Hole in My Heart Podcast

We get a decent amount of questions about how to engage healthy friendship (and touch) as single people. So, we asked one of our dear single friends, Meg Baatz, to help us navigate some more of this friendship quagmire. Some of the questions we explored include: What is the difference between finding community as a single person or as a married person? What is Meg's journey with finding community? Why are people so awkward when it comes to being friends with people of the same sex (if those people experience attractions toward the same sex)? How can we all be friends? How can we engage healthy touch with our friends? Dive in with us today at the podcast table.   //: Highlights: "I knew [community living] would be hard. I knew it wouldn't solve all of my relational needs. I knew marriage wouldn't [either]. I knew trying to find the right *people* can be the same pitfall as trying to find the right *person.*" --Meg Baatz "I can desire to have the majority of my relational or emotional needs met from women rather than from God first and then from women ... [But] it's easy to go one extreme or the other: 'I have this really deep need for relational with women.' Or 'Oh, no! I don't want to idolize my friendships, and so I'm going to retreat out of fear or shame.'" --Meg Baatz "I think we can be ashamed of and afraid of our limits [with physical touch]. Instead we need to accept them ... and say, 'How can I honor myself as someone who God loves while loving and respecting other people through the boundaries I set up?'" --Meg Baatz //: Do the Next Thing: Check out Meg's organization she works for, Lead Them Home, here. Dive into Meg's personal site here. //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What "stupid human" trick can you do? (Roll your tongue, shake your eyes, do some random dance move...?) Email podcast@lauriekrieg.com or find us on Instagram to answer. For More.

This interview kicked our tails. Do you know what to do when you encounter someone who is experiencing homelessness? We thought we did ... sort of? Give them a few bucks? Offer a pack of things you have ready in your car? Pray with them? Terence Lester, activist, speaker, and author of I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People, ​helps us practically navigate how we can better see people experiencing poverty and homelessness and thereby learn a lesson on how we can really see everyone.   //: Highlights: "We are all poor in some way. When we understand that (when we understand what God has done for us) it creates a bridge that we can walk over and show our brother and sister, who may be living on the street and experiencing hardship, the same type of love that we would want and have received from our God." --Terence Lester "The best phrases in the New Testament are 'Jesus saw.' Not only did He see people, but He became proximate to them. What will radically change our understanding and even our misconceptions about people is acknowledging them and getting proximate." --Terence Lester "Presence can trump money." --Terence Lester //: Do the Next Thing: Check out Terence's book I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People. Check out Terence's site here. Find Terence on Instagram. //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What does your name mean, and how does it affect your life? Email podcast@lauriekrieg.com or find us on Instagram. For More.

Friends. We need them. They can also be a big challenge. It can be hard to put them in their proper, healthy place (neither diminishing them nor elevating them)—whether we are married or single. Today, we primarily look at how to have healthy friendships through the married lens, but single people? We believe and hope and pray you will be blessed, too. Kelly Needham, author of the new book Friendish, helps us explore questions such as, “Can we have covenant friendships outside of marriage?” “What are signs of when friendships are moving into an unhealthy direction?” “Are our spouses supposed to be our best friends?" ​It's a needed conversation for our lonely world today on the podcast.   //: Highlights: "If a friendship is starting to encroach on our relationship with our spouse or with Christ, that's a warning sign." --Kelly Needham ​"I don't think the word 'best friend' is wrong, but I don't think that it's right that we build covenants into our friendships ... That does not condemn single people to loneliness or missing out on something huge. If we believe that, then we are admitting that marriage satisfies preeminently in our hearts." --Kelly Needham ​ "Your loneliness is primarily alleviated in Christ ... Loneliness came as a result of sin, not alone-ness." --Kelly Needham //: Do the Next Thing: Check out Kelly's book, ​Friendish, here. Check out Kelly's blog and site here. For more on this episode //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What was your favorite school lunch? (Either packed or the hot lunch variety?) Find us on Instagram.

When Brad Klaver was ten, he watched three men in his church get publicly excommunicated for either experiencing attractions toward the same gender or for being in same-sex relationships. He made a vow to himself, "I will never share this part of me." Twenty-five years later, married to his wife and dad to four kids, God allowed this now-pastor to go through breakdown so he could experience breakthrough. Join us as we engage Brad's journey with his wife, friends, and church in this final story in our broken/beloved pastor series today. [Also listen in as we get hammered by a rainstorm and get word of a tornado in our area. It made for an exciting recording finish. ;) ]   //: Highlights "I remember exactly where I was watching [the excommunications] unfold. In me there was this internal fear of: 'I don't know where this came from. I don't know why I have this. I don't know where this all began, or what was done to me to make me like this. All I know, based on what I am seeing now is ... this is what happens if people find out. You admit it, and you are shown the door.' ... I said to myself... 'I will never tell anyone. Ever.' That commitment was kept for 25 years." --Brad Klaver "The pages with the verses pertaining to homosexuality and marriage are the most well-worn pages in my childhood Bible. I begged God to either fix me or switch me or end me. None of that was happening, and so I took matters into my own hands and learned the art of religion." --Brad Klaver "The reality was not that I had done something--a moral failure or something that disqualifies me from serving in the church--the reality was that this journey that God was taking me on completely wiped me out." --Brad Klaver //: Do the Next Thing: Connect with Brad by emailing podcast@lauriekrieg.com Check out our Podcast Facebook Group. For more on this episode. //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What drew you to your first friend(s) as a kid? (A game? Proximity? Mutual likes for something?) Find us on Instagram.

It's week two of our Broken/Beloved Pastor mini-series, where we try to break down stereotypes and halt the gossip train when it comes to pastors who leave their positions for various reasons. Today, we dive into the painful and gorgeous story of Johnny and Amanda McKenna. The middle of their journey includes him almost killing himself to hide his double life of affairs, pornography addiction, and alcoholism--while serving as a pastor. But there is a beginning and new ending to this story. Come and hear pieces of the whole broken and beloved journey with us today.   //: Highlights: "I constantly felt like I didn't measure up. Pornography was an escape from that feeling for me. 'Finally, I don't have to feel that just for that moment.' But after that moment is over . . . now I'm right where I started, and in an even worse spot." --Johnny McKenna "We could not have sex for two years of our marriage. I was so ashamed. I didn't know what was wrong with me what was wrong with my body. I didn't understand it. It's so hard and embarrassing to talk about with people . . . I felt so helpless." --Amanda McKenna "All this is going on and I'm saying to myself ... 'You're such a scumbag ... It's time to take my life ... I'll be gone, but my legacy will be in tact. I won't be this pastor that is another Hall of Shame member. I won't have to tell my boys that I failed them--that I cheated on their mom. I won't have to tell my youth group kids and leaders. I can at least provide for them financially. They'll be in a better place because I had life insurance.' I thought that was the best case scenario. Those were the lies Satan was whispering in my ear."--Johnny Mckenna ​"One of the things [my friend] said was, 'Amanda, God is saving your husband right now.' It shocked me. 'What do you mean He's saving us? It feels like He's killing us.' But then that meaning sunk in: Johnny was living bound and held captive by his sin. But now, God was in the process of saving him. ...That's really beautiful if you think about it: God steps into the mess and he fights for you." --Amanda McKenna //: Do the Next Thing: Connect with Johnny and Amanda by emailing podcast@lauriekrieg.com Check out our Podcast Facebook Group. For more on this episode. //: Question of the Week for Next Week: If I walked into your house/apartment/room what are three things I would see that describe who you are as a person? Find us on Instagram.

This episode surprisingly convicted us because, well, we don't think much about food. But, good grief, what we miss out on when we see food as a way to shovel nutrients (or happiness) in as opposed to a way to know God more deeply. Food Network star, Melissa d'Arabian, invites us to the table with our creative, creator-of-food God. Through her vulnerable story and experience in the food entertainment industry, Melissa teaches us how to know Him more through eating. This is a sweet one. //: Highlights: "God could have created a nutrition-delivery system that was far less delicious and far more efficient that didn't require us to stop, sit, eat, prepare, and grow. But He didn't." --Melissa d'Arabian ​ "Food has a way of saying, 'I see you.'" --Melissa d'Arabian //: Do the Next Thing: Check out Melissa's book Tasting Grace. Check out her site (and food books/videos!) here. //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What is your favorite word? ​ Email podcast@lauriekrieg.com or find us on Instagram. For More.

The Church is precious. It's Christ's beloved and broken bride. But sex and sexuality conversations have notoriously challenged us for the last ... thousands of years. New York Times bestselling author, Mo Isom, helps guide us through some of these conversations we have forgotten, and does it with storytelling and great passion. (She takes us to church!) Grab a pew, and join us.   //: Highlights: "A lot of my issues grew out of the fact that my family thought the church was talking to me about the hard stuff, and the church thought my family was talking about the hard stuff. So really, no one was talking to me about the hard stuff. Therefore, the world ... was teaching me." --Mo Isom "Nothing you bring to the foot of the cross is going to knock God off of His throne." --Mo Isom //: Do the Next Thing: Check out the book, Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot. Check out that video resource, ​Conversations Continued, here. Dig deeper into her first book (and testimony) here. Discover More.   //: Question of the Week for Next Week: If you had to be stuck inside of a TV show for the rest of your life, which show and what character would you be? ​ Email podcast@lauriekrieg.com or follow Laurie on Instagram to answer.

Touch can be ... a touchy subject. Some of us can overemphasize it and others can shun it. When Laurie recently said to Matt, "I wish I could live in a touch-free world," she realized just how touchy (and painful) non-sexual physical touch can be. Instead of bury it, in classic Hole in My Heart Podcast fashion, we are bringing the conversation to the table. Matt, Laurie, Steve, and guest, Hayley Mullins, toss around questions ranging from what to do when we idolize touch, to how to carefully speak the "love language" of touch with those been affected by sexual assault. This is another raw and (in our opinion) beautiful one. You are welcome to join us.   //: Highlights: "The way Jesus healed most often was with touch. I have to imagine because we are created bodily, and because our natural reaction when we fall and scrape our knee is to take our hands and put it over that wound, there is something intrinsic to physical touch that when used in a giving way, when used to attend to the needs of the person as opposed to try and take is more pronounced."--Matt Krieg "When I was walking through a season where I was wrestling with, 'How do I use touch appropriately in a way that just loves people? ... How do I practice this ... if it is causing me problems?' [I needed to find] the ways to show the Father's love with touch in a way that is welcoming--in a way that draws them in as opposed to pulls them to yourself because of you. Instead, it welcomes in so that they can see Jesus more clearly." --Hayley Mullins   //: Do the Next Thing: Feel free to email us your thoughts or to connect with Hayley at podcast@lauriekrieg.com That HIMH Podcast FB group? Check it out here. For More.   //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What was your favorite childhood toy? Find Laurie Krieg in Instagram. 

How many of us have fought (and do fight) with heart-pumping, air-constricting anxiety? How can we practically do battle with it? Bestselling author and popular speaker, Rebekah Lyons, helps us put on our boxing gloves to practically combat it.   //: Highlights: "We don't know freedom until we know bondage. So let's acknowledge we are so hungry for God's rescue, and let's ask Him to do a mighty work." --Rebekah Lyons "I questioned, 'Am I a fraud?' I thought there was a healing that happened, and I was loud about it. And yet I found myself in a place of frailty and desperation again." --Rebekah Lyons   //: Do the Next Thing: Find Rebekah's book and more at: https://rebekahlyons.com Connect with Laurie on IG. Find More. 

There is intense pain in the world and in our hearts--based on national or personal tragedy. We may be quick to jump to anger, to text someone, to Twitter, to do something. These actions may not be wrong, but they can be wrong-hearted if we skip an important step: going to the Father with lament that leads to forgiveness and eventual love for our enemies. It feels impossible--really, truly loving our enemies--but as believers we are called to do the impossible with the One who empowers us. But how in the world can we do this lament that leads to forgiveness that leads to genuine love for our enemies? We get as practical as we can in this episode, breaking down how we lament in real life, and even give you a bonus episode where Matt leads us like a midwife to birth these laments today. :)   //: Highlights: "I picture the cross of Christ, but I don't put the person ... on the cross ... He deserves it. So do I." --Laurie Krieg "If there is anything that you could get out of this, yes, lament and understand what it is. But, understand that the God we go to is a God who wants all of us. Not just the joy, not just the sad, not just the stoic, not just the put-together, and not just the broken. All of it." --Matt Krieg   //: Do the Next Thing: Find the full episode notes and a lot here on the podcast episode page here.