S10.18 | Grace For The Spiritually Weary Christian Woman
You’ve felt disconnected from God. Too broken. Too messy. Maybe you’ve stopped praying, can’t open your Bible, and feel like you’ve failed spiritually.
In this episode, Carla gets honest about the seasons when faith feels hard and shame runs deep.
She talks about why feeling stuck doesn’t disqualify you—and how God draws near even when you feel far. If you’re a Christian woman feeling stuck, ashamed, or unworthy, this episode is for you. You are not too far gone..
Did you know that Carla is a Christian Mental Health coach?
See if working with her is what you need in your current season.
Book a discovery call today!
Key Takeaways
God’s Faithfulness Doesn’t Depend on Ours
Even when we are weak, doubting, or inconsistent, God remains steady and faithful because it’s who He is.
2. You’re Not Alone in the Valley.
Jesus doesn’t wait for you to get it all together—He meets you in the mess, holds your hand, and walks with you through the darkness.
3. Grace is a Daily Gift.
God’s grace isn’t a one-time offer—it’s a daily invitation to receive His love, mercy, and strength no matter where you are.
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Connect With Carla:
Foundations to Healing—-> https://www.carlaarges.com/foundations-of-healing
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Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Hello friends, and welcome to this episode of Affirming Truths. We are getting really close to the end of season 11. There's only a couple more episodes left, and then we're gonna take a few weeks break before we come back with season 12 and. I gotta tell you, I have high hopes for season 12 because I feel a little bit disappointed and let down by season 11 to be honest.
And maybe you feel the same. I mean, I certainly hope not, but um, I. The whole period of Season 11 has been really hard for me, and I know that I've dedicated a few podcast episodes to talk about that. We're not gonna be talking about that today, but you know, dealing with my mood, dealing with how my body's reacting to some physical, um.
Struggles I'm facing with Hashimoto's and [00:01:00] adrenal fatigue. It's been rough. Um, but through it all, God is so good and through it all, even when I've had a hard time showing up for God, he hasn't stopped showing up for me. And I really want to talk about that with you guys today. God is not faithful because of the degree of our faithfulness.
He's faithful because of his character, and there are a lot of ways. The last four months I haven't been faithful in the way that. I normally am faithful in my walk. I've really, really struggled with Bible study, what my Bible study has looked like for three plus years with such a challenge over the last four months, two months in bed with pneumonia, debilitating depression, this energy and.
Brain fog issue I'm having with my other ailments. It's been [00:02:00] really hard, and with that praying has been really hard. I I coupled the, the intense intimate time of prayer with my Bible study. And so when the Bible study wasn't happening, the, the intentionality of my prayer life wasn't happening and. I really lost my faithfulness in those spiritual disciplines over the past few months, and maybe you can relate to that too.
Maybe you have been going through that dark night of the soul, um, that you hear about, that we see that David Con, uh, faced and Elijah faced that dark night where things feel hopeless and your mind's failing you and your body's failing you, and you can't show up in the way that you want to show up. And maybe you're attacked with doubt and fear like 'cause.
Does God see you? Does God hear you? When will [00:03:00] rescue come? When will the end of the suffering come and we fall out of our spiritual disciplines, which we know are so important, not just for our spiritual health, but our mental, emotional, even physical health, and yet when we can't make it to the throne.
Christ comes to us and we see that in a very real way in the New Testament when we couldn't on our own, keep the law, when we couldn't on our own, maintain faithfulness rather than turn away from us in wr, which God absolutely could do because he's fully holy and fully just. Instead, he turned towards us in love.
Now, that didn't mean his justice and his holiness ceased to exist, but he met [00:04:00] it with bringing down his son to suffer and die. The consequence why? So that we could be joined to God so that we could have his presence with us. He came to us, he reached down for us. When Peter was sinking in the water, Jesus reached down and took his hand.
God is for us and where I have been tempted, either in my own humanity or from past legalism, I'm breaking free from or attacks of the enemy where I've been tempted to feel guilty. Or condemned about my struggle with the Bible and my prayer. While I've been struggling with my health, God has not met me with accusation.
He has met me with grace [00:05:00] and love and building me up and holding me in hard places and what that required of me. With allowing him to do that meaning rather than turning away in shame, rather than turning away in discouragement, rather than turning away in doubt during the tough times, I turned inward towards him.
And I wanna ask you, in your dark night of your soul. In the struggle that seems to be ongoing in the disruption of your spiritual disciplines, are you turning towards God to just rest in him? To say, Lord, I don't wanna abandon your word. [00:06:00] I don't wanna abandon conversation with you. I don't wanna abandon worshiping you, but right now I need to be held.
And I think sometimes, especially as women in our, in our home life, we don't give ourselves permission just to rest. We don't give ourselves permission to quote, unquote drop the ball. I. Which is essentially what has happened in my spiritual disciplines the last four months I've dropped the ball. We don't allow ourselves to do that.
We have to be on birthday party planning and making sure everyone's fed for dinner and keeping the ongoing grocery list. And managing work and managing sports schedules and making sure our husband has his needs met and we carry this whole mental load and we don't feel like we can ever drop the balls.
Why? Because we believe this lie that we have to have it all together. And if we [00:07:00] drop. The balls. We are dropping our ability to be loved and valued. If we are not constantly producing, if we're not constantly falling in line, if we're not constantly juggling everything, we are not worthy of love. We have to earn it.
And when I first, in the first, uh, few weeks of me getting out of the habit of the Bible reading and the prayer, just because I was so sick. I judged myself in error that I wasn't performing for the Lord, and God really was so gentle to me in redirecting this, that God is not looking for our performance.
If I read the Bible every day and pray to him every day because I am performing for him and checking off a list to see, say, see God, I did it. Love me. I'm missing the [00:08:00] point. I'm missing the point. Being in the word and being in in intimate prayer with God isn't about performance. It's about what God wants to do in us.
It's about our deliverance, it's about our transformation, it's about our healing. It's about what he wants to give us. Really, which is why in turn, he is worthy of all our praise and all our worship and all our glory. The Bible and the prayer is what he wants to give us. In fact, it's really interesting.
So in my one-to-one practice of coaching for mental health with Christian women, I look at neuroscience. In addition to scripture and somatics, we approach, um, dealing with mental health issues from mind, body, [00:09:00] and spirit because God's created us. That way, and it's so interesting to look at the neuroscience of prayer.
What happens in our brain? What happens in our body when we pray? Now we know in our spirit, when we pray. We can get encouragement and we can get peace, so we can get breakthrough, but prayer is a gift to us. Neuroscientific. Studies show that regular prayer activate the prefrontal cortex and quiet. The Magdala.
The Magdala is where our fear and emotional reactivity is, and our anxiety creeps up when we're in prayer. It quiets that alarm system. It reduces stress, anxiety, and depression. Prayer actually strengthens the ability of our brain to be neuroplastic, [00:10:00] meaning the ability to form new pathways, which is very much the renewing of the mind.
It's helpful in breaking cycles of trauma and negative thought patterns. Prayer helps to regulate the nervous system. It quite literally puts us into the parasympathetic state of rushed and restore by slowing our breathing, calming our heart rate. It's incredible. I. Repeated prayer, especially when we are praying the scriptures, which is so powerful, and I encourage you to do that.
Form thought loops, which create new neural pathways that as you pray the scripture, you are replacing trauma-based beliefs with God-centered truth. You're reforming your identity. [00:11:00] We are biologically wired for attachment and prayer strengthens this attachment with God. Prayer is such a gift that God gives us for when we're weary, for when we're burdened, for when we're stressed, when we're anxious.
It is such a gift he gives to us. And so when we are struggling to utilize that gift. He doesn't look harshly at us. He comes and meets us where we are. When Elijah was struggling with his depression, when Elijah was having his dark night of the soul, did God chastise him? Did he, did he condemn him? No, he brought ministering angels to give him food and tell him to take a nap and to restore himself.
He didn't tell him to read more [00:12:00] scripture or prayer, more prayers. Not that those things aren't effective, but God understands that when we are struggling through the valley of the shadow of death, that we can sometimes struggle with those, those spiritual disciplines. Right, and I wanna encourage you today that yes, as you can do your spiritual disciplines, if your Bible study used to look very regulate rigorous, but you're in a dark night of your soul, maybe it looks like just clinging to one verse.
Maybe it looks like just hanging onto one Psalm and rereading that psalm and praying that Psalm. But do not be condemned. Do not fear that God's love is withheld from you. Reach out to him. He is so tender and loving. [00:13:00] God has revealed himself to new to me in new ways. Oftentimes, he's revealed himself to me in his word, and while I would pray journal during my time, with my quiet time with the Lord.
And while that's been disrupted because of this, the, these physical. Challenges I'm facing right now. God has been so good to reveal himself in other ways, and some of the ways is bringing to mind past scripture. Some of the ways has been bringing to mind past prayers and showing how he's working and showing his fingerprints to me.
And he is so good. And so I wanna encourage you front, if you've been struggling and you feel like you're letting God down because you haven't been able to do the things that you do, stop looking at it like a checklist to earn God's love and approval and [00:14:00] start looking at those things as gifts God gives you to actually help you in your struggle.
He is tender and loving towards you. He is tender and loving towards you, and so your affirming truth today is that I will not condemn myself in times of struggle, but I will turn my face towards God, whose face is turned towards me. And I know this is kind of like a cliche anchoring scripture, going to Philippians four, six to seven, but it says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, present your request to God.
Lean into prayer. The gift that he's given us to give us peace. A peace which transcends all understanding. A peace that will guard your heart and mind in Christ [00:15:00] Jesus. Friend, you are so loved and even where we fail to be faithful, God never fails us. I'll talk to you next time.