What if the place you most want to avoid… is the very place where Jesus wants to meet you?
In this week’s episode of The Love Offering Podcast, I had the meaningful opportunity to talk with author and speaker Willow Weston about her powerful new book, Collide.
Life rarely unfolds the way we imagine. Heartbreak, loss, trauma, disappointment, and shame can leave us feeling scattered and unsure of how to move forward. Many of us try to outrun the pain or bury it beneath busy lives and brave faces. But as Willow gently reminds us, unresolved hurt has a way of resurfacing—often through anxiety, broken relationships, or a deep sense of restlessness.
But what if our pain isn’t the end of the story?
In Collide, Willow invites us to consider a different possibility: that Jesus meets us right in the middle of our mess. Not to shame us or condemn us, but to walk with us, heal what is broken, and begin restoring our hearts.
Through her own honest and vulnerable story, Willow offers compassionate guidance for those who long for healing but aren’t sure where to begin. Together we talk about:
- Why our past wounds often shape our present struggles
- How avoiding pain can keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns
- What Scripture reveals about weakness, suffering, and God’s nearness
- How inviting Jesus into our hurt opens the door for real healing
- And how our healing can ripple outward to bless others
One of the most encouraging reminders from our conversation is this: we don’t have to arrive healed before coming to Jesus. We can come exactly as we are—limping, weary, unsure—and trust that He meets us there.
Friend, if you’re carrying something heavy today, I hope this conversation reminds you that God sees you, He cares deeply about what you’ve walked through, and He is near to the brokenhearted.
You don’t have to run from your pain.
You can bring it to Him.
🎧 Listen to my conversation with Willow Weston here
My prayer is that this episode encourages you to take one small step toward healing and to trust that even the places that feel most broken can become places where God’s grace meets you most powerfully.
With love,
Rachael
Host, The Love Offering Podcast
Author of Everyday Prayers for Love
P.S. If this episode encourages you, consider sharing it with a friend who may need the reminder that healing is possible—and that Jesus meets us right in the middle of our story.
Summary
In this episode of the Love Offering Podcast, host Rachael Adams welcomes Willow Weston, an author and speaker, to discuss her journey of faith and healing. Willow shares her personal story of overcoming childhood trauma and how it led to the creation of her ministry, Collide. The conversation delves into the complexities of healing, the importance of addressing personal pain, and how healing can positively impact relationships. Willow emphasizes Jesus’ role in the healing process and encourages listeners to embrace their worthiness of healing. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer and a reminder of the power of love amid pain.
Takeaways
Willow’s journey began in an irreligious home with a negative view of Christianity.
Her radical conversion at 21 marked the start of her healing journey.
The Collide ministry was born from her desire to help others find healing.
Healing is a complex and layered process that takes time.
Unresolved pain doesn’t disappear; it requires inviting God into it.
Healed individuals can positively impact those around them.
It’s important to be real about our struggles while loving others.
Forgiveness is a journey that may require taking small steps.
Grieving with God is essential for healing.
Love runs towards pain, just as Jesus did.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Love Offering Podcast
01:17 Willow Weston’s Journey to Faith
04:38 The Birth of the Collide Ministry
08:06 Understanding Personal Pain and Healing
10:12 The Complexity of Healing
12:47 The Ripple Effect of Healing on Relationships
15:24 Loving Others in the Midst of Healing
17:19 The Role of the Holy Spirit in Healing
21:26 Addressing Bitterness Towards God
24:28 Encouragement for Those in Pain
26:13 The Nature of Love and Pain
28:16 Embracing the Empty Nest Phase
29:21 Closing Thoughts and Prayer
Transcript (AI Generated)
Rachael Adams (00:01.746)
Welcome to the Love Offering Podcast. I’m your host, Rachel Adams, author of Everyday Prayers for Love, learning to love God, others, and even yourself. Each week, we dive into meaningful conversations about how to live out the greatest commandment, loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Whether through inspiring stories, practical wisdom, or biblical truth, my hope is to encourage you to love boldly, live faithfully, and reflect God’s love in your everyday life.
Today I’m honored to welcome Willow Weston to the show. Willow is an author, speaker, podcast host, and the founder of Collide, a ministry impacting women nationwide. Through conferences, Bible studies, and storytelling marked by honesty and hope, Willow invites women to meet Jesus in the middle of their mess and discover healing, freedom, and transformation. In her new book, Collide, Running into Healing When Life Hands You Hurt, Willow asks a powerful question.
What if your pain is the very place where healing begins? Through her own raw and redemptive story, she reminds us that Jesus doesn’t avoid our brokenness. He runs straight into it, not to condemn us, but to walk with us and make us whole. Well, hello Willow, and welcome to the Love Offering Podcast. I’m so happy to have you.
Willow Weston (01:17.166)
Hey Rachel, this is so fun. We gotta do this on my podcast, and so it’s so fun to be on yours. Thank you for having me.
Rachael Adams (01:24.564)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s an honor to get to talk with you. And I was telling you before we hit record, I remember several years ago when I got to be a guest on your podcast, we were talking about this very project. And so it’s so neat to see it come to fruition. And so I’m really happy to, for those who don’t know you yet, introduce you to them and hear more of your story.
Willow Weston (01:47.579)
Thank you so much. I’m happy to be on and chat with you.
Rachael Adams (01:53.342)
So collide, tell us when your life first collided with the Lord. When did you first come to a relationship with him?
Willow Weston (02:02.157)
Oh wow. I grew up in an irreligious home, didn’t grow up going to church, in fact kind of had a mindset. My mom, I was raised by a single mom, and had a mindset that was pretty negative about Jesus and Christians. And so I really wanted nothing to do with Christianity. When I was in my early 20s, in college, my life was falling apart. I had all of this unresolved baggage and wounds from my childhood that I had never dealt with. And it was really coming out sideways in my friendships, in my ability to get up and go to class and carry grades, carry relationships, carry my life. I had not only recognized that I had been really wounded by my parents, but I also now had the great capability of wounding my own life and wounding other people’s. And I had this radical conversion when I was 21 years old. The Lord, in a desperate place where I needed a place to live within a week or two, the Lord put me in the basement of this Christian family’s house, and this woman, Cindy, who’s so bold. She kept telling me about her Jesus, and I thought, I’m only gonna live here temporarily. She said, ” She wanted me to. You can live here, but you can’t party, and you can’t have boys overnight.” And I thought that’s the most archaic thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life. I won’t be here long, because I’m not gonna be able to pull that off. But she invited me into her days and her life and into her family and her small group and just invited me to begin sharing my story. And it was the first time that I even realized I had a story to share. And I started opening up about things I had gone through that I wasn’t allowed to talk about as a kid. And as I was sharing my story, she began to speak Jesus into my story. And it’s such a long story about how I got to the day I gave my life to Christ, but it was God using that woman pouring into my life, speaking into my life, and drawing me into hers, and speaking Jesus into me, that truly led me all the way to, I remember the day I gave my life to Jesus, like I was just, my hands were up, and I was like, God, I wanna give you everything, like my past, my wounds, my baggage, my dreams, my hopes, my body, my mind, my heart, and I handed him my life, and I’ve never been the same since. It’s been amazing. So obviously, there are challenges and hard things, but he’s with me in all of those.
Rachael Adams (04:52.468)
So, at what point did you begin the Collide ministry when you went from kind of coming to know him as your Lord and Savior to this being your whole-life mission?
Willow Weston (05:05.165)
Yeah, so I dove right into following Jesus. I think next week I’ll drive to a church by myself and start getting involved. I’d never been to church in my life. Became a youth leader within weeks. Got invited to be a youth leader, and I hadn’t been to a youth group, think, except for one visit. So I started getting involved in service, investing in kids, leading Bible studies, reading the Bible, and growing in the Lord. All these things were in vocational ministry for several years, and then I got pregnant with my first kiddo and took a step back from vocational ministry, had my second kid. And it was then that my mom, who I hadn’t lived with since I was 15 years old, I had to move out of my mom’s, as a kid, and another family took me in. And here my mom moves into town to be super grandma. And we had all this baggage from her addiction, neglect, and abandonment that we’d never dealt with. And she was still a severe alcoholic, and she knocked on my door one day, and I had my kiddo and Bella, and I didn’t know it was her, and I went to the door to answer the door, and I saw her face, and I just flipped out. Like I just couldn’t let her into my house and my life, and all my childhood pain kind of came flooding over me, and I ran upstairs, and I hid in the closet with Bella because I didn’t want my mom to know we were in there and so I just went as far away as I could so she wouldn’t hear us. And I had this moment where the Lord was like Willow, I’ve done a lot of healing in your life since you gave your life to me, but there’s more to be done, like you’re hiding in a closet because of your pain, and now you’re gonna hurt your own daughter. And so you need to come out and get help. So that was this crazy moment where I stepped out of that closet, ended up in a Christian therapist’s office, and it wasn’t anything the therapist said, but I had this sort of epiphany, and I just started talking and seeing all these things I’d never heard before, and I was like,
Willow Weston (07:20.307)
I was born into wounds. I collided with my parents. They didn’t get healing for their wounds, and they wounded me, and now I might wound my kid. And I’m desperate for healing. I’m in need of a new kind of collision. Like when you and I collide, if we’re wounded, we wound each other. But when I see Jesus in the New Testament, when He collides with people, they’re made more whole than broken. And so I paid the lady her $85, and I was walking to my car when the Lord said, “I’m going to do something with these words: wounded, collision.” I had no sense of what that was. I wasn’t looking to start something. I was just hiding in a closet, so I wasn’t in a good headspace. And within a week or two, a college-age girl asked me to mentor her. I said I could meet with you and we could look at Jesus in the New Testament, how he runs into wounded people, and what he does as a result of it. And I thought it was going to be her. She brought 25 friends. And then, long story short, now we’re like 14 years later, and thousands and thousands of women have come and collided with Jesus, experiencing his hope, healing, and purpose. And so I’m just the girl in the closet who needs Jesus to heal me, and I’ve invited a few friends to come, and man, have we experienced the goodness of God.
Rachael Adams (08:40.5)
Well, I’m so excited that you have invited us into this story as well. But we’re going to take a brief break to hear a word from today’s sponsor. And when we come back, we’re going to talk more with Willow about her healing journey.
Welcome back. I am talking with Willow Weston about her new book, Collide, Running into Healing When Life Hands You Hurt. So I love that subtitle. So you’ve alluded to a lot of this. There was some maybe some pain in the relationship with your parents and your mother, but would you just elaborate a little bit more about, like the specific hurt that you experienced that needed healing?
Willow Weston (09:23.213)
Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve all experienced hurt. And for me, a lot of the hurt that I experienced as a kid had to do with, you know, this sense of feeling like my father was absent and my mother had an addiction and all that her addiction brought into her house, whether it was, you know, angry, violent men or sexual escapades that no kid should see till being left alone for way too long at a time and feeling abandoned. And so I had all of these things that would happen, and I was kind of expected to just experience it, to just move on and get over it. And I think a lot of us can resonate with that, whether it’s in big ways or small ways, we have unresolved pain because we’ve been taught by people who are wounded themselves to just kind of move on, sweep things under the rug, pray about it, and it’s just going to go away. But the thing is, about unresolved pain for all of us is that it doesn’t actually go away. It doesn’t go away until you invite the Lord into it and invite Him to go back to the origin of the pain to really heal you. And so that’s in big traumatic things, but it’s also, you could have been hurt by your best friend last week and something she said to you and you’re trying to just get over it but you’re not getting over it you’re still mad and you’re still bitter and now your bitterness is coming out sideways and so I think we’re a people who just hope that pain disappears but it doesn’t magically disappear Jesus actually invites us to deal with it and not dealing is not healing so
Willow Weston (11:13.141)
We have a beautiful God who wants to meet us in the middle of it and make it whole. Healing does take time, and it’s very layered. It’s very slow. So how do you think we remain faithful and hopeful when healing doesn’t happen quickly or neatly?
Willow Weston (11:30.925)
Yeah, I mean, we’re complex people, and so there are a lot of areas, at least in my life, that need healing. And so I think we want God to wave a magic wand and just make everything better. And one of the things that’s interesting to me when I look at Jesus in the New Testament is that he actually shows up in people’s scenes, he collides with them, and he invites them to participate in the healing they long for. So when you see, say, him run into the man with the shriveled hand, he says, “Stretch out your hand.” Like, he’s gonna heal it, but he wants the man to actually participate on the Sabbath when he’s not supposed to move. He’s asking him to take a risk and stretch out his hand. You see this when he shows up to the man on the mat who’s been waiting 38 years for the water to heal him. Jesus shows up on the scene and actually asks him to pick up his mat. And I’m sure the guy’s like, what? I’m the dude who doesn’t move. Like, I’ve been here almost 40 years.
Rachael Adams (12:29.87)
Right. Yeah.
Willow Weston (12:32.275)
And Jesus is like, “No, I’m asking you to do something you don’t do.” I’m asking you to move. And so part of the long journey and process with the Lord is that I think the Lord is like, I want you to want your healing as much as you want me to want your healing. I want you to actively participate. Like I want you to follow the doctor’s orders. I want you to do the PT stretches. I want you to call the therapist. I want you to read the Bible and hang on to my promises and believe they’re true for you and not just your friends. Like, I want you to actively name what has hurt you, who has hurt you, that voice that speaks to you and tells you you’re not worthy. Where did that voice come from? If he just waved a magic wand and made the healing process faster, then all the character refinement, the work, and the depth we experienced with him wouldn’t have happened if he just made us all better. He wants to get in there with us and do something way greater than make us feel like we just experienced an overnight miracle.
Rachael Adams (13:40.915)
You know, earlier, when you were given part of your testimony, when you and your mom came to your door, and you hid in the closet, you said something I feel like was really impactful, that your daughter was with you. And then in some ways, your mom had hurt you. And the last thing you wanted to do was to hurt your daughter. And so our healing does impact the people around us. You know, there’s the familiar saying: hurt people, hurt others. Well-healed people can help heal others. So talk to us about that, how our healing impacts those around us, and how you’ve seen maybe the ripple outward because of your healing.
Willow Weston (14:15.809)
Yeah, I think often, especially women, we’re so busy helping everyone else that we don’t take the time to make space for our own health and our own healing. I think we’ve been invited to be silent for a lot of us. I think we have been asked to keep secrets. I think we’ve been told that if we’re good little Christians, we’ll pray and ask God to help us feel better, and then we’ll move on. We won’t make a ruckus, we won’t tell our story, all of these things. We have all these things. And so we put off our healing. We put off our health, our self-care, and all of these things. And then we end up hurting the people we love the most. And so what I think is a really helpful reframe: some of us won’t say yes to the invitation to healing unless we start to think, okay, if this actually is for my kids, I might do it, because that’s how much we love our stinking families. And so I wanna encourage women to say yes to what is one thing you can do today, to say yes to healing and health, because that move is actually going to help heal your family and help heal your friends, and invite them to say yes as well. So When I was a mom and I’m hiding in a closet, if I would have stayed in that closet, if I would have come out and not told my husband, not gone to therapy, not been real about the fact that I could be triggered in a moment’s time by my childhood pain, if I would have raised Bella, and she’s 20 now, if I would have raised her like that, she would have a mess of pain she’d be having to deal with now. But I get to see, and she’s not perfect by any means, and I don’t mean to say that at all, but she is so beautiful and so strong and has faith in the Lord. And instead of spending a ton of time in therapy dealing with all the wounds I’ve caused, and I’m sure I’ve hurt her in some ways, but instead of having to do all of that, she’s out chasing people who are hurting because she doesn’t have all this baggage. She doesn’t have the same experience that I grew up with.
Willow Weston (16:34.259)
We get a chance to give our kids something different from what we were handed. You might have inherited something that was hard and wounded, but you don’t have to pass it on.
Rachael Adams (16:46.43)
I think that’s a really important issue that we talk about. When we are still healing, how can we still love people faithfully in that in-between place? Like if we haven’t experienced full healing from something, but yet we’re still trying to love others well, what does that look like?
Willow Weston (17:17.373)
I walked a fine line, and maybe you’re listeners, and you can resonate with this, where I knew that I wasn’t going to pull off being the perfect put-together mom because I’m so far from it. And so I really tried to figure out what it looks like to be real with my family, real with my kids, about what’s really going on and how I really need Jesus. And so they, my kids, grew up seeing
real pain, not where I expected them to be, my therapist, but where I was real with them. They saw the real pain, but they also saw the real redemption. They saw the power of Jesus showing up in my story. They saw how hard it was for me to love my mom. They drove down when we would drive down to meet my mom, and they saw the agony, and yet we still knew we were called to go and love her in the midst of her addiction, and they were invited into that, too. They saw when I met with my abusive stepdad near the end of his life and set him free into peace and forgiveness. They were there. They saw me freaking out on the drive, not wanting to do it, and yet feeling like God was calling me to do it. And so all of these things where I got to be real with my kids, invited them to know exactly who to go to and how to get there when they feel anxious, when they feel a mess, when they feel in pain, when they feel hurt by somebody. And I think that’s the hard thing as a woman, is like, how real do I get about my mess without getting my mess on all over other people? But there’s something so powerful and beautiful when we get real about our stories with other people, when we invite them to see the power of God showing up in that mess and bringing about beauty.
Rachael Adams (19:04.084)
Talk to us about forgiveness as you have been healing, and about the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this. You know, this whole healing process, and you have talked about it beautifully. We can’t do any of it apart from the Lord’s work in our lives. Like this is not out of our own strength.
Willow Weston (19:23.813)
man, mean, forgiveness is a big one, especially as a Christian, because I think that we read scripture and people throw it around like, you’re a Christian, you need to just forgive them. And I think for some of us who’ve experienced some incredibly difficult things, it’s not as easy as just needing to forgive them. And we’ve been trying that for decades, and it’s not working, so we’re faking that we’ve forgiven. So we have this fake forgiveness, but it’s not real forgiveness. When I gave my life to Jesus Christ, it was so upside down and radical for me. I had to confess to my family members that I was a Christian, which was like the worst news ever. So when I gave my life to Jesus, my first assignment that I remember Jesus giving me was: “I now want you to forgive your father.” And I was sitting in therapy for like over a year saying, I can’t forgive him. Where was he? Where was he when I went through this? Where was he when my mom was drunk? Where was he when I was being hurt by other men? Where was he? And Jesus was changing me and showing me how much grace and forgiveness he had for me. And the more I spent time with Jesus and his character, the more he invited me to be like him with my own father. And so I was agonizing over this, and my therapist said, I want you to take one step to walk towards forgiveness, which is something I write about in my book. Sometimes forgiveness feels a million miles away, but what’s one step you can take towards it today? And it might be that you start by seeing a therapist. It might be that you name how you feel hurt. It might be that you write a letter. She said, write a letter to your dad, and you’ll never have to mail it. And I wrote a letter to my dad, and I wrote years and years of pain, and I wasn’t gonna send it, and then I decided my next step I decided was to send it. And I sent that letter, and I remember the day I got an envelope back, I saw his handwriting, and I sat down, and I thought I’m so scared to open this because if he dismisses my pain, that’s gonna make everything hurt all over again. And it doesn’t always happen like this, and I understand that.
Willow Weston (21:46.058)
And forgiveness cannot be about the other person’s response. What I realized was that my bitter heart towards my dad, my wanting my dad to hurt because he hurt me, was torturing me. That was keeping me a prisoner. That was embittering and poisoning my life. And so whatever was in that letter didn’t matter because I decided who I wanted to be as a person, and I wanted to be more like Jesus. So if you’re out there, listening, and forgiveness feels a million miles away, number one, take the first step towards it. And it might not be forgiveness. I might be praying, Lord, help me. I don’t know how I can forgive this person, but I know you’ve called me to it. But take the first step towards it and decide that your forgiveness has much more to do with the kind of person you want to be than with their response. I opened the letter my dad sent, and he absolutely owned every last drop of his absence in my life and how much pain it caused me, and how it’s his biggest regret. And I will tell you, my dad has since passed away. He passed away this year, and my dad and I reached a place of forgiveness and reconciliation. We became friends, and the last day I spent with my dad, I am so very grateful that we got to experience that gift of peace. So extremely grateful. But it took a long time to get there. It wasn’t overnight, and it wasn’t because I read a scripture on it. Yes, I read a scripture on it, and I heard what the Lord’s will is in the Lord’s heart, but it needed to be real forgiveness, not fake. I’m saying the right thing, forgiveness.
Rachael Adams (23:36.123)
I love that you are so authentic and real with your story, and that there is hope, like what I’m hearing in your story, that there is hope for our hearts and our heartbreak. And as you were talking about being bitter with your earthly father, it occurred to me that it’s possible for us to be bitter with our heavenly father, that he would allow some of these hurts to even happen to begin with talk to us about
Willow Weston (24:04.001)
Yeah, it’s interesting. have a chapter in my book called “If You Hads,” and it comes from the story in the Bible where Mary and Martha asked Jesus to come because their brother Lazarus was sick. And scripture says he purposely waited for three days and didn’t go when they asked him to, and Lazarus died. And Jesus shows up in town, and both Mary and Martha run out when they hear Jesus is there, and they both say the same thing. They say, if you had been here, if you had been here, our brother would not have died. And I think there’s this really interesting sense that they were being so raw and real with their grief, not just their grief of their brother, but their grief of God. Like, where were you, God, when I needed you? You didn’t show up the way I wanted you to. And I love you, follow you, and like where were you? And I think a lot of us need to start with our if you hats with God. I think we have to get real there. You can’t pretend that they’re not there if they’re there. If you feel ticked off that God didn’t rescue someone or didn’t answer prayer, or didn’t give you a dream, or save you from a disappointment, God knows that’s there anyway. You’re not hiding it from him. He knows all of your thoughts, right? Psalm 139: like there’s nowhere we can go that God doesn’t know who we are, what we think, and what we do. And so he already knows. And he actually, Jesus sits with Mary and Martha. This is the great, absolutely most underrated verse and easiest one to memorize of all time, Jesus wept. He actually emotes with them. He sits with them in their pain and grieves with them. I actually talk about this in the book. As a new Christian, my therapist invited me to go back to one childhood memory, the saddest childhood memory I could think of. And I didn’t want to have to do that. And it was weird because what I had thought about, and I won’t go into it too much, but it was a very surprising thought and memory.
Willow Weston (26:26.517)
And she asked me to invite Jesus to go back to that place, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it for probably a year or two. And I finally got to a place where I could invite Jesus into that grief of why did you leave me here in this pain? Why did I have to go down all these roads and go through all the things I had to go through? Where were you? Why weren’t you with me? And I had this crazy experience where he just spoke over me and into me and held me in that space in a way that just unlocked so many ways that I’d been bound. And so I think grieving with God and grieving God are both very important.
Rachael Adams (27:15.028)
I can’t wait to continue the conversation today. But we’re gonna take another brief break to hear a word from today’s sponsor. And when we come back, we’re going to continue talking with Weston and Willow about how healing from her is possible.
Welcome back. I’m talking with Willow Weston about her book, Collide, running into healing when life hands you hurt. And so Willow, I’m just being super mindful that someone listening right now is in the midst of hurt and she’s holding onto it. Maybe it happened far back in the past, or maybe it just happened today, just moments ago. What would be your encouragement to her today? What’s one thing she can do today to start the healing process?
Willow Weston (27:59.66)
I think I want to say that you’re worthy of healing. You’re worthy of healing your pain and your hurt, no matter how big or small, no matter how much other people have maybe dismissed them or how strong you’ve been and what a survivor you are and how you’ve managed anyways. You’re worthy of healing, and you get to say yes to God’s invitation to heal today. And not only will that help you in your life, but it’ll also bring healing to the people you love.
Rachael Adams (28:34.788)
So this year on the podcast, is there a biblical concept of love that you think applies to this topic?
Willow Weston (28:57.111)
Well, I don’t know if this answers your question, but when I see the life of Jesus, and He is love, He’s love incarnate. Like we see Him, God with us, walking around, and He runs towards pain. Love runs towards pain. It doesn’t run away from pain. It doesn’t avoid pain. It doesn’t sweep pain under the rug. Love runs towards our pain, enters it, and heals it. God can handle our pain and heal it because he is love. He loves you so much that he doesn’t want to keep you stuck in your hurt, but he actually wants to heal your hurt and then use your life and purpose your life in your story to help heal other people.
Rachael Adams (29:47.112)
You know, it strikes me that if we’re to love as God has loved us, and he loves us by running towards our pain, then is that something that we should do with other people, run towards their pain?
Willow Weston (30:00.698)
I absolutely believe we should be running towards pain. I think a lot of us are like, where’s God? I don’t feel like I’m experiencing God. I think God’s like, hey, I’m running into, know, look at him. He gets out of a boat and goes into the tombs in a cemetery where a guy is crying out day and night, and he’s cutting himself. And Jesus intentionally goes out of his way to meet him. He goes out of his way to meet the woman at the well who, you know, clearly is struggling in life and has this pattern in her life that isn’t working and is wounding her life, and he goes out of his way to meet her. He’s on his way to heal a 12-year-old girl and a woman who’s been bleeding for like 12 years, the same amount of years as the young girl, and he and she reach out and touch the hem of his robe, and he stops for her. We have a God who runs towards pain, and we’re called to follow him. We’re actually called to be imitators of him. And so that looks like actually entering pain. We tend to be people who wanna avoid people’s pain. It scares us. And yet we have a God who runs right towards it. And so what does it look like for us to be? We get healing from Jesus; the more healing we receive in our collisions with wounded people, the more we can bring.
Rachael Adams (31:23.09)
Yeah, it seems to me, and I’m just being transparent, that most of the people I know run away from pain, our pain and everybody else’s. Like, we don’t want to get messy with it, but that’s honestly every story you’ve told, and looking at scripture and the stories that I know in the Bible. I would concur with what you have found that he runs to it. He’s in constant pursuit of a relationship with us, not because we’re clean or deserve it, or because everything is perfect, but because of the opposite, in some ways. So I just love this message so much and believe it’s going to help so many people, as it already has today. And so, on a little bit of a lighter topic, is there something that you are loving right now?
Willow Weston (32:06.209)
Ooh, something I’m loving right now. Well, this seems silly, but Jess recently became an empty nester. So when my chicks are in the nest, there’s nothing I love more. Like, I just absolutely adore it when this last holiday season, both kids moved back into the house, and I was like, I was in like heaven on earth. Just absolutely loved it.
Rachael Adams (32:28.948)
Me too. I’m gonna be an empty nester in a couple of years, and I’m not looking forward to it, but I know it’s a there’s beauty in every season, and I know that, and so I’m thankful, but hopefully that they will continue to want to come home, that’s the goal.
Willow Weston (32:45.405)
Yes, that is the goal, and I’m sure they will.
Rachael Adams (32:48.082)
Yeah, well, so I know I want to stay connected with you. I’m sure listeners are going to want to, so tell us how we can best do that.
Willow Weston (32:55.071)
Yeah, well, thank you so much, Rachel, for having me on and for doing the work that you do. I think it’s so important to point women to Jesus and invite them to follow him, to be more loving in the world and to themselves. So I appreciate you and all that you stand for. Yeah, if people want to stay in touch, I’m on Instagram at @WillowAnnWeston. If you wanna get my new book and hear more about the message that the Lord laid on my heart, you can get it at most places where books are sold, Barnes & Noble.
Rachael Adams (33:53.681)
Yeah, of course. It’s been a pleasure to have you. And so would you close us today in a word of prayer?
Willow Weston (34:00.182)
Absolutely.
Willow Weston (34:04.397)
Jesus, we come before you today and thank you that you are a God who runs right into our mess, right into our pain, into our grief, and into our story. And not only can you handle all of it, but you want to heal it. God, I pray that in the places and spaces that are hurt today, will you make us more whole? Will you show us how we can participate in what next steps you’re calling us towards? And will you remind us that we’re worthy of it? God, in the ways that someone might be listening and they don’t believe they’re worthy of it, that they have time for it, or that it matters, God, will you show them that their healing matters and that it will help heal the people they love. Thank you, Jesus, that you love us so much that you would take on our wounds and our pain, our sin and suffering, so that we would always know how loved we are. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.
Rachael Adams (35:17.338)
Amen. Well, I just as you’re praying, I had just the picture of Jesus who was wounded and hurt to the point that he knows and he has experienced everything or more than we have. And that’s the kind of God that we serve. What a beautiful picture.
Willow Weston (35:37.645)
Mmm, so beautiful. I love Jesus. Oh, thank you, Rachel. Thank you for having me.
Rachael Adams (35:40.818)
Hmm, me too. And I love you. So thank you so much for being my guest today.
Rachael Adams (35:49.417)
Thank you so much for listening to the Love Offering Podcast. I hope today’s conversation encouraged and inspired you to love God, love others, and even love yourself a little more. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends and leave a review it helps others find the show and spreads the message of love even further. To connect with me, visit me on my website at RachelKAdams.com. While you’re there, be sure to download the Love Offering Calendar, a free resource filled with simple daily ways to love those around you. Don’t forget to pick up a copy of Willow Weston’s new book, Collide, Running into Healing When Life Hands You Hurt. A special thank you to Life Audio for supporting this podcast and making it possible to fund more great podcasts at lifeaudio.com. Thanks again for joining us today. Until next time, let’s make our lives an offering of love.
