My Babies Died, My Faith Didn't

What's the Story

21 May

Guest: Julie Sunne

Julie Sunne is a resilient mother and author who has faced profound personal losses, including multiple miscarriages. She draws strength from her faith, which has guided her through the challenges of raising a child with special needs. Julie shares her journey and insights to inspire others to find hope and strength in their darkest times.

Here’s a summary of this week’s story:

Three Main Takeaways from Julie Sunne's Episode:

The Transformative Power of Faith in Adversity: Julie’s journey shows how deep personal tragedies, like miscarriages and raising a child with special needs, transformed her understanding of faith. Initially viewing God as a distant, sovereign figure, Julie came to experience His presence intimately through her darkest times. This profound shift helped her trust in God's unwavering love and plan, even when circumstances seemed bleak.
Embracing God’s Attributes in Daily Life: Throughout her trials, Julie learned to lean on various attributes of God, such as His sovereignty, compassion, and omnipresence. She discovered that understanding and remembering these attributes helped her navigate life’s challenges with a strengthened faith. Her book, "Sometimes I Forget," emphasizes the importance of continually reminding oneself of God’s true nature to find comfort and hope in difficult times.
Surrender and Trust in God's Plan: Julie's story underscores the necessity of surrendering personal control and trusting in God's greater plan. She highlights how, through surrender, one can find peace and resilience. Julie’s experiences taught her that while life might not unfold as expected, God’s presence and promises are constant. This message encourages listeners to trust God, even when His ways are beyond human understanding, and to find solace in His steadfastness.

Links & Resources from today’s story

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Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to What's The Story. We're an inquisitive bunch of hosts from the What's The Story team on a mission to uncover stories about faith and courage from everyday people. And to help us do just that, we get the privilege to chat with amazing guests And delve into their faith journey, the hurdles they've overcome and the life lessons they have learned along the way.
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What's the Story is brought to you by Crowd Church. We understand that stepping into a traditional church might not be everybody's cup of tea, and that's where Crowd Church steps in, [00:01:00] providing a digital sanctuary, a safe space to explore the Christian faith where you can engage in meaningful conversations rather than just simply spectating.
So whether you are new to the Christian faith or are in search of a new church family, we invite you to visit us at www. crowd. church and if you've got any questions just drop us an email at hello at crowd. church. We're here to help and would genuinely love to connect with you. And now, without further ado, Let's meet your host and our very special guest for today.
Sadaf Beynon: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of What's The Story Podcast. I'm your host Sadaf Beynon and today we have another inspiring guest with us, Julie Sunne. Julie has been through some incredibly challenging times and she's here to share her journey of resilience, faith, and the lessons that she's [00:02:00] learned along the way.
Julie, it's so great to have you here. How are you doing today?
Julie Sunne: I'm doing well, Sadaf. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Sadaf Beynon: Oh, it's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. So where are you calling in from today?
Julie Sunne: I live in Northeast Iowa in the States.
Sadaf Beynon: Okay. And what's that like? What's life in Iowa like?
Julie Sunne: Life in Iowa is getting really pretty.
It's very, it's greening up. We're probably in the 60s today, I think, low 60s. And right now it's foggy and overcast. So I think it's going to be one of those days, which we need those too. We've been getting a decent amount of rain. We were in a drought and now we're getting a decent amount of rain again.
So the farmers are happy. It's a kind of a rural farming community.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah.
Julie Sunne: Mostly.
Sadaf Beynon: Cool.
Julie Sunne: Yeah.
Sadaf Beynon: So should we jump in?
Julie Sunne: Please. Yes, let's do.
Sadaf Beynon: All right. Julie, why don't you start by telling us a bit about your early life and how your faith journey began?
Julie Sunne: Yeah, I've actually spent most of my life, all of my life in Iowa, living in Iowa, and [00:03:00] I grew up one of six children in, on a dairy farm in northeast Iowa, and it was a wonderful upbringing.
I really enjoyed it. We had a built in family, built in ball team, so we could, we played together. We didn't, we just really enjoyed, of course, we fought together as siblings do, but my parents were loving parents, very hardworking. They really instilled in us a hardworking ethic. I grew up in the church.
I was baptized and raised in the Catholic faith, and as we were in church every Sunday, but I would say now looking back as I grew up, I didn't, I knew the Lord in a very authoritative, sovereign creator way, but I didn't really walk. It wasn't a faith where I was walking very close with him.
I was going to church every Sunday. But, in the church that I went to, it wasn't, you didn't read the Bible for yourself, [00:04:00] you didn't really understand, you didn't really, I didn't anyway, I should just speak to me, for me, I did not grow real close to the Lord during that time, or walk daily with him, it was more of a Sunday faith, I would say.
But I did love and revere the Lord and respect and worship Him. I would say it's more of, I didn't feel Him on a daily, I didn't think of Him on a daily basis. I didn't live my life in obedience to Him on a daily basis.
Sadaf Beynon: So would you say it wasn't really a relationship with the Lord, it was more just knowing that he was sovereign?
Julie Sunne: Yeah. Would you say That's exactly what I'd say. I knew he was sovereign. I knew respected the fact that, he was in control of everything, that he had created everything. There was a healthy, I think a healthy fear of him, which I think a fear of the Lord is definitely biblical and a very good thing.
But there wasn't the intimacy, I [00:05:00] would say the realization that he was walking in my daily moments, that he was with me in my daily moments. It felt like he was in church and I was. And when I was in church, we were together and then, but when I was in my daily life, there wasn't a whole lot of thought to spiritual things.
and to the Lord.
Sadaf Beynon: So how did that evolve? How did that change into a place where you had a strong ongoing relationship with the Lord?
Julie Sunne: Yeah, it really didn't change until my life was turned upside down and I was thrown into a deep depression. Pit of depression. I think that as the Lord is sovereign, he knew what I needed and he provided that.
And so that I was, like I said, I had a good childhood. I went to college. And met my husband, we got married and we decided after a few years we were going to have our, [00:06:00] start a family and we were just elated when I got pregnant and, but that was quickly turned to great sorrow. It wasn't, I was probably about 10 weeks along when I found out the baby, we were losing the baby, they couldn't find a heartbeat and it was like in a, I had this immediate flip from elation to having, everything's going right and I'm going to have this beautiful baby.
And then just devastation when I found out that she was not going to live. And I went into a deep depression and I did not want to really function anymore. My husband and I were on different pages in our grief, and so I felt very alone in that. I have very supportive family on both sides. Both my husband's family and my family are very supportive, but they had not really experienced miscarriage and nobody we knew at that time had a miscarriage in either of our families.
And so it was, they didn't know how to relate. And I was very, it was thrown into a [00:07:00] deep depression. My world, I describe it as my world, turned colorless and the color washed out of it. And I didn't even want to get up. And the Lord knew that I needed to be out of control, that I needed to realize I had no control in order to get my attention, I think, and to help me start figuring out who he was.
Out of this deep depression, he met me in a dream, and he started to pull me out of my, at that point, I was probably in a self pity, and in my grief, and he started pulling me out of that. And yeah, so I can go into a little bit more of the dream, if you want me to. It was just a kind of a very special time.
And like I said, I was in bed. I didn't want to move on. And the Lord in a dream gave me an image of my little girl and it was. It was just, it was absolutely beautiful. [00:08:00] He held her. He didn't say it was him, but the hands that were holding her, it was just so beautiful, and she was held up for me to see, probably about three months old, and I had the words impressed on me.
Now, I didn't hear this audibly, but the words were impressed that here she is. She's beautiful. She's with me. Sarah is right here with me, and she's fine. Now you need to get up and live.
And
I had said, I had not even told anybody that her name was gonna be Sarah. We hadn't talked about names. It was so early.
We didn't know she was a girl. But in my spirit, I just a sense that she was a girl. And the Lord confirmed that in the dream.
And it wasn't like all of a sudden everything was better. And my life was all going well. It was just that he was there, he was present, and he made himself known to me in the way that I needed to know him.
I needed, I don't think any other way would have helped. I needed to know that [00:09:00] she was safe, and I probably, I knew that, I guess I really hadn't even thought of that up to that time, but at that point, it was like, I knew she was safe, I knew she was with him, and I knew he was with me. Even though I was so angry and just had really pushed him away.
He wasn't leaving me. He wasn't turning away and running away because I was so angry. He was just lovingly there. He was present. It was like when you're sick and as a child and you're not, you just count, your mom is right there or your dad is right there. You can count on them being there.
And as much as I pushed the Lord away, he didn't go. He felt I was worth staying. And that was such a pivotal time in my faith, I would say. And had me reconsider everything I thought about the Lord because at that time, everything I thought of the Lord was very controlling. [00:10:00] And I don't mean that in a bad way, just
sovereign. That's the only creator and sovereign were probably the only attributes of Lord, of the Lord I really thought about until then. And then it was like, this is an imminent God, a God who's near. This Lord is a compassionate Lord. He didn't have to give me this vision of my daughter.
He could have left me where I was, but he didn't. And he's a very compassionate Lord. So I saw some completely different aspects of the Lord. And he knew that's what I needed. And so that started a journey over an eight year span, I had five total miscarriages, and I gave birth to four babies.
So at that time, it was a very up and down roller coaster existence, I would say. And it was still a very, I had a very transactional idea of faith still, and I had to really grow through that. And the Lord did take me through [00:11:00] that through those trials of those eight years and beyond.
I thought, I was very misguided and I thought if I put in the right coins, and do the right things, the Lord is going to bless me in the way that I thought I should be blessed. That's I think what was so devastating about the first miscarriage was I thought I was a good person and I thought I was doing the good, the right things and he didn't hold up on his bargain in my mind.
And so I had to relearn who the Lord was and have different expectations of who he was for me. And that was profound and it's been a long journey to really get to understand who he was and to be able to trust them that whether it was miscarriage, whether I had loss or whether I had experienced the birth of a beautiful little boy [00:12:00] or my little girl, that he was good, regardless of which one happened.
His goodness doesn't change based on what my circumstances looked like. And that was a totally different concept. And an important one for me to learn.
Sadaf Beynon: Thanks for sharing that. It's evident how you as you've gone through all these incredibly tough times, how the Lord's been with, there with you each step of the way, and you're getting stronger and stronger in your understanding of the Lord and in your faith in him.
Yeah.
Julie Sunne: Yeah. Yeah. It's a journey. I think we all have different faith journeys and we all, the Lord is so individual and he knows exactly what each of us needs. And so that's what he provides.
That's
why none of our walks are the same. You can talk to a million Christians and everybody's faith journey is different and the Lord meets them individually.
And that's such a gracious Lord. [00:13:00] To be able to do that for us, to meet us in the way that we need him to meet us.
Sadaf Beynon: Absolutely. Julie, you shared about your dream and it was a profound dream in one of your darkest times. Can you share maybe how it changed your perspective. You made that clear, but
how do you think it prepared you as well for what was coming?
Julie Sunne: Yeah, I think it softened me and opened me to the possibility of experiencing God in a new way, of knowing God in a different way. And that was big. I needed to expand my understanding of who he was. I had a very little God and he was only one little aspect of life.
And God is so much bigger than that. And so I really needed to understand that. And he prepared me for dealing with the unexpected in a healthy manner with faith. And with patience [00:14:00] and kind of a an attitude of endurance, perseverance, because I needed that. I would need that to come and he knew it.
And again, that's the beauty of it because every live birth would be up of course a high in my life. And then I would experience a couple of miscarriages and that would just have me questioning all over again. I don't get it. Why? Why would you allow such beauty to be born into this world and the birth of my children and then such ashes and just devastation when my next two were taken before I could even hold them.
I didn't understand it and I felt I should, which is silly because now through all this walking with him and getting to know him, why should I think I could really understand him? He wouldn't be a very big God if I could understand him because I don't have a very big [00:15:00] mind. I shouldn't be able to understand the God of the universe. Now that doesn't mean we can't understand some of who he is and he reveals enough, he gives us just enough. And so in the words of scripture his character is revealed in a profound manner in the way that the scripture describes him as loving and compassionate and kind but also as wrathful and holy and righteous and sovereign and omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent and all of those so we can understand bits of his character, but we can't expect to grasp the wholeness of who, of the fullness of who the Lord is.
And so it seems awful presumptuous to me now looking back, but most of us, I think, go through that phase. And that's a faith that's part of our faith journey as well.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, as you were talking I was thinking of the scripture in Isaiah, where it talks about his thoughts and his ways [00:16:00] are so much higher than ours.
And for us to think that we can somehow grasp the things that he's thinking and doing almost feels entitled.
Julie Sunne: Exactly. Exactly. And, we are very, I would say, we're very proud people and that's that pride. And that was that control in attitude that I had, personality that I have.
I pride myself, I guess I'm being a strong woman and being able to handle things that come my way and being able to figure it out.
And when it doesn't go that way, I don't like it, but it's good for me and that's what the Lord has done. So as he continued to take me through the lows of miscarriages and disability, we had disability early on with the birth of my son did not go, my firstborn did not go as expected and he was born with an arm that was disabled and still is to this day.
And that was a year, more than just a year, but the first year was a very traumatic year of adjusting to what that might look like and having a child who did [00:17:00] have a disability. But the Lord knew I needed to be prepared in that manner as well, because our third live birth and our only daughter was born with we didn't know it at the time, but she had a genetic, has a genetic condition.
And is intellectually delayed to the point where she will always need to be cared for. And it was a slow revelation of that. When she was born, she seemed, she was born at the kind of on the backside of experiencing another couple of miscarriages. So we were just thrilled to get to full term and have our little girl and to have the girl too was just an added, of course we would have loved to have It's a wonderful podcast.
We're so grateful for your support. We'll see you [00:18:00] next time. And hers was just in the soft palate, so it was in the very back of her throat. So you couldn't see it, she had no cleft lip or anything, you couldn't see it externally. And so it took the doctor a little while to find it, but basically that caused the nursing and feeding for her was very difficult because she couldn't create suction because she had that extra hole in her mouth.
But that's all we knew. So I remember, I distinctly remember talking to my mom, calling her on the phone and just saying, yeah, she's born, she's healthy. We have this little girl and she's perfect, except for just a little hole in the roof of her mouth. But that can be repaired at about 11 months.
And so she's just perfect. And those words are interesting because She is perfect in the way that God made her, but she certainly wasn't perfect in the eyes of what we were expecting or in the eyes of what the world would call perfect. And her disabilities were revealed over years actually.
And we still aren't quite sure what that is going to be. Looks like in the future and we'll get into where she's at [00:19:00] right now, but she was so at six weeks she quit breathing on us and so we had gone through the whole route then of ambulance drive and figuring out what that looked like
And after a bunch of tests, it was basically found out that she had a really severe case of Gastroesophageal reflux disorder, which is, some people call it gerd and it's not that uncommon, but hers was a very severe case.
So as the acid would come back up, it would scorch her throat and make her throat clamp down, and so she would quit breathing. So we were sent home with medicine and a monitor and just said, you don't need to worry because if she quits breathing and passes out. When she passes out, she'll start breathing again.
It'll be okay. It wasn't, I suppose it's comforting in some ways, but in other ways, you don't, I couldn't sit there and let my daughter pass out. That wasn't something that was yeah. And then we also found out that she did have some heart anomalies.
She had a couple holes in her heart that did not close. And that they usually close at birth or prior to birth and hers did [00:20:00] not but that too. They figured that they would close that it wasn't really a cause for great concern but it was all we were starting to see a pattern of all things midline everything that seemed to be wrong with her was midline, which seemed to indicate some sort of a genetic thing and
I already had two boys.
I knew what the developmental milestones should look like and we realized that Oh, probably about four or five months that she really wasn't meeting those milestones. And so we started having her evaluated and that gave her the label of developmental delay. That's about as far as we got for quite, for a number of years.
And we just kept, she wasn't sitting up when she should have. She wasn't rolling up when she should have. She wasn't talking when she should have. So the whole kind of gamut of stuff continued to roll out. And we finally, I don't know if it was maybe, she was probably two,
maybe,
two and a half when we got a diagnosis of Velocardial Facial Syndrome.
Yeah. Yeah.
Julie Sunne: For instance, Syndrome, which a doctor in New [00:21:00] York had discovered and given his name to this set of anomalies or some symptoms that would that would give us this genetic condition. And I just didn't have a good feeling of that set up. I did not think that she had that syndrome.
So I started doing my own research. I told you I'm a little bit stubborn and controlling. I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know what to do about it and then we could fix it. So I did my own research and realized I just don't think she has this. So I sent all of her records and her pictures to that doctor in New York who had named the syndrome.
And to his credit, he responded very quickly. I really wasn't sure I'd ever get a response from him because doctors are busy and they don't have time for everything. Yes, he responded immediately and said no she doesn't have that. So again, we're left without a diagnosis. Besides developmental delay, we didn't know what was causing it and that was a real [00:22:00] concern, a real stumbling block for me for a while because I really, I felt I needed this roadmap of what was going to happen so I could prepare myself and so I could find ways to fix it, to make it better.
So that was a difficult time and I had to, again, learn to surrender that why in that that map of where I was going.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah Julie raising children, especially those with health challenges can be incredibly demanding, right? Yeah. So what has what has that been like and how has your faith helped you navigate these obstacles?
Julie Sunne: Oh faith has been everything, faith has been everything. If the Lord hadn't brought me through what he did, the miscarriages, the way he did, the loss of my first baby, the way he did, I don't know that I could be the mom that I needed to be for Rachel and probably for the other the boys as well.
We did have a boy after a couple of miscarriages, we had another little boy which rounded out our family. And I [00:23:00] needed to know that I could trust him with each, that's one of the reasons. I was, besides maybe stubbornness again, but that's one of the reasons I continued to try, that I wanted to continue to try to have children
And I was growing in to trust the Lord and I thought whether we have another child with disabilities, since we didn't know what caused it, we didn't know, it was a genetic thing.
We didn't know if we, and nothing was conclusive in our genetic testing. So we didn't know if we could pass something on or not, but I just felt like the Lord was going to be with us in those. And that was a huge face step for me to even get to that point, Sadaf. I was so lost early on that I would not, I maybe would have still continued forward under my own strength.
But I really, that gave me so much peace when our last son was born, to know that the Lord was would not abandon me, would not leave me, and wherever we were at with him, he would meet us there. So that was incredibly important for me and I was a very, oh, I would say I was a good person, but I was also very self centered and [00:24:00] I'm set in such a different way.
The Lord brought me to such a stronger faith and to such a nicer person, more beautiful person with a faith that, that can bend without breaking.
And so I needed that with our children. My oldest son went through several different surgeries and experiences with his arm. And so that was a journey of faith there that we had to really trust him. The doctors weren't always nice. Sometimes they were the one, one doctor in particular was very dismissive of our son's disabilities.
And so we really had to persevere. So I needed to be strong. And advocate for him and for our daughter and for our sons, just even that are normally developing children, as a parent, we have to be advocating for our children. And I think it's more, even more critical now in today's world that we [00:25:00] have to be strong in that.
And the Lord strengthened me to do that. And we also have to let go of our expectations because anybody who's a mother knows that our children don't go the way we expect them to. They don't do the things we expect. Parenthood is nothing like you expect it to be, and I thought I was, could be this awesome mom, and our children would just respond to that, and you quickly realize, I think, as a mom that there's, that they're going to do a lot of things that you said your children would never do.
And so that is also part of the faith journey and part of what the Lord does in your life is prepared for that. And to hold on to certain things like where he tells us that, raise them in the faith and they will not depart. They'll come back to that. And holding on to being able to hold on to that and knowing that whatever we face, the [00:26:00] Lord is with us.
Right now it's so critical. My daughter is 26 years old, still lives with us and will for as long as we can see anyway into the foreseeable future. And so that requires, I'm not a young mom anymore. And that can be pretty draining for me to care, to be a caregiver now. And that was quite a transition from, to transition from mother to caregiver.
Yes, I'm still mother, but my role has changed. And now she's an adult.
And
so it was it's, yeah. It's a very different process, I think, to get to that. And it was incredibly important that I could and can continue to surrender a lot of that to the Lord, which I would not have been able to do had the Lord not taken me on my faith journey.
One of the things that haunts me a lot, and I have to be very careful. About is Rachel's future to dwell on that too much because she'll always have to live with someone. And that doesn't, [00:27:00] that's not always pretty. And we hear the stories of especially a child who is she is nonverbal functionally.
She has some words that we can understand, but people from the outside would not, would only understand a handful of words that she has. And so the real possibility of her being taken advantage of is. is there. And so I can become very panicked and have become very panicked when I start thinking about her future and what will happen when my husband and I are no longer here.
I couldn't, I don't know that I could have handled that.
If Rach would have been plopped into our lives as our first child, if I hadn't gone through the suffering of the miscarriages and Daniel's disabilities. And another one of our children had learning disabilities that we had to navigate.
And if those would not have been in my life and I wouldn't have had to learn how to lean on the Lord and how to surrender my strength for his strength, [00:28:00] because my strength is nothing. It's a drop compared to the Lord's and my knowledge is nothing. It's a thimble full, not even a thimble full.
But he knows it all and he has her future before we're ever in that future. And I've had to learn how to surrender that. And it's not an easy thing. It's not a clean break. I struggle with that a lot, but I know he'll meet her in that. When we're gone, he's the father to the fatherless, right?
He's promised to be there and our children are his. They're only to us on loan. And so he loves her more than I do. And that's where I really had to get to that acceptance of that and to set aside. So I think it's really important for the wise to really hold on to what's he doing in this and what's he preparing me for, what's he preparing other people for, what's he have that in this for us.[00:29:00]
And when I changed my mindset to that. It was a lot easier, to surrender her to him. And as I started digging into knowing him better because I needed to, I needed that reminder of who he was, that reminder that he was imminent, he's near, but he's also transcendent, otherworldly, and that was incredibly important to me because he had to be above my circumstances or he couldn't handle the circumstances because I certainly can't handle him and if that's, if he's on the same plane and the same level as me, then
I don't have faith, I can't trust that he can handle it either.
But knowing that he's transcendent, that he's omniscient, that he's all powerful, that's pivotal in order for me to surrender her future to him and to her present even. He has her, we don't know what's coming. We don't know if there could be some major health issue popping up.
Thankfully, he's spared us from some of the health issues that so many deal with, which my heart goes out to, because [00:30:00] some of the daily challenges, we don't have as much of the daily challenges, at least health wise, as so many do that have, that are in the throes of caregiving and raising children with special needs.
So I'm grateful for that. There's so many blessings. Yeah. Just learning to embrace her for who she is, disabilities and all, was another huge mindset change. The whole world of disability, I would not have stepped into. I know some people do willingly. I would have not, I needed to go kicking and screaming and the Lord knew that and he wanted me.
To be there and to be in that world, obviously.
Sadaf Beynon: Wow, Julie, you've been on some road, haven't you?
Julie Sunne: It's been a journey, you have to look back and see that everything the Lord allows he has a purpose in it.
Sadaf Beynon: Absolutely. And I think what's evident is your surrendered heart and your grateful heart.
And I think that comes from, like you're saying, how the Lord's been teaching [00:31:00] you. Yeah. And honing you to be more like him.
Julie Sunne: Yeah. It usually doesn't come from the easy times, does it?
Sadaf Beynon: No, it doesn't.
No.
Julie Sunne: And look at. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Sadaf Beynon: No. I'm sorry. Carry on.
Julie Sunne: I'm just saying it takes getting to the other side and looking back.
And of course, we're not on the other side, but we're far enough along the journey. I can look back and I can see his fingerprints on that journey.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah.
Julie Sunne: And you can't see that in the moment. And that's why I'm telling my story. That's why I need to share because when you're in the throes of it, you can't see it, and you need to hold on to, sometimes you just need to hold on to the faith of someone else and see that you can just wait long enough.
You can get to that point where you can look back and see his faith
or his faithfulness, I guess I
should say.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. So I guess going on from what you've just said, what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned then about God's nature?
Julie Sunne: I have learned that we have victory, and he is the victor, and [00:32:00] so just because life looks broken here, is broken here, it won't stay that way.
And so we can trust that our circumstances are redeemed. The Lord is the Savior, He is the Redeemer. And I've learned that it doesn't matter how angry we get at Him, He continues to love with an everlasting love. And one of the most important things I've learned is that His grace, yes, His grace is sufficient.
He's a very gracious Lord.
But he's not going to give us the grace for tomorrow, He's going to give us a grace for this moment.
Yeah.
And we so often want I want to look in the future and I want him to tell me. I want to know exactly how he's going to provide and I want to experience that grace for them.
And that's not how the Lord operates. He says no, Julie, you need to trust me. I have, I'm going to give you the grace for this moment. I'm going to help you through this [00:33:00] moment. To see this next step. I'm gonna illuminate that. But you need to trust me for the rest because if I show it to you all for one thing I couldn't even understand it because I can't understand that.
We don't have the minds. We have very finite minds. We can't understand the ways of the Lord, but also where's the faith in that? And the Lord wants our surrendered heart. He wants us to be able to trust Him as our Father, as our sustainer. So those were some very important things that I've learned about the Lord.
I've learned that He can handle it all, and He can handle my anger as well, our feelings. Now He's going to do things to, I think, pull us out of our depression and our dependence on ourselves. He's gonna allow things in our lives. And that perhaps is one, is another one of the more important things I've learned is that everything that I've experienced, God has allowed or [00:34:00] ordained.
He's sovereign. He has allowed or ordained it. Oh, I may not like it, but I don't have to like it. He's not asking for my permission and he's not as much after my happiness as he is after my surrendered life and my heart, and my salvation. That's what he's most concerned about is what does eternity look like for me and for my daughter and for my children.
And I don't think, since he's a loving God and a gracious God, he doesn't love the things that the hard things in our lives, the things that are so difficult, but he knows better to then to keep us from those things, honestly, he knows we need those things and he provides or allows those things to those hard seasons to prepare us to surrender to him and to be able to trust him and to be willing to walk with him and let him in our lives.[00:35:00]
Sadaf Beynon: Absolutely, and you're right, like when we go through the hard times, that's when we let him into our lives, don't we? And that's when his promises that at sometimes might feel distant, they, we come to see them as they're meant for us.
Julie Sunne: Yeah. Yeah. There's a time I did not, I doubted, I knew his promises.
I was raised in the church. I knew that the Lord promised us all kinds of things, abundance and shelter and all kinds of stuff, his love and his presence, but I didn't always feel those for me. I, they seem like they were promises for everybody else. And not for me. But I needed to learn Sadaf who this Lord was.
I needed to know who he was, what his character was that he could not fail me, honestly. Because he is all of his attributes perfectly, is perfectly loving, but he's also perfectly holy. He's perfectly sovereign, but he's also perfectly kind and [00:36:00] perfectly gracious and near, even though he's also perfectly
otherworldly and far, I needed to know that I could trust him without a doubt. Because then I knew I could trust his promises even when I didn't see their fulfillment in my life. Again, it comes back to expectations. We expect them to look a certain way. And the Lord knows better, so they don't always look that way.
But when we know who the Lord is and that's why I ended up writing a book that I wrote because it's called Sometimes I Forget because I forget that his promises are for me. I forget who the Lord is and I need that reminder of who he is because then I know his promises are for me.
But if we don't know the one who makes the promises, how can we trust those promises?
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, absolutely. So about this book that you've mentioned Sometimes I Forget. What inspired you to write it?
Julie Sunne: I was, again, which tends to [00:37:00] be my default, I was lamenting and concerned about Rachel's future and was really in a season of what's going to happen and I have to have it all figured out and so I was writing, I have a blog and I was writing a post for that blog and I just, that's what the whole thing was just pouring out. How is the future going to unfold? I'm so concerned about Rachel's future and I'm just, panicked about it and then I regrouped and I always want to give my readers hope. So I needed to turn this blog post around and find hope in there.
And so I started reminding myself that all these attributes of the Lord. I just started pouring them out but I need to remember, Lord, that you are sovereign. You weren't surprised when she was born with that hole in the roof of her mouth. You weren't surprised when she quit breathing.
None of that surprised him because he was sovereign. And he's loving and he loves her more than I do. So he's going to plan for her. He's going to [00:38:00] provide for her. So I started pouring all that out. And then I was and my literary agent and I were just discussing book ideas and I just kept, the Lord kept bringing that post to mind and just said, and I realized how important that post was for me and that, that idea to just because I knew the Lord, I could trust him.
That idea was so important to me in my faith journey. And so we just came up with that. I just said I think this is so important. I think other people need it. And at the time I was only going to do 30 attributes of God and my publisher said we would really like.
to experience more. So could you do 60 attributes? And I said, of course I could. And that was my strength talking. I quickly realized I did not have the capability of doing that. So it was the Lord graciously provided. Insight into who you was enough for me to write my story. And there's a few other pieces.
Each chapter is a store, is a snippet of my story, or there's a few [00:39:00] others that are other people's, but most of it has to do with the things that I've learned and then they relate to each attribute. There's 60, 60 chapters probably 61 because there's a conclusion as well. And then it quickly goes into the Lord's that attribute and how that attribute helped me through the situation or comforted me in the situation and a takeaway and a prayer around each prairie start.
Sometimes I forget, Lord, that you are. Fill it in, sovereign, loving, gracious, kind, imminent, immutable. His unchanging nature, is just critical, I think to everything that he doesn't change so we can trust him. He's not going to ever become different than what he already is, so we can count, we can stand on him.
He's that, that, that firm foundation that we need to have.
And yeah, so the book was born and my faith was again stretched and strengthened as I tried to get this little pea brain of [00:40:00] mine to understand this immense incomprehensible Lord. And it, so yeah, so it was good. It was a wonderful journey for me and I think it'll be very encouraging
to people walking through all kinds of, whether you're in the deep throes of a very difficult season, or you're in the everyday, hard mundane ness of young motherhood. I think knowing the Lord is instrumental, is crucial for any part of our journey to know him and know that his promises are for us.
They're not just for you, they're also for me. They're not just for us, but they're for our listeners, that his promises, we can trust because we can trust the one who made those promises.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. And we can
Julie Sunne: rest with that.
Sadaf Beynon: And listening to your story today it just highlights everything that you're saying that he's with us in the ups, the downs, and yeah, [00:41:00] no, thanks so much for sharing that.
Julie Sunne: Oh, absolutely.
Sadaf Beynon: Julie, you may have already touched on this, so reiterate it if you need to, but we do to ask our guests, what is Your one message.
Julie Sunne: I would say my one message, my one overall message is the Lord is trustworthy. He is trustworthy and he will be with you in your circumstances and he will see you through them.
It doesn't look that way often it doesn't look that way at all. It looks like a complete disaster and an impossibility but the Lord is a God of impossibility in our impossibility. Since when we know the Lord who is above all and with all and all. When we really get to know Him and who He is, then we can rest on those promises, and we can trust that He will be there, even if it doesn't look like it, even when we can't understand.[00:42:00]
And one day we'll be able to look back and see that. Or we'll know for certainty when we get to heaven with Him, because it'll all be revealed.
Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, he is absolutely trustworthy. Yeah. Julie, thank you so much for sharing your incredible story with us today. Your journey is just inspiring, and I'm sure that our listeners will take a lot of hope and strength from it.
Julie Sunne: And that, that is my prayer, that's exactly why I speak out, is we need to know that we need to sometimes lean on other people's faith
as
we walk through ours and grow in ours.
Sadaf Beynon: Absolutely. And for everyone listening, be sure to check out Julie's new book, Sometimes I Forget, which is available now. And as always, thanks for tuning in to What's the Story. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. And remember, no matter the challenge, there's always a way forward.
Until next time, bye for now.
Julie Sunne: Bye bye.
Matt Edmundson: And just like that, we have [00:43:00] reached the end of another fascinating conversation. Now remember to check out Crowd Church at www. crowd. church, even if you might not see the point of church. We are a digital church on a quest to discover how Jesus can help us live a more meaningful life. We are a community, a space to explore the Christian faith, and a place where you can contribute and grow.
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Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. What's the Story is a production of Crowd Church. [00:44:00] Our fantastic team, including Anna Kettle, Sadaf Beynon, and me, Matt Edmundson and Tanya Hutsuliak, work behind the scenes tirelessly to bring you all these fabulous stories. Our theme song is a creative work of Josh Edmundson.
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Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. We'll catch you next time. Bye for now.