Theology in the Raw - When Trauma Meets the Love of God: Quina Aragon

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Quina Aragon is an author, editor, and spoken word artist. She is the author of the children's book trilogy—"Love Made, Love Gave, and Love Can"—which poetically retells Scripture's story through a Trinitarian lens of love. She is also the author of Love Has a Story: 100 Meditations on the Enduring Love of God, which invites you to explore God’s love as it has existed and moved throughout (and before) time, and how it intends to transform your own life story. -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology in Iraq. If theology has blessed or challenged you, would you consider supporting the show at patreon.com forward slash the all gender raw. You can get access to lots of premium content that's available only to the patron supporters. And we are rolling out a whole new list of premium content that's available to our supporters. Again, patreon.com forward slash the algebra or click on the link in the show notes. Also the exiles of Babylon conference is happening folks, April 3rd to 5th, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We're talking about the gospel and race after George Floyd, two perspectives on social justice and the gospel transgender people in the church and a dialogical

debate about whether the evangelical church is good for the country. Several amazing breakouts and after party and lots and lots of stuff. We keep adding to the conference again, theology and rod.com to, to check out the conference and register. And we do have an early bird special. So you want to register before the end of the year to take advantage of that. My guest today was a fascinating dialogue partner. Really enjoyed this conversation. Kena Aragon is an author editor. That's the coolest name I've ever heard of, by the way, author editor, spoken word artist. She's the author of the children's book trilogy, love made, love gave

and love can, which poetically retails scripture through the store, through a Trinitarian lens of love. She's also the author of a brand new book. He let me grab it for you from my YouTube followers here. Love has a story, 100 meditations on the enduring love of God, man. Keena has been through a lot. I'll just leave it at that. She tells her story and we dig into the nitty gritty of past trauma. And we even end the conversation talking about some socio political stuff related to ethnicity and some political stuff going on in America. Anyway, you'll, you'll, you'll, we'll get to that. Please welcome to the show. The one and only Kena Aragon. All right. Hey, good morning, Kina. How are you doing this morning? Good morning. I'm good. You have a fascinating and I would say raw story and you've written an incredible

book that's sitting up on my shelf behind me from our YouTube watchers. Let's go. I mean, I don't know where you want to begin. Do you want to begin in your, uh, your upbringing? I mean, you have a, uh, an interesting upbringing and then you have had a, uh, an interesting, I guess, I don't know if that's even the right word growing up period. And then your encounter with Christ and, and your engagement with the love of love of God, take us back as far as you want. Who is key to Aragon? Sure. So in the 1700, no, I'm just kidding. So no, I was, I was born in the Philippines. My mom, I'm a mix. So I'm Filipino, Puerto Rican, Jamaican. So all islands are inside of me. My grandmother was from Puerto Rico, married a Filipino man in New York, had, you

know, seven kids in, in, in the Philippines. So My mom was born and raised in the Philippines, had me in the Philippines, and then decided to not stay there and we moved. I grew up in Florida. My dad's Jamaican, grew up with mom, dad. A mixed bag of upbringing, I had a dad who doesn't really subscribe to any particular belief. And then my mom being Filipino is kind of a bit on brand, but she was raised Catholic, so she raised us Catholic.

So it's a Catholic church, Catholic school, all the things. And growing up, coming from such a diverse, I mean, my family is huge and loud and crazy and like has all kinds of beliefs and all kinds of backgrounds and It's actually a really beautiful mix and and what we experience as a family At least, you know, maybe is a little bit naive of me because I'm like I was a kid growing up but in my you know imagination back then it was like as a kid growing up, but in my imagination back then, it was like this sort of almost perfect unity of this mix

of cousins that look white, cousins that look a little bit more like me, cousins all over the spectrum. And so that was kind of like the positive side. And then growing up in a Catholic background, I had zero real interest in God at all. If anything, because of going to Catholic school here in the States, I was like one of the only black people

in class, and so that presented all kinds of challenges and feeling like an outsider, and where I found my space of belonging was really sports and academics. So if I can exceed in both of those, I can excel in both of those, then I can belong. And so, I did and I felt like, you know, around middle school time, I started to wonder, what's the point of life?

You know, we live and we die and what's the point? And I had questions about faith and at the time taking religion classes, you know, the nuns were like, just have faith. And I didn't really, there was no like biblical grounding for anything in my experience that I was supposed to believe. And so going into high school, all of a sudden I was in this really big, diverse high school here in Orlando, Florida. And I was like, wow, people look like me and all the things that, what I experienced in that was, I did the same thing, sports academics.

Sports academics, that was my focus. If I can succeed in that, I'll be good. From a high school perspective, I sort of had everything you could want. The boyfriend, we were well off at the time, was doing well in volleyball, basketball, and all this stuff. What I experienced was sort of, I always compare it to the book of Ecclesiastes, is this chasing after the wind, my fleeting sense of success, and finding that in having it, I was still empty. And that's what the Lord used to really bring me to Himself. And so I had an aunt

and uncle from, or I do have an aunt and uncle from the Philippines who would send me Bibles and I would just kind of let it collect dust in the corner of my room. And in God's providence, he had a friend in my English class and in my volleyball team who I really kind of saw the way she interacted was so different than us. She didn't speak like us in terms of like, you know, cursing and all this stuff. She didn't gossip like us, she didn't do all of that stuff.

And yet she was very cool to be around and she was very kind, very joyful. And being a part of that volleyball team with her, I began to hang out with her family. And so it was her hospitality, her family's hospitality, they're Christians and the way that they would interact with each other, I was like, there is something different here. So it was like their hospitality is juxtaposed with my sense of this is empty, like life is empty. God used that concoction to one day, I just had an emotional breakdown in my room.

Was like, if that doesn't make sense, you know, if you're rich, you die. If you're poor, you die. If you're wise, you die. If you're a fool, you die. It doesn't matter. And as I was crying and I couldn't articulate myself, I just saw the Bible in the corner of my room,

picked it up. I didn't know chapter from verse. I didn't know anything of the scriptures. I just opened it up in the middle. I also thought it was old English and like that I wouldn't understand it and that it was all a book of rules. Lo and behold, I opened it up and it's Psalm 69.

And I'm like, it's the poetry of scripture. And he's talking about, you know, save me, the waters have gone over my head. I have more enemies and hair on my head. Answer me with your sure salvation. And I'm like, wow, that is how I feel. And I didn't even know there was like this divine permission to feel and to articulate feeling and emotion.

And I didn't know anything of the context or anything of that. I just knew this sounds relevant and I didn't know anything of the context or anything of that. I just knew this sounds relevant and I need to know more. So me being nervous to talk on my feet and very on brand for myself, I'd rather write than talk out loud. So I wrote her a letter and it was like four pages long to basically say, hi, can you explain more

of this God stuff to me? And she used one of those, she of course, excited to do so. She used one of those old school gospel tracks, sat with me on a bus ride to an away game for volleyball. And that was really the first time I heard the gospel presented in such a way that my heart was primed and I was ready to receive, especially as it talks in Ephesians about that is by grace you're saved. So from a Catholic background, I was thought, you know, I'm not selling drugs, I'm not doing

this and that, I'm not so bad. But then as I saw my high school progress, my high school years progress, all the things I said I wouldn't do my freshman year, here I was finding myself doing them and not being able to stop. And so when I saw that verse and saw this fact that I cannot reach God through my own works that Christ had to do it for me, that was revolutionary for me. So that night, I prayed the prayer at the back of the track and just went to school like, okay, what do I do now? So her family kind of mentored me. And my testimony is really a mixed experience that that was the really positive, exciting part of it because I came hungry for the Lord and

I've been following him ever since. But at the same time, like you said earlier, it's like that first year or two of following Christ was just absolutely traumatic at the same time. Why, why was it? I've got a bunch of questions. Actually, let me ask one question. Actually, it's more of an observation. I mean, when you first started reading the Bible, it was the Psalms that drew you in. It just made me think like the Bible is filled with so many different genres purposely. It's filled with so much diversity because creation is diverse, people are diverse, God is diverse. I mean, you're a big Trinitarian

thinker. We often, though, like, you know, if there's a new believer or a seeker, we're like, we always give them the gospel of John. It's always like, John, go read John, you know? And it just made me think, like, I don't know, what if we actually took time to understand how this person's wired? Maybe the Psalms, if it's an artist or something, might be a better book to start with rather than thinking John is going to meet everybody. I think John is actually, Jesus's speeches, they're terrible. I mean, they're very mysterious. There's a lot of the things I was like, I don't know if I want a new believer with no context to read, eat my flesh and drink my blood. Anyway, that just made me think of that.

Have you thought about that before? Just the diversity of humanity and the diversity of scripture and just paying attention to those connections. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you look at the ministry of Jesus, he's so different. He has such diverse answers for different people and their backgrounds. He doesn't go with a gospel track every time and say, you are a sinner and you need to be saved.

He understands the woman at the well, her situation. He understands the leper situation. He knows exactly when to touch, when not to, how to speak right to the heart of that person's story. and not to, and to, you know, how to speak right to the heart of that person's story, which is kind of like what my book's about is like that love has a story in the whole scriptures, but also like love has been writing your story. And so let's observe some of your story. Let's get curious about your story.

And then when I do, you know, I look back at that time where it was the poetry of the scriptures that drew me in in in the first place. And I'm like, that's so funny because my friend that shared the gospel with me, she had reminded me later on as I started to write poetry myself, as I was processing my walk with the Lord and all this stuff, she was like, you were so bad at creative writing. You were so bad at poetry when we did those sections

in English. And I always was cool with academic writing, presentations, things of that nature. But creative writing? Forget it. I was so out of touch with my emotional life and anything like that, that I was like, this is pointless. And so it's kind of like also that God has a sense of humor because the very thing, and this is the one test I remember in high school that I failed was the poetry section and now I write

books but yes so yeah I've thought about that a lot. So that doesn't come naturally you seem like a natural poet I mean your writing is very poetic and just colorful and creative so that that's you're saying that wasn't how you're wired at the beginning. No I think the DNA for just loving writing was there. That's true, like essays and all that stuff. But God took that kind of DNA, that raw material that existed in my story, but then made something grander and more glorious than I could have ever imagined. And being able to do creative writing and short films and things of that nature. I mean, that's, and it became clear to me,

even in my teenage years, that this is a gift from the Lord, like very clearly, because I literally was not able to do this a year ago. You know, I was a 16 year old. And so I've always wanted to use that for God. And as I've grown, of course, like my imagination of what that could even mean has also expanded. Wow.

Okay, so take us to, you see, I cut you off with your story, right? When you said you started to encounter all kinds of trauma, can you take us there? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I don't know if it makes more sense to share the poem or just to jump in. Yeah, I would love to hear your poem.

Let's start there. Okay. Yeah, this kind of just summarizes it. It's in my book, it's called, Welcome to the Faith. Welcome to the Faith at 16. And back then, I'd have run through a rod for my God. Brand new believer, welcome, Keena. You'll never be the same. And I wasn't.

But then again, back then, I saw no face to mirror my emotional conflictedness that my parents split just months after I prayed my first true amen. Back when I didn't know I should maybe mention home was swallowing me whole and the only touch that seemed safe Touched me in ways that shoveled me under my shame Bearing your name, but sneaking hands where they shouldn't be welcome to the faith Welcome to secrecy Back then you were new to me yet. You were my everything I knew to follow meant carrying cross,

yet staring at addictions grimace. The way it makes the finest face shrivel and sink, deflating the ability to dream. At 17, I admit I didn't expect it. Back when I'd cringe in class as kids laughed and rapped about crack cocaine like it didn't just disintegrate everything around me, like it wasn't the enemy. No, back then I thought maybe this was it. Maybe this was your plan for me, my purpose to never get out. So I quit to my forever chagrin.

It seems volleyball dreams, my student athlete trajectory back when my high school coach, who'd known a bit about my home, for some reason made it his mission to torment me all season, antagonizing my newfound faith, then pulled me aside to tell me a lie. I'd spend the rest of my life trying not to believe, but I believed it then. He drew a chart on a paper,

pointed to its peak and said, "'This is you now, almost 18. This is the best you'll ever be. It's only downhill from here. Back when I'd already seen my friend die, my mentor die, my life tear at the seams. Back then, I didn't know this was all called trauma, that my brain would black out memories,

my body would keep, my nightmares would later remind me of back when I began this great migration, away from hoping in my own fleeting sense of success to hoping in the resurrection. Yes, back then, my childhood experienced its own sort of death, welcomed to the faith with pain I still feel today. But back then, I remember. I refused to forget. Yes, I refused to forget.

I'd lay my head on the pillow and pray to this Jesus I found myself in love with, this Jesus who I knew was changing me within. And back then, you gave me a vision in the screaming silence of my loneliness. There you were holding me with scarred hands. You'd rock me in the night till finally I'd fall asleep, welcomed to the faith I've never been the same. Oh my gosh. Oh man. That's powerful. I mean, both the language and also the story.

I mean, I'm picking up layers of trauma all in one, like one year. Was that, were you narrating kind of a, I mean, a short amount of time? Yeah, very short amount of time, about a year and a half. If I can identify, so I mean, it seems like there was, uh, emotional abuse, um, from your coach for sure. A divorce, death of a friend. Uh, I'm also, there's hints of like physical or sexual abuse as well, or. Yep. Can you take it like what, what's, how are, and you're a brand new Christian, how are you piecing all this together?

How were you able to cope with all that? And how did you pursue healing, if I could ask that? Yeah, it's weird because it's like now in my 30s and being in trauma therapy for however many years now and growing in my understanding of who God is. I think I look back at that season now with a lot more compassion for 16, 17 year old Kena than I ever did before. And that has taken a lot of, you know, again, therapy and all of the things.

But I'm able to hold space now for the fact that that season was so beautiful and that I was encountering God for the first time. I was like having this relationship with Jesus and growing. I was just devouring God's word. I was writing, I was doing poetry, all this stuff. And then at the same time I was being like sexually abused. I was experiencing emotional abuse. I was experiencing emotional abuse,

I was experiencing things that I would regret later on, like quitting volleyball. And I had no idea in that time, first of all, that any of that was that, like abuse or any, I would have not put that language on it. I just was like, I felt like in that time, all I could really feel was a sense of shame around not just what was happening at home, certainly, but also what I was engaging in because I was

like, this is my fault. This is all my fault. I could only really understand the cross at that time as I have done evil, Jesus paid for my sins, I am forgiven, and that is very hard to believe in this time. And then I could not imagine that stories don't end in the middle. I just felt like that was, at that time as we were dealing with addiction of a loved one, I felt like all my energy was spent towards that.

And so maybe this was the cross God wanted me to carry and that's it. Like that I wouldn't have any sort of expression of the gifts and the calling that God had put on my life. I just thought this was it. So my imagination of like what it could mean to walk with Christ in this life was extremely limited. I was ignorant about the purpose of the body of Christ in this life was extremely limited. I was ignorant about

the purpose of the body of Christ, like the purpose of community. I was a part of a church, but I just didn't think that because it was just like me, I would just drive myself to church. And I just didn't know that that was something I should probably share with people, like with any safe adult. I don't even know that I could have identified who my safe adults were. And so when I have gone through my 20s and reenacted lots of traumas and those traumas even from the first year of following Christ, they're not random.

Like our family of origin plays such a role into the things that sort of prime us, if you will, for what we experience later, the things that even of prime us, if you will, for what we experience later, the things that even we allow into our lives. And so as I've grown older, I'm like able to look at younger, younger Keena and understand that that home was unwell in a lot of ways and able to name some of those specific wounds

that have led to more wounds, that have led to more wounds and reenactments and cycles within my life. So the reason I say now I can kind of look back at that teenage Kena, and I'm still working through a lot of this, but I'm able to look back and say, wow, you were a kid. Your brain wasn't even fully developed.

They say, when you've grown up in, I have complex PTSD, by the way, P.S. So that getting diagnosed with that a few years ago was like very helpful, actually. I was very relieved because I was like, I just felt like I suck at emotions. Like I suck at like being able to regulate myself. Like I just feel like I'm really high, I'm really low,

and I'm not steady. And so being able to understand, man, being under intense stress and trauma since a kid, since I was little, has stuck with me. And that has changed the chemistry of my brain. It's changed my body. So I'm able to look back now and go, wow, you were a kid. And you did what you could.

You coped in the ways that you could and you tried to do what you knew. And somehow, like I've had to lament and wrestle with God. Like, why would you let this happen to me? Like I've had to get to the place of being angry at God so I can experience his openness to the full emotional range of feelings that I've had about that season and other seasons similar. Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Aiman joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance.

I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood actors and all high performers in all types of different fields of how they break through pressure, ignite drive, how they overcome distractions, how they put fear on the bench, how they tap into flow state and just dominate all these different areas of high performance. So on this season, my good friend, Dr. Daniel Layman will break down what is actually going on in the brain

in these different areas and I will give actionable tools to be able to use and apply in your life. So buckle up, the doctor and the nurse on The David Nurse Show coming at you. So I was wondering, I mean, when you're a kid going through all of that, fresh in the faith, how did you not, how did you cling to the love of God? Like, I can imagine many people, rightly so, would say, if God is good, why in the world is this happening?

There must not be a God, or if there's a God, He's not good. You have the problem of evil kind of stuff. Did you wrestle with that at that time, or what kept you wanting to follow Jesus through all that at such a young age? There was some ignorance because, a lot of ignorance. There was a lot of ignorance because I felt like this, I knew, I was clear at least on the fact that Jesus said,

in this world you will have trouble. I was clear that there was a cross to bear. In that time, I just, again, I assumed that it just meant I'm gonna be lonely and just have to kind of bear this sort of on my own. And I didn't understand that part of community. I look back now and I think, man, what I did know to do was be on my knees.

And it taught me how to literally be on my face, praying for the things that were going on. Like, yeah. And that taught me the rhythm of like absolute desperation for God and that is never a bad lesson to learn. And so that has stuck with me. I know where to go and I felt, like I say in the poem,

in that intense loneliness of that long season, I felt honestly, as I was writing that poem, I was like, wow, you gave me like a literal visual of Christ holding me with scarred hands. And that image of the resurrected Jesus still bearing our wounds, or still bearing his wounds, still bearing scars, you'll see that in my book. It's like, I didn't even realize it

as I was compiling these poems and compiling these meditations, that that's like a really big theme in my book, but also because it's been a big theme for me in my life. And so the fact that our God is the one who has wounds, who still bears his wounds, and that the center of our worship in heaven forever is gonna be a slaughtered lamb

is not just mind-boggling to me, it's like the biggest comfort to me because that means he under like, you know, he's able to have this intense solidarity with abuse victims. He's able to invite us to touch his wounds as we doubt. And he's able to meet us in the ugliest parts of our stories and go, I want to be with you in this and I want you to experience me in this as you wrestle with what appears to be my silence, as you wrestle with what appeared to be my inaction

and my lack of presence with you. I want to be with you as it were on the wrestling mat. Like Jacob, I want to be with you in that. And as I've experienced that, and that God didn't leave me after my snotty nose many times lament of like, how could you that I have felt that I felt like I've heard that still small voice of God's like gentleness. The thing of King David, he said, you know, your gentleness made me

great. I feel like that is my testimony in a sentence. I was going to ask you about that line, actually, before you brought it up about Christ's, you know, pierced hands. I forget the word, like embracing the earth, that you found comfort in the suffering of Jesus. Like you're not going through anything that isn't like what Christ also went through. I do think like when people wrestle with the problem of evil like that, I don't think there's a good clean, satisfying response to the problem of evil. That's my, I don't know, my approach. I think when people try to iron it out too well, I just think they don't quite get it sometimes in just my opinion.

But I do think that the key piece is God, through his own will, chose to identify with human suffering. Like all of their solutions to the problem of evil, I think lack that piece from other religions. And obviously, I think that everybody has to wrestle with the problem of evil, atheists. I mean, the evil is there and whether there is a God or isn't a God, there's a problem of evil. I think an atheistic response would just lead me to pure nihilism. You know, like there's just arbitrary evil that's out of my control and out of everybody's control. And that to me, that doesn't, that's not satisfying. Anyway, I was fascinated that such a young age you found comfort in suffering to Christ. You made another statement though, I'd love

to tease out that you as a necessary, and again, this is my summary, we'd love to hear you unpack it, that going through a season of being angry with God was almost a necessary part of your journey toward healing? Or how would you put that? Can you unpack that? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's absolutely necessary. It's the disciples in the boat going, Lord, we're perishing, don't you care? And even though Jesus is calling them to a greater faith, He's not neglecting them in that. He's not walking away from that. It's Martha going like, you know, go tell my sister. She needs to be helping. There's this, or even, again, wrestling with God in his great fear. It is the book of Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah going, look at this destruction that's

come. God, I've been the one prophesying and being faithful in this, and yet I still, my eyes have to behold this abuse and this destruction, this deportation, this exile, all of this. It is the Psalms that are mostly painted with lament. It is the Book of Job that is mostly lament. I think there's just this constant invitation to take off our sanctimonious and like prayers and the arpithy phrases that we try to encapsulate. Well, you know, nobody's good. So there, it's like, God bless. Like, okay, like that's not, like

you said, it's not satisfactory. I think if anything, the scriptures are filled with examples of God inviting our anger at Him, which He is not surprised by because we know that He knows all things and He knows our hearts, but He wants us, as the psalmist says, to pour out our complaint to Him. There is a difference if I am giving God the silent treatment

and pouring out my complaint to this person and that person and God is a, that is the progression of someone that we don't wanna do, where we stand, we're walking, we stand, we sit with scoffers. That's not what he's asking, but what he is doing is saying, there is a lot more space than you could ever imagine that I'm giving you to interact with me in the full range of emotional experience of being human. And how do we know

that ultimately is because the Son of God chose to, like you said, become fully human. And on the cross, he quotes many things, but he quotes Psalm 22. He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What incredible permission and invitation God is giving us to ask the same questions. Not to say, oh, well, my suffering is exactly like Christ. I've never borne the sins of the world in my body. I've never done that. However, he's quoting King David, who, like me, was a sinner and felt an experience of God has forsaken him. And so there's this great invitation from the lips of the Son of God himself, the sinless one,

to say like, yeah, please tell God how you're feeling because he can work with that. There's a, the process of lament is so missing from our liturgies on, I'm sorry, I'm going on a rant here. Like it's so missing from our liturgies. I'm sorry, I'm going on a rant here. It's so missing from our liturgies. It's missing from our conversations. We are so uncomfortable with sitting with each other in our deep grief. We have a timeline for each other and even that we put on ourselves

that God hasn't put on us for our grief. Oh, well, you're still dealing with that? Like, when are you gonna be over that? Like, when are you going to be over that? Like, we do that to ourselves, we do that to each other because we haven't experienced in the body of Christ a lot of times somebody else's face mirroring the absolute emotional pain, the absurdity of what we're experiencing, the outrage of what we're experiencing or what we have experienced. We haven't experienced that a lot of times in community.

And when you haven't experienced that in an incarnate way, you don't know how to hold that space for yourself. And then therefore you don't really know how to do that for other people. And so we have, again, our sort of Bible band-aid, slap Jesus on a, Jesus band-aid on a gunshot wound and it doesn't work, you know? And we wonder why we have all these addictions that we're like, I think I'm going to stop

porn, I'm going to stop this, I'm going to stop. And it's like, where do you think that our idols come from? Like, think of Isaiah, like it goes back to a wound. It goes back to an area of life that you have not experienced Jesus tending to, and that he's intensely interested in tending to that wound, that you might be free from the idols that you don't even wanna have as a Jesus follower.

You know that you don't want that addiction. You know that you don't want that. But are you willing to maybe open that door to explore a little bit more of your story of what God might have been up to and to open yourself up to be angry at God at some point in that process? Pete I'm so glad you're, I've been thinking about this a lot in the last year, the missing element of lament and grief in our liturg our, yeah, in our liturgies and our worship services. I just, I don't know. Like I, you know, I talked to a wide diversity of people that have a lot of different experiences. I mean, and a lot of trauma,

truly traumatic experiences. I mean, just similar to your story. And so when I go to church, I look around and when everything's just nothing but triumphant and God, you are always, always, always good. You never let me down. That's you. There's verses that would say that, but that's only one side of the story. And when we only emphasize one side, I just, I can't imagine personally, cause I have not experienced nearly the trauma that you have or that many I mean, I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's's got to be hard for people to say, do you, is that, I mean, do you experience that when you're in an overly triumphant or only triumphant kind of Christian context? Yeah. And I've, I've, I feel like I've yet to find like a space that like just regularly laments, like, because there's always going be, like what Roman says, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. There needs to be both, because both are always happening within any congregation, within any fellowship.

And I don't know, I think that is one of my, I don't mean to make a rant of it, but it really does. You can rant, still general, you're free to rant. I think that all of the full testimony of scripture, the full like the various scents, if you will, that come from the garden of all the stories that are collected in scripture is like, you have to lament. Like if you do not weep, like I think Mary and Martha,

the way that when Lazarus died and Jesus purposely delays, lets him die and comes and they're like, Lord, they both say the same thing. Like, Lord, if you had been here, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. And at no point in that story do you see Jesus going, ah, ah, ah, eh, no. He doesn't do that. He's, if anything, he enters in, it says multiple times that he's deeply moved by the grief. He's obviously, where we see Jesus wept.

He takes the time to leap knowing full well that he was gonna raise his friend and knowing full well that raising his friend was gonna be like for sure the death warrant, the warrant on his life. Cause in the book of John, I mean, that's kind of the progression is like once then the leaders kind of heard that he did this

for Lazarus, they were like, that's it. We gotta out this guy. So knowing all of that, he takes the time to grieve. And so I just wonder if we have not oftentimes felt like we've experienced someone going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you just told me like 10 heavy things, let me name them back to you.

Let me, like I'm mentoring someone right, a couple of people right now. And like one me like, I'm mentoring someone right, a couple people right now and like one of them I remember she shared like really heavy stuff. I said, whoa, let's just pause for a second. And I couldn't collect myself. I just started crying in front of her. And I think that is something I have experienced from somebody, from a few other people doing that for me, as I sort of power through my trauma stories

and then this and that, whoa, let's pause, this happened. You're going through this financial crisis, you're going through that health issue, you're doing it. Like, let me mirror for you what that feels like and give you that permission to then feel those things. Because if we don't, how are we going to take it to the one who who's able to transform those things? Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Tell us about your book. Love has a story. And I guess I want

to begin by asking like the power of story. You have the most amazing, either African I'm not sure if you're going to be able to tell me that. But I'm sure you're going to be able to tell me that. So I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question.

And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question.

And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'm going to ask you a question. And I'mda, give me a story. Do you remember the proverb or I could- Yeah, well I have to look at it, hold on. Cause I actually got it from, I heard it when my friend Rich Perez, who was a pastor in New York, he's in Atlanta now,

but he had said it on some interview and it was in the middle of a really dark season for me. And I was like, that resonates so much because the things that were ministering to me at that time that helped me, especially as I was like, is God even real? Does He want to kill me? I was dealing with chronic pain, like five surgeries is the whole thing. And he said that quote and I was like, yes, the thing that I think is keeping me are the stories that are willing to engage my humanity. And not all of them were books

or stories that were written by Christians or anything like that, but they were willing to engage my humanity. And then two, the fact that the scripture does that, it engages that. So the quote is, share the facts and I'll learn, tell the truth and I'll believe, tell a story and I'll be forever changed. That resonates a lot because I think when the sort of formulas that we want and the perfect little boxes that we want to create for God and for framing of our suffering and the problem of evil like you were talking about, when those things inevitably become insufficient. I think it's the story for me at least that has kept me. It is like, it seems that when I read the story of scripture,

when I see the story of Jesus, I'm still drawn in. I'm so mad at him. I'm so upset. I feel like he's being silent. I feel at times like he's being a bully. I feel like he's being cruel. And I can be honest about that and yet find that it's just, I can't help it. This is the best story I have ever heard. There is no better story than a God who's fully invested in going into the deepest and darkest and grossest, you know, parts of our stories. And that that's like exactly what he makes a beeline to,

to the point of putting on humanity, to the point of putting on poverty, to the point of living in oppression, to the point of, you know, taking a death on a cross for, like carrying our griefs. I mean, there's no better story and I just, I can't get over that. And I just remember, you know, in the process of trying to write this book, which was supposed to be like a 10 month thing, and turned into

like a four year thing because of, I had stage four endometriosis, had a bunch of surgeries, chronic back pain, could not work for a while, it was really hard. And I just felt like God was trying to kill me. We lost friends through falling out. We had financial trouble because of all my medical issues and other things that we had to relocate. It was just so much. And in that, it was like the story, the story though.

I'm going to pour out my complaint before God, but he just kept drawing me back to the stories and the story, like the greater story of scripture. So what led you to write this book? It's maybe describe, it's a different kind of book, describe the book and tell us, like, tell us what it's all about. Yeah, so I was asked by Moody Publishers to write 100 days on some attribute of God, and I got to pick. So I was like, okay, sounds good. This is me in 2020. I'm like, sure, yeah. I was thinking, should I do justice? Should I do something really scandalous, like the wrath of God? I don't know. What should I do? And as I prayed and thought about it,

love was the one that I was like, oh my gosh, everybody has written a book on the love of God. And so at first I was like cynical, but then I realized in the process of writing it, that I think I was drawn to the love of God and just seeing, basically what I do is I trace the scripture story.

I tell the scripture story from like a kind of 10,000 foot view and trace the love of God in that. And so it's not that this hasn't been done before, but I needed to do it because I think that the love of God is the hardest thing for me to internalize, the hardest thing for me to feel in my bones. So it feels very much like God to take the area of our deepest woundedness, our deepest doubts,

and to be like, yeah, write about that. Like, right, let's do that. So there was a lot of God tending to my heart as I wrote this, and experiencing the love of God as I wrestled through these things. So my book is not like fluffy and I hope that the cover in and of itself sort of communicates that my husband designed the cover.

It's like rugged books and journals and a compilation. There's a lot of little Easter eggs in there, details about me and about the scripture story. And so this book is not like your fluffy sort of like feel good little nugget of comfort for the day. It is comforting, but it is honest. It's very human and it's educational too. You know, it's what basically my best way of describing it is it's biblical theology, just like some level of introductory education

on the overarching story of scripture, and as we trace God's love through it. But then it's also story work. It's like the reflection questions are gonna ask you to get a little curious and to start engaging your story, your family of origin, even your ancestry, all of these things that play a part of, you know, you were born into a story

and like, let's explore that because your struggles are not random. And then it's also kind of like meeting your local open mic coffee shop poet, you know? And so if I'm gonna ask you as a reader to engage your story through these reflection questions, I am going to need to do that first for you. I'm gonna need to show you what it might look like

to look at past scenes of your life or even present scenes and engage my story with you, the reader. So I share personal poems, like the one I already shared earlier in this time, and others that kind of give you an opportunity to reflect and slow down. So it's that, it's biblical theology and story work

and sort of this intersection of those two, because I felt like our spiritual formation is so missing sort of both of those together. We can become really heady and have zero emotional maturity and then we can also become really interested in our stories, but sort of disconnect it from the greater story of scripture. I think I should be reading my life story

through the lens of the story of scripture and I'm hoping to help others do that. So you chose the love of God, not because it came most natural or that you're most passionate about it, but because you wanted to grapple with an aspect of God that was most difficult for you to... Yeah, because I'm terrible at believing it myself. Yeah. Wow. That's kind of backwards from how most people... I mean, that's really honest, you know? Like I'm going to tackle this topic because I don't really love it, or at least I have a hard time believing it.

I'm going to be honest, I, I, I most kind of devotional literature as you know, I'm primarily an academic and I've fallen into non-academic kind of less academic stuff, but like, I still have that kind of snooty, like, I want precision and good content. And most, most devotional literature I read, it's just kind of like, I just fall into kind of a cynical, like picking it apart intellectually. I'm like, ah, I can't do this fluffy stuff. You know? And I've tried, I've tried, I've tried really hard. It's hard. It's like, I feel like I'm going to be drawn into God by reading Karl Barth more than I am by reading, you know, I won't name any names, you know, but like more Christian living type stuff.

Your book's different. I mean, just in look, I mean, it's deeply theological without being like, while being poetic and clear, but it's like fairly heavily footnoted with a wide range of sources from, you know, you're citing CS Lewis to like the indigenous translation of the Bible to some academic books. I mean, you're, you're widely read and not that just because it has footnotes, meaning the con, you know, whatever, but like it shows that you're working really hard to be academically or intellectually precise and thoughtful. Can you, I mean, is that a good representation of how you're, you're wired or? It is. And I wanted to, to showcase that. And I also wanted to be able to quote more than, um, dead white people, like dead white men. I wanted to quote more than that.

I wanted to show that there are a range of voices that we should be tapping into, that we should be listening to, because the church is a global and diverse body of believers. And we cannot, for me, I mean, a lot of my discipleship for a while there was really implicitly just like sort of thinking, okay, if I won't say names either, but like if such and such Puritan or if such and such dead white person theologian like said it, then it must be true. Let me fact check it based off of that.

And I want readers who maybe don't know or just aren't sure like even who are those voices to just have some level of introduction. So I make it clear like, oh, this is a native American I'm quoting here. This is a Korean American I'm quoting here. So that was important to me. That's really, I love that.

You even have a, and just so I mentioned this in intro, but it's a hundred meditations. And they're really, they're really short, which short, but complex and in depth, like, and they're not, they're not fluffy. So somebody is looking for a fluffy kind of devotional literature, Google it. You'll find plenty. This is, this is going into the deep end, but it is short. Like it's, you know, each chapter is like pages. And you even have a chapter, I lost it now, but one where you talk about

being an immigrant, I believe, and then you even cite Karen Gonzales and other, I think maybe Jenny Yang or some other books on... I love Jenny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't find the page number. Anyway, so all that to say, you deal with even the interaction of like personal but also social or sociopolitical themes, you know? You don't expect reflections on immigration to be baked into a devotional book. Was that a high value of your... Yeah,

am I understanding it right by describing it that way? Yeah. I think any... So I want to be be faithful to what is the story of Scripture. I also want to be honest about what is my story. And when I looked at what is usually called the patriarchal age of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, that part in Genesis, and I was going through that part in my book, instead of calling it the patriarchal age, I decided to call it the mysterious migrations of love. And kind of pose the question, why would God let Abraham and his children at some points

walk the promised land that he tells them in Genesis 12, like this is the land I'm gonna give you this land. Like he tells him, he lets them walk it, but he doesn't let them stay. Why does God allow for famine to happen multiple times throughout those generations? Why does God allow, like, kind of posing that question and then saying, well, if from the beginning, God has been, as the Psalm says, like watching over the sojourner. And you see this theme develop throughout the rest of scripture embedded in the Mosaic law is a care for migrants, is a care for the immigrant. In the Book of Ruth, obviously, it's beautifully played out.

Jesus himself becomes a refugee later. So if this is like a thing God tends to do with his beloved, with his chosen, what's he up to there? Like, what do you think he might be teaching us? And then I kind of proposed, you know, at some point in that section is like, maybe we should be learning from voices of people who have been refugees or are refugees or have been or are immigrants and have experienced these great migrations. Because there is also a sense, I think it's 1 Peter that talks about us being sojourners, passing through in this life.

And so our identity in Christ is to be migrants in a sense, because this is not our home. And so, yeah, so I wanted to kind of be faithful to what the story of scripture seemed to be drawing out and then also like faithful to like what I've seen. I've seen how, well, to some degree how broken our immigration system is. I had in-laws that were deported a few years ago and we still are dealing with the fallout of that and it was an unjust deportation. And that's a whole other story, but there's, I've seen it up close and personal and it's like, man, what can, I want to be, I want to be educational,

but I also don't want to just like feed our brains. Like I want to actually be prophetic in the sense that I want to speak to our American idols. Cause I know that most of my audience is American. I want to speak to my own idolatry, my own tendencies. And I think that's the part that's a little scary, but like needs to happen. I'm curious, this is gonna kind of take a quick turn,

but with your diverse ethnic background, do you identify with one background more than the other? You've heard, you refer to yourself as black a couple of times. Is that, or is it, is it just a mix? And this is a white dude asking a stupid question. No, it's a great question. It's a great question. No, I grew up more connected to Filipino culture than the other ones.

I am Puerto Rican, I am Jamaican, but just by nature of like my family, my mom being born and raised there and her her family just has a lot of family members, and most of them were born and raised there as well. So the way I describe, and you'll see it in my book, actually, you'll see my grandmother's tiny little house, New Orlando, with her little wooden table, is just this mixture of Spanish, then Tagalog, then English, and I don't even know Tagalog,

but somehow I like understand what's happening. And I don't, I'm not sure how that works, but. So yeah, I've always more connected with the Filipino side, but as I've grown, you know, I've of course became interested in, you know, where I come from and want to better understand the stories of my family and the stories of the countries where my ancestors came from.

Another, if I could ask a kind of a political question. At the time of this recording, it's funny because people are going to probably listen to this after the election. But at the time of this recording, there was just a recent Trump rally in New York City. And I don't watch these things, but apparently given some clips online at the rally, I don't know if it was Trump or somebody else made some comments about Puerto Rico. And I don't know if it was the people or the Island, whatever that were taken again, there's two different interpretations. Some people were like, ah, it was just a joke.

I even saw some Puerto Rican people online like, Hey, it's no big deal. It's just a joke. It wasn't, you know, another people saying this is super offensive and racist. And if you don't, I don't know if you saw any of this or if you have an opinion on that. Okay. Yeah. What do you, what are you? I did. I think the book, the war on all Puerto Ricans, and I'm totally forgetting the author's name at the war and all Puerto Ricans should be required reading for everybody. Because when you start to, when you see jokes like that, which are nefarious and not in good faith, they are extremely dehumanizing. They're not, but they're not random. They don't come out of nowhere. It comes from a long history of the US having colonies,

having Puerto Rico as a colony, as one that is taxed, but does not have the proper representation. They're not able to vote for the president and things of that nature. The Jones Act, I mean, that creates further oppression of the people. Like, anyway, that's a whole conversation.

I talk about in one of my devotionals in the book, that when Jesus came on the scene, we have to look at least, and I feel like NT Wright was the most helpful resource for me in this one, but like, when Jesus came on the scene, we have to like understand the political, social, the narratives and myths that were around at that time. In other words, how did Jews in a land that was occupied by the Romans, where they were heavily taxed, where they were being oppressed, how did they

understand how God would realize or his kingdom would come. How would that happen? And if you were a Pharisee, maybe you had one answer. If you were a Sadducee, maybe you had a different answer. If you were just your modern day fisherman, whatever, you might have had another answer. And when Jesus gets on the, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, or if we were to just take like a survey of Jesus's teaching as a whole, there is this, what is often called the upside down kingdom, but I feel like when he was speaking to what is this kingdom of God, it was invading and challenging the stories that his audience, his original audience, would have held deeply. And so it became difficult for the rich to enter into the kingdom.

And the disciples are confused by that statement because they're like, hold on, well then who can be saved? It became difficult for those who held power to relinquish it, but it also became liberating for the poor because it's like, wow, we've been oppressed. And I think of Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disenfranchised when he talks about this, but Jesus giving this invitation to be freed from the hatred of my oppressors.

There is a, oh wait, I don't have to live with this enslavement hatred of my oppressors. There is a, oh, I don't have to live with this enslavement and hating my oppressors. I don't have to live. I can pray to God for daily bread and he cares about that, that I have food to feed my family today. Like, his teachings particularly invade the stories and myths that everyone held at that time, and it still does today.

So what I say in that devotional, I guess you could say, I feel like devotional doesn't like, like you said, it kind of comes with a sort of baggage. But what I say in that meditation is that if this book is about, and the scripture is about, invading our stories, then we have to admit that we are born into stories that are affected by our society, that we're born into, the cultures we're born into. And if we find ourselves in an American context, then in order to best understand Jesus, we have to be able to acknowledge the fact that there are myths that we hold dearly, American exceptionalism, the idea that America,

as in general, their ethos, their morality, their history is somehow better or superior, white supremacy, colonialism, all of these things are just sort of the waters we swim in, the textbooks we read, the lessons we learn in school and media and all of these things. We have to be able to acknowledge those things as myths and untrue, or else we're gonna miss Jesus

and we're gonna see him as this sort of exceptional guy who made it. And if you trust in him, you can make it too. And you can have this abundant life. And we understand the abundant life as something different than what Jesus was saying. So if we were going to believe that about Jesus, he's just this picture of American exceptionalism or, you know, Christian nationalisms, you know, whatever image of who God is, then we literally would need to cover up the fact that Puerto Rico has been colonized and is continuing to be colonized by the U.S. We have to cover up the fact that the U.S. engaged in an ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. We have to literally cover up the fact

or sort of do some sort of intellectual gymnastics around the fact that the US is built on the backs of enslaved Africans. And if we're not honest, this is what repentance is. If we're not honest about our past, the good, bad, and ugly, then we cannot experience the incredible transformation power that comes through this good news of Christ.

So that's that. I don't find it funny. I had a whole post written. I had to delete it because I realized, I'll say it's not time. I need to process my anger with God first before I say something that I'll have to retract. But yeah, I know you asked me a very simple question. I had to go on that. Well, it was a simple question, but a complex issue. And yeah, a friend of mine who's from

Puerto Rico recently explained to me, I did not know how blatant the colonization of Puerto Rico and the empire nature of America's relationship to Puerto Rico is. I mean, it's, he's explaining to me, I'm like, wait, seriously? Like that's, that's the relationship. And he's like, yeah, it's straight up. Like we are under the empire of America. And yet it's not, you know, we, it's, it's, it's empire colonialism straight up. Yeah. Yeah. You can't vote, right? You can't vote, but you're, you have, we it's, it's, it's empire colonialism straight up. Yeah. You can't vote, right? You can't vote, but you're, you have a us passport, but can't vote. Is that correct? And for it's wild. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You can only vote within the, like the, the governor

of, of Puerto Rico and things like that, but not the president. And so, and you think of like how anyways, hurricane Maria is a whole thing and the constant hurricanes. But you know,, when you look at and again, War on All Puerto Ricans is a great book for this. But like when you look at the literal documents within the US of communications of presidents, the ways that they communicated, how they viewed Puerto Rican people, how they viewed Cuban people, how they viewed Filipino people, who they also had a part in colonizing. We were savages that we were less than human in some ways. And so it was okay to sort of oppress. Again, those types of jokes are not random. Like, oh my gosh, where do you come up with that? That's a long, long line of the American, a white supremacy, like viewing, um, people

of the islands, people of different skin colors, uh, as less than. So it's built, it's participates in a long narrative. And that's, I think that's something that, uh, people at least online maybe don't understand. So Tina, I've took you over an hour and I felt like we're just getting warmed up, but this is the book again for my YouTube watchers. Love has a story of 100 meditations on the enduring love of God. Cannot, I highly recommend you guys check it out,

especially if you're looking for a thoughtful, more meaningful kind of devotional literature. I'll stop there. I don't want to speak negatively of devotional literature that people love, but this is a really provocative book, Kina. Where can people find you? Do you have a website or a place people can reach you at? Yeah. Easiest places. Love has a story.com. You can join my email list on there. You can see it other works I've done. But yeah, love has a story.com. Thanks for being a guest with the all-general. Wow. Thank you for having me

This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus Podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? The Hearing Jesus Podcast is here to help you live out your faith every single day. And together we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's word in a way that you can really understand it.

If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Haven. And as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time

that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation and we talk about everything from relationships to parenting to friendships to even your view of yourself and we don't have answers or solutions but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I love for you to join me, Haven the Podcast.