't need to convince someone that they were a terrible person because they hurt me. We can talk, clarify, understand each other better. Sometimes we even become closer because of those conversations. Not because one person won, but because both people were willing to stay at the table. I've started realizing healing doesn't eliminate complexity. It simply gives us capacity to hold it without falling apart. The more that happened, the more I noticed another quiet change. Healing wasn't just changing the way I related to myself, it was changing the way I saw everyone else. One of the most unexpected things healing has changed is the way that I look at other people. Not because people suddenly became easier, because I became different. I've noticed something over the last several years. The more secure I've become in who God is shaping me to be, the less interested I am in reducing people to simple categories. Maybe you've noticed it too. If you spend much time watching the news or scrolling social media, it can start to feel like the whole world is divided itself into teams. People who become labels, conservative, liberal, rich, poor, Christian, not Christian, right, wrong, friend, enemy. Everything starts to look so black and white. But then I go to the grocery store or a restaurant or the gas station, and I remember real life doesn't usually look like the internet. When someone is walking into a restaurant behind me, I hold the door open. Not because I know who they voted for, not because I know what they believe, not because I know whether we'd agree about anything. I hold the door because they're another human being. Sometimes people drop their wallet or their phone or their keys or something else falls out of their cart. I don't stop to evaluate whether they're the kind of person who deserves my help. I simply bent bend down and help. Not because I'm extraordinary, because I think most people do that. And honestly, those little interactions aren't even particularly comfortable for me. I'm still an introvert, after all. I'm still not someone who's naturally going to strike up a conversation with strangers in the checkout line, but kindness has very little to do with personality. It's a decision, one that's become easier the older I've gotten. I think part of the reason is because I've learned how dangerous assumptions can be. Years ago, after my second Moya Moya surgery, I made the decision to shave the rest of my head. The surgeons had already shaved part of it. What they left behind was probably the longest, most crooked mohawk you have ever seen. Those really weren't there were really weren't very any good options. So John and I shaved the rest of it and waited for everything to grow back at the same time. One day, John was having one of those completely ordinary conversations on Twitter about college football. Nothing important, just sports. And somehow the person he was talking with clicked on our family picture. They saw me standing there with a shaved head. And without asking a single question, they decided they already knew my story. They started making comments about how I looked like a man, how ugly I was, the usual things people say when they forget there's an actual live person on the other end of the screen. And the interesting part is it never occurred to them that maybe there was another explanation. Maybe I was going through cancer treatment. Maybe I'd lost my hair because of a medical condition. Maybe I'd just survived two brain surgeries. Maybe there was a story there that they couldn't see because there was. They just never stopped long enough to wonder what that story might be. I've thought about that moment many times over the years, not because I stayed angry. Honestly, I couldn't even tell you who the person was or why they decided to go nasty that day. But what stayed with me wasn't the insult, it was the reminder. How often do we think we know someone's story when we only see one photograph, one conversation, one social media post, one difficult moment, one opinion, one chapter. Healing has made me much slower to do that because I've lived what it feels what it feels like to be misunderstood. I've lived what it feels like for someone to make up an entire story about me based on no information at all. And if that can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Now, when I look at people, I find myself wondering things I never used to wonder. I wonder what they've survived. I wonder what they're carrying quietly behind the scenes. I wonder what they're worried about or who they're worried about. I wonder what prayer they've been praying for years that still hasn't been answered. I wonder what they've they're hoping that no one notices. Not because I need to know those answers, but simply remembering that they exist. That changes the way that I respond. Jesus never ignored the truth, but he also never reduced people to the worst moment of their lives. He saw something deeper, not just what they had done, not just what had happened to them. He saw people, image bearers, stories being written, and maybe that's one of the quiet ways that healing changes us too. Not by making us agree with everyone, not by removing our convictions, but by making us slower to assume we know everything about someone else. We've only seen a single page of their story. And as I thought about that, I realized something else. The person I had spent the longest reducing wasn't actually other people. It was me. As I've been thinking about all this, I realized something. For years, I was the person that I reduced the most. I could usually find what was wrong before I noticed what was growing. And maybe you've done that too. You accomplish 10 things and spend all day thinking about that one thing you wished you had done differently. You make progress, but all you can see is how far you still have to go. You become healthier, and somehow you only notice the pounds that you haven't lost yet. It's amazing how often we become our own harshest critics. And I know I've certainly have done that for years. I thought it was the only way to keep growing was to stay disappointed in myself. I thought that if I became too comfortable, I'd stop changing. If I gave myself too much grace, I'd lose motivation. So I kept believing that shame was somehow helping me to become better, even though it wasn't. It was just making the journey heavier. One of the biggest things healing has taught me is that grace has always been much a much better teacher than shame. Grace doesn't pretend that there isn't room to grow. It simply refuses to make growth a condition of worth. That's the lesson I'm still learning, especially when it comes to my health. Right now, I'm not where I'd like to be. I know that. I'm actively working to become healthier. I'm making changes, trying new habits, returning again to the things that I know help me care well for the body God has entrusted to me. But something inside me has changed. Years ago, I would have looked at a mirror and only seen failure. Now I can look in that same mirror and see someone who's still worthy of kindness. Both things can be true. I can honestly say this isn't where I want to stay without believing this is who I am. That one shift has changed everything because I don't have to become healthier by hating myself anymore. I can become healthier because I love the life that God has given me. I think that's true for in so many other areas too. I've learned that I can make mistakes and own them. In ministry, that happens more often than you'd like. Sometimes you're sitting with someone in one of the hardest seasons of their life, you care deeply, you pray before the conversation, you genuinely want your words to bring hope, and then something comes out differently than it sounded in your own head. You can see it on their face, and you immediately realize that's not what I meant. Ten years ago, I probably would have replayed that conversation in my head for weeks, wondering how I messed it up, questioning whether I should have opened my mouth in the first place. Today, I still care, probably too much sometimes, but now I simply stop, I clarify, I apologize if I need to, I explain what I was trying to communicate, and then I trust the relationship enough to let grace do what perfection never could. Because the people closest to me know my heart. They would know they know I would never intentionally cause them any pain. They know my words occasionally may miss the mark. Probably more than occasionally, but my love for them never does. That's very different, a very different way to live. Healing also has given me permission to take up space. I smiled when I realized that that sentence that sentence, because if you had met me ten years ago, you probably wouldn't believe it. Back then, writing was my safe space. It still is. I've always processed life through writing. I'll sit down at the computer and the words just come. I don't usually write a paragraph, go back, edit it, rewrite it, and polish it. I simply let my heart speak. Long before AI helped me to refine anything, writing was how I untangled my own thoughts. It still is. The funny thing, writing never scared me. Speaking did. The first time I sat down in front of a microphone, my heart was pounding. I'd write a paragraph, take Take a deep breath, record it, realize somewhere in the middle I'd practically stopped breathing and gasp for air before the next sentence. I wasn't worried about whether I could write. I was wondering whether I deserved to be heard. Even now, there are moments during open ten at church or meetings or interviews where my heart starts racing, and I begin wondering, is this even helpful? Have I completely missed the point? What if this doesn't make any sense to anybody but me? Sometimes it's almost like my brain goes blank. I can walk away from the conversation, barely remembering what I said because my nerves took over so completely. The anxiety didn't magically disappear because I started speaking more often. What changed was something quieter. I stopped waiting to feel fearless before using my voice. That may be one of the greatest gifts that healing has given me. Not confidence, permission. Permission to write, permission to speak, permission to make mistakes, permission to learn, and permission to keep growing. Permission to simply be the person that God is continuing to shape instead of waiting until I feel finished before I show up. And maybe that's exactly the point, because I don't think healing has a finish line. I think it has a direction. One of the biggest misconceptions I used to have was thinking that healing had an ending. I imagined there would be one day when I'd finally arrive. I'd become healthy enough, confident enough, wise enough, faithful enough, disciplined enough, whatever enough happened to mean that week. I kept thinking there would be this invisible finish line where I'd finally look around and think, well, I made it. And life has taught me something very different. There is no finish line. Not because healing doesn't work, but because life never stops changing. Every season asks something different from us. The woman that was homeschooling two little boys needed something different than the woman sitting behind this microphone today. The woman recovering from two brain surgeries needed different strengths than the woman learning to how to grieve her father. The woman trying to figure out body image needed different reminders than the woman learning to steward her health as a gift to the people that she loves. None of these women disappeared. They're all still part of me. They're just no longer leading me. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about healing. It doesn't erase your story. It gives your story its proper place. I've also realized that God has never wasted any of it. Not the surgeries, not the uncertainty, not the years of infertility, not the parenting struggles, not the grief, not the weight loss or the weight gain, not the mistakes, not the victories, none of it. Somehow he keeps taking experiences I never would have chosen and quietly using them to help me love people better. To understand pain I wouldn't have otherwise I would have otherwise overlooked. To recognize fear hiding behind someone's anger, to notice shame hiding behind someone's silence, to sit with someone in the middle of heartbreak without feeling like I have to fix it before I leave. Because sometimes people don't need us to solve their pain. They just need someone willing to stay. Ten years ago, I couldn't have imagined this life. Not because I lacked dreams, because I lacked the capacity to dream beyond the season I was surviving. It's one of the things that survival does. It narrows your vision. It gives you like a tunnel vision. It has to. When you're just trying to make it through today, you don't have much energy to imagine five years from now. Looking back, I don't think that 200 200 2015 Kim would have believed you if you had told her she'd write a book or start a podcast, or someday wonder if God was inviting her to speak to people. She would have laughed and probably changed the subject. Not because she didn't love God and not because she lacked gifts, but because she was surviving doesn't leave much room for imagination. Healing slowly gives you that back, not all at once, just enough to take the next faithful step, and then another, and then another, and before you know it, you look behind you and realize God has quietly been shaping someone you never could have imagined you were gonna become. Not someone different, someone freer, more secure, more compassionate, more willing to be seen, more willing to let other people help carry the load, more willing to admit when she's wrong, more willing to say, I just don't know, more willing to trust God while he's that it's still working. And even when I can't see yet where he's leading, and maybe that's what becoming really is not reaching perfection, not finally arriving, simply continuing to say yes to whatever God is doing in this season. As I was preparing to for today's conversation, I found myself thinking back over the last several weeks. At first, they probably sounded like completely different conversations. We've talked about our reactions, our health, the people who walk beside us, the labels we've been given, grief, the messages that we've believed about ourselves, stewarding the life that we've been entrusted with. On the surface, those don't seem like they're connected. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized we've all been quietly asking the same question. Who are you becoming? Every diagnosis, every relationship, every misunderstanding, every loss, every act of courage, every ordinary Tuesday, every faithful choice have all been shaping someone, not perfectly, but patiently. And maybe that's when healing has been all along, not escaping our story, allowing God to use our story to shape the person we are becoming. And maybe that's why I don't think healing has a finish line, because becoming doesn't have a finish line either. If I could sit down with a version of me from 10 years ago, I don't think I'd spend much time telling her everything that was going to happen. Honestly, I think it would have would overwhelm her. I don't think I'd tell her about the book or the podcast or the ministry or even the heartbreak break that was waiting around the corner. I'd simply reach across the table, take her hand, and tell her you're going to do better than you think you are. One day you're going to understand why this season feels so heavy. One day you'll realize God wasn't getting you just getting you through it. He was quietly using it to shape you. I'd tell her that James is going to be okay, that she didn't have to have every answer, that it was okay to ask for help, that she didn't have to carry everything by herself, that one day she'd be comfortable taking up some space, not because she became someone more important, because she finally understood that she had always been deeply loved. I think I'd tell her one more thing too. I'd tell her don't rush, because the woman you're becoming can't be microwaved. She has to be grown. One ordinary Tuesday at a time, one difficult conversation at a time, one act of obedience at a time, one season at a time. And maybe that's what I'd like to leave you with today. Maybe you don't feel like you've arrived. Maybe you're disappointed by how slowly you're changing. Maybe you look in the mirror or at your circumstances or at a relationship, and all you see is how far you still have to go. Can I gently remind you of something, friend? God has never asked you to arrive, He's invited you to walk with Him, to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep trusting, to keep loving, to keep returning, and to keep becoming. Because healing isn't creating a brand new person. It's revealing the person God has been patiently forming inside you all along. And the beautiful thing is, he's not finished yet, and neither are you. Over the last eight conversations, we've explored reactions, relationships, identity, grief, body image, health, stewardship, and now becoming. If you found yourself in these conversations, I hope you'll continue the journey with me. You'll find every episode, every resource, every next step at healerhopegiver.com. Wherever you find yourself today, whether you're surviving, healing, or somewhere in between, I'm so grateful you're here. And I hope you'll join me again next week as we begin a brand new arc together. Thanks for spending this season with me. When we begin these conversations, I don't think either of us knew exactly where they would lead. We talked about reactions that surprised us, relationships that shaped us, labels that tried to define us, grief that changed us, messages we believed about ourselves, health, stewardship, and today who we're becoming. If there's one thing I hope you carry from this entire arc, it's this. You don't have to become someone else to experience healing. Healing isn't about becoming a different person, it's about becoming more fully the person that God has been loving, lovingly forming in you all along. So wherever you find yourself today, whether life feels peaceful or complicated, whether you're surviving or slowly beginning to heal, don't lose heart. Growth is often much quieter than we expect. Most of the time, it looks like ordinary faithfulness. One conversation, one apology, one act of courage, one ordinary Tuesday at a time. As always, thank you for letting me be part of your journey. If these conversations have encouraged you, I'd love for you to share this episode with someone who might need the reminder that God isn't finished with them either. And next week we'll begin a brand new arc together, one that's very close to my heart. Until then, keep showing up. Keep trusting, keep growing, keep becoming. I'll see you on Thursday.