Singing Through Fire

Singing Through Fire #001 - Lara's Story and Testimony Through Grave Suffering...

Lara Silverman, Christian Author, lawyer, comedian Season 1 Episode 1

Lara Silverman, Christian comedian, lawyer, and author of the bestselling Christian memoir, Singing Through Fire, has started a podcast to share her profound journey from a promising legal career to facing a debilitating neurological illness for the last eight years. She will explore themes of faith, suffering, acceptance, and her search for joy amidst her pain and the severe grief of losing her health, career, and husband. Her goal is to highlight God's redemptive purposes in suffering, so as to powerfully encourage other believers in their own trials and pain. 

PODCAST DESCRIPTION:

Welcome to the Singing Through Fire podcast! I’m your host Lara Silverman, and this is where we:

  • Worship when it hurts
  • Discuss hot takes from the furnace of affliction
  • Explore a biblical theology of suffering with a side of sass and sarcasm

From lamentations to laughter, this podcast is for anyone desperate for hope who has ever asked, "Why, Lord, why?”

Don’t forget to follow/subscribe because I upload content every single week. Help me get to my goal of 10,000 subscribers so we can help other sufferers.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2nd Corinthians 4:17.

BUY LARA SILVERMAN'S #1 Bestselling Book, Singing Through Fire, here:

https://books2read.com/singingthroughfire

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. went to an Armenian evangelical church, had great parents, wonderful family. So I didn't have that much exposure to suffering as a kid. I was very type A. So my full-time occupation was pretty much chasing gold stars in school and otherwise. I always wanted to be a lawyer because I loved public speaking and advocacy. And years later, I did in fact end up at Stanford Law School. 

And after law school, I worked for two federal judges. And then I worked at a big law firm in downtown San Francisco, you know, doing high stakes litigation, intellectual property, antitrust, that sort of thing for three years. And I really loved it. And While I had a relationship with Christ and attended Bible study fellowship during this time, I would say I definitely didn't prioritize the Lord other than simply seeking His will for my life generally and praying for a spouse, of course, which at that time was the only thing left on my Christian checklist, if you will, the usual what you pray for in your 20s kind of thing. So fast forward to January 2018, I had just turned 30 and had just been hired at my dream job as a federal prosecutor. The Lord opened the door. I really thought this was my calling. I had trained to be a trial lawyer for many years. But on the second week of that job, let's just say everything in my life changed. I fell mysteriously ill with a very rare neurological illness and the doctors threw a million diagnoses at me. We tried countless pharmaceuticals, MRIs, CAT scans, specialists, you name it, nothing stuck.

None of the treatments worked. And to give you an overview, my illness stems from a faulty connection between the vestibular system in my ears and my brain, such that I can't tell where I am in space at any given time. I have two holes in my ears from birth, which can't be corrected by surgery and which exacerbate the problem. So you can't tell right now, but the whole world around me is spinning right now. And the neurological illness is sort of silent. You can't see it. And I'm going to slam right back down on that bed after this talk is over because recording this video is more than I can handle at one point in time. But back in 2018, at the start of all this, after 10 months of trying maybe 10 drugs, different treatments, nothing worked. So unfortunately, I was forced to resign from the United States Attorney's Office without ever being on the job. They had graciously given me a leave right at the start, but after 10 months, you had to make a decision. Are you going back? Are you not?

The whole thing was incredibly confusing because I really felt like being a prosecutor was my calling. And I had even prayed, you know, for the Lord not to open the door to this job if it wasn't His will. So the timing couldn't have been worse. I had been healthy as a horse the first 30 years of my life, you know, a go-getter and ready to thrive on this dream job. And yet the door was closed. You should know though that the Holy Spirit was powerfully with me at that time.

Ironically, I think it was the day before I had to resign. I opened my Christian devotional app on my phone. It's an app called Daily Streams in the Desert. And the message of the day, you know, was something to the effect of, does it feel like God's plan is turning out completely opposite to where you thought He was leading you? Does God seem to be opening a door only to close it? Move blindly in the dark with faith when God doesn't make sense. 

And I mean, right there, man, I was just...in tears. Just knew God was saying, look, I know this doesn't make any sense, but trust what I'm doing in your life, even if you have no clue why. And I'm sure that's how Abraham felt when God called him to leave his homeland, right? From there on a physical level, things went from bad to worse. I was strictly bedridden for three straight years with my eyes completely closed with my mother nursing me full time. And I'm talking literally bedridden. In other words, I could not lift my head one inch off of one pillow without dramatically spinning harder or the world around me spinning harder. So the situation was completely debilitating. My mom bathed me on a bed, took care of all my needs. I mean, we are talking basically completely disabled. And over the course of those three years, I was hospitalized twice without any answers.

I lost 36 pounds. hired countless private doctors. We tried maybe 150 treatments, 37 pharmaceutical drugs, Western treatments, Eastern treatments, you name it. No answers. We even consulted experts in the UK who said that my case was the most severe they had seen out of thousands of cases. And you can imagine how my family and I, you know, were feeling. I mean, it was basically just one closed door after another. Every drug made me worse. Every treatment made me worse. You know, not only did they not help, I was getting worse. We were begging the Lord for answers the entire way. It really felt like God just kept leading us from one dead end to the other.

You can imagine how heartbreaking and exhausting this was for my parents, taking care of me, kind of like I was a baby once again, and my entire church and Armenian community was praying for me. My parents and I frankly would have gone mad if it weren't for my dad reading the word to me every night for one hour in their master bedroom where I was laying down at the time. And Psalm 119 verse 92 took on a brand new meaning. That verse says, "If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction." And man, was that true during that time. The word was the only thing I was clinging to, even as I was desperately pleading to God every night. Lord, save me, save me. 

But fast forward to today, despite what you might see on social media, I still haven't healed. I spend about 70 % of each day flat on my back in that bed, with my brain spinning chronically nonstop. The big difference though is these days my blood pressure is stable when I sit up and take my head off a pillow and the doctors have no idea why. But because of that one change, I'm able to force myself to sit up and be functional, you know, for a little bit, despite the spinning, you know, maybe an hour, sometimes two hours, sometimes three hours, but that's pretty much the maximum. And I record a skit or I sing a song for social media because I'm an actor and a singer. just love performing. But you know, after that hour or so I slammed back down on that bed because the stimulation and the spinning is just all my brain can handle.

I'm really grateful that I've been able to sit up intermittently throughout the day the last three and a half years compared to those first three years, but I'm now eight years in without any diagnosis or healing of the neurological pain itself. Day in, day out, the world is still spinning around me. Whether I'm lying down or sitting up, it just never stops. And I can't get in a car but for once or twice a month and only about eight miles maximum for each car ride. And frankly, that's even too much. try to keep the car rides to like three miles. So I take every single trip to the outdoors, like a big celebration. That's super special for me. 

But the bottom line is four years ago, after trying some hundred and none of which worked, the Holy Spirit explicitly gave me a very surprising word, which was very difficult for me to digest, but he called me to acceptance by expressly communicating to me that it's His plan to heal me in eternity. As you can imagine, I was like, what on earth, is this why nothing worked? And I scoured scripture at the time, even just on my bed, you know, trying to open my eyes, read my phone, because I was thinking, no, no, Lord, I thought you always deliver, right? Just after a season, it's just a season, you always deliver. But the Lord communicated to me that this was kind of like Paul's chronic thorn in the flesh which God expressly chose not to heal because God's grace was sufficient for Paul. 

Now, while this was incredibly difficult to process and come to terms with, God did give me Christian friends and mentors to walk through all that grief. But that word from the Lord has been the hardest thing I've ever had to reckon with in my life because obviously this illness has changed my life dramatically. I went from a thriving go-getter lawyer to a professional bedridden person, if you will, but one who has a Christian ministry. on social media by singing and acting out comedy skits and sharing theological insights I've learned during my suffering just as a means to give myself joy amidst my pain and my grief. I'm a lawyer, so I love analyzing and I'm also a wrestler. You know, I wrestle with the Lord. And I've spent the last eight years wrestling with one very obvious question, which I'm sure many of you have faced at one point or another in your own grief in this fallen world. Why does God

allows such intense suffering in our lives? And why was I chosen for this path of pain and loss? Does God really have a good purpose for all of it? And what does Romans 8 28 actually mean in practice? Can't that good be accomplished some other way, Lord? How can God be good when His answer to my desperate prayers for healing has been no? So I want you to take a minute to reflect on this in your heart. What do we do as Christians when God doesn't say yes or wait, but clearly
heart-breakingly says no. If he asks us to come to acceptance or surrender to his plans for our lives, not our own, do we walk away? Do we give up our faith because Jesus has let us down? Or do we have a theology that can withstand that kind of fire? So I'll tell you my story. 

Before any of this suffering, I never subscribed to the prosperity gospel, but I think in function, I had a prosperity gospel light. This idea of, God is good, which means he'll heal you if you wait for his timing and his change in season. God is good, so why wouldn't he deliver you every time in the end? You just have to be patient in the valley, that sort of logic. And Christians, I think, in the normal day-to-day life and normal seasons, often assume that if we're praying for good, godly things and desires of our hearts, whether it's restored health, a spouse, children, career, God must and will eventually answer yes. Because after all,

These aren't bad requests. It's not like we're asking him for a Ferrari or fame or money, right? But here's the truth. We don't follow the false prosperity gospel. We follow a take up your cross gospel, a sometimes God answers no gospel. Jesus warned us, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world. It's the hard truth, but the truth nonetheless. We will all face trials and some very serious trials. But Jesus also said, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Before eight years ago, I didn't even remember this was in the gospels. mean, Jesus actually said, take up your cross. Deny yourself. Okay. Not take up your bandaid, not take up your spa day ladies. Lord knows we all love a good spa day. No, take up your cross.

daily. And as a type A prideful 30 year old who wanted to be a hotshot Supreme Court justice and loved God probably in large part for his earthly blessings, taking up my cross has meant dramatically changing my entire worldview theologically and forcing myself to surrender to his will and giving up all my own dreams for my life. Because sometimes his sovereign plan involves a daily cross, not just a season of suffering, but a daily lifelong cross.

We never think it will happen to us until it happens, right? And don't hear me wrong, the Lord gives sustaining grace moment to moment, and it truly is enough, even though it didn't feel like it in my emotions at times. But 2 Corinthians 12, 9 has proven itself true to me over and over again in practice, where the Lord says to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. But it is a cross nonetheless. On that note, I think the church doesn't talk enough about how God literally asked Abraham to surrender to God's will by killing his son. Okay. How many of you moms think you would actually come to acceptance and obey God if God asked you to sacrifice your child, whether God went through with it in the end or not? Honestly, take a second. I asked my dad the other day if he would kill me if the Lord asked him to. And obviously I was being facetious, but my dad popped a pistachio in his mouth and was like, absolutely not.

Okay, now obviously Abraham's story is metaphorical for Christ's ultimate sacrifice, but it's a lesson for us too. God is asking us for radical surrender and acceptance of His will for our lives. And His will might very well hurt in some sense temporarily on an earthly level. But God is asking, can you trust me on an eternal level? Can you trust that I have purposes for this temporary pain that you might not see until eternity?

In my case, I'm ashamed to say I've done kind of a poor job of trusting in a steady fashion throughout my journey. It has been a roller coaster of spiritual highs and spiritual lows. I have to be honest because I mean, what's the point in lying? I want to help others not pretend like I'm Miss Christ-like and Miss Perfect example. I have personally struggled with great bitterness, okay, against the Lord. And you might even be there yourself today.

in some small way, in a large way with whatever emotional or physical struggle you're secretly battling against that no one else can see. But that's where the growth and Christ's grace comes in for us, right? In other words, even with all my lashing out, my doubts, my questions, I'm testifying to you today as your sister in Christ that despite my volatile emotions, God has remained faithful. And there's a verse in 2nd Timothy that says, even if we are faithless, he remains faithful because he cannot disown himself.

I have found that the Lord gives us ample space to grieve these emotions. Just read the Psalms for 10 seconds and you'll see a beautiful picture of what it means to lament. And God has honored my lament by always meeting me with open arms, which frankly has really surprised me. I don't think I ever really understood the extent of His forgiving and abiding grace before all this. Like He truly understands that we are dust and have a hard time surrendering when the path is so difficult. Though obviously the Lord does want us to grow and get to a Christ-like space where one day we can in fact say, not my will, but thine be done. You know, that's the goal of the Christian life. Obviously Romans 8.29, we are being conformed to Christ's image and whether we like it or not, suffering is the crucible, which kind of does that best. But what's more, I want to emphasize that the Lord has never left me this entire journey. Frankly, it sounds trite, but I am telling you that I don't think I would be a Christian today after eight years of this neurological pain. If the Holy Spirit had not comforted me in timely moments, day in, day out, he has just kept showing up for me in like the most surprising of ways, whether through his word, a coincidental verse, a devotional or a timely word from a friend. 

I feel like Christ has literally been walking through this illness with me. I am a solid defense witness that Psalm 34 is true. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. He has been so close in a way that he never was when I wasn't sick. Most days I feel like Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego because Christ is right here with me on that bed, whispering comfort in some way. So hopefully you can take some spiritual nuggets from all of this so far. But there's one thing I've kept secret so far, which is just going to knock your socks off. I'm kidding. Ooh, the plot thickens. So God...

always provides miracles and comfort in the darkest dungeons, right? Resurrections where we would never imagine them, right? Kind of like how he provided the ram for Abraham. Well, I'm here to tell you that God didn't give me healing, but he did give me a man.

That line might go down as the most ridiculous statement in a Christian testimony in history, but here we are. Let me explain. 1 Corinthians 1-4 says that God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we receive from God. This means, obviously, that we're called to comfort one another with godly wisdom and hope through our mutual suffering, right? Because sometimes one person is just so down that they need another believer to hold them up and strengthen their faith.

Well, God took that biblical promise to entirely new heights in my story. Exactly four years ago, right after God called me to acceptance of my illness, I was just demoralized that it wasn't His plan to heal me. And this was just as I was starting to force myself to sit up off the bed and start moving again, despite the world spinning harder when I was sitting up. Well, right at that point, God brought a man named Matt Silverman into my life, an acquaintance from church from years back.

And he just called my mom and said, hey, your daughter is isolated in there. It's been four years. The whole church is praying for her. Can I come visit to just encourage her in Christ? Let me tell you about Matt, bio-molecular engineering PhD, a medical diagnostics professor, a cancer researcher, a missionary to Haiti, our church's youth leader, a backup preacher to our pastor, and honestly, the most Christ-like person I had ever met.

In Armenian Christian circles, he's, which I run in, he's known as the engineering and theology genius. He could basically out-quote Charles Spurgeon. So this guy swoops into my parents' home and starts visiting me and giving me a theology of suffering. And he was incredibly wise because he had healed from cancer before as a kid. But there's a plot twist. He had just been diagnosed with a very rare terminal cancer at age 38. A different kind of cancer than his first one. So I'm laying flat on that bed in pajamas and he's sitting next to me on a chair with his chemo pump attached with the chemo feeding and poison, all the while telling me he's not scared to die and telling me God is good despite his terminal diagnosis. And I'm over here like, who are you and why are you so Christ-like? And can you please tell me why you are not bitter at the Lord for possibly taking your life young?

because I'm desperate for hope in my own valley. And I can't explain it, but over the course of the first eight visits or so, we literally realized that we were just falling in love. Like he cracks a joke, I crack a joke. I don't know. I mean, he did have a killer smile. What's a girl to do? Not to mention the fact that I had longed for a godly and brilliant spouse for so many years in singleness. And here's this brilliant PhD who I had chemistry with.

And the only problem was he was dying and I'm on a bed. I mean, you can't write this story if you tried. So we prayed a lot about it. You know, as you can imagine what is happening, is this even wise? Is this even from the Lord? Should we date if Matt might very well die from this cancer? And I have my own convictions and I'm telling you the Lord explicitly answered us to take that joy in our mutual grief. Like take this gift of comfort in one another.

And in fact, our wedding verse a year later ended up being Isaiah 43.20, which is about how God gives us refreshing streams of water in our times of desert suffering. And from that first visit forward, when Matt started visiting me, we had this unmistakable intimacy based on our mutual grief. And we comforted each other by debating theology until the wee hours of the morning on, you know, why is God allowing our suffering and is he good despite it and will God redeem it in eternity and if so, how? So our relationship and eventual marriage was really a metaphorical picture of how God calls the church to comfort and heal each other's emotional and physical wounds together. All that radically changed how I view God and earthly blessings versus eternal blessings. I honestly do not think I could have come to acceptance of my chronic illness if Matt had not reframed my theological views. It was as if God was shouting with a megaphone, I know my will for your life is hard, but take this gift in your suffering. I want to give you this godly man as your joy in your darkest valley.

and in Matt's valley. mean, Matt was being hospitalized, you know, once every two months at that point due to different complications from his cancer. And yet here he was as my new boyfriend. Long story short, Matt entered glory exactly one year after our wedding. And I will confess that I felt like Jobe at that point, you know, struggling with great bitterness again, you know, despite the miracle of even being able to get married amidst both of our severe illnesses. At that point, I had lost my health.

my career, then my husband, and my mind frame was, Lord, I cannot do this give and take away thing anymore. I started begging God again, wrestling with scripture with questions like, if you withhold no good thing, Lord, why are you taking everything away? Our entire church and thousands of Armenians were praying for a miracle for Matt because he was essentially our youth pastor, but the Lord answered, no.

But here's my honest testimony, which I'm not sugarcoating, eight years into all of this. I finally do believe today that God has been faithful to me, even despite all my losses. It's literally taken me eight years, but I finally come to realize that being blessed does not mean having all the typical earthly blessings. Remember, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Turns out God's economy is way different from ours.

I mean, Christ's kingdom is upside down in almost all respects. The first will be last. The weak will be strong. The meek shall inherit the earth. We find our lives by losing them and taking up our crosses. All Jesus's words, not mine. And he's the one in control, not us. You're probably thinking, okay, Sherlock, but I don't think we truly surrender to that idea until we are in the fire ourselves and we're questioning the choices that he is making while he is sovereignly controlling our lives.

For now, I'll just say that I now see far more clearly that all our blessings are just temporal, earthly assignments. What matters most are the eternal things, faith, hope, love, and God's higher plans and purposes, not ours. I mean, you can just hear how much I've changed. I went from a prideful, goal-oriented person who idolized work to being a bedridden person who cannot wait for eternity. Person who now believes God does want what is best for me.

And his ways are perfect as scripture says, even if it makes zero sense to me from an earthly perspective. Isaiah 55, the verse that says his ways are higher than our ways is something I cling to every single day when Satan plants doubts in my mind that God is not good or has withheld from me. So where is all this leading? About a year ago, literally a month about Matt died. God randomly called me to write a book on my journey. One day a friend randomly called and asked, have you considered writing a book? And I said, no.

I'm a lawyer, I've never wanted to be an author, my head is spinning, I'm in pain. Then the next day another Christian mentor calls me and says, have you considered writing a book? And I said, no, but it started to feel a bit strange. And you know, is this from you, Lord? So I started praying about it. And the next week, Ephesians 2 10 kept popping up everywhere about how God has prepared good works in advance for us to do.

So at that moment, the light bulb clicked on and I said, all right, Lord, I hear your job offer loud and clear. So I spent the last eight months laying down on that bed with my laptop on my knees, with my head spinning, just cranking out my manuscript. And I wrote it kind of like a screenplay and tried to make it funny because I'm an actor and a comedian and I love comedic writing. And it cannot get much funnier than God giving you a husband while you're strapped to a bed. The joke at our wedding was we got married without dating and without even getting off of bed. I published the book two months ago and by God's grace, my book is now a number one Amazon bestseller in three Christian categories and all glory to God. The book is called Singing Through Fire, partly because I'm a jazz singer. I love singing jazz, but it's also a metaphorical message of having joy in Christ, even in adversity. And I'm going to lift it up if only because I'm in love with my cover.

You can see the treble clef and how it's on fire, but it's still radiant with joy. So this book is my Christian testimony of how God walks through seasons of life with us when life feels like it's burning down around you. You know, I am a lawyer, so I kept receipts of how God has literally been at my side.

The last eight years, every time the Holy Spirit spoke to me, either I wrote it down or it, when I was incapacitated completely, I forced my mom to write it down. That poor woman, she is a saint. I forced her to write it down in like seven evidence journals, you know, sort of like God is good in suffering journals. And now God is redeeming that by giving me space to write down that story. But this memoir is also a deeply romantic love story. I mean, I am such a romantic bit, which is why losing Matt was obviously very painful.

But I want you to know that in our one-year marriage, God gave us so many victories even amidst all the hospitalizations. We gave two testimonies and three jazz performances at church, even though it was impossible for me to get in a car without spinning harder. We raised $13,000 for admissions ministry in Haiti on our one-year anniversary three weeks before Matt started hospice.

Okay. We filmed a comical movie about being Christian newlyweds who are suffering. And we started a music and theology YouTube channel where Matt could preach his sermons and where I would play violin as much as I could tolerate. And I would sing. did oldies, jazz, pop, Spanish songs, Italian songs. I'm a singer and I love performing. So it was such an avenue of joy for both of us. We would record Matt preaching with this chemo pump.

Or I would get up, sing a song, do a comedy routine, then slam back down on the bed. I even applied for the most productive bedridden person in America award, but ended up placing third place. You obviously know I'm joking, but whether we planned it or not, our ministry to our church community became this simple message. God gives us gifts of joy in the fire, just like he gave us to one another. And more importantly, God calls us to have joy in the fire, not just after.

We Christians always focus on the deliverance, don't we? And the deliverance is wonderful if there is one in an earthly sense, but Christ calls us to have joy while we're still in the fire. It's all over the New Testament. Paul says, sorrowful but rejoicing, give thanks in every circumstance. mean, Paul and Silas are literally singing in prison while they're shackled. So even though Matt and I were either in a hospital or on house arrest for every day of our one-year marriage, we did our best to sing through the fire, so to speak.

My book is also brutally honest because I wanted to comfort anyone who's ever shaken their fist at the Lord asking, Lord, why? And my favorite part of my book is that it explores all the many theological reasons for suffering that I've wrestled with. What gave me so many surprising insights, which I never understood from scripture before. Like, have you ever thought about second Corinthians four 17, which says our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighed them all.

Paul says our suffering itself is achieving something eternally. Just digest that for a moment. I wish we had time to discuss this more, but it's all in my book. But for now, I want to emphasize this. You remember how Joseph said in Genesis 41, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction? Well, I see that happening in my life too. God is producing spiritual fruit in me, in others, all thanks to my suffering and not suffering. God is actively redeeming my losses through my book too.

in the sense that Christians have emailed me, know, random Christian readers while I'm literally crying in bed and they're telling me my book has helped them view their suffering in a totally different light and help them cling to Christ more. And it's not about the praise, it's about how God is finally using my pain to bring hope to others in their own trials. My life has not been wasted just because I have a chronic illness and I'm bedridden. He's using my weakness to give Christ a big spotlight.

So now I know why he allowed this in his sovereign plan. I mean, have you considered that the early church basically viewed suffering as a calling and a privilege? Just step back and think about that. Actually, this is going to shock you, but Helen Rosavere, a medical missionary to the Congo, who was raped and imprisoned on the mission field, testified that God shockingly asked her, can you thank me, my child, for trusting you with this, even if you don't?

know why. She said that God's one question turned her entire perspective around, making her cling permanently the rest of her life to Philippians 1.29, which says, you have been given the privilege of suffering for Christ. Just imagine if all Christians believed suffering is a privilege. This is so counterintuitive, but it's all over the Bible.

My book release has also been incredibly healing for me emotionally because it has proven to me that when God calls us to suffer, he always has a redemptive purpose for it. My husband's main legacy was preaching from the pulpit that some purposes we might never know until eternity. But God always has a purpose and he gives us sweet glimpses of at least some redemption here so we can keep trusting him when it comes to the tragedies too. The stories where it just doesn't seem to make sense from an earthly perspective alone.

Just look at one of my favorite verses, Genesis 50-20, which was my Bible devotional verse the very morning Matt died. That verse says what Satan intends for evil, God intends for good. You have no idea how much that comforted me the week Matt died. So if you are suffering emotionally or physically in any way today, please hear this. God has told me over and over again that there is a purpose and that Matt's story and my story is not over and will continue in eternity.

There is so much more to life than this temporary life. And there's so much more to all our stories that we can't see past this temporary fallen world. That idea has comforted me big time. It sounds trite and we should already know that heaven is awaiting us based on scripture, but this was a word from the Lord to me. And you, you've got your booties. I cling to it like my full-time job. And the same applies to you in whatever area you are experiencing loss today.

The same God who has carried me is the same God who is carrying you and has great plans for you, even in eternity. And he is faithful in the fire. He doesn't abandon us. It took me about eight years to realize all this, but God always heals, doesn't he? If you'd like to stay in touch, these days I'm doing comedy on social media as a ministry, showing people that Christians can have joy and grief. You can find me on Facebook or Instagram or my YouTube channel called The Silverman Show.