28: Knowing God, Knowing Self: A Journey to Freedom
Today’s Guest: Ruth Hettler
Ruth is a wife, a mum, a nurse, and currently also a student finishing her MSc in Leadership in Healthcare. She works for a small inter-cultural faith-based organisation, and has been living in Rwanda for the past 5 years with her family. Ruth loves coffee, good books, the ocean & the mountains, building authentic friendships and is also passionate about the importance of supporting people’s emotional health.
Here’s a summary of this week’s story:
Ruth discusses her upbringing in a Christian home and shares a defining moment during her university years when she experienced loneliness and learned to embrace it, ultimately leading to a deeper relationship with God.
She had a clear sense of calling to be a nurse in East Africa from a young age. Despite a winding journey with several challenges, she believes that God used that time to do much work in her and her husband, and helped them become the people they are today.
Ruth shares about her mother's journey with breast cancer and how it impacted her faith, especially after her mother passed away before Ruth could be with her. She had not prayed for her mother's healing, but had asked for time with her before she passed away. When that plan didn't work out, she felt disappointed and let down by God, leading to a crack in her relationship with Him.
Ruth talks about the difficult decision her family had to make when her mother's condition worsened rapidly and they couldn't make it back in time to see her before she passed away, and how the disappointment and grief led to a crisis of faith, but ultimately, the support and hope from her community helped her hold onto her relationship with God.
She highlights the importance of community and vulnerability in the grieving process and how it has profoundly changed her, leading to a stronger sense of self and relationship with God. Though grieving is difficult, leaning into God and community can lead to a beautiful transformation.
Ruth's one message from her journey so far is that knowing God leads to knowing yourself, and vice versa, and that the two are connected. She believes that in order to know God more, we needs to know ourselves more, and that there is freedom in that understanding.
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