Surrendering My Expectations: Heidi's Story

What happens when the Jesus Freak identity you built as a teenager doesn’t sustain you through the wreckage of a divorce or the silence of your 30s?

 In this moving episode of Stories of Hope, we sit down with a guest who spent years trying to control her own narrative. From a Christian upbringing to a painful divorce after only 18 months, she opens up about the exhaustion of trying to be enough and the dangerous allure of leaving it all behind.

 She shares the pivotal moment of spiritual darkness that led to a desperate text message and a simple, three-sentence prayer that shifted her life from self-reliance to radical surrender. If you’ve ever felt tainted by your past or weary from trying to earn God’s favor, this conversation is a beautiful reminder that your security isn't found in your performance, but in whose you are.

In This Episode, You’ll Hear:

• The Weight of Expectations: How placing the burden of fulfillment on marriage led to a sense of being "ruined" after divorce.
• The Jesus Freak Re-examined: Navigating the shock of being told, "I don't think you know who Jesus is," despite a lifetime in the church.
• The Exhaustion of Control: The mental toll of constantly analyzing "what’s wrong with me" and trying to engineer a happy ending.
• The Turning Point: A dark night of the soul that was met with a powerful prayer of surrender: "Jesus, I love you. All I have is yours. Yours, I am. Yours, I want to be. Do with me as you will."
• Defining Hope: Why hope feels like security, relief, and the freedom to "laugh at the days to come."

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey, my name is Jason, and we are here with Heidi, who we just discovered have known each other probably for 17-ish years. And I have been a, I don't know if you know this, but I've been a longtime admirer of your art. I grew up painting with my grandmother, and so your technique and your ability to see color really reminds me of her. And I don't think I've ever told you that. And so I want to thank you for sharing that um with the I think the cities around the Central Valley through murals and then through your paintings that are awesome and beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Um Heidi, you have a really great story of hope. And as Spirit, we've been sharing stories of hope over this year. Um, and you have gone through some seasons, um, but yet you've seen God's hand um through community, um, through deep relationship and friendships, through loss, um, and also in coming back to understanding who you truly are as a daughter of God. So, would you just take some time and just um share with us a little bit of your journey and how God and how Jesus has revealed hope in your life?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah. So I was born and raised in Visalia, and I was born into a Christian family, church-going family. Um, and I considered myself to be a Jesus freak. Um, yeah, so I was I was like a nerdy Christian. I would, or not nerdy, I was just into it. I was I was into like um loving Jesus and not being ashamed about it. And I would say my faith was shaken um when I turned 21. I married my very first boyfriend. And um I I remember I just I was like ready to not be ready. I just was going for it. And um it was not as easy as I thought it would be, and um we ended up getting a divorce after a year and a half. Um I think I probably had like put uh too much expectation on it on marriage to be like something that fulfills me and like secures me. I don't know, like I just thought it would um meet something deep down inside, which it didn't. Uh so after the divorce, uh I've I felt ruined. I felt just like my life couldn't be good again. And I I used the word tainted. I felt tainted, and um, I also didn't feel like I could go to church anymore in I just it wasn't the same, nothing was the same. And um so in my 20s, I uh kind of just wandered a bit more, traveled, was more like less in the church culture and more in the world, um, open to the world, I would say. Um in my traveling, uh, I still like wanted God. I just didn't know how to come to him. He just felt very far away. But I had memorized Psalm 139 when I was 16 years old, and that psalm was just in me. And so in all of my wandering and traveling, I I would remember that um and recite it in my head. And it made me feel somehow okay, like safe, like that God saw me. Um, when that didn't go so well after so many years, um, I had come back home and was feeling hopeless. And I was at actually, I was at Radiant Church, and Travis had said, Does anyone feel hopeless? And I actually raised my hand in the congregation. And um I had gone forward for prayer afterwards, and I ended up on the floor crying. And um, June Ainley came up to me and she said, I don't think you know who Jesus is. And I was like, I what? Like, I will I was saved at a Billy Graham festival. Like, yeah, I said the prayer, you know, like I've gone on mission trips, you know, like I'm a Jesus freak. Yeah, I'm a Jesus freak. Like, um, and so when she said that, I was kind of shocked, but I was so desperate also to like, well, maybe I need to know because something's not um I'm crushed. And um so then I went to the discipleship school um at the time called Foundations, and that was two years where I was in a tight community uh where I felt like safe to confess or like talk about the things that I felt crushed by, and then I realized like I wasn't alone, that there were other people, because it was a community where everyone was encouraged to be open and um share with the things they didn't want to share, and um in that environment it allowed me to receive God's love. And so as I I came out of that school, like with my identity reestablished as a daughter of God, and but with it I had expectations again that God would do certain things, kind of like how I when I was younger, like this was after you're going through foundation, you still had that expectation. I had expectations that like like uh God would send me like my Prince Charming, like a husband, like that would love me the and I would get to go again two years ago. So when I was turned 36, I was so focused on my disappointments that I couldn't enjoy what God was doing in my life. And it's like you we can look at someone else's family and think their life is so much better than mine, or look at a single person. Like I've heard married people be like, Oh, I wish I was single. I wish I had your life. You're so free, like enjoy it, you know. And it's like, or and it's just we all look at what the other person has, and like I understand now why Paul says, like, don't want what you don't have. Like, yeah, don't try and have a different position than what you're given. And I think the whole purpose of it is to be present and to trust God, like he wants us to trust his process in us and to trust he knows how to provide and when. And but I was focused on wanting to be in control of it and figure out why are things happening the way they are and what's wrong with me. And like, but it had I was my mind was working in a way that I was in control, like of my life, and and that is exhausting to constantly be yeah, critical of yourself and analyzing like why aren't things going the way I want? What am I doing wrong? What's my part to play? And so I just got tired and of of all of this disappointment where I had this eff it attitude, and I literally it was like on my birthday, just I it was a mindset I just kind of took and didn't care anymore. Um and didn't care about what you should do, you know, just like but I was attracted to unbelievers because I was like thinking, you guys look more free than believers. You just seem like you're enjoying life, you don't have any shame, like um you're authentically you. I had actually said to someone, I wish I wasn't raised a Christian because then I would feel free to just like not have to try and live a certain way. And when I said that, that night was it's like God removed his presence from me, and it was a dark night where and I felt like more fear and more loneliness than I had ever felt, and more emptiness than I had ever felt. And I so I in a panic, I texted Aaron Gomes and I was like, hey, Aaron, I'm not like this is what I'm thinking, like, and I'm panicking. I don't like this feeling. I don't like feeling like I what if I don't believe? Like this is scary. What? And he texted me this prayer. He said, Pray this, say this out loud three times. So it's Jesus, I love you. All I have is yours, yours I am, yours I want to be. Do with me as you will. Jesus, I love you. All I have is yours, yours I am, yours I want to be. Do with me as you will. Jesus, I love you. All I have is yours. Yours I am, yours I want to be. Do with me as you will. As I prayed this prayer, I I felt this security cover me like a like a blanket. And I think it's it has to do with who we belong to. Like if you think of who you belong to being someone bigger than your fears and bigger than your weaknesses, then that's like there's it's so securing. And I didn't realize that that the the reason I was feeling insecure is because I didn't realize who I belonged to. And I thought I was abandoned, I thought I was alone, I thought like I was responsible for my life, and that's terrifying. So when I prayed this prayer, it's like I'm shifting everything onto him. And um, and if I belong to him, then he's responsible for me. Which, and if he is who he says he is, and he's responsible for me, then that's pretty securing. Like so it kind of it made me realize like it's so much about knowing who he is. And the more we know who he is and his character, and the more we know how he loves us in our and we the more the more we know ourselves too, like weak and needy, then the more free and the more fruitful life I feel that I'll have and we all will have, but it's such a process. That's all it is. Like the process is about knowing who we are and who God is.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

What did you feel when you said that prayer? Was it an immediate, like infilling of the Holy Spirit?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Was it a gradual, like it was actually immediate, and I like I because I turned my lamp on, it was like there's something there must be power in the name of Jesus. Yeah, it must be true because I felt like um clarity, like, oh, he's who I belong to. Like, I don't need to be afraid. Like, okay, my life belongs to him, so I don't have to then worry about my life and if I screwed it up anymore. Yeah, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

So if you could say hope feels like or hope is, how would you finish that sentence?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Um, okay. Hope feels like security in perfect love. Hope feels like God fulfilling like my dream. I'm like hope feels like relief. It feels like I can laugh at the days to come. It feels not lonely. Hope feels exciting because I can trust like that God is wild, you know? Yeah. My confidence is more real, and I don't know where that takes place. Like, where does our confidence become real? Like, is it uh in Christ?

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Like, no, he's real, like it could come from surrender, it's through surrender, humility we talked about, but also in the reading of scripture through prayer, through community, and really understanding all aspects of who God is to us and for us and in us. And I think that's what you've been describing is this experience of really rediscovering who Jesus is. There was this idea of who Jesus is as a child, and now as a woman in your mid-30s, you're going, I'm fully discovering who Jesus is, maybe for the first time. And it's good. And there's hope.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yes. Makes me also think people are more beautiful too. Like instead of being afraid of people, to be more fascinated of like what like Jesus, uh you're his creation, you know, like there's just so much depth in each person, like so much treasure in each person. Like if he finds me a treasure, well, like it's it's in everyone. So yeah, there's no boredom in that. Yeah. And that's pretty hopeful.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for spending time with us. Thank you. It's really good to hear your story. And um, I know it's going to be encouraging, and I know that we're going to have people who are going to be able to connect with finding and rediscovering that hope in Jesus. I think the beautiful part, right, it happens at different stages of our life. Um, and this is a new discovery in some ways for you, but also it's a discovery that I believe God's timing for you is is perfect and that it gives you an opportunity to have this relationship with people, I think, that you probably always have wanted, which is an honest relationship, really understanding who Christ is and each of us and then being able to share it. I appreciate your time. Thank you for being vulnerable.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Thanks for joining us. Follow the journey. Find us at My Spirit Radio on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more stories of hope. Do you have a God story? We would love to hear it. Head to spirit89.com, click on the stories of hope banner, and share it with us. Links are in the show notes. Alright. I'll see you next time.