Her Grief Was So Heavy She Ended Up in the Hospital

Julie Bussler's nickname is Joyful Julie, but she's no stranger to deep grief and trauma. Today, she's telling people what she's learned about the power of lament and how it can bring healing to our hearts and minds. Author, wife, mom, and missionary Julie Bussler grew up in a Christian home where she was taught to hide her pain. When Julie's mom died from cancer, her family wasn't sure how to handle grief, so they didn't. Things only got worse after her father committed suicide. In her book, Hopeful Sorrow, Julie teaches us how to process pain and trauma and find hope and healing in Jesus Christ. Well, I'm so excited to say and very honored to say that my friend Julie Bussler is here live in the studio. Julie, thank you so much for being with us today. It's great to be back. Yeah, we loved having you last time, but okay, so this is book number two, but I wanna go back a little bit. For those who maybe don't know your story, we just saw a glimpse of it in that setup piece, but can you just take us back to maybe what led to you really struggling with depression? Yeah, so it really stems from childhood. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was eight years old, which is really young, and if you weren't taught about grief or even cancer or dying, you don't know what's going on, but you know something's wrong. So then she was really sick my whole upbringing and she passed away when I was 19. I was a freshman in college. That was so traumatic because it wasn't handled the healthiest way. There wasn't hospice. There wasn't really any support. So I'm watching her die and I'm, you know, 19, you feel old, but you're really young. You're a baby still in some ways. So I just tried to survive by shoving all that sorrow down and just pretending like I'm okay. I looked normal on the outside. I was smiley. I was successful in school. I did become a true believer in college. I really just attended church growing up. I didn't really have a relationship with Jesus. So I become a believer truly in college. Meet my husband after college. We get married. He's this wonderful Christian man and we're starting our life together. So we have a few kids and then when I'm in my 20s, I wake up one day to news that my dad has just died by suicide. So that's a lot of trauma. It's very complicated, but of course, I'm very ill-equipped to handle that because I've never been taught, never gotten help. So then that's just where I hide it, but you can't hide from something like depression. You just can't hide from that. So that was really going on starting in college. Okay, so you guys eventually, you and your husband and your family, you guys moved to Turkey. First off, what led you guys to Turkey and then what happened while you guys were there? So God, he redeems all things. There's nothing that he cannot redeem. So when my dad, his death was so tragic and so traumatic and it's this death of despair. He had lost hope. So while we are trying to grieve his death, we have hope in Christ. I know that someday all of this pain will disappear when I'm in the presence of my savior. So we're realizing there's a whole world that is living and dying without hope and many have never heard the name of Jesus. And there's still people who don't have scripture in their language. So because God redeems all things, he used my dad's death to really wake us up to go share life and hope in Jesus with people who don't know him. Yeah, well, while you guys were there, what was going on for you personally? So I'm still hiding what's going on because I'm really detached from it. I'm not trying to be secretive. I don't realize how traumatized I've been. I've pushed it away because we can do that for a while. But eventually it comes out somehow. So after about six years overseas, I'm a good mom, I'm a good wife. I have a fruitful ministry, but I'm human because it doesn't matter how successful you are in ministry, you are human and you still need help sometimes. So eventually I just got to this point where I had basically lost my will to live. I was so consumed by what had happened to me, this trauma, I needed help. So I ended up having this breakdown and I'm in a Turkish psychiatric hospital for a while, which my life is breaking apart, but it's really God's goodness because he would eventually build it back to where I could walk in true wholeness. Yeah, can you just briefly tell us the, I love you talk about this in your first book, but the moment about Psalm 20, I believe it was Psalm 23, that God just reminded you of, it was very powerful, like a powerful moment in the hospital, what was that? So after I got out of the Turkish hospital, we went home and I was almost immediately re-hospitalized because I was stable, but still really struggling. So while I'm there, I'm thinking now, I'm totally forgotten by God, I'm at the, I'm just a failure in my mind, but I'm not because I'm a child of God and there's still, the spirit is in me and that power is there, but I don't, I've lost sight of that, so I'm sitting there and some friends from church come to visit me and they don't come preaching, they come just to be with me, which was so important, I needed their presence, but one of them said, I think you're in the valley of the shadow of death and the word's alive and it transforms us, so even that little bit woke something up in me, so I'm thinking, okay, maybe I am like the psalmist and I am in the valley, so then she left and then I'm sitting in this waiting room and another patient gets up and walks past me and just says to no one, I will fear no evil for you are with me, and that's the next part of that verse from Psalms 23. Then I go to sleep and I'm thinking, what in the world? And I wake up the next day and the doctor meets me for the first time and the first thing he says to me is, Julie, have you ever read Psalm 23? And so in that moment, I'm thinking, I am locked away in a psychiatric hospital, I feel forgotten by God, but there's no place so dark that he does not know where his sheep are and he made his presence known and that was a turning point in accepting help like doctors, therapists, all that, but Jesus alone is the hope. Yes, yes and amen. Well, here you are today, I mean, you are an author, a successful author, your first book, Joyful Sorrow, was amazing and it really just dove into your story, but then you say that this is a sister book to your first book, Hopeful Sorrow, tell us about it. So Joyful Sorrow, it really is how I got help. Basically what I just told you is how I got help, how medicine and therapy and Jesus all work together beautifully, but then after that was published, I started really diving deep with a therapist on what's underneath this depression, what is it really and that's where I discovered what childhood wounds are, like emotional neglect, verbal abuse, fear of abandonment and how that can really hinder you from attaching to God as your father. So Hopeful Sorrow is the fruit of all the help that I finally got. Wow, well, what were some of the things that you maybe discovered or uncovered that were from your childhood and from your past that as you were uncovering it and going through it, it actually brought you to a deeper healing? So first, before the healing came, really deep grief. I realized that I was really delayed in grieving the loss of my parents, because that was in my 19s and 20s and here I am in my 40s and I'm just now grieving. So as my therapist is teaching me, Julie, you were actually neglected as a child, I didn't understand that. And so some experts say that emotional neglect can be even more damaging than something like physical abuse. So as she's telling me, this is what happened to you and I'm seeing even some of these patterns, possibly like my reactions repeat with my own children, because these are passed down a lot of times to generations. I am flooded with grief and then I'm realizing I don't know how to grieve in a godly way and that's what introduced me to lament, which is pouring out our heart to God. But then I'm recognizing it's really awkward to pour your heart out to Heavenly Father. If you don't know how to do that to an earthly dad. Oh my gosh. So I'm seeing how these childhood wounds are preventing me from grieving in a godly way. Yeah, I wanna read a quote from your book, it's so powerful. It says, lament gives dignity to our suffering and fosters attachment to the God you love in the midst of a story you don't. I think that was so powerful because I love how you talk about like, it's okay to go to God and say, hey, I don't like this story that you've given me. You mentioned it was a powerful moment in therapy where you were like, I don't like this story. And it was your therapist that pointed out that's grief and that is lament. Why do you think it's so important for us to just be honest with God and lament? First of all, it's a gift in scripture that God gives us all these stories, heroes of the faith who had really hard stories. And I cannot imagine that Moses' mom wanted to give up her baby. Or I know that there's no way that Ruth wanted to lose her husband. Or even Jesus in the garden is saying like, please, this is my paraphrase, but is there any other way? Take this cup, but not my will, yours. And so we number one, we have a template in scripture of people who had difficult stories. But until we own our story and admit, this is what's happening, how can we then move forward? So by turning towards my story and saying, this is what happened to me, now I feel like I can, with freedom, turn towards God and say, but help me through it. There has to be something here. Help me to learn more about you and to use this for your glory. Yeah, and you go so deep. I mean, you talk about so many different things. You talk about the importance of breaking those cycles, generational things that we are able to break through Christ. And I also love you have a lot of reflection questions and things at the back of the book. So it's really, really powerful. What is your hope and prayer for this book? That people will break these cycles because the gospel is declared through these healthy families. I really believe that. And the enemy does not want these cycles broken. But someone has to say enough is enough. And God helps us do that. So it is good to get help. And we are not bound by our childhoods. There really is freedom. We can walk away from that and hope. Definitely. Well, what's up with you today? What are you doing? Is book number three on the way? Like, what are you guys up to? I have some ideas. God's always unfolding the story. I love that. Right now, I'm just living the story out and watching my children flourish, which is everything. I love that. Oh my gosh, Julie, I love it when you're here. Thank you so much, always, for sharing your story with such transparency and vulnerability. I know it's literally changing the lives of people all around the world. So thank you so much. Yeah. All right, everyone. Julie's book, Hopeful Sorrow, is available now. Make sure you get your copy today, not just for yourself, but for those around you. And we'll be back with more of 700 Club Interactive right after this.