Dr. Jessica Peck prescribes Hope for healthy families on American Family Radio

Hello, and welcome to the Dr. Nurse Mama show, prescribing Hope for healthy Families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner, and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there, friends, and welcome to my favorite part of the afternoon, getting to spend time with you, prescribing Hope for healthy families. And today, we are going to talk about hope, which we talk about every day on this show. But today we're going to talk specifically about hope. And how do we feel hopeful in a world that feels anything but? And, you know, I look back to Covid and it's. I know I just said that word and you're like, no, let's not talk about that. But it's so interesting to me because I find myself talking about it more this year than I have in the last couple of years. And I think that's just because we're starting to recognize the impacts that it had on us. And it feels like the world kind of flipped upside down during that time m. And when we look back to how much the world changed, we see. I mean, I think even in leading a large professional nursing organization, we still used a speakerphone before COVID like an actual phone with a receiver and a cord that was into the wall. And then all of a sudden, we went to Zoom calls, and we went from professional meetings to just being on Zoom in our pajamas with our pets. We started ordering things from Amazon and Tetris packages on our porches. Most of that was toilet paper. But surveys show that three out of four Americans feel more stressed now than they did even then at that time five years ago. And nearly half admit they're just going through the motions. They're just living life by numbers. And we've got all these recipes saved in our camera rolls. We've got sourdough starter ambitions. We've got peloton bikes or, treadmills that we bought during the pandemic that are now collecting dust. And a sneaking suspicion, honestly, that optimism might be extinct. But what if hope doesn't require going back to normal, back to what that was pre pandemic or whatever it was that you're longing to go back to. Even thinking about the pandemic, we all thought it was two weeks, right? Two weeks of inconvenience, of pause, and back to normal. But here we are five years later, and usual for a lot of us just has never come back. And the pandemic didn't just interrupt our schedules. It really exposed our souls. And if we're being really honest, I Think it revealed how fragile our sense of control really was. We thought optimism would carry us through. We'd just be optimistic. But it doesn't survive empty chairs at the dinner table. It doesn't survive fractured relationships, that ache of isolation. And maybe that's the uncomfortable truth that we've all been forced to face, is that we. We don't just need a sunnier outlook, we need a sturdier anchor. Because we all start out every year with optimistic intentions. Here we are going into the end of the year. I want you to think back in January. Maybe you thought, this'll finally be the year I get organized. And thanks to Kathi Lipp, many of us are. Or maybe you thought, this is the year, this friendship, this relationship is going to be different. This job is finally the one that's going to make me happy. This move, this relationship I have. But somewhere between January gym memberships and now this September, just barrage of negative news that's come in, reality is setting in. And that better year. We think, this year will be better than next 2020. We all just wanted to turn the page 2021. Here we are, 2025. Why does our optimism die so quickly? Because it needs everything to go right. But I want to invite you to transition today from optimism M to hope to real hope. And that's different because hope doesn't require perfect circumstances. It just requires a perfect savior. And we have that. Optimism says, I trust that life will be kind. I hope that life will be kind. But hope says, even when life is not kind, I trust that God is still good. So I'm talking today to Scarlet Hiltibidal in her new book Hopeful Ish. And she's reminding us that the gospel offers a sturdier hope, one that is not going to be as inconsistent as our WI fi or require any monthly subscription or a hope that disappoints. It is a hope that persists, a hope that lasts. So, Scarlet I'm so grateful that you are here. Thank you so much for joining us.

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Thank you for having me. I need to, like, put you in my backpack and take you on the road for you to just introduce this topic for me because that was so beautifully, beautifully said.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, thank you for that. Anything that you hear that is beautiful is only beautifully broken. Honestly, I'm walking this journey along with everybody else, and it amazes me sitting here behind the microphone. I don't have all the answers, Scarlet I don't have it all put together. But I am finding hope along the way. I find hope every day. And I find hope in people like you who are sharing this hopeful ish message, which I just love that little ish on the end because if we're all really honest, I think that's kind of how we feel. So let's hear a little bit about you and your path and your journey and how God called you to give us this message to be hopefulish.

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Okay. Well, like you said, the world has changed the last five years. I, the books I've written in the past have been very light hearted and like, you know, I've written about anxiety and shame, which are heavy topics, but I wrote about those things in a world where I was a natural optimist and you know, bouncing back from things and remembering the joy and peace I have in the gospel was a lot easier pre2020. And so this book was kind of birthed out of what I know is a very universal experience of just kind of figuring out how to hold on to the hope that we have as believers, as followers of Jesus. And after, you know, the world has changed just like you just said. The world's changed so much. We've lost loved ones because of sickness, job loss has moved people we love away or it has dismantled our careers or whatever. It's just everything's changed. And that happened in my personal life. this book was, I thought of writing about it because my, Uncle Jimmy, who was a father figure to me, died by suicide in 2021 after Covid, you know, messed up his job and he had a broken engagement and he was so special to me and important to me. So that happened 16 days later. My grandma died of COVID Covid pneumonia, his mom. And so that was kind of the springboard for this. But when I actually. So, you know, I signed a book contract, I'm like, okay, I'm going to write about this from the piece of my home. I'm going to exhale and write about what the Lord has shown me. It's all going to be easy now. But, as I sat down to write it, my mom's cancer return, stage four inoperable. I took a positive pregnancy test as a 38 year old. I'm now turning 40. well, not yet, I'm 39, but 40 is the next birthday. Hold on to that, you know, hold on to that. But as I, as I set out to actually meet the deadline of turning this manuscript into my publisher, I get this positive pregnancy test. I've got three kids, one of them is in high School now. So I thought I was in the easy stage of parenting, you know, and the hard things would be the, you know, conversations about dating and, you know, driver's license things. But no, I'm. I had a year of, throwing up. I have very hard pregnancies and all that goes with that. And now here I am in the newborn stage again, which is, you know, an unexpected joy. but all this to say, writing this book, the journey of writing this book was. It was birthed out of, like, just walking through grief and the change of how the world has changed. But then as I actually wrote it, I was like, oh, wow. Not only that, but the joy and pain of life does not stop. It's not like it's going to take a break for me because I'm trying to write this book. So I think that that added to the book a lot. And, I wrote it from a very. A place of wrestling with all this myself as a longtime follower of Jesus. And, I think that, yeah, I think the hope of Jesus shines through as I record text messages and things from my mom, who's a believer, just, she's, you know, preparing to meet Jesus, and she is just pouring wisdom and hope and joy and faith into our family right now. And so, it's been a blessing. All the sadness and all the grief, it's been a blessing because we're not doing any of it alone. And the Lord's been in it all along.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Scarlet that's a. That's a lot of tough stuff. And, you know, I look back at my own journey, and I think back to when I was in nurse practitioner school. This was 25 years ago, long time ago. And I had a preceptor that I worked with at a clinic for a long time. And when I finished the rotation, the. The staff there, they gave me a gift. They gave me this little crystal ball. it's not like to tell the future or anything, but like, a little light prism. If any of you have seen the old movie Pollyanna, read the book, you know, seen that movie with Haley Mills is. They called her the Glad Girl because she was always optimistic. And that's what they called me. They said, oh, you're the glad girl. So they wanted to give me a little light prism to remind me of that. Pollyanna and fast forward, Scarlet and just carrying all of those heavy things. You described some very heavy things. And I think, especially since COVID I think about the loss that the world has experienced and every single human being on the planet who Lived through Covid, lost something. Some people just lost something as maybe trivial as their favorite place to eat for lunch or, you know, something like that. But a lot of people lost something really big. I actually lost my grandmother, because of COVID And it wasn't even all of these things. You know, we think about the physical impacts of COVID but her. Her whole social circle was. Was shut down, and. And so she sat for a long time, and she didn't go out as much as she used to. She got a blood clot. She got a stroke. You know, she ended up having this big health cascade. I think about even, you know, as a nurse, the things that people have lost. I think about how many people I was with who had a baby, who weren't allowed to have a support system there. They had a baby all by themselves because there were no visitors allowed. I mean, just the. The waves of loss go on and on. And I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that loss, to say, you know what? This is what I lost. And you talked about sitting in grief, and it's so hard, Scarlet, because, you know, we ask a God to give us hope. Well, it's not this magic infusion of hope. Oh, you want hope? You know, let's. Let's just magically give you hope. No. He gives us circumstances in which it seems there is no hope, so that we can have hope if we want patience. He gives us circumstances, we. Where we are able to exercise patience. And that's so hard. But I always find that personal stories come out of this. And one of the things I love about your work, Scarlet is that you talk about how the Gospel, the Bible, speaks into those seasons of deep sadness, of soul weariness, of just feeling so tired. I know even now I'm looking at the news that's coming across and just very, very tragic events. How do we learn from scripture about those seasons of just really extensive grief?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Well, it's a great question. I was just thumbing through my book to try to find the specific verse. I, think it's in First Peter. I should know this, but it's been a little bit. It's been a year since I wrote this book, but, something that I. That I noticed that I hadn't noticed before, reading through scripture, is that hope is a gift from the Holy Spirit. So it's like we. And I write about this in here. We could, you know, we want to, like, attend a seminar or, you know, we walk through these hard things, and we want an answer for okay, but how do I have hope? And it's a gift from God. It's just a gift. this isn't the verse I'm thinking of, but Romans 15:13 says, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Spirit like God. God is the one who fills us with that. When we. When we look at the world and we look at our circumstances, it looks like there is no hope. And the only reason we have the hope of an everlasting life with no more pain is because of what Jesus did for us. The only reason we have hope, that life can be joyful and peaceful right now in this new. This new normal, as you said, is because we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We are still able to love one another. you know, and so, man, I get on these rabbit trails, but I don't know, to answer your question. Does that answer your question?

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: It does answer my question. And I'm okay with, chasing a rabbit every once in a while. I think that God gives us grace to do that. And I think we're coming up on our first break here, but after the first break, we'll talk about a story about a donkey that's a little more light hearted, but I. I love that verse. Romans 15:13. Often write that verse when I'm signing books or sharing with other people, because I think the whole of the whole platform of my ministry and my hope here, Scarlet is to prescribe hope for healthy families. And I think that is a verse that we can hold onto. It's such a powerful blessing to speak over someone who feels like there is no hope. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is a powerful blessing that we can speak. Because I think it's very easy in today's world, Scarlet to feel like there is no hope. And people often ask me, how can you believe? How can you have hope in a God who would allow all of these things to happen? And I think my answer is that I. My hope is that this isn't the end of the story, that we don't have to rely on our human. Human limitations and weaknesses to somehow make this better and to self help ourselves into a way that we can hope. I hope in a God who redeems, who restores, who renews, who will make all things well, who will wipe every tear who will make all things just in the end. And when we come back, we'll have more conversation about that. We'll talk about how do we feel hopeful. And maybe you feel like I don't feel hopeful. Maybe you'll feel hopeful. Ish. And that, we'll have more with Scarlet Hiltibidal When we come back. Candice talks about finding out she was pregnant. Thankfully, an ultrasound provided by preborn allowed her to hear her baby's heartbeat. The sonogram sealed the deal for me. My baby was like this tiny little spectrum of hope. And I saw his heart beating on the screen and knowing that there's life growing inside, I mean, that sonogram changed my life. I went from just Candace to mom. Thank you. To everybody that has given these gifts. You guys are giving more than money. You guys are giving love. Preborn currently has clinics that do not have ultrasound machines. Would you consider a leadership gift and sponsor a machine today? These life Saving machines cost $15,000 more than most centers can afford. Your donation will save countless lives for years to come. Dial pound250 and say the keyword baby or go to preborn.com/AFR who could.

>> Living Hope by Phil Wickham: Imagine so great a mercy? What heart could fathom such boundless grace? The God of ages step down from glory to wear my sin and bear my shame the cross has spoken, I am forgiven. The king of kings calls me his own beautiful savior. I'm yours forever. Jesus Christ, my living hope. Hallelujah. Praise the one who set me free. Hallelujah. Death has lost its grip on me. You have broken every chain Jesus Christ, my living hope.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is Living Hope by Phil Wickham. and listen, I don't know about you, but my heart is really heavy today. Been watching the news of the girl that was killed on public transit. These things we, we, we see the, the shooting at Ascension. It is very hard. Honestly, I feel like I just want to run away from all of the news because every time we open it up, there's just heartbreak and it seems like there's no hope. And he's. Even if I'm listening to that song Living Hope by Phil Wickham, I remember the very first time I ever heard that song. I was serving as a volunteer nurse at a high school camp. And, it got quiet in the clinic, which usually wasn't very typical. And so I went into the worship service and I never heard that song before. And I saw hundreds of teenagers singing this song and worshiping the Lord. And it gave me so much hope. Because I knew a lot of those things that kids were facing, really serious, heavy, hard things. And I thought, I can't fix those things. I don't have enough intelligence, enough wisdom, enough strength, enough courage to fix all of those situations. But to put our hope and someone who is acquainted with sorrow, someone who knows our grief, someone who knows the path of suffering and will be there with us in this broken world until things are made new. That's the only place that I can get hope. So I encourage you pray for all of those impacted by all of the tragic stories that we've seen. The hill country floods, the natural disasters, the school shootings, just all of it. I just encourage you to turn those cares into prayers. That's all that I know to do. And I know to speak to other people who have walked a path of feeling hopeless, but have felt hopeful or hopeful Ish, as my guest and I are talking about today. I'm talking to Scarlet Hiltibidal today about her book Hopeful Ish. And that's where we are today. And it's so, We live in such a strange time where, sometimes our phone knows that we're sad before our spouse even does. And maybe your algorithm starts giving you sad girl playlists or gives you therapy memes or it gives you motivational reels that are narrated by the Rock. We know that Americans check their phones an average of 144 times a day, but here's a spoiler alert. No one has ever doom scrolled their way into accidentally finding hope. It just doesn't happen. Refreshing the news will not refresh your soul. We do not need another refresh button. We need renewal. And that's why Scarlet Hilda Beidle has written Hopeful Ish and given stories that make us laugh, which we desperately need, and stories that make us cry. And Scarlet, on a day where my heart is feeling so heavy, I know yours is, too. There's so much tough stuff. You have a humorous story that you can share with us. We talked about we already chased some rabbits.

You were pretend farmers for a couple of times in Tennessee

Now let's talk about donkeys. What did you learn from a donkey and your life about hope?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Okay, I hope this is humorous. well, we were pretend farmers for a couple of times for a few years in Tennessee. we had some chickens. You know, that was our first time being pretend farmers. And then we tried again part two. And we got a pig, and we got some donkeys, and the donkeys felt like, okay, we're legit now. Like, you can't. You. You're a real Farmer. If you have donkeys. So the arrival of the donkeys felt like a legitimate I'm a farmer moment. I remember this was a few years ago. So we got a big donkey to protect our chickens, and we got a miniature donkey because she was so cute. He was so cute. And so, we were waiting for this fence to come in. We're trying to get them to their water trough for the first time, and they kept going out into the big field. And so me and my daughters were trying to wrangle the donkeys back to their water supply. And I thought, you know, I'm MacGyver, I'm Old MacDonald. We don't need a fence. I can make a fence out of electrical cables and, moving blankets. And so I did. That did not work, surprisingly, worked for a second. but then the little one got away, and so we're like, okay, we got to go get the little one. And this is the cute one that we got for cuteness purposes only. And so we, me and my youngest daughter go out to get this donkey, and she start. He starts charging at us like, yee hawing in English, foaming at the mouth, practically screaming at us and running at us. It sounds really funny, but it was like, are we going to get killed? Moment. Like we're about to get mauled by a miniature cute donkey. So we're. I'm just. I run, and we're just running, and we jump over my makeshift gate, and we were safe. And the gate came, and it all. It all worked out for a while. but we ended up. When I wrote this book, I was talking about, there's a chapter called Fake Farming Weary Worship. I want the real thing. And I was talking about how when you're a farmer, you've got to get up early and you've got to take care of the animals and all. If you stop taking care of the animals, then everything dies. So to stop being a farmer, all you got to do is sell your farm and give your animals away to some kind people. We actually ended up, very recently doing that for a second time. We got rid of. Farming is not for us. We have learned after two tries. but the Christian life, it is like farming, and it's not like farming. It is like farming in that you have to stay connected to the Lord. You have to actually walk with him in order to keep your soul afloat. You know, not saying that doesn't mean we are not saved anymore. If we walk away from the Lord, if we, you know, are in a Season of grief. If we're in a season of not looking at our Bibles, it doesn't mean he doesn't love us anymore, but it means that we'll start to feel our happiness wither away. We start to feel our hope, feel lofty and far off. We forget what's true. We forget that we are safe and loved and protected and that we have this hope, and safety in the Lord. We just start to think. We just look at our sad circumstances and get caught up in that.

Scarlet says sometimes we forget to look at God's word in pain

So the funny story leads me to the more serious topic of, you know, I think that I have tendency sometimes to maybe not look at God's word or not talk to him in my pain. Because I don't want to be fake. I want to be. I want it to be real. Like, I want to pray and worship God when I feel like it. But that is, that's not true. Going to God when you don't feel like it is not fake. It's. It's like, ah, it's life or death. It's like, it's like putting water in the trough of a donkey. Like, we need God's word to survive and we need to remember what's true to remember what's true. Otherwise we will feel hopeless and we won't get to experience the joy and peace available to us, because of what Jesus did for us. And so, you know, there's scripture everywhere. Scripture. In Revelation 21, he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Grief, crying and pain will be no more we. It's so easy, like you said, with the doom scrolling to forget what our hope even is. If we, even if we've been walking with him for a long time, if we look away from that because we say we want to be real, then, then we're going to live in the agony of being caught up in circumstances rather than resting in the future hope that we have in Christ. So, you know, don't be like, don't be like a farmer who lets the plants die. Be like a farmer who keeps going out there and tending to the farm so that to live, you know. I don't know.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Yeah, you're. You're making me think of John 15, you know, abide in me and I in you. Like, I am the vine, you are the branches. And as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. And it just reminds me of what you were talking about earlier with, with Romans, 15:13, about, about having hope through the Holy Spirit. And it is so true. We have to abide. And it's so easy to drift. And Scarlet I find that that doom SC really makes me drift because I start to get depressed. I start to see all of the bad news. And it's really hard because, you know, when we were growing up, when I was growing up, because I'm. I'm a little bit older than you. When I was growing up, you know, the world was really small and. And the bad news was delivered to us through Walter Cronkite, you know, and it was very sterile in the way that it was delivered. And it was very, compartmentalized. Like you're going to see on the evening news this happened. And maybe if there was a really big news event, you know, would be breaking news on the television and they may have, you know, some live coverage, but it's always coming through, like, very impersonally. You know, somebody's talking to the anchor in their ear, and then they're conveying to you basically this game of telephone. And now when we open it up, I think some of the things that we've seen, even this week, you see it happening. It.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: There is video everywhere, and you just find yourself. It's like, the car wreck that you just can't look away from. And I think we have gotten. Got to pull our eyes away from that and fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross and, despising its shame. And now he sits at the right hand of God. And I think about, you know, the. The scripture. Scarlet of I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? It comes from the maker of heaven and earth. And I think of all of the awful things that have happened in the world, all of the trials that have happened in my own life. But I know that God has met me in those moments of desperation. Scarlet. I know it. I know it. He has spoken to me. He has ministered to me. He has orchestrated miraculous circumstances. And many times not in the way that I would want, but I know in the way that I need. And when we're abiding, when we're listening, when we're practicing those daily rhythms, we have that assurance. And I think it's really hard, you know, for us to feel that way. And I shared with you earlier that, you know, I was the. I was the Pollyanna. I was the glad girl. And now my kids constantly telling me mom, you're such a pessimist. Mom, you just always think the worst. And I think, no, I'm not. I'm the glad girl. I have the little light prism to show it. But I feel myself drifting in that way. How do we parent in this broken world? When you talked about not feeling fake, like, I don't want to give my kids, like, oh, it'll be okay. It's fine. How do we be real with our kids and give them hope?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Yeah. Wow, that's such a good question. You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking that here's the gift in this. I think people who are more Pollyanna, like old you and old me, pre life feeling like it beat us up a little bit. Here's the gift in it. It's sad, but it's also not sad because I think that when you are all Pollyanna, it's easy to just get caught up in. In that. To an extreme, to where maybe you're not noticing the suffering or you're putting your head in. I don't know if you're this way, but for me it was like, I didn't. I just wanted to live in happy zone. And so, my. Toward the end of the book, I have another donkey chapter. A sick donkey on a Saturday. And it's about that same donkey who charged at us when she was dying because there's a lot of death on a farm. She got sick and started dying. I keep saying he, she. I don't really know. I don't remember. I think it was a boy. Anyway, this donkey was dying and I will Never forget my 8 year old at the time said, mommy, is. What was her name, buddy? Is she still. Is. Is he still around? because if he's dying, I don't even want to go out there. Just tell me if he's not okay. I don't even want to see it. And I thought, man, I'm so like that. Like, I just want to look away from the pain. like, don't even tell me about it. Let me just. Let me just look at my Netflix and think happy thoughts, you know? But. But Jesus didn't look away. Jesus didn't look away when there was a sin problem that broke the world, right? He stepped into the pain. And as little Christ, as Christians, that's what Christian means when we look at the pain in the world. And rather than putting earmuffs on or running away from it, but when we step into it with love, we find blessing, right? We find joy for ourselves when we get to love others. So, you know, I think the gift in this new world and optimists kind of battling pessimism is we can maybe have a more, realistic look at the world. And maybe, maybe we know too much to wear earmuffs anymore, you know, and we can have. We can pursue the real kind of hope that's deeper than optimism, you know, because there's optimism like everything's going to work out okay, but then there's the true hope that really, truly everything is going to work out okay in the end for those who are safe in Christ. And so, you know, I think that so many of us long for the old days when before we had so many losses to grieve. But maybe, like, this new. This new form of optimism is a deeper kind of optimism. And I just. I think of my mom, who's walking through cancer that I mentioned earlier. Like, things were good, you know, before in our family. But my mom talked about this recently, how the gifts that this horrible, thing cancer have brought into our family have been so precious. Like, the. The talks we've had about the Lord getting to see a lifetime of faith in my parents lived out in how they are handling this and the things that they're resting in. It's like, you can't fake that. It's just if you. If you walk with Jesus through all the heartaches for years and years and years, and then you find yourself with a diagnosis like this, it reveals what's really there. And so, like, what a gift, you know? So I think that as we walk with our kids, it's like, I take my kids to my mom's house, and they. They know she's stage four, and they see her hanging out with us and laughing and having hard days and having good days, and they're like, oh, bam, Bam's gonna live forever. You know, like, that's our hope. And so it's a deeper kind of. Kind of happiness, I think.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: You know, I'm thinking of John 11:35, which is the shortest verse in the Bible, right? Jesus wept. And the context of that was that he had gone to. He found out that his friend Lazarus had died. And when he got there, you know, of course he raised him from the dead. And Scarlet sometimes I think about that. I think, well, then why did Jesus cry if he knew, you know, that he was going to raise him from the dead or that everything would be okay? I think he knew. I think surely for our sorrows, he knows our grief. He saw the grief that that caused. And he felt that. And he felt that for his friends and he expressed that compassion and that sorrow. I think it's okay for us to cry about some of those things that happen now and still yet be hopeful, even if we can, only be Hopeful. Ish. And we have so much more to talk about about this book. Hopeful-ish sadness, weariness, donkey attacks, more sadness, and other stuff you need the gospel for. We'll be right back with more from Scarlet Hiltibidal

There is a great deal of emphasis on human wisdom now in evangelical circles

Here's Pastor Erwin Lutzer from the American Family Studios documentary the God who Speaks.

>> Pastor Erwin Lutzer: You know, so often I see even in evangelical circles where you have a great deal of emphasis on human wisdom now, that human wisdom sometimes is right. For example, human wisdom can diagnose certain problems that people have psychologically and so forth. The problem is human wisdom does not have an answer to the deep needs of the soul. What we need to do is to get back to the Bible. Do we begin to think in human terms as to how problems can be solved? Or do we come to God seeking his wisdom so that the answers that we have for human need and human conflict are truly biblical? Visit thegodwhospeaks.org.

>> Fight On My Knees by Evan Craft: Feels like a whisper but in heaven it's loud don't give up don't give up on the ones you love oh, just a little faith is enough Help me to remember My help comes from heaven God, when I surrender I find all I need Strength in every weakness in the name of, Jesus always find a secret I fight on.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: My knees I fight on my knees welcome back, friends. That is Fight on My Knees by Evan Craft. And I don't know about you, but life lately just feels like too much. 2025 has been one of the hardest years I faced in my whole life. And I was even just speaking to my husband earlier this morning about something else that has gone wrong, and I said, just throw it on the trash pile. That is 2025. It just feels like I'm having one of those years. And maybe you are, too. Maybe things are going great, and I hope that that's the case. But if we look at the world, life just feels like. I mean, honestly, we're living inside an everything bagel. It's just like too much. Too many headlines, too many tragedies, too many emails marked urgent that really just want you to buy something. And we know statistically the average American spends about seven hours a day looking at screenshots. And most of that is not good news. Most of that is not Edifying most of that is not helpful or healthful for us. And still, even though we're digitally connected, we feel more emotionally disconnected. There's a loneliness epidemic. Gallup reports happiness levels are at near record lows. While the Surgeon General has declared loneliness a national health crisis on, par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. When we look at health impacts of that. So no wonder we're binge watching shows we don't even like. We're just trying to numb out, Netflix and chill, drown out the noise. But here's the catch. Our souls don't need just distraction. They need direction. And we're talking about a book by Scarlet Hiltibidal today called Hopeful Ish. And if you don't feel hopeful, it's really encouraging to me to think, okay, just take a step towards Hopeful Ish. And things that give me hope are hearing the testimonies of other people. And we've heard some powerful ones this week. On Monday, we heard from Peter Rosenberger, whose wife was injured in a car accident when she was 17 years old. She's had nearly a hundred surgeries, millions of dollars in medical bills. And he shared how they sang the hope that they have even in the most recent surgery. Yesterday we heard from Kim Harms, a two time breast cancer survivor and the hope that she had. And today we're hearing from Scarlet. We also want to hear from you friends. We want to hear listener stories of hope. And we're gathering some stories now to play during our fall share a thon. And we would like to hear from you. If the Lord has used American Family Radio to give you hope at just the right time, all you have to do is just call our listener storyline. That number is 877-876-8893. That's 877-876-8893. Just call for a minute or two and give your testimony of hope.

Scarlet says she learned the gospel before she knew how to talk

Well, Scarlet we have really talked about just carrying some heavy things, both in our own personal lives, in the world, in the, the people around us who we love. It is really, really hard. Where do you find hope in the gospel? Talk to me more about finding hope in the word of God. Where, where do you find that hope that doesn't disappoint?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Well, I learned the gospel before I knew how to, how to talk or what it meant. And I think because of that, it's a gift, but because of that I knew the words. I knew that Jesus saved me from my sins. I knew those words. I knew the verses that went with it. I graduated from Bible college and married a pastor. And yet I was still, not living the abundant life that the Holy Spirit said I could have because of those things. And I couldn't figure it out for a long time until, the Lord just put me in the right room with the right people. Now there were grandmothers and teachers and people pouring into me, planting seeds all along. But, when I was in my 20s and I was a brand new mom with a baby, I, got to hear the testimony of this woman who was just a regular mom with three kids. And she said, my goals are not to be the perfect mom or the perfect wife and have the perfect kids. My goal is to just live the gospel out in my home. And here's what that looks like. And then she presented the gospel I knew to be true, that, you know, Jesus in my place, because of what Jesus did, I can have a right relationship with God and I can have joy and peace. But she presented that practically in a way that I needed in that moment. And she just said, you know, when I fail my family, if I snap at my preschooler or if I'm mean to my husband, rather than despairing because I failed the day I live out the gospel, I show them this is what we do with our sin. we pray and we repent, we turn from it, we accept the forgiveness of God and we can move on. And so she just kind of taught me practically that if I have a great day, it's because of the work of the Holy Spirit in me. Thank you, Jesus. If I have a horrible day and I fail people I love, this is why Jesus died. So I can still, the day is not, is not a failure. I can still point the people in my life to Jesus and I can seek their forgiveness. And what a beautiful lesson that is to our, to the people around us. Like, you don't have to be perfect. You can rest in the perfection of Jesus. And so that's the gospel in every day, right? And I did not realize that for so many years. And so that just impacted every part of my life. And that allowed me to even pursue hope in the day to day rather than just feeling like I better white knuckle it through this life and maybe, hopefully someday this Bible that I study is true and I really can have the peace. No, I can have it right now because of what Jesus did for me. Because it's not all depending on me to get it right. It's not depending on us to get hope right. We get to have it as a gift. in Our souls, deep in our souls, because Jesus is making all things new all the time.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: You know, that's a beautiful moment of transformation. One of the things I love about that story, Scarlet is that I think so often people who are just trying their best to just walk with the Lord, to just abide daily in his presence, to be obedient, you feel like, am I really doing something that makes a difference? And what you described, it wasn't some big event. It wasn't some, you know, supernatural miracle, miracle moment. It wasn't like, you know, lightning. It wasn't, you know, it. It was just an everyday interaction that you said you had already had those seeds planted, and God just used those to grow at that. At that moment in time. What would you say to people who think, okay, well, I'm where you were, Scarlet. Like, I am feeling discouraged. I am feeling like, you know, I keep trying to start over. I keep trying to, you know, get a fresh start. I keep trying to have a fresh perspective, have that moment, but I just feel like I'm, failing miserably. What would you say to give those people hope?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: I would say preach the truth, the good news of the gospel to your heart every day. Because we are like the Israelites. We are forgetful, and we do have so many distractions. And just, you know, when you start feeling like you're not doing a good job, you've got to remember that it's not up to you to do a good job at whatever is. I mean, yes, we want to. We want to do good because we want to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world. We want to pour the love that we've received onto other people, but it's not to earn anything. We already have it. We. Our souls are secure. We can love and walk in obedience to what God's word says out of the overflow. So I would just say put yourself in situations that help you with the long. I think I already mentioned Eugene Peterson's book A Long Obedience in the same direction. Like, it's the boring sounding. Not boring sounding, but, you know, the routine sounding things of reading your Bible, even if you don't feel like it, praying, even if you don't feel like it, being in rooms with other believers, going to church, being reminded of the truth from other people who have walked with Jesus, longer than you. You know, those things are so important and vital, and God uses all those things to buoy up our. Our hope when we're feeling hopeless. Because, you know, I think of that verse, we're pressed but not crushed. But man, sometimes we feel crushed. Even as believers, even as long time believers, persecuted, but not abandoned. Sometimes we feel abandoned and we need, we need worship music and we need radio shows like this, and we just need to pour in the truth so that we can remember the truth and, be encouraged by it.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: Absolutely. And I think, you know, sometimes it can be really easy to just kind of get in that, in that rut of just feeling down, feeling overwhelmed, feeling depressed. And I think that there is a time and place to feel that. We've already talked about that. But, you know, one thing that I know you appreciate is humor. You appreciate things that are funny. And I think that's one of the reasons why I, really love my husband and I know that God put us together because I tend to take life way too seriously. And he is the kind of guy who's going to visit you in the hospital and he's going to, you know, make the glove into a balloon. I know he's wasting resources. I've already told him all of that. But he is the, the guy that's just going to make things funny. And where do you find that lighter side of life, Scarlet in your family, all that you're facing, you know, with your mom's cancer journey and, and everything that you've been through, losing your uncle. Where do you find, where do you find hope in that and the lighter side of life?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Well, I'm super grateful, to just have grown up in the family. I don't know if you know this, my mom was, on Saturday Night Live for the first six years of my life. She's a professional comedian, and so I did not know that. Okay, so that helps a ton. I was six months old when she got that job. And so I grew up in the wings of comedy clubs and theaters and at snl. And so I am a big time appreciator of humor, and I seek out clean humor, and find it wherever I can. And so I, I'm blessed to be in a very funny family. And, you know, watching my mom walk through cancer, I mean, she's still hilarious. And so it's like, that's a very hopeful, encouraging thing, to see. I mean, I think it's just such an example of her faith, like, she's still her. You'd think that getting, what is, you know, a stage four return to cancer diagnosis, you could call it a death sentence, and you would think that's like, what everyone's afraid of. You know, you'd think that it would just cause you to just be constantly depressed and moping around and just to see her still being her really funny self. it just instructs all of us. I have a 14 year old daughter and when we first got the bad news, we were crying in the car on the way to go see my mom. And then we get into her house and she had a balloon tied to her chair and. And I was like, did my sister bring you that? And she's like, no, I just got it. Like she just got herself a balloon. And then when we left, my daughter was like, I was really scared to see Bam Bam. But now I feel better because she's acting like everything's okay. So I feel like everything's okay. So I think it's just, it's really beautiful when you get to. When you really are living for eternal life. Like during the the Camp Mystic News, we were talking about all these news stories. You know, semi recently there was the tragedy of the floods and the Christian girls camp and I was really struck by that and I was wrestling with that. And I went to my mom because, you know, I'm learning so much from her right now. And I was like, how do I reconcile this? Like, I'm really struggling with this. And my mom said, I think we put too much stock in this life. Like what a simple, beautiful, biblical. Like she's living for eternity. And that is a tragedy that I can't imagine. Those girls who passed away are the ages of my. Some of my daughters. But like if I really believe that there with Jesus right now, you know, like I put too much stock in this life. So, man, you can laugh when you are living for eternity. You can laugh at the days to come. Like the Proverbs 31. Woman. It's a real thing.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: It is a real thing. I'm so glad that you brought that up. You know, she laughs without fear of the future and I think that's something that we forget about and something that we really need to model. And yes, it's okay to feel to. I. I'm so glad you brought up that verse from 2 Corinthians so that we are afflicted. I'm going to read it to, to my listeners here because I think this is such a good reminder. It starts in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 7. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not Driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. I think that is, that's the reminder that I needed today. Scarlet I'm so glad that you brought it up because that, but in there is so important for us. We can say, yes, we are afflicted in every way, but we are not crushed because we have that view of eternity and you know, and kind of separate but unrelated. You know, I hear all of everybody, all, ah, parents my age, talking about the anxious generation by Jonathan Haidt and how his vision is to restore childhood and to give it back to kids, which I think we should absolutely restore childhood in the ways that it was. But my view is that my children would be co heirs with Christ. That's what I, that's what I want to be restored. I want their, their life, their spirit, their soul to be redeemed, to be restored, to be renewed and to know that somehow, in a way that I don't understand, God will make all things right. Well, Scarlet where can we connect with you and learn more about your work in your ministry?

>> Scarlet Hiltibidal: Probably most often on Instagram. Just try. Do your best with my hard last name, Hiltibidal Or you can go to hopefulish.com and scarlethiltibidal.com find me there.

>> Dr. Jessica Peck: I love it. And just to give our listeners some closing words from 2nd Corinthians 4, so we do not lose heart, all of these things that are happening, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. And friend, at whatever path of loss that you're navigating, I hope that that. And pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you and give you peace. And I hope that you have a hope that doesn't disappoint and that you have been encouraged by the words that we have shared today and the journey. The book is called Hopeful-ish Sadness, Weariness, Donkey Attacks, More Sadness, and other stuff you need the gospel for. Listen, I'll see you right back here tomorrow with more hope and help.

>> Jeff Chamblee: The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.

Jessica talks with bestselling author Scarlet Hiltibidal about how the gospel radiates hope in the messiness of life. She also shares how her upcoming book, "Hopeful-ish", will speak to those who crave real talk about faith and mental health.

Rx for Hope: Rediscover Gospel-Rooted Hope

https://www.scarlethiltibidal.com/