[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to the Perimeter Counseling Podcast, a ministry of Perimeter Church. I'm your host, Caleb Martin. Perimeter Counseling center is a Christ centered, clinically informed group of counselors who are passionate about offering redemptive, holistic and practical principles to guide you through life's challenges. Thanks for joining us today. Welcome to another episode of the premier counseling podcast. I'm your host Caleb Martin and my co host is here, Kathy Chang. And we have a special guest with us today, one of our counselors who's been with us Since February of 2024, Ashley Cable. Welcome Ashley. [00:00:43] Speaker A: Thank you. It's so good to be here. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Excited for you guys to get to know her. A little bit of her story. Ashley, first tell us a little bit about your family. [00:00:52] Speaker A: I am married to Paul and we've been married for going on 20 years. Wow. Awesome. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Wow. [00:01:02] Speaker A: We hope we have a big 20th celebration coming up. So no pressure Paul. [00:01:07] Speaker B: No. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Nice. And we have three children, a 16 year old, 14 year old and a 12 year old. And we've been at perimeter for around 10 years. Awesome. [00:01:19] Speaker B: My first question to Ashley when she was talking about age of kids was when are they available for babysitting? So this isn't a promo for babysitting but they're getting of age so there you go. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Right away. They love the extra spending money. [00:01:31] Speaker B: So yeah, absolutely. Well, today we are going to be talking about a difficult subject, but we're talking about chronic illness. And it's not just randomly that we selected you to talk about this. But Ashley, we know that you've had your own journey, you're currently on a journey and so why don't you share just a little bit of your journey to start us off and we'll just have a conversation about this topic. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I was symptom free growing up, but I was diagnosed by some routine blood work with hypothyroidism, which is an underactive thyroid. About 10 years later found out that was because of an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto's and that just causes brain fog. It causes issues with metabolism and it's your immune system is attacking your thyroid. And later on in my 20s, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, another autoimmune disorder which attacks the lining of your colon and again similar symptoms. All of these as autoimmune disorders are attacking your immune system is overreacting and it's instead of attacking the foreign bodies and the viruses and the bacteria, it's attacking parts of your body instead. So that was in my 20s and then when I was 35, I started having trouble joint issues. I was making various trips and tests to orthopedic surgeons and various doctors and found out that I had psoriatic arthritis, which attacks my joints and my skin. So with all of those kind of conditions, there is an autoimmune disorder, also a dysfunction of your dopamine regulation in your brain. So that can lead to chronic fatigue, which is probably the most debilitating symptom that I have, and memory issues, confusion. So some months it's great. And I am relatively symptom free. And then I'll have months of various tests because a flare up has happened. So I'm currently in a flare up and going through the various tests and we have a solution coming. It just takes a while to get there. So. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. [00:04:15] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks so much. I don't think I even realized kind of the extent of the struggle that you have been facing for a good part of your life. For those of you listening who may not know Ashley, you would never guess by looking at her that there are all of these multiple issues going on. And she is. You really are just such like a bright presence and a joy to be around. So it adds color to your story that you are able to face all of those struggles with such hope because there was a lot going on there. So, yeah, thanks for. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Thank you for saying that. That's doing great. Thank you. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know all of that. I knew pieces of it, but thank you for sharing that. How have you. And you've also had three kids along the way, and there's difficulties with that. But how are you maybe applying the truths of the scripture to your life today? Or maybe you talked about 20s and early 30s, how's God met you through His Word, his people? What's that looked like for you? [00:05:28] Speaker A: I have been very blessed that I began my counseling journey and studying through seminary because that really was developing some theological roots. And this foundation has really helped me personally. I read this poem years ago. It's written by Fran Jean Harrison, actually. It's called Loving My Lot. And it talks about going through life and you may want. You may think success and his goodness and mercy looks like the form of health or success or what we would call prosperity. But the thing that what we need the most is to know the Lord and to become more like Him. And that's. That's what goodness and mercy is, is him growing us and him meeting us where we are and loving him more through that. So that's Been very helpful for me. Just that resource. Also just a reminder of his presence that in Deuteronomy 1, you see that the Israelites, you know, send out spies, and they're like, okay, God, we know you've. We know you've told us to take this land. You've promised this land to us. Like it. The people are really big and the cities are really fortified, and we're overwhelmed, and I don't know that we're going to do this. And God says that I've gone before you. I am with you. Don't be terrified. I will fight for you as he did, as he's been doing, as he did in Egypt. And there you saw how the Lord God carried you as a father carries his son all the way you went until you reached this place. They still. They didn't trust him. And they didn't see that this looked like his goodness and his mercy. And in spite of this, they didn't trust him. And he said, I've gone ahead of you in this, in fire by night and a cloud by day, and I will show you the way to go. And the Lord has been this steady presence and comfort through all of this, and the joy I have, I really didn't muster up on my own. It really is a gift from the Lord that He's reminded me that he's with me. He's fighting for me. He's working good in this. Um, even on days when I can't see it, it doesn't feel like good. It doesn't feel like his goodness and his mercy. I trust him because he's. He's shown me his goodness and mercy through Christ. He's shown me his goodness and mercy in the ways he's provided for me in the past. And I can just, you know, look back over the past year and see how he's provided that for me and how he's shown up. So I can trust him in this, too. [00:08:51] Speaker C: I love so much what you just said about even on the days when it doesn't feel like it is good and merciful, that you choose to trust. And I imagine for people who have just kind of this ongoing and unpredictable journey that they're on, that that's gonna be a reality on a lot of days where it may not feel good, but you choose to trust. So thank you for putting that to words and exemplifying it in your life. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Can I ask a question about that? I was thinking about the. Those words, ongoing, uncertain, pervasive. You're experiencing joy and you experience God's felt presence now. But I'm sure there are days where you really didn't experience it and it fell away and there was some negativity there and real struggle. Talk about maybe those days. What was that fight like for you? [00:09:54] Speaker A: I'll call them my bathroom floor days. Okay. Because you don't feel strong enough to stand. And I'm taken back to scripture where it says that God is covering you with his wings. And I just sit and listen and I think about picturing that, that God is covering me. He's for me. And when I am mourning, when I'm grieving. And that's what it is. It's like a grief of, this is what I would like my life to be like. This is what I thought it would be like. And this is what it is that I think about when in. In Romans 8, when it says that creation is groaning and your people are groaning. And this groaning and this lament is because we're. We're already, but not yet. We can taste the redemption, we can taste his salvation, we can taste the resurrection to come, but we also feel the brokenness of the world. We feel the brokenness of the body. We feel the brokenness of our sin. And for us to grieve over that is. Is to be expected because that is hard. And the curse is hard. Yeah. And so thankfully, the Lord has given us like half the psalms of our Psalms of Lamed, where we can communicate our hurts, our grief, our disappointment to the Lord. And as we keep reading in Romans 8, where it says, like creation's growing, the believers were groaning for this restoration, it says the Holy Spirit mumbles groans to the Lord on our behalf. And the comfort that when I'm in those bathroom floor moments and I don't even know what to say except help that he is. The Holy Spirit is saying exactly what I need, and he's providing exactly what I need. And he's communicating those to the Father who loved me, who gave Himself for me. And I can trust him. I can trust him to give me what I need for today and for tomorrow, to give me what I need for tomorrow. And he has. And I can trust that he will. Wow. [00:12:28] Speaker B: I see that his faithfulness through your story and in those bathroom floor moments and can see that you have. You've been with him in those moments. He's been with you very clearly. Thank you for sharing that with us. That's beautiful. And also extremely difficult. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I. I was just thinking through how you don't just to flip what our Expectation of, like, maybe the word flourishing. We use that in some of our language here. And this kind of beginning in just the church at large. I feel like that that word flourishing. And we can kind of have that. It has kind of a nice bow, like, happy ending type. That's not what we mean at all when we say it. We talk about. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Relationship with God and self and neighbor and what kingdom flourishing really looks like. But that picture that you're walking through. Talk about that picture of flourishing. Now that. That's maybe a different one than we initially think about. [00:13:40] Speaker C: Right. [00:13:40] Speaker A: And it goes back to some of the scripture that's been very helpful for me. Psalm 23. And it says. We're familiar with that psalm, but it goes to the end. And I kind of alluded to this earlier where it says, for your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And we have an idea of what that looks like. But God is like, I have better for you. I know what you actually need. I know what's actually good for you. And we were talking about Romans 8. You keep going past that. You see that he's working all these things for our good. And you go, man, this doesn't look like what I think good would look like. I want good to be like health and safety and comfort. And the Lord is. He has so much more than the little snapshot that I have of my life. Like, he. He. There's this whole story, and I'm a part of the story. And it's really cool that I get to be a part of the story. But I only have limited wisdom. I have limited energy and time. And I can only see just a glimpse of what he's doing. And John Piper has this article that says God's constantly doing 10,000 things in your life. And you may be aware of just a couple of them. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Is that he is working and knows all the pieces. And I need to. It goes down to faith and trusting him. That where I can only see this little portion of this time in history where I'm living, where he's working, that he is accomplishing his perfect plan to redeem creation and to be glorified through it all. [00:15:30] Speaker B: Yeah. There's like a level of humility that you're expressing. I know he's got a purpose. He's got 10,000 or 20,000 or a million purposes. But I'm. I'm going to trust to believe. Like, but not try to figure out all the purposes. But I'm going to live in my story. Okay. I'M going to tee up a little question kind of for our next question. But you Talked about Romans 8. I feel like it's tempting and we hear this a lot people. We do kind of. It's like we read over Romans 1, maybe get to the adoption part. Then we skip over all of the places that you highlighted and we go to Romans 8:28. Talk about being conquerors and God's got a purpose. Listen, those are amazing truths. But what's the danger for somebody helping someone else if they skip over the places in Romans 8, maybe 18 through 26 or so and skip to Romans 8:28, kind of with somebody else who's walking through chronic suffering. [00:16:25] Speaker A: I think that when you, when you don't take a look at the full picture of the gospel which is part of it, that Jesus came. He died for our sins to make us right with Him. What starts back. The story starts back at creation and him making it perfect and creating us in his image. And then there was this brokenness, like this curse, this problem and the effects of that sin. Yes, our sinful nature also like disease and sickness and broken relationships and this spiritual warfare that we haven't even really attention that's going on that you can think is there something that I did maybe that's causing the Lord to do this? It's like, is there some. Some unrepentant sin that I'm in or maybe I'm not being obedient enough and the Lord isn't treating me well, isn't working good for me because I'm not being faithful to Him. When we see that the big picture is that we are living. We're broken people in a broken world and broken relationships and broken bodies with broken beliefs and things we run after and take refuge in. And that Jesus is restoring and redeeming creation, including our. Including our bodies eventually so we can trust him to work good for us. [00:18:04] Speaker B: So sometimes we under emphasize the just the brokenness of sin and how it covers our bodies and how sometimes we want that when Jesus comes back, we think that's what salvation means, is we're going to be all flourishing in a bodily sense now. But you're saying is we need to highlight that even with people and be sensitive and that highlights our care for people. Right? Right. [00:18:25] Speaker C: Yeah. I like how you asked that question so much. That was along the lines of what I was thinking as you were sharing is just that so many times not only the people who are helpers, but even the people who are suffering rush to 8, 28 where all things work together for good. And that doesn't necessarily help in the midst of the struggle. And so for people to be able to sit in the previous verses, to know that the groaning is normal, to know that this is the experience of life in a world that's broken, I think is really helpful. One of my favorite counselors, Ed Welch, said that a lot of the Christian experience is waiting in wilderness. And I think we need to get more comfortable with that because we're always looking at the end. But I think what you've really beautifully shown us is that a lot of it is about the journey, about walking with the Lord on those bathroom floor days. And I mean, that's such a. Even that term is such a picture of what it looks like to sit with the Lord in the hard. In the hard things. So thanks for that. Kind of going back, stepping back, maybe like stepping outside of your personal experience, but from using your own personal experience. Are there things that you wish people who don't suffer with chronic illness knew about it? And also on the flip side of that, are there things that you would want people who are suffering with chronic illness to know about how to kind of envision their journey? So two different things there. And you can. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Part of it is what you were just saying that we like to skip to the Thanksgiving. We want to fast Forward through the first part of Psalm 13 to get to the Thanksgiving when sitting with someone, just saying, I know this really stinks that you're going through this. Can I pray for you now? So being willing to listen and not just not offer like quick fixes, but to offer support, whatever that looks like, maybe that's a meal because that person's had a really hard time day to day, like keeping up with the housework or whatever. Also, chronic illness is, it's physical, but it's also emotional, spiritual, relational, financial. So it impacts every area of your life. So we are going through it physically, but we still have family to take care of and that we want to have fun with. And we have appointments. Often people who have chronic illness, especially autoimmune disorders like myself, have children that have it also because of genetic component and also parents that have it. So there's that aspect of managing those relationships, managing those appointments, and that care that the sufferer is managing as well. It comes in waves, the grief, you know, like I can go months and, and everything's great and I have energy and it's like I feel like me again. And there's always that uncertainty that, that medication's not going to work, your insurance isn't going to cover it. So a lot of sufferers go through that. Like when this happens, what would that look like? And for sufferers, just the what I would like for and to know is that God is with you and there's something about his presence that is comforting. Like when you're in a hospital or you're sick and you have your significant other or someone holding your hand there with you, there's that presence that's helpful and that comforting. But also He's God, so he's more. It's more than that. He is giving you his strength. He's giving you his power. He is fighting for you. He is carrying you. He is going ahead of you. He's not limited by this day. He's not limited by knowledge. So take comfort that he is good, he is wise, and he is sovereign. And as we have power and strength for the here and now to take to handle each day, we also have the hope that he not only is providing for today, but we have this hope of a future with no more suffering, when all things are going to be fully redeemed and we're going to have no more pain and no more grief and resurrected bodies. And for somebody with a very difficult broken body, that's glorious news. And in the here and now, we want to steward our bodies well and at the same time of steering our bodies well, make sure that our refuge is in the Lord and that we're seeking refuge in him, not in our ability to control our body. Our to find the right medication or the right treatment that's it's healthy to be able to steward well and to find those resources in that treatment. But our hope ultimately is in the Lord when all that stuff fails and when all that stuff is taken away, he will hold you and yeah, take time to grieve and bring your hurt to the Lord. That's my encouragement too, is take time to lament. And that itself is a step of faith. I think sometimes we can see that as, okay, you got to get past this and showing, expressing my doubt and then I'll get to the step of faith, of thanksgiving and appreciation when communicating your hurt and your grief to the Lord is a step in an act of faith. So take time to do that and you don't have to do it alone. Find community to, to encourage you and find a way to serve and to get out of your own thoughts and, and pour into other people and help other people with, as a scripture says, with a comfort that you've been Comforted. Go and comfort other people, serve other people, love other people, pour into other people and those relationships, too. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome encouragement. I was thinking about. You were talking about God's presence and how we. We don't have a high priest who's unable to sympathize, but we have someone who knows exactly what we're going through. And we're. I recently kind of re. Listened to Chronicles of Narnia. But the. Oh, what's the main name of the main book? The one Mission Atlanta Children. [00:25:43] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:25:44] Speaker B: Yep. But there's When Aslan don't want to ruin it for you, but old book, so. But Aslan's heading to the stone table and he tells Lucy and the other girl can't remember her name. [00:25:59] Speaker A: Susan. [00:25:59] Speaker B: Susan. Thank you. Golly. I did read it. Just put your hand on my back, on my coat so I can feel you. And it reminds me of how Jesus is in the garden asking his friends to just stay with me. He knows he didn't need his friend. He was God. He was man. But he knows what it's like to go through hard things. And that's who's with us in those moments. On the bathroom floor days. It's a God like that. I see a book or an article Bathroom floor days in the future. Are there. Just real quick, any resources that you would recommend? Maybe there's a book or an article that we could link to. [00:26:44] Speaker A: Yes. CCF has some great articles. One is by Esther Liu, When God's promises feel untrue. That's great. There's also a lot by David Powelson, but specifically the one that I recommend is God's grace in your suffering. That's very great. Yeah. Great book. And the one I mentioned earlier by John Piper is God is always doing 10,000 things in your life that one really does go through all the promises in scripture that God says he is doing and accomplishing in your life. The when life disappoints poem that I mentioned. Loving my lot about the things we long for and the things that we think we need and what we actually are really wanting. And that's to to know the Lord in the scripture references mentioned earlier. Ronnie Morora and Romans 8. That's great. Yes. A few resources. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Well, it's been an honor to hear your story and just the thoughts coming from someone who's walking through this currently. I think it's especially powerful and meaningful and real. You can just feel how real it is in your life and how God's met you and so if you're experiencing a bathroom floor day or walking with someone else who's going through that, know that God's with you, and we want to be here for you as well at perimeter counseling. So thank you for joining us today, and we're praying for you.