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186. Embracing Life's Unexpected Detours with Lori Ann Wood
78 Plays21 days ago
Lori Ann Wood lives with her husband in an empty nest in beautiful
northwest Arkansas. After discovering a serious heart condition almost too
late, Lori Ann writes and speaks to encourage deep faith questions along the
detours of life. Her work has been published in several anthologies and
dozens of print and online venues, including Bella Grace Magazine and The
New York Times. Lori Ann’s award-winning book, Divine Detour: The Path
You’d Never Choose Can Lead to the Faith You’ve Always Wanted, was
published by CrossRiver Media, and is available on Amazon in print and
audio form https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Detour-choose-always-
You can watch a book trailer and read the first chapter free on her website at https://loriannwood.com/books/.
https://www.instagram.com/loriannwood/
https://www.facebook.com/DivinelyDetoured
Freebie link:
If you’re on a detour, and find it difficult to communicate with God, get her
free gift, 5 Prayers & Promises When You Can’t Talk to God, at
https://loriannwood.com/hope/.
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest on her podcast or to have as a guest on your podcast or event. https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Living in a Miracle and Healing
00:00:00
Speaker
I was so focused on being healed, permanently healed, and having my heart restored to where it was and having my life back. And I was just waiting for that miracle that I had envisioned for myself. And I didn't realize that whole time that I was living in it. I was living in the miracle and that there were these little tiny flecks of glitter swirling all around me. But I was so focused on something outside of it, I couldn't see.
Grief, Life Changes, and Stories of Hope
00:00:42
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
Meet Lorianne Wood: A Journey of Faith and Heart
00:00:58
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar
00:01:19
Speaker
Today we are joined by award-winning writer, Lorianne Wood. Lorianne's journey through a serious heart condition has inspired her to write and speak about deep faith questions. And one of her books really dives into that. It's titled, a Divine Detour. The path you'd never choose can lead to the faith you've always wanted.
00:01:45
Speaker
Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Bella Grace Magazine and the New York Times. And I am very excited to talk to her, particularly because one of the chapters in her Divine Detour book is actually titled Grief and Gratitude. Is that correct? correct Yes? Is that right? Yeah. So it's like perfect for our conversation. So welcome, Lorianne.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thank you, Kendra. It's great to be here. I'm excited to have this conversation. I am ah happy you are here and happy to be talking about this.
Before the Diagnosis: A Healthy Life
00:02:23
Speaker
It's going to be particularly about the grief that we can have by experiencing a near-death experience and how life just completely changes. So talk to us a little bit of what your life looked like prior to November 2015. What was your life?
00:02:43
Speaker
before that. Yes. I was just cruising along. I was in great health. I've always been in really good health, always had low blood pressure, low cholesterol, took care of myself. um i I knew I needed to start exercising more, but I was really careful about what I ate and I always got good reports from the doctor. So I was, I had kids at home still. I had some in college, but I was just kind of cruising along, um expecting just to be doing what I was doing, which at that time was teaching college. And I just expected to keep doing that. And then I got this, um, unexpected thing dropped in my lap and everything changed.
00:03:30
Speaker
what What were the symptoms that you were experiencing? at them And how, um ah if you don't mind sharing this, cause you had, you say you you had some kids in college. How many kids do you have either by the way? I have three. Three kids. So you still had one at home and two in college at that moment. So you're young. You were probably but in your early fifties max at that moment. I was 51. Yeah. So here you are. So then what, what were some of the things you started to feel or what happened in that November. as You said November six was one date that you mentioned. that and then So tell us what happened.
Discovering the Heart Condition
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah. So it sort of complicated it because right before my diagnosis, I actually had a medical evaluation for a life insurance policy and they said, your your numbers are so great. You're in such good health that you have less than 3% chance of ever developing heart disease in your lifetime. And I thought, well,
00:04:31
Speaker
I wasn't surprised by that. i I've always been you know had on my radar cancer and especially breast cancer and other things like that that ran in my family. But at that time I thought if I took care of myself the way I knew I should that I could completely avoid heart disease. and so three weeks later, I just wasn't feeling very well. i It was Thanksgiving week and things were happening and the kids were coming back home and I didn't have the energy I needed to have and I knew something was up. And so I kind of suffered through that week. I we went to convenient care a couple of times and
00:05:11
Speaker
ended up finally on Friday after Thanksgiving, um, going to my family doctor because I had to spend the entire Thanksgiving day in bed, which was really unlike me. i I could hear all the things going on. They had Thanksgiving dinner and I could hear it and I heard him talking and laughing, but I just couldn't, I didn't have the energy and the muscles to get out of bed.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I thought, honestly, I thought I have pneumonia. I've never had it, but I bet that's what I have. And so I went to the doctor and he immediately found that I had an extremely enlarged heart and that it was functioning at only 6%.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so I thought, well, that came out of nowhere. But in reality, I did have symptoms for many years that I just didn't think were heart related. I just thought they were age related or some other situation going on, but I had no idea they were heart related.
00:06:14
Speaker
Wow. So now what kind of tests had they done for your life insurance that in that moment, like your markers then of your heart were fine. Yet it's something that you yourself felt you've had symptoms of maybe exhaustion or just not being able to yeah like, what, what are they?
00:06:34
Speaker
missing now i'm I'm glad you wanted to get your your ah your your life insurance because the thing is that a lot of times people are negated because of things like this, right? That are preexisting because conditions and then they're not able to get this type of insurance. So what yeah, what what what kind of tests then can someone do in order to really know what their health status is?
00:07:03
Speaker
I think my best advice to tell someone is if you know something's not right with you, ask your doctor because this medical evaluation I had, they took my blood pressure, which has always been great.
00:07:18
Speaker
and they took it um you know a blood sample, and they didn't see anything in that. And so they did all the standard tests, but they didn't know that I couldn't do inclines. They didn't know that I was short of breath um walking. they didn't They didn't test any of that.
Recognizing Overlooked Symptoms
00:07:39
Speaker
And the test that my doctor ended up doing that Friday was um just it They call it an echocardiogram, but it's basically just a sonogram like you have when you're pregnant of your heart. And they can look at the structure of your heart. And mine was, I have a lot of things going on with the electrical system in my heart. And they don't know if I was born with it and just compensated all this time or if I got a virus and it changed that electrical system. So,
00:08:11
Speaker
I would say and it is scary, right? Because you think you're doing all the right things, but what I wasn't doing right was I wasn't sharing with my doctor about that i couldn't I couldn't really do in contact. We were at the Grand Canyon and I about didn't get out of the Grand Canyon. I was great going down, but coming back up, by the time I got up, my whole body was shaking and I thought, I'm so out of shape, this is embarrassing.
00:08:40
Speaker
but it should have been more of a red flag that I shared with my doctor. It's sometimes not just what you like. You don't even know what to say. Sometimes at the doctor, like you're saying, you're like, Oh, maybe I just need to exercise more. It's really are you're being asked the right questions, right? It's really that it's, we got to change the system. We went to a wellness check for my kids and the doctor was even asking my son, like, how are you feeling emotionally? You know, he's 17 emotionally, you know, uh,
00:09:14
Speaker
depression, anxiety. it's We're a whole being, right? We're not just one little thing. And sometimes we just focus on these little narrow areas instead of really asking a well-rounded question for an individual to really be able to see, okay, that doesn't sound right. You know, right, Lorianne, you should be able to go up I feel like you came down it, you know, and not be feeling like you're about to pass out. Yes. Yes. I think too, what but you brought up a good point about they need to ask the right questions. Doctors visits are so fast now, you know, you wait and you wait and they come in and you, you're thinking, okay, what are the most important things? I'm going to hit the high points because they're going to walk out of here.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so you hit you know the main things that you came in for and all those little things that are sort
Communicating Health Concerns Effectively
00:10:11
Speaker
of nagging at the back of your mind like I don't know i'm you know I don't I can't really exercise like I used to and that stuff gets pushed under the rug so.
00:10:21
Speaker
What I've started doing is really taking advantage of this online, you know, when you can send your doctor a question and just say, visit follow-up question. Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm a little bit short of breath when I do this and I've noticed it's getting worse. And it feels like it's number one, not as embarrassing. You know, you're not looking right at them. And number two, you feel like you have a little bit more time and it's documented. So if you can do that and you have access to be able to do that online,
00:10:51
Speaker
I think that's a pretty good option.
00:10:55
Speaker
now in in those days and that's a great that's a great tip and also because if you don't want to sound like hypochondri every time you go to a doctor write and like with this list like a notebook filled with all the notes like know yeah i feel nowadays i'm like my nails are brittle my there you know this mid night age space that I'm in of like, oh, it's not like how I used to be a few years back.
Accepting and Living with Chronic Illness
00:11:22
Speaker
Now in in these moments and in that moment of being really faced with the possibility of death,
00:11:31
Speaker
What was coming through your mind? And I know you are faith-based individual. You have that. That's been one of your cornerstones to be able to kind of hold you through this space. And I'll i'll dive into that in a minute. But what, what were your thoughts in that moment as a mother, as a wife? Like what was going on in that moment of that facing possibility of death? Yes. I think I.
00:12:01
Speaker
I can look back on it now and think I was in one of the stages of grief. I was in denial for a long time because I was thinking, I'm going to leave the hospital. I'm going to get well, and things are going to be back to the way they were.
00:12:17
Speaker
even though I had people coming in, you know, I had nurses and doctors coming in in tears saying, you know, I'm about to pull the rug out from under you. I'm sorry. And I wasn't hearing it. I was hearing it, but I wasn't taking it in because in my mind I'm like, no, you don't get it. I'm healthy. You don't know me. I'm going to be fine. And I kind of stayed in that space and really just researched and tried to find because it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but At that point in my life, I thought there were two kinds of illnesses. There was like an acute illness that was treatable that you went to the doctor and they either set your broken arm or they gave you an antibiotic and you got over it. Or there was something terminal that they couldn't help you with and you were on this short timeline and unfortunately you weren't going to survive.
00:13:15
Speaker
I didn't know there was this thing called chronic illness that just becomes part of who you are and it just becomes part of your life. And I didn't know that I was at the very beginning of now what's now been nine years, thankfully of this chronic illness. Now mine is chronic and it's progressive also, which means it gets worse over time, but it also never goes away. And,
00:13:44
Speaker
You know, they manage it well with medications and devices and surgeries, but it's just something you live with every day and it changes not only what you do, it changes your mindset. It changes kind of how you experience life.
00:14:00
Speaker
Because that whole journey that the at the beginning, was it about what sixteen did you write like 16 months or so of like full on almost being at the were you at the hospital of those 16 months continuously or just in and out, in and out, in and out?
00:14:15
Speaker
It was, I got diagnosed. I was in ICU for two weeks. And then they finally let me go home with a life vest, which is like an external defibrillator vest. And I was flown to Cleveland Clinic and I was treated as her most critical patient, but she let me come back home. But she wrote the forward to the book and she can tell you, you can learn more about her thoughts, which she didn't share all all of them with me at the time, but She didn't think that I'd be coming back. um Once I flew home to Arkansas, she thought, well, I'll never see her again because I was just in such bad shape. and you know and She told me that my heart was the largest heart she'd ever seen.
00:14:58
Speaker
It kind of sunk in that that's not good when you're talking about the director of transplant at Cleveland Clinic. and this is This is something bigger than what I thought it was. so I eventually got to take that defibrillator vest off and I got an internal defibrillator and pacemaker and I'm on a lot of medications. but that heart failure is true to form. I'm managing it really well and and thankful, so thankful for all the medical care I have, but it, my function is going down and it kind of plateaus sometimes and then it'll take another little dip. And so we kind of just wait to see the next, the only thing left to do is heart transplant. And some of my numbers indicate I should be on the list and and then there's the fact that I just function really well, so.
00:15:51
Speaker
you're dealing with. The good thing is that your overall, the other aspects of you are ah very healthy, right? Is one part that's not so the other parts of Lorianne are working overtime to be able to support the heart. And the part of like, you've got the biggest heart I've ever met, you know, I'm gonna say like, bless your heart type of Southern, that's not in a figurative leaves. Speaking, what you it's great if somebody tells you you have the biggest heart you've ever met, if it's figuratively, not when it's literal. Right. Right. You're like, that's not the type of thing I want to hear from a doctor, from a friend that's saying, I've got a great big heart of kindness.
00:16:34
Speaker
And I didn't even know a big heart was a thing, you know, other than what you're talking about. I didn't even know your heart could get big. So yeah, so that's yeah not what you wanted to hear. But how awesome that then it's your doctor, your cardiologist that then wrote the forward of your book of the Divine Detour.
00:16:52
Speaker
the The parts that you mentioned before, you were saying about experiencing one of the stages of life, and that and it's something I talk in my podcast a lot about regarding the book, the stages of of grief, sorry, the stages of grief. the It was written particularly in the stages that ah somebody facing death goes through. And so you mentioned denial was one of those in your case. Were there others that you saw show up? Now you're definitely like in the acceptance stage, nine years in, you're like, this is my life living with this chronic disease. What other of these stages of being faced with less ah death did you face?
00:17:37
Speaker
I mean, i I think it took me several years to kind of get down into acceptance where this is just part of who we are. um you know And when I say we, I mean, it affected not just me, it affected my husband, it affected my children, it affected everybody in my family. And we sort of had to come to That acceptance as a as a unit like this is I'm not the mom that I wanted to be I'm not you know I became a grandma a couple years ago and even though I never they never thought I would see that day I'm not the grandma that I wanted to be that I hope to be but that's a whole other grief Aspect as well there too because then it's a life not looking like you thought it was going to look like exactly
00:18:21
Speaker
Yes, and I, one of the things that I have um identified a lot with is there's this thing called illness identity where you And it's a lot like the stages of grief, but you can get to almost pass that acceptance where you can say, not only do I know that my illness is part of who I am, but now I can use it to make positive changes in my
Positivity and Identity with Illness
00:18:48
Speaker
life. And so that is where I think I'm trying to get, um and I think I'm making strides in that way, because you really have to get,
00:18:58
Speaker
I feel like in my case, I had to get to where I was comfortable and stop fighting. I was still you know researching on the internet and asking all my doctor friends. and Finally, one of my doctor friends said, you know the heart is the only muscle that can't heal itself. It doesn't regenerate new muscle tissue. and so Once you lose that, it's gone.
00:19:23
Speaker
and Just to hear that from a doctor that was my friend, I knew I'm going to have to revamp what I'm thinking. and so That started the process of me really wrapping my arms around this thing. and and I've tried to take that as a springboard to Let's take that and look at that as a gift because I get to know that this is important time and um that I need to make hay with it. So that's what I've tried to do is kind of get into that enrichment stage. And it's, it's, it's so true. Like what you're just saying is like you, okay, this is this, these are the cards I got dealt now. What now? What now? And how?
00:20:09
Speaker
with this life experience that I have, how do I pay it forward? And service, I feel, is such a huge part of a grief journey, of a mourning process of when we're going through these heart emotions. When we serve others and we're in service of others, it also helps us in that process. Now, you started blogging ah as part of your therapy, quote unquote, and processing your emotions.
00:20:37
Speaker
Talk about that journey and did you write, were you a writer before? I mean, you mentioned you're a professor, so were you a writer before? Yes, I was not. i I, to be fully, to full disclosure is I have a master's degree in tax and I am a CPA. And I knew as soon as I started into my career as a CPA in a big, in a national tax firm, I'm like, this isn't, this isn't for me.
00:21:10
Speaker
But I'd already gone to school for so many years, so I switched over to teaching. And that sort of and engaged that part of my brain a little bit more, but I still felt like there was something more. And I didn't know what that was going to be. And so at that time that I was diagnosed, I thought, I'm going to kind of explore what that next part might be.
00:21:32
Speaker
and as it turns out, once I got my diagnosis and whatever happened to me, that Thanksgiving week that really took me down a level, put me at a position where I couldn't stand up and lecture anymore. And I had to make a change whether I wanted to or not. And that's when I started writing and mostly it was for me, a little bit of it was to keep people updated on what was going on with my health, but
00:22:03
Speaker
When I hit that time where nothing was changing for a year and a half, I didn't have anything to write about on my health. So I started looking at these questions that were just nagging at me. And that's when I sort of embraced this idea of maybe, you know, the book's called Divine Detour. And, you know, detour is just when you have a plan and you're on your road and you figured out the quickest, most efficient, smoothest route.
00:22:34
Speaker
And then for some reason you get shoved off on this little dirt road that you don't want to be on. And it's windy and it's out of the way and it's inconvenient and the stops aren't great. And I was on that detour and other people were saying, I don't have a health issue and I don't have anything going on medically with myself, especially not heart failure, but what you're saying resonates with me because I'm going through a divorce or I just lost my job and I never expected to be here. And so those were the kind of things where I said, okay, this detour idea is something that's bigger than just my little medical story. And so that's when I really started to embrace that idea of writing about people just facing things that
00:23:27
Speaker
Maybe they planned all their life to never face, and then they do. i As you're saying the word detour and you mentioned in a really beautiful way, like what it means in life. I have a little anecdote of that word detour, if I'm going to share it with you, but it's completely different way. But this little kid, I used worked with kids and this kid comes in, it's like, sorry, we're late. We had to take a detour. And I was like, well, what's a detour? Well, the world was closed, so we had to take a different world.
00:24:00
Speaker
Somebody was so cute. He was like three, right? The fact that the mom just said, you know, well, it's closed. We got to take another road. And that is life. Sometimes it is closed and we take a different road. and And you really had planned your life around getting to that destination goal you know at a certain time. you know the You know how long it takes to get there.
00:24:23
Speaker
And and it it isn't that way. And you do have to take these detours and really not know what is going to be there. But the part of your book that he has even just added is that then it just says the path you'd never choose can lead to the faith you've always wanted. So let's talk then about that aspect of faith and how that really played a role in your in your journey of accepting this major detour in your life. Yes, you know, I had I've always grown up in a Christian home and um we raised our kids in a Christian home. But when I got that diagnosis, things just I felt like I was going to break that faith. I felt like
00:25:14
Speaker
This is not a situation that's going to end well. And so if I get that down and use it, I'm going to break it and not be able to pass that heirloom down. And so I kind of stepped away from it and I thought I'm going to wait until things look like they're going to turn out.
00:25:32
Speaker
And that was a really dangerous place to be because when you have that belief system and the time that you need it the most when you stop using it, then you run the risk of never returning to it at all.
00:25:47
Speaker
So I just started to say, I've got too much history. I have too much invested. I'm gonna ask all those hard questions. and the And the questions I looked at in the book are just big life questions. And the the three that the books formatted around are, is this life all there is?
00:26:12
Speaker
And then I looked at, is God always good? Because what I'm going through doesn't feel so good. And then um is God's plan enough? Because I'm fighting against what seems like this plan that's pulling me into it. And I don't want to be in it. I want to do everything I can to stay out of it. So I looked at those questions from all different angles. And you know I guess the spoiler alert for the book is that I didn't answer the questions. I just gave people permission to ask them.
00:26:47
Speaker
And I think that's what made my faith stronger and for sure kept me from walking away from it because I flung that door open and I said, I'm asking, I'm going to go there. And when I did that, this conversation started with God that I was able to really ah feel like I wasn't alone in that situation that I was in. And so I think that was key of everything I learned was that There's more value sometimes in your questions than there are in the answers that you think are out there.
00:27:24
Speaker
But back to that part of questions, we talked about it in the doctor component of asking the right questions. And here it's the same thing, the questions and just trying to figure out, do i am I even going to know this answer? Probably not. it's It's kind of like when we tell kids as parents, don't do something and they want the answer. And sometimes we really cannot give them the answer. that They're not really at a maturity level to really even understand the answer.
00:27:53
Speaker
And they just have to go by the the faith and the love that they have to us as our kids and follow along in that we say, yeah, I'm sorry, you cannot go tonight and egg or whatever it is, right? And that's kind of how we are in this life. a lot of it For those of us that do believe that there's something greater than us, that we just have that faith that some of these answers are not going to be, questions sorry are not going to be answered right now. And it's okay. And it's okay. And it's just part of it. And like you said, it's like it's not always going to look
00:28:33
Speaker
pretty or or like as if it's coming from a loving space. Like a time out for a kid doesn't seem like it's loving, but for a parent, they are doing it in a you know in a loving way sometimes when they give a child a time out, right? So there are these tests that we're given and we have to sometimes just have that trust that there is something that we may not again ever know in this life what it was for.
00:29:00
Speaker
That's so true. i I love that idea because, you know, I think as human beings, we're just not ready. We're not in a position to understand closed doors. I mean, we see doors closed and we think it was opened for them or it was opened for me last time. But some of us that have lived longer can go, oh,
00:29:22
Speaker
Now I can look back on a closed door and realize that, or on an open door, I can walk through an open door and realize, oh, all those other doors had to be shut in order for me to walk through this one, but we don't see that. and so That's where a faith is tested, where we get a no answer, or we get a bad diagnosis, or we get a closed door. What am I going to do with that? And you, as as a child, you know you have to trust your parents, like he said. And so much more do we have to trust you know God to say, oh, I've got you. um Because he he rarely explains in our lifetime, and
00:30:07
Speaker
a closed door and so we just have to we just have to have that. ah Sometimes we get a glimpse of it, but some we may not even in our lifetime get a glimpse of why that door was closed.
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, and that's that's those, ah what do you they call them? The silver lining that a lot of times people are like, well, at least XYZ, right? And those at least when someone's grieving are not the best. They're not very they're not very supportive. Sometimes you feel i them as if they're miss kind of taking away from your pain. Yeah, not taking the weight out of the situation that you're feeling and the value of that.
00:30:48
Speaker
But the when we're saying here, what we're talking about here is just a little further. It's not that we're saying that you have gone through something and then something beautiful came from it and that you actually see it. Like you said, you may see little glimpses of it. You may not.
Choosing Positivity Over Anger
00:31:08
Speaker
And it is okay to not see it. And it's also okay, like you but mentioned even at the beginning, to doubt your faith and to go through that moment of of doubt. But the reality is if you're going to be living with a chronic illness like you're living yourself,
00:31:26
Speaker
you have a choice of how you want to live it. And do you prefer to live it in anger, in, you know, I don't know what other emotions and just this, a you know, being upset at what happened? Or do you want to shift it and be like, okay, this is what it is. And there might be a reason of why it is occurring. And I'm going to choose to live it thinking there's a reason whether I find out the reason or not.
00:31:53
Speaker
right yeah And it just shifts your energy as you're living life. Would you find that to be true like for you? Yes, I do so much. And I think one of the things that I've often thought of is that I was so focused on being healed, permanently healed and having my heart restored to where it was and having my life back.
00:32:17
Speaker
and I was just waiting for that miracle that I had envisioned for myself. and I didn't realize that whole time that I was living in it. I was living in the miracle and that there were these little tiny flecks of glitter swirling all around me, but I was so focused on something outside of it, I couldn't see that dazzling thing going on. you know The fact that I'm still alive nine years later,
00:32:46
Speaker
they kind of sent me home with a they They did send me home with a hospice binder, that first ICU stay. and They were thinking six months. and i held on and I got to see my child my daughter graduate from high school and my son graduate. I got to see my daughter get married.
00:33:09
Speaker
I got to see my grandchild born and then turn one and then turn two. And none of that was expected. And if I was still focused on, oh, but I'm not healed. Oh, but I swore I'd never get this device implanted. I'm like, I'm not doing it. I'm going to get better. But if I didn't get it.
00:33:31
Speaker
I probably wouldn't be here. and so Sometimes we have to reform that. and my mom used to My mom used to say, sometimes you have to act better than you feel.
00:33:42
Speaker
And that sometimes is the first step in saying, I don't feel that great, but I'm gonna look for those little tiny flecks of glitter that are swirling around my life right now. And someday they're all gonna settle into this beautiful mosaic that I don't know what it's gonna look like, but someday they're gonna make it. And right now I'm just living in it. And so I just need to be acting better than I feel.
00:34:12
Speaker
When you said that part, like, I was living in the miracle, like, I literally got goosebumps. We are. Every one of us is. Every day it is that way. And it just changes the whole way in how we view our life. It does. It just changes it. Like, oh, God, I got i really did get little goosebumps. I wanted to read a part of your Divine Detour clip. Is that OK? Yes.
00:34:39
Speaker
So this was the part of the questions and then I want to go into the part of the grief mixed with gratitude component, but I still struggle with questions almost daily, but rather than seeing them as a threat to my faith, I see them as a lifeline to keep it.
Faith, Questions, and Life's Detours
00:34:57
Speaker
The post-diagnosis years have taken me on a faith detour I never saw coming. And this is a part of what you were saying as a longtime believer. I felt profoundly disappointed. I wanted answers, but more importantly, I needed permission to ask the questions.
00:35:14
Speaker
And then you talk about what the book then is about, which is a 40-day book. And this is what you said about asking then questions. You're also then allowing others around you to have permission to ask those questions as well. So take us into how divine detour is structured into these 40 days. And you mentioned the reasoning behind it being you know ah biblical.
00:35:39
Speaker
So um take us in how it's structured and how someone can kind of navigate through the through the book in their journey. Yeah. So when I put the book together, it's arranged around those three big questions that I mentioned earlier.
00:35:57
Speaker
and the At first, I felt like they didn't go together. I felt like all the thoughts I was having really didn't have a structure. But when I started looking at them in terms of those three questions, it came about from ah Jesus's temptation in the desert and what he faced in those three temptations. And there was a lot of similarity in what he was going through and what I was going through. His was certainly a detour. Mine felt like a desert detour as well.
00:36:29
Speaker
And they started, all my thoughts and writing started to go into these three categories. And i it was ah another sort of added bonus, I think, is I realized that for myself, and I think for most people that are in a grief experience, you have a shortened attention span. And you just need a nugget to hold on.
00:36:56
Speaker
And sometimes all you can do is have this little attention span and little bit of time and a little bit of tolerance for some input. And so I wrote it in terms of 40 short essays and they're all standalone essays.
00:37:12
Speaker
And so you can look at either the main question, there's 13 essays under each main question, or you can just look at the title. Like that first one you mentioned was grief and gratitude and just pick one. And where, where do I feel today that would speak to me on my journey? And so it's not something that you go through necessarily chronologically or, cause I don't think any of us process grief or life chronologically most of the time. So we,
00:37:42
Speaker
we we can just jump in and it's ah just a nugget of something that people can look at and think about and ponder and reread if they need to. And so that was something that was exciting for me. And then recently um I was able to record the audio book for it and my publisher made that available. So, cause sometimes I know when, you know, when you're really hurting, even reading is hard, but I found that I can listen sometimes easier than I can read.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, I love listening to audiobooks when I'm walking my dogs or even that's usually what I what i do. That's why I'm doing two different things that are healing or in my process, right? The walking, being in nature, actually more than one, moving, being in nature, plus also reading, quote unquote.
00:38:29
Speaker
Now, i I wanted to read a little part of that part of grief and
Grief and Gratitude Together
00:38:34
Speaker
gratitude. So grief and gratitude are not an either or proposition. We can be grateful and still be grieving, which is the whole reason that I have the name of my podcast. So talk about those perspectives of the gratitude and grief in your own life.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yes. First of all, I thought it was amazing that your podcast was similar so similar to that first essay that was in my book. and That one was ended up to be the first essay because i that was kind of the the cornerstone of how I started to process this whole book. And when I realized that, I think so many times we get focused on one thing and we're trained to just be, you know, okay, I'm grieving right now, or I'm being grateful, or I'm being happy, or I'm being, you know, I miss you, or I- Yes, yeah we're in this. and When I realized, and I think it was Frances Weller that said, it's a mature person who can hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and then be stretched large by them, which made so much sense to me because I found that the things that I was grieving the most were the things that I was most grateful for. Those were my pain points and I thought, that's it.
00:40:02
Speaker
the things that it's both ends of this realization that you have, that I've been given something of great value, and it's very important to me, and there's the the part where you receive that, and then there's the part where you release that, whether it's through death or circumstances,
00:40:25
Speaker
But both of them are this realization that I had something of such value and they meant so much to me and they go together because we can't really be grateful. I think unless we've lost something important to us.
00:40:42
Speaker
And when we're in that grief situation, what keeps us from bottoming out is the fact that we're grateful. So they cut they work so well together. And I just wanted them to be you know worst enemies. I wanted them to be opposite ends of the spectrum, but really,
00:41:02
Speaker
They help us realize these things that are transient in our lives and that were just given to us through grace. They're just things that were gifts and one's on their way in and one's on their way out.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah, they don't, they it it's again, not to minimize the grief experience when you're grateful is not taking away from the part that you're grieving. It's just really just, and it's kind of this supporting your grief in that yeah in that gratitude practice as well. And again, they they go hand in hand in hand. Now, what are ah some tips, let's say, if someone right now is facing a a really tough situation in their life and they're standing in this door that is closing.
Comfort in Shared Experiences
00:41:52
Speaker
What are some tips that you would say or what would you say to someone that's in this moment right now of this crossroad in their life? you know One of the things that I realized at some point in in those early days was that I was at a loss for for any
00:42:15
Speaker
ah better way to say it. I was at a loss for words and i couldn't I didn't know what I was feeling because I didn't have words to put to them and I realized that I don't have to have words. I can borrow words and that's where it's so helpful to have podcasts like this where you can borrow words from other people and, you know, books where you can read and see and borrow their thoughts. Maybe they're further on down the line from where you are. And even, you know, sometimes I would, at my my instinct told me to go to scripture, but sometimes it felt too rich for me. It felt too, and it was too soon, almost, for me to go there. And so I needed to read trusted people
00:43:06
Speaker
that wrote about such things that I that i knew there their lives and I trusted their thoughts. And then a a strange one for me maybe was that even when i I didn't have the mental capacity to read or the emotional, whatever it took to read, I would listen to Christian music or you know any type of lyrics that would sink in.
00:43:32
Speaker
because those were what I would cling to. And sometimes, you know, songwriters can put words together, they can string words together that are like magical. And those can resonate in your head and help you get to that next level and just kind of like a little tether that you're, you know, you're desperate, you're holding on by your fingertips. But those words are this tether to hang on.
00:43:59
Speaker
So perfect. Now in in that part, in that same question, how can someone or how, it even for yourself, how can the circle of friends of someone that's going through something like this show that support?
Support Systems in Illness
00:44:13
Speaker
And how did you feel that support from your circle? What were some of the things people did? Again, it was not what they said. Probably that was the, Oh, yeah what were some of the ways that you felt with the support?
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think the the thing that and and people we know this this is what's so hard is we know this but it's not in our DNA to do it is to just be there, you know, just show up and just don't say anything, you know, um unless someone at unless they ask you but don't don't give advice don't you know,
00:44:54
Speaker
it It always lands flat, but it's so hard to just be there for some reason and I think that was what really Helped us through that was just having people say the this is horrible I don't know what this feels like. I don't know what you're going through, but we're here. We're here. We're just gonna sit here and be quiet and for some reason My personality wants to do something. It's like, can I bake you a cake? What can I do? And sometimes nothing is the best thing you can do, which is sometimes also the hardest thing to do. um And then I think the other thing I would say is that you know chronic illness is a lot like the grief process when you lose a loved one.
00:45:43
Speaker
i had ah I'm nine years into this. I had a lady come up to me who'd been praying for me and sweetest lady, but came up to me about two years into my diagnosis and she said, whew, I'm glad that's over.
00:45:58
Speaker
And my husband and I still laugh about that because they want it to be over so much. There's Tybo on it and go on. And we want to do that with grief too. We want to say, oh, you lost your, you know, I lost both my parents in 2020 and it still feels like I just lost them. And we just want to go, well, that's done. Now let's go on to the next thing.
00:46:21
Speaker
And so just be really open to that window and give them that, you know, it takes a long time. You're never going to be the same. And so asking, you know, how they're doing even long after, sometimes people think I don't want to bring up the person, you know, that's gone or I don't want to remind you that you have this disease, so I'm not going to ask you about it.
00:46:49
Speaker
But we want you to ask about it, because that means that you care, that you remember, and that's the biggest part.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, they they usually say that a lot of times people show up a lot that first week of someone going through something and then afterwards it dissipates as if it's just done. we We have a society in general that we are comfort seeking beings and anything that just throws us off of that comfort zone and you know, puts a it which discomfort, which illness does, death does,
00:47:22
Speaker
just doesn't sit well with us. We want to fix it. And so we, eat and if we don't know how to fix it, then we try to avoid it. And that's when a lot of times people then may not show up and ask you anymore. If you want to go out to lunch and you know, or in your case, like maybe some of your friends, like that are still kind of not knowing what to do with the idea of you at one point not being hear anymore know what to do with that and they may prefer to separate themselves from you. Did you notice any riffs like that in your life?
Maintaining Connections and Curiosity
00:48:01
Speaker
I i for sure did. and
00:48:04
Speaker
you know they It's hard because it's not something they're familiar with, but I have to be really careful about what I eat and um because I don't handle sodium really well. And that was one of my problems early on is I didn't know that I was carrying around 14 pounds of fluid because of sodium. And so I have to avoid that, which everything has sodium, especially if you're eating out. it's I mean, if it's good, it has sodate a lot of sodium in it. so I noticed people just stop asking. you know It's just too hard. It's too hard to have my husband and I are over for dinner. It's too hard to meet at a restaurant. We don't know where. Let's just now not do that and that. That's just another part of something that you lose, that you're like, well
00:48:52
Speaker
and And I think the better thing would be to just you know just hit it head on and say, ah let's figure this out. And I had one friend who was like that and she actually had liver cancer. So she understood the dietary restrictions and she understood the weird awkwardness with people. And she I got a ah bad heart ah checkup.
00:49:18
Speaker
And she just drove over to my house. She was um quite a bit older than I was, but she she used to cut my hair. And then we just became these really good friends. She drove over to my house and she said, let's go find something we can eat. And we found something. We sat in her truck and we ate it and she said, what do you want out of life? And I thought,
00:49:42
Speaker
Has anyone ever asked me that question? And I was like, wow, I'm just going to tell you. And it was so freeing because I knew she was dealing with that same question. And so part of what was so appealing about her was she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid to say those things and and ask those questions. And I think Back to the question thing, sometimes when we get in an awkward situation, we're like, I don't want to ask the wrong question. But I think even if you ask a question that feels like, well, that was a dumb question. It shows that you care about them. It shows that you want to know. It shows that you want to be part of their lives. and so
00:50:23
Speaker
I say all this about questions because I was terrible about asking questions in my earlier life. I thought I have to know the answer before I ask the question or I'm not asking it. you know So that's been just a huge theme in both my faith and my health and my relationships and everything.
00:50:46
Speaker
I love that question that your friend did.
Future Hopes and Heart Transplant
00:50:48
Speaker
And I actually had that as a question that I wanted to ask was how do you see your life just unfolding from here on? Like what, what are your hopes and your dreams from and it's you now it's been nine years. What are some of these hopes and dreams that you have for yourself and your family? Yeah, I, you know, so many of them, I've kind of tried to retrain myself to be watching for, but I just wanna keep doing what I'm doing with my family. And like right now I am moving my daughter into her new apartment in St. Louis and I'm in her apartment. That's why it looks so cute.
00:51:28
Speaker
um
00:51:31
Speaker
that's I just wanna keep being part of that in whatever capacity. And I know that's gonna change because I'm not gonna be able to do um you know all the things that I, even now I'm not doing all the things I would like to do to help her move in. but I want to be able to just find new ways to do the things I want to do. Just from a strictly health point, um they've kind of done everything for me that they can do at this point. I'm on the highest dosage of all the medications I can handle and I have the newest device. And the next step would be transplant. And so
00:52:09
Speaker
from From that perspective, I would hope that if I need to get that, um that I would get on the list while I'm healthy enough and be able to recover from that and get some more years out of that. and so um We're just, we're taking it um one little bit at a time and appreciating every little part of it as it comes and realizing. And I think we all realize this with our, as our kids grow up anyway, but every part, we don't get to see it all. We just see this one little window and we step into that window and we live it and we appreciate it. And then we go to the next one.
00:52:48
Speaker
And as we're speaking here with at the windows around you, I know people are just listening, but yes, just just live in that in that little space. And in that moment, it's just perfect. So beautiful. Laurieann, now as we wrap up, is there something I have not asked you? And we will make sure before before this final question, we we will also end with how people can find you. But what is something you'd like to say that I may not have asked?
00:53:20
Speaker
I think, ah you know and we've said this throughout the interview about just grasping those questions as ah as a point of strength, um I would just challenge people to if you're like me and somebody that, and I don't know if it was my education or the generation I'm in or whatever it was, but to see those questions as something that opens up conversation, that strengthens where you're at, and they don't always have to be answered. You don't have to have a final bookend on it. ah ah Because I think that was kind of an aha for me was like the question
00:54:07
Speaker
If it comes, it has to have an answer and it really doesn't. It can hang there and it can grow relationships. It can open up hearts. It can just make conversations happen and never be answered. And that's okay, but I had the to take a long time to get to that point.
00:54:32
Speaker
So just basically being present in the journey and not being so focused on that destination is the way of like answer the ask the questions and getting the answer is kind of as if you just get to the destination type of thing. No, just ask the questions and that's the road you're on. That's your journey.
00:54:50
Speaker
Thank you so much again, Laurieann. And to get ahold of you, people can visit your website, LaurieannWood.com. Yes. And yes share the different offerings that you have there, your books, your blogs, and how they can get more. but We just heard about the Audible and other other things that people can get from you, please.
00:55:11
Speaker
Yes, so at my website, there's a laurianewood.com slash books and you can learn learn
Lorianne Wood's Website and Offerings
00:55:19
Speaker
more about the book. You can ah read the first chapter. You can see a book trailer and there's links to buy that. um And also, um if anyone would be interested on this idea of gratitude, I have a three-day Devo ah reading where it's just for three days.
00:55:38
Speaker
back to short attention span, about three days. And it's called Cultivating Gratitude When Life Is Hard. And you can get that at laurianewood.com slash gratitudedevo. And then there I have some gratitude tips that are really just ah I guess just really practical things like, and well, I'm going to be grateful while I'm brushing my teeth because I know I brush my teeth every day. So I'm going to be grateful then. So I have some tips about how do I incorporate gratitude in my life without adding one more thing to my to-do list? And that's and those tips you can get at LaurianneWood.com slash gratitude tips. So I would love to do that. I'd also love to connect on Facebook and Instagram. I'm Laurianne Wood on both of those places.
00:56:28
Speaker
Perfect. Now I know what I'm going to be thinking of every time I brush my teeth because yeah sometimes you're like, wait, I don't have a journal next to my bed and this one more thing I have to write. So just thinking of something you're grateful, not just one, maybe you had start with one, two, three, maybe then by that time you've been brushing your teeth for 30 minutes because you thought of so many things you were grateful for.
00:56:50
Speaker
That's right. ah Thank you once again. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast and you have a beautiful energy and a huge heart in the bay in the in the figurative live figuratively we figurative way as well. Thank you. It's so great to be here. Thank you.
00:57:14
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:57:43
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.