That's phc.edu/lifeaudio.

I am the one who has seen the afflictions that come from the rod of the Lord's anger.

He has led me into darkness, shutting out all light.

He has turned his hand against me again and again all day long.

He has hidden like a bear or a lion waiting to attack me.

He has dragged me off the path and torn me in pieces, leaving me helpless and devastated.

He has made me chew on gravel.

I think

Pete Down wanted to write the book, but it was intimidating and scary.

And When you're writing a book and you're telling stories and you're trying to convey to other people what you felt, you have to go back into it.

You have to relive things.

And that was one of the things my editor pushed me on was tell more, tell more.

But yes, when our oldest, he's 24 now, was 17, we became aware of of some serious mental health struggle that was going on.

Now we have diagnoses, generalized anxiety disorder, some pretty severe, um, social anxiety and, um, major depressive disorder.

How do we have maybe some more helpful dialogue as moms?

So tell us just a little bit about the story behind, why did you write this? Why is it titled this? And what about the cover?

Yeah, so even in exile, rediscovering hope and joy when your world turns upside down.

What on earth is exile, right? That's a pretty biblical term that we don't throw around in everyday life.

Exile is, it's a season or it's seasons when what was familiar has now become unfamiliar.

So home is life.

I belong.

I know what to expect.

in.

how was that though different from going through a hardship as a child to then being the one who's supposed to have the answers the pastor the mother the problem solver and the story that wrote itself and then that you put in writing in even in exile to being the role of the parent and having to go through that struggle?

That's a good question because, okay, when it's your struggle, right? For me, at least, when I was the one grieving and hurting, and I had a relationship with the Lord, even if I was not letting him comfort me because I didn't know how to talk to him and I just ignored him for a while.

When it's your child, so for us, it was our oldest, right? So when it's your child that's struggling, You are not in control of how they are going to process their pain.

You are not in control of their timeline for healing or anything, for understanding, comprehending, moving forward, motivation.

I felt out of control with that.

But what I knew... was that when I hurt, I want someone near me and I want someone to tell me things that are true until I can believe it's true and believe it for me.

And so that is what I did when our child started struggling.

Where is God? If God's not in Jerusalem? Where