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Spiritual Wholeness

Spiritual Drowning, Honest Questions, and a God Who Doesn’t Let Go with Heather Thompson Day

Episode Notes

I’m joined by the brilliant and beautifully honest Dr. Heather Thompson Day for a conversation on spiritual wrestling. Heather’s latest book, What If I’m Wrong? Navigating the Waves of Fear and Failure explores what happens when the faith you once relied on starts to unravel.

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Heather shares openly about her father’s battle with Alzheimer’s, the spiritual crisis it triggered, and the years she spent in what she calls “spiritual drowning.” We talk about attachment, disappointment, failure, and the unexpected ways God shows up when everything else is falling apart.

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This conversation is a powerful example of how doubt and faith can co-exist. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re allowed to question your faith—or felt like you were losing your grip on God—this episode is for you.

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We explore:

  • What happens when the God you believed in no longer matches your reality
  • How therapy helped Heather not just psychologically but spiritually
  • Why what feels like failure may be something deeper—and more redemptive
  • The unexpected miracle Heather experienced at the end of her long season of doubt

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This isn’t a story of tidy answers. It’s a story of holding on, even when you’re not sure what you’re holding onto.

🎧 Listen now and share with someone who needs a reminder: doubt doesn’t mean you’re losing your faith—it might mean you’re learning to trust in a deeper way.

🔗 Heather’s new book: What If I’m Wrong?
🔗 Connect with Heather: heatherthompsonday.com
🔗 Follow Heather on Instagram: @HeatherThompsonDay

💬 Got a question or reflection? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.

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If you liked this episode, you’ll love:‍

  • ⁠Episode 98: I Shouldn’t Feel Alone in My Grief—Why Your Grief Matters & How to Support Those Who Are Grieving with J.S. Park
  • Episode 99: I Shouldn’t Feel Like My Spirit is Broken—Exploring a Broken Spirit & the Dark Night of the Soul with Christopher Cook

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Thanks to our sponsors:

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Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

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While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript:

ALISON Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You Podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, just a quick reminder. You can now call in and leave a voicemail to be featured in a future episode. The number is 307-429-2525. We've already heard from so many of you and it's been incredibly meaningful to connect in this more personal way.

You can call with a question, a comment, or simply respond to this prompt. What is one area of your mental, emotional, or spiritual health where you like to grow? Right now just include your first name, where you're calling from, and your message, and if something from today's episode sparks a thought, that's a great place to capture it.

Again, the number is 307-429-2525. We'd love to hear from you. Now onto today's episode. This is one I've been looking forward to for such a long time. I've admired Heather Thompson day's work from afar for years. 

Dr. Heather Thompson Day is a gifted storyteller, speaker, bestselling author, and the founder of IT is Day Ministries. Heather has contributed to Christianity Today, religion, news Service, Newsweek, and the Bar Group, and she spent 15 years as a communications professor teaching public speaking persuasion and social media. She's the author of several books, including her latest that we're gonna get into today.

It's called, What If I'm Wrong? Navigating the Waves of Fear and Failure In It she invites us into the deep, raw, and very human questions that emerge when our circumstances no longer match the faith. We thought we had figured out in this episode. Heather shares honestly about her father's journey with Alzheimer's.

How it unraveled her own understanding of God and the years she spent in what she describes as a kind of spiritual drowning. We talk about grief, identity, the tension between faith and doubt, and how the experience of suffering became a catalyst for a more honest, grounded relationship with God. This isn't a story of neat answers or tidy theology.

It's a story of holding on even when you're not sure what it is you're holding onto. It's a story about the power of questions, the importance of honoring what hurts, and the miracle of discovering a God who never left. Whether you're in a season of wrestling or just hungry for a faith, it can hold the full weight of real life.

I think this episode will speak to you. Please enjoy my conversation with the brilliant and beautifully honest Heather Thompson Day.

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ALISON I've known of you, I've seen your work, and so I just love, for me, this is such a great opportunity to get to know someone who I have admired from afar. I feel like we've kind of circled around each other. Yeah. But never actually connected, and so I'm just. [00:05:00] Thrilled to get to meet you today and get to have this conversation with you.

So I wanna start though, Heather, because you actually had me kind of just in that first chapter, just like, oh boy, really? You're gonna do this to me? 'cause I have a dad who's 83. You start off telling us about your dad and his battle with Alzheimer's. Tell me a little bit about why is this the way you started off this book where you're really exploring fear and failure?

HEATHER That story is the defining story of what feels like most of my adult life. Everything that I do. I was deeply impacted by my dad as a child, which I talk about in the book. My dad was the same man in his basement as he was when he was on stage, and I grew up in a van going with him from church to church to church.

Not even just the country. We went internationally too. And so I was always in the room where the Holy Spirit moved. And so I never doubted whether God was real. I've never had that journey. I always knew God was real 'cause I saw him and my dad, it was God and my dad felt very close. And so when my dad, God, Alzheimer's, now that was a different story.

All of a sudden then I started to not question whether God was real, but question whether I understood who God was. 

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ALISON You're saying something so important, let's just hit the ground running in terms of attachment, right? So much that primary attachment figure becomes our vision of. Who God is, which could be a wonderful thing for some people.

That's actually why they have a hard time trusting God. 'cause they're like, well, this person didn't model well, God. Well, in your case it was a beautiful like of course God is real. Of course God loves me. And then also that was. When your dad starts to be taken from you. So does also that image of God, that understanding of God.

HEATHER Yes. And it wasn't just the disease, it was the state that it left our family in. My dad gave his entire life financially to ministry. Every dollar he made, he always poured back in. And so here we were trying to figure out how do we afford a nursing home? And I can't even tell you the bitterness that came up.

When I started to feel like, okay, he gave his whole life to you, God, and you can't even make sure that he has a nursing home. That was very complicated for, and, and to be honest, I'm still working through those pieces, especially 'cause my dad always said, we barely talked about the Alzheimer's. I. While he could still cognitively discuss it.

'cause he always said, God's gonna take care of me. God's gonna take care of me. Don't worry about it. And we believed him and then came the time where that doesn't feel true anymore. Right? So what do I do with my image of God now? And so that it, it was like a three year journey of me in therapy and that's when I'm writing the book is.

What do we do in this space where my image of God feels as though it could be wrong? And let me, I'll just say this too, 'cause I know somebody right now is feeling frustrated that I'm even talking so negatively. So let me say this. I sent a text to my mom, and this is in chapter one, and I said to her, it feels [00:08:00] like Dad gave his entire life to ministry and he has nothing to show for it.

And my mom text me back 59 minutes later, though her read receipt said she had read it immediately and she said. You say Dad has nothing to show for it, Heather, he has you to show for it. I think you're wrong. And from that, I started to zoom out and this is like a three year journey, but I started to zoom out and say.

What if this life is not just about me? What if God is answering prayers that my dad prayed in my life? Like what if this thing is more than our singular experience and we're actually a part of a much larger, bigger global family 

ALISON Connectedness. Yes. That God taking care of your dad might look differently than what you had thought and I appreciate your foreshadowing kind of the end of the story.

And I also just wanna say again, from a parts perspective. So we talk a lot on the podcast about different parts. That's the model from which I work. This internal family systems, parts, everything you're saying makes sense. A part of you, right? That's what I love about that model. It's complicated. A part of you is mad, but again, you're trying to fill out a larger story that accounts for all of what you're experiencing, including a little bit of the frustration or a little bit of the doubt.

That to me, and that space makes sense. But let's go to the fact that you, 'cause you talk about this in the book, you went to see a counselor. You specifically chose to see a counselor who was not Christian. Tell us a little bit about that choice and why that was important to you. 

HEATHER My world is very Christian insulated. I worked at a Christian campus. I work in ministry. Some of my best mentors are literally, I think, have prophetic gifts. I am surrounded.

By wise Christian counsel, but my issue that I was struggling with had to do with whether or not my dad was, I say this in the book, there's a fine line between faith and delusion and I didn't know what side my dad was on, and so then I didn't know what side I was on anymore, and so I wanted somebody who would tell me the truth and not Alize it.

And I went to my non-Christian counselor and it was such a beautiful three years that we spent together. She was much less antagonistic to my faith. I was not prepared. I thought she'd be like, this is silly. No. She was like, how has your hope hurt you? You know what I mean? She's like, it seems as though you're living a really beautiful life.

And I said, wow. Okay. That's—I needed to hear that. 

ALISON It's really interesting. It's such an interesting choice. I've done the same thing in my own life for what it's worth. And the question will come up on the podcast. You know, should I always have a Christian therapist? And my answer is, not necessarily, but that diverges from what some other people will say.

And the reason that I say that is that similar to your point I, I'll say to people, you don't wanna see someone who has an agenda with you who's trying to shame you or talk you out of something. That's not the job of a therapist. But the job of a therapist is to hold up a mirror and help you understand your own self and your own faith.

Better, more objectively. And it sounds like for you it's like I'm almost gonna trust this person more if they're asking me questions without any sort of preconceived idea about what the answer should be. Yes. And she was respectful. That's the piece that's important. 

HEATHER She was incredible. And you know what? She was like fresh out of school. It, we just had such a good dynamic 'cause I think she was like hungry to, to be in there doing the work and I lucked out and got her. 

ALISON I love though that you were intentional about noticing this is going on with what's going on with my dad is affecting me. It's not just grief.

It's actually affecting me spiritually, psychologically, and spiritually. I'm gonna get support. I'm gonna get support very intentionally. And tell us a little bit about what some of that rumble was, Heather with. Doubt and faith and how you, I mean it's, this sounds cliche, but it's almost as if you went through another iteration of figuring out how to.

Make your faith, your spirituality, your own, even to another degree, separating it from your dad's.

HEATHER That's exactly what I was doing actually, now that you say that, yes, that's exactly what I was doing. I needed to know who I was. There's so many things that have helped me. Discover that, and I, I will say this to whoever's listening for me, knowing who I am has changed everything knowing who I am and who God is, because my circumstances no longer have to reveal to me what I know to be true about who I am.

And this is a new area of life I that I've ever been in, that I get to walk right now. And I don't think I could be here until I had nothing in my circumstances to affirm anything about who I was. Nothing was working. It felt like everything. I was touching, was failing. 

ALISON Give us an example. 

HEATHER Yeah, so a big thing that I talk about in there was my dream, right? So the book is about passion and how the word passion actually biblically means to suffer. So a lot of times we say, I'm doing this 'cause I'm passionate about it. And it's like I. Well, no, we like affirmation and we like accolades, and we like resources and open doors. Passion is what you cannot stop doing, despite not receiving any of those things.

What are you willing to suffer for and through? And so for me, I had said, oh, I'm a writer. And then the suffering started. Then books aren't selling in the same way that the last book sold. I think my, so my first book that I did sold 5,000 copies in like a week. This last book, I'll See You Tomorrow, sold 511 copies in the first week.

So I had done it. Just felt like, oh my goodness, I'm a failure. That's the only thing I've ran from, I mean, I got a PhD by the time I was 31. I mean, I have tried so hard to go the opposite of what I saw my dad do. My dad went all in with no safety net on just ministry and calling and passion, and so I said I'm gonna get as many degrees as possible to make sure I can have a stable, safe financial life.

Then it still wasn't happening, and I'm writing the book that I felt like God called me to write and it's not selling. I had to come to a place where I separated myself from the work too.

AD BREAK 1

ALISON There's so much in what you just said. First of all, passion as suffering. Wow. Nobody thinks about it that way. And probably you didn't when you went in with all this gusto. 

HEATHER Right. This is how I came to it. I started trying to figure out what's happening. 

ALISON Yeah. Feeling like a failure. Even though you'd worked really hard to not fail in air quotes the same way that you saw your dad in some ways, maybe he didn't fail spiritually, but financially there was challenges.

So despite your best efforts experiencing the very things you were trying to. Avoid. And so all of this, your dad getting sick, you questioning God, you wrestling with these failures, quote unquote, lead you to the place where you feel like you're drowning. Tell us a little bit about that before we get to the good news, because I want my listeners who are feeling that to be with us on this journey.

HEATHER It wasn't just a feeling it was chasing me. I was waking up in the night with nightmares of I'm drowning where I'm trying to get to the top of the water and somebody keeps pulling me back down and I'm somebody who writes everything down. I try to, I started this practice many years ago where. Whatever I'm praying or experiencing, I write it down and I put dates and I'm trying to watch God's involvement in my life, so I wanna see dates.

And what I found by keeping dates is that oftentimes God will keep an anniversary with me that I forgot. So he will answer a prayer sometimes. Maybe three days, but sometimes three years or 10 years to the day that I prayed it to the day, right. I have long since forgotten. And then I'll go back and I'll go through my notes and I say, oh my goodness, God remembered.

And so I'm having all this experience of dreams of drowning. I'm talking to my therapist and for the first time I'm talking with my family. 'cause we didn't talk about it, about my dad's Alzheimer's. We acted as if it, we didn't say the word. I need you to understand. My mom didn't tell her work. My dad had Alzheimer's for probably 12 years.

Her work didn't know until like a year ago. Even me writing this stuff in the book, I could tell she was like. And I'm, at this point, my dad's almost not even remembering anybody's names. Like you would catch now that he has Alzheimer's, right? He could fake it for a long time. Nobody knows. So we were living in this really strange place.

So for the first time I start even talking about it with my own mom, this was a big thing too. I was very afraid about who I would be. This is gonna make me cry when my dad wasn't there to confirm it. Because he believed in me. I, I mean, my dad took me to writing lessons when I was 15 years old. He was a dreamer.

And when I, I got expelled from school in eighth grade from my Christian school. 

ALISON Oh, I wanna hear that story, but keep going. 

HEATHER Yeah, I got expelled from school and I just had such a hard time in middle school because I was very opinionated and I didn't yet fully understand not to share unless people ask.

So I was always giving everybody my opinions. I was probably quite obnoxious, but it was very difficult for a Christian school, a small Christian school, conservative school, the handle in a female. And so I was always getting in trouble and kids didn't like me and I would, I just remember going home and just.

Crying like this. One time these girls left, um, these secret admirer notes for me for several days. And one day the note said, meet me at the fence. So I go to the fence and it's three girls laughing, right? Not this boy that I think is my secret admirer. And so I go home. I just need people to understand who my dad was.

For me. I'm pedaled biking home and I get home and I slam the door and I crawl under my bed and I'm just sobbing. And I can remember my dad coming into the room, sitting on the bed and saying, what's wrong? And I tell him, and he's like, Heather, I. You're gonna be somebody. I know it. I see there is something in you.

I'm just telling you, God is calling you to something. And for so much of my life, I only believed that because my dad had said it. And so without him there to say it, when my dad doesn't know my name anymore, who am I? And I remember my therapist said, you know, like everything your dad has put into your life.

That doesn't leave when he's gone, that stays. And that was a light bulb for me 'cause I just kept thinking about what I'm gonna lose. And then I realized I'm not gonna lose any of the things that he's given me. Yeah. 

ALISON It's in you. It's in you. It's actually internalized inside of you. But parts of you didn't know that, man. That's that's powerful. 

HEATHER Yeah, so I was drowning and I'm still treading water. I would not right now, be like, I'm a strong swimmer. No. I feel like I have better tools now. I know, okay, go on a walk, call somebody and tell them that you're struggling. Go to sleep. I have tools to navigate the situations that I'm in that I don't think I had before. I was using a lot of perfectionism to just numb. 

ALISON Gosh, it makes so much sense again from an attachment perspective, that that safety you felt with your dad that in many ways gave you a positive image of a loving God. Also didn't fully get remapped onto God, and then almost even anger with God for taking that away from you.

HEATHER Now I need to meet with you after. Right. Because it's like, wait a second, and then when I'm losing my dad, I'm losing my image of God. And so now, oh my goodness. It's almost like I'm, I had to go through this rebirthing experience and childhood growing up and learning how to walk with God on my own.

ALISON That's profound. But that process, it makes sense to me. Would have sent you into the drowning. Yes, I've lost God almost. 

HEATHER I lost a God who saved me, like my dad saved me 'cause he wasn't jumping in and saving me and my dad did. And what do we do with a God? So this God? Yes. Who are you? 

ALISON Oh man, I can just feel that. So. You go and ask these questions. This is the title of the book. What if I'm wrong? Is it, what if I'm Wrong about God? Is that kind of where this question, what if I'm wrong? That seems to summarize this drowning experience. 

HEATHER Yeah, so Martin b Copenhaver did some work and he found that Jesus asked far more questions than he gave answers.

Of the 183 questions he has asked, he only directly answers three. Okay, so I had lived a life being told God gives you the answer, and now I'm in a season where I'm not getting any answers. And so what I found were questions. And then I did all this research to try to understand what am I experiencing?

And I realized actually God is far more comfortable with questions than answers. God who has all the answers comes to earth and doesn't feel the need to give us them. [00:22:00] Jesus, who could have written his own gospel. Would've taken very little for Jesus to sit down and pen something directly from his hand, and he doesn't do it.

He allows his story to be told through his people. He allows us to sit and ask questions and wonder, and so I just realized I'm going to have to get comfortable with a God who believes questions are more important than answers. 

ALISON Disorienting, disorienting, and has in some ways created a wound or hurt. In terms of this person you love so much.

I mean, it just, I get it. It just makes so much sense. So through this process of getting comfortable with the questions, what were some key moments, some key lifelines that sort of made you kind of be able to come up out of the drowning? 

HEATHER It just kind of felt like drowning, and then I had one breakthrough that made me realize I was never drowning.

That's honestly what happened. And I tell the story at the very end of the book. Long story short, the same days that I'm writing in my prayer journal, God, where are you? God, don't you see me? God, I have no money in my bank account. God, what am I supposed to do? There was somebody that God had sent into my life.

I just didn't know who they were, but they had been talking to me and, and anyway, that person at the end of the book ends up. Providing for me in a way, literally is funding my entire salary for this year. Multi multimillionaire that had found me on Twitter. Just another crazy story, but that's for the end of the book.

But then I realized, oh my goodness. The entire time that I said, God, where are you? He was right there all along. I had been talking to this woman the entire three years. I just didn't know who she was, right? But she had been encouraged. I wrote about her, I wrote her words in my prayer journal with the date.

No idea that she was gonna end up feeling stirred by God to pour into my [00:24:00] ministry financially. I had no idea. This is what I'm saying about my circumstances. I don't need my circumstances to reveal what I know to be true about who I am and who God is. I know that God is here. I know that God loves me, and actually I know for a fact that God is with me, and if my circumstances don't reveal it.

I'm gonna hold on and I'm gonna wait. 

ALISON Because you had that experience of literally after three years, it's almost like the cloud's lifting you going. Oh, there he was. All along. All along. 

HEATHER As long as I am telling him, you must not be powerful. 'cause if you were, you'd help, something is not right here. And he allowed me to think, to just thrash and thrash and then realize, oh my God, I'm swimming.

This is just what it feels like to swim for 18 hours in tough, current and strong waves. This is just life. 

ALISON Yeah. And so much of it is the wrestling, right. The questions. 

HEATHER Mm-hmm. It sure is. And it's not giving up on the questions—and it doesn't mean that I've done anything wrong. Exactly. And in my search for answers for perfect little Christian answers that I had needed and that worked for me in my past until they didn't, I.

God had provided answers much quicker. This experience was three years where I didn't get answers and things just kept getting stripped away. My podcast, which was a, another line of income for me, stopped growing and we had to cancel that. My book then didn't sell. Then my university is talking about they're going through financial hardships, so they're talking about renegotiating my contract.

Literally everything. That was my safety net that I had. Built with all my hard work and degrees was being stripped away from me and for God to have been with me through that entire thing all the time that I finally see at the end. I'm just, I'll never be the same. I'll never be the same, and he's my God Now.

AD BREAK 2

ALISON To me, this is the literal definition of a miracle. We want the miracle, and the miracle is the lifeline now, or the answer now, but the miracle is that you kept thrashing about in the water for three years, and were willing to ask the hard questions and to sit in this pain and to suffer in amidst passions and things that were not your fault. Long enough to then see. 

HEATHER and I'm just gonna tell you, I will say this, I never stopped praying and some of my prayers were angry. Like I said, you must not be who I think you are. But I never left the room. I just remember Annie saying to me one day it was raining and I was like, I'm not gonna go on a prayer walk today 'cause it's rained.

She's like, you're gonna let a little rain stop you from experiencing God? I was like, no, I'm not. And I went. And so I learned for the first time, I typically, I, I've always done prayer walks, but in Michigan, that's where I lived. When it was winter, I didn't go 'cause I'm, I'm not crazy, right? It's cold. No, it's dark.

There's tons of ice. No, for those three years I walked every winter, you know, and it, something was born within me in the winter that I could not have experienced, I think in any other season. And now I get to take that with me, I hope into. I hope, Lord New Seasons. 

ALISON Yes and amen. I love how you draw upon, uh, that work of wintering. I only read that here. 'cause some in that season, somebody on Instagram said, I think you're wintering. You should read this book. I read it. Oh my goodness. What a beautiful book. Such a helpful naming of Yes, that season. Heather, I wanna just touch on just how you came to terms with failure. The word itself.

I think we could turn on its head because so much of what you described happening was just, it wasn't even failure in the sense of, it was just things were being stripped away out of your control, but it, we experience it as failing. How did you. Come to terms with that. You're a woman who's very capable, who's done some [amazing things.

Not only what does that do to your faith, but how did you come to terms with that in terms of your. Self-concept, 

HEATHER I think, well, part of it, like I let it be, again, this was a three-year process, so I remember days where I really struggled to get out of bed and then I read necessary endings. That was very helpful to me too, to start saying, oh, maybe this isn't a.

Failure. Maybe this is a necessary ending, right? So vocabulary for me as a communication professor, that really helps my brain say, oh, I'm having an inappropriate relationship with this word. So now this new word is helping me reframe. You know, I said this to somebody else in an interview, and I think I offended them because they like corrected me.

So I'm just gonna say it and it might offend somebody, but I'm, I'm just gonna tell you what I experienced. I felt like I did let go of God. I think God did not let go of me. He did not let go of me, and so that got me through. I really think he carried me through. I'm just telling you, if we're on the merit system that I wanted God to operate under with my dad, I no longer received the merit 'cause I said some really nasty things to God.

I kept praying, but I also just said things that I was taught you never say to God, and he just loved me through it. I'll say this too, this language in my brain as a writer, this was helpful. In my brain, I always thought the good part of the story is what happens to you, right? The hero goes through difficulty, but then something beautiful happens and or a miracle comes, and now it's a good story, okay?

The Lord revealed to me, that's not the story. You are the story. So a heart that remains soft, despite circumstances that are hard, that's a beautiful story. It doesn't mean that the circumstances ever change. I don't have to have God bless me in order to choose to bring blessing to other people. I don't have to have God be good to me in order to choose to bring goodness, and that is a blessing that only belongs to the righteous, the wicked would never perceive of doing such a thing.

Blessing and goodness is available to me at any time. And if I partake in that, that's a beautiful story. And so I started living as if the story was just my response, not what happens, which I can't control. 

ALISON It's a paradox. You're saying something really deep. It's in the sense, it's like I'm letting go of old God, you know?

And I don't know what bigger God is, but to me that is the essence of faith. It's almost like calling God, I'm gonna keep doing what I know to be true, even if you are not. Who I thought you were, God. To me, that's faith. And to me also, when you think about the parenting model, you think about a good parent, which is what you are rumbling with in many ways.

A good parent, you think about a parenting a teenager or a young adult, a lot of times they are pushing off of you. That is part of the deal. And a good parent is sometimes knows when to be like, you just keep pushing. That's what you need to do right now. And I'm here and I'm not gonna let this connection be broken.

I'm big enough for this. Right? But it doesn't feel that way from where you are. You feel like I gotta let this go. God's like, okay. You do that, you just, it's, he's not offended by that. You know? Yes. 

HEATHER He was not offended.

ALISON not offend, not easily offendable God.

HEATHER but that's not what I was taught. I'm not saying by my dad, but I'm saying by the system that I was raised in, the church that I went to, the school system that expelled me. That's not what I was taught. I was taught just by what I saw. God very easily gets offended and we have to protect it. 

ALISON Yeah. And gosh, Heather, this is where we could go into so many different directions. 'cause I'm curious how your faith journey is now. This is where I, to me, this is just good psychological development.

This is the overlap where I think the church gets so caught up in kind of keeping us young. And it's not, we're not breaking outta anything. It's just, listen, if you've parented young [00:32:00] adults, this. Your job as a parent shifts, and God designed this so God knows this. We have not changed, but our kids' experiences of us change.

They think they need us less. They actually, in some ways need us more, but the way they need us is different. They're asking different questions, they're trying to differentiate. This is all healthy, but in the church it's almost like we try to keep people fearful and God is so much bigger than that. So I really love.

You were brave enough, I think some of that part of you, you know, that in middle school was willing to, you know, call a spade a spade was brave enough to be like, I gotta be true here. God. 

HEATHER Yeah. Well that's part of the work that we do, right? It's like, if I am, authenticity is very important to me and right.

And so how do I keep talking to people about something if I'm struggling to believe So, yeah, I needed to go on this journey so that I can stay true and authentic in the ways that I serve. 

ALISON What does your faith journey look like now on the other side of this three years? 

HEATHER I feel like I'm learning. I'm still learning. I just had a difficult thing last week, but it was interesting 'cause he followed it up with like the opposite. So somebody modeled for me something that was kind of painful, but then literally three days later I. In a similar experience, somebody modeled for me something that was like above and beyond anything I, I deserve or should have asked.

And I just said, okay, you're revealing to me the type of person I want to be. Like, I want to live the way this second person responded to me. I'm looking at life right now as if there's so much to learn, but I'm hoping to end up in a more joyful state because I've been very serious about God for a long time, and now I wanna find that joy in being.

And laughing. Sometimes that's hard for me 'cause I'm somebody that like, I'm a feeler, so if I see other people drowning, it feels like, should I even be happy right now [00:34:00] if there's, you know, so I'm learning this balance and I feel called into joy. That is what I'm feeling called into. And to know this side of God.

ALISON Now, as God's beloved daughter, yes, again, you never, not, we're not right, but just in that experience of, oh, I do have. Good. Father, I wanna read this, Heather, because this, this is toward the end of the book. You said a month ago, my mom realized my dad didn't know who she was. They've been, they've been married over 40 years.

That's what Alzheimer's will do to a once perfectly happy family. It will make you forget that you are ever perfect or all that happy. I just know I love you. He told her, when she asked him who she was. Then you map it onto your own journey when you don't know who God is anymore. When you don't know what your dreams are or what passion you're willing to keep suffering through, when you can't remember whether you're an option B or option 1 42, I hope those words are all that remain.

Lord, I just know that I love you when all is stripped away from us, as bony Christians. May that be all That's true. Here is what remains. I don't even know that I know you anymore. God. I know that I love you. I mean, that's just so powerful. 

HEATHER I remember I was on a prayer walk. It was this last winter. I just remember saying that out loud.

I said, I don't know anything anymore. But here's what I do know, and I know that this has to be true. 'cause there's no circumstances that would make it true other than it's within me. I know I love you and I know I'm gonna keep showing up to be in this relationship with you, and it's not about what you can give me. And it's not about what I think I've earned. 

ALISON It just is. Even when I don't get it, I sometimes think about it when I kind of. Everything kind of falls by the wayside and I can't make any sense of anything. And I'm like, and here is God. Here is God still. But I love that and, and I still love you. I'm still here.

It's so beautiful. And the power of even that literal sense of your dad, not exactly recognizing your mom anywhere, but I still love you man. 

HEATHER I just learned so much from even watching this phase of him in Alzheimer's. 'cause that's what he was telling her is, I know I love you. I just don't have the words anymore to say who you are, but my heart recognizes you.

I mean, what a beautiful piece of just life and humanity in this really horrible situation that I get to keep another piece, that I get to keep with me long after he'll be gone. 

ALISON This goes without saying, but I just feel so much of God's delight in you and in you telling this story. In your father's delight, in you and in you telling this story.

I love the story that you've told through this book. I think it's gonna help a lot of people who I do hope. So go through this. You know, we don't talk about it enough. How do you let go of your faith and keep your faith? It feels like we've got these two options. You know, I can just burn the thing down or I can kind of fight for it and wrestle.

Maybe not even fight for it at times. Let it go. Thank God. Still remains. It's just such an important offering. So tell everyone where they can find the book and find your work and connect with you. 

HEATHER Yeah. Hey, it, what if I'm wrong? Wherever books are sold, HeatherThompsonDay.com. My website has everything to connect with me and book links and all of that.

ALISON It's just a beautiful journey and I appreciate you sharing it with us. 

HEATHER Thank you so much for letting me share it.

OUTRO

ALISON Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and click the plus or Follow button. That will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.

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