Ep 109: When Loving Someone Is Hard with Katina Wilkins

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Transcript

Misty: Before we begin today’s episode, I want to say something this conversation today is about loving difficult people. I know, we all have somebody in our life, have had, will have someone in our life that might be a little challenging to love. I know for some of you, the word love in the context of a hard relationship carries a weight that often we’re not talking about.

Because perhaps you’ve been told, maybe by a sermon, by a friend, by a family member, maybe by something you’ve read, that love means you stay until the bitter end, that love means you endure, that love means you keep showing up to something, to someone that is hurting you. And I would like for you to lean in and hear what I’m going to say before we go any further into this conversation.

This is not what this episode is teaching, and it is not what God asks you to do. I have loved someone whose presence was doing damage to my own heart, to my soul, to my children, and I know what it is to wrestle with whether leaving is faithful or whether it was failure, whether God would still love me if I decided to leave or that I would not be lovable.

I know what it sounds like when the word love gets used to keep a woman in a place that God never asked you to stay. And what Katina teaches and what I believe with everything in me is that love and safety are not in conflict with each other. In John 8, the woman who was being used and exposed and shamed publicly, Jesus didn’t tell her to go back and endure it better, to pray harder.

No, He stepped in between her and her accusers, the thing that was harming her, and He drew a line in the sand. He protected her. That is the heart of God for you. a boundary as you will hear Katina explain is an act of love. It’s an act of love for the other person, and it is an act of love for yourself.

And sometimes the most loving, God-honoring thing that you can do is create distance between yourself and the behavior that is harming you or someone that is important to you. Loving someone does not mean living inside of their sin.

you can love a person and still require safety. You can love a person and pray for them and not be in the same room with them. So if you are in a marriage or any relationship that is abuse, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, please hear me. This episode is not telling you to stay. It is, if anything, a reminder that God’s love for you is the foundation, and He is not asking you to absorb what He Himself would not allow.

 if that’s you today, I want you to talk to someone that’s safe, [00:04:00] a counselor, a pastor that you trust, a, a domestic violence advocate. There are people who can help you think through what love and safety look like in your specific situation. You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you do not have to choose between faith and freedom what we’re about to talk about is real, it’s rich, and it’s going to change the way that you might see difficult people and yourself.

Let’s begin

My oldest daughter and I were in one of the hardest seasons of our relationship. Her dad had recently left, and she was hurting in ways I didn’t know how to reach.

She tucked herself away in her bedroom and would come out for meals or to interact with her siblings, but every time we were in the same room together, it seemed to end up in a yelling match. And I wanna be honest right here. I didn’t handle her heart very well. I didn’t handle her hurt well at all. I didn’t have the tools, and I didn’t have someone like today’s guest mentoring me on the journey of how to love my daughter when she was seemingly acting very unlovable.

One afternoon, I remember I sat down. I was completely exhausted from the emotional battle that seemed to never stop, and I did something I hadn’t done until that time. Oh, I’ve done it a lot since then. I stopped looking at the problem, and I looked up. I said, “God, how in the world do you do it?

How do you keep loving when someone is acting so unlovable? Because, Lord, I know I’m not being very loving toward my daughter right now, and she isn’t making it easy for me to love her. I need you here. I need to know your way.” He gave me a scripture, Jeremiah 29:11. “I know the plans that I have for her, Misty.”

He already knew the plans He had for her, and then He gave me something I wasn’t really even looking for. It was a picture. It wasn’t of who she was being or how she was acting. It was a picture more of how He saw her, a strong and mighty warrior woman. It was a battle-ax in His hand, and He told me, “As she learns to yield to me, to trust my hand, she will be like a battle-ax in my hand.”

I held on to the plans that God knew He had for her when it got hard. And over the next six or seven years, trust me, our relationship was like a rollercoaster ride, hot, cold, up, down. But over time, her heart did soften, and today she is an amazing mom of three. She’s a worship leader in her community.

Her husband and their family is in full-time ministry. And that word God gave me, well, every single time I start to look at her with my own eyes, every time I start to judge what she should or [00:08:00] shouldn’t be doing, just listen to last week’s episode if you wanna know about the shoulds, God quietly reminds me to look up, to look at who He says she is.

And beloved, that is what today’s episode is all about. Not a strategy for tolerating difficult people, a theology of love, and what it actually looks like to love someone who isn’t making it easy. My guest today said something in our conversation that I want you to take a moment and listen to

[00:08:43] Katina: A boundary is not about self-protection as much as it is about loving them better.

 let’s say that they’re not treating you with respect.

If you let them continue to treat you with disrespect, you’re letting them sin. And love halts, at sin. It says there’s a line, and we draw a line at sin. So when I allow you to run over me or be unkind to me, I’m allowing you to sin, and that’s not loving.

[00:09:13] Misty: Okay. if that got to you the way it gets to me, I want to invite you to buckle up and stay with us on this power-packed conversation about how to love difficult people

Hey there. Welcome to Mom to Mom Mentoring. I am so glad you’re here. Whether this is your first time or you’ve been with me for a while, thank you for joining us. This is a podcast for Christian moms who are hungry for something more than just survival mode

Every week, we gather around wisdom, the kind that meets you in the real mess of life, and points you back to the one who holds it all in his capable hands. Hey there, I’m Misty Hughes. I’m an ICF certified life coach. mom to four amazing adults, grammy to six, And I’m someone who has lived more chapters of the hard stuff than I’d ever planned For over 25 years, I’ve been walking alongside of Christian women, helping them navigate out of overwhelm and into the peace, clarity, and purpose that God designed them to live in their daily rhythms of life.

That is the heartbeat of everything we do here. So if you’re looking for a place to belong, come join our Facebook community, Christian Moms in Business and Ministry. It’s where we keep the conversation going all week. Now, my guest today, she grew up in… She grew up as a first-generation Greek American. Full Greek Orthodox Church, Greek dance lessons, Greek food in the lunchbox, the whole thing.

If you’ve ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, she says, yes, that’s basically been her life. She moved from California to Texas for grad school and met her husband, Mike, and somewhere along the way, they dedicated their lives to Christ and never looked back. She holds a BA and a master’s degree in psychology.

She has been a Christian speaker and Bible teacher for over 20 years, and in 2021, she launched Morning by Morning Life Coaching. She built this coaching practice around her belief that it is really a morning by morning process of renewal. [00:12:00] She coaches women through all kinds of relationship challenges, and her signature framework, the Christ-Centered Boundary Blueprint, is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s biblically grounded, rooted in love, and designed to help women set real boundaries without losing themselves or the people that they’re called to love. Out of her own late night, 3:00 AM wrestling matches with God, she wrote Love Is Complicated, a Bible study handbook on learning to love difficult people well.

please welcome Katina Wilkins.

You know, Katina, the Greek word for love is agape, and I have a feeling you’ve spent more time figuring out that word than most people ever will. I cannot wait for these moms to hear your story, and to actually talk about what it looks like to live love out.

But before we get into our conversation, I wanna have a quick word with you. If you’re in a season where everything feels like it’s too much, and you’re ready for something more than just getting through the week, I wanna invite you to grab my Rhythms of Renewal mini guide. It’s free, it’s practical, and it’s just a gentle first step toward building rhythms so you don’t run on empty.

You can find it at mistyhughes.com/resources, the link will be in the show notes. And if you’re curious about what it looks like to work with me more closely, A discovery call is always the best first step. You’ll find that link in the show notes as well. It’s absolutely free, and it’s an opportunity to ask all your questions and get a taste of what coaching would be like for you.

All right. Let’s get into it

Your life work is centered around loving difficult people. sometimes there’s a story behind why we do what we do and why we’re passionate about what we do.

And so was there a journey for you into this area of coaching?

[00:14:41] Katina: Yes, definitely. Definitely. I feel like if I didn’t have a personal experience with it, then I would just be a lecturer, right? And it wouldn’t be the same. I’d be like, “And you should love them well,” and that’s just the end, right?

But unfortunately and fortunately for everybody else, I did go through a spell where it was very hard for me to love my family, and it was about- Five years ago about now soon after COVID.

I had a teenager at home, I had a mom who was newly widowed and a husband who I was not used to be- working from home at that time either, right?

all of the chaos that was happening, it was like I got to this point where I really started to realize that I didn’t really love anybody in my family, that everybody was not doing what I would wanted. I was a people pleaser.

To my recovering people-pleasing folks out there it, think it’s very easy For us to get caught up in thinking that love is pleasing other people, and when nobody’s happy, then you feel like you haven’t loved well, and are [00:16:00] not doing your job well.

And it becomes very confusing about how can I make them all happy? and I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything to make them happy. And if I couldn’t do anything to make them happy, then I couldn’t make them feel loved. And then I wasn’t even sure that I did love them because it was so performance-based in my world,

And so my sister challenged me, especially with my daughter, She goes, “I know you love her, but does she know you love her? And did you know in the Bible it says 200 and blah blah times that the word love others or love one another and I was very offended by it because at the time we were debating on letting her go to live in Florida my sister had invited her to come and live with them. so this was on the table. And the way that my sister had stated that made me feel like I was a less-than mom.

 I felt very betrayed because I found out she was talking to my daughter behind my back about this and about other things. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, who do I trust? Who do I trust right now, and how do I go about this?” After lots of tears, the Lord started waking me up like in the wee hours of the morning to come talk to Him.

And so if I couldn’t sleep, I would get out of my bed and go to my prayer room, take out my journal that I had labeled The Battle Plans and said, “Okay, Lord, what am I gonna do with this, and how am I gonna go about this?” And and one of the things that I wrote to Him was- I don’t think I love any of them.

And if I am to love them, then I need you to tell me how to love them, and I’m gonna start from scratch. And so my learning to love was definitely a personal journey, and it was never intended to be shared. It was just me and the Lord at, 3:00 in the morning hashing out what love is. And the first place He took me was 1 Corinthians 13 to talk about what the Bible says love is, and then we explored each part of it.

 He had me practicing, and as I was failing, I would go back to the war room. There was a lot of time spent on love is patient, love is kind. And that’s it. Because- Oh. Oh … every time I would be like, “I can’t remember what love is,” and He’s what is love?” And I would say, love is patient, love is kind, and I can’t remember anything else.”

He’s “Are you doing it?” Let’s just stop. Let’s just stay there. Until you can master love is patient, love is kind, we’re not gonna go any further, because you have got to learn to love, and to love with patience and kindness. I think that love, it can be wrapped up in expectations of what we think how others should behave.

And when they’re not behaving well, then we hold back our love,

[00:18:51] Misty: I think about where you landed for a long time, the patient and the kindness.

And it’s hard to be kind when people aren’t being kind to you. so give me an example of how you did that.

[00:19:08] Katina: Ooh, that is a very good question. Sometimes the kindness and the patience was listening instead of telling. it’s very easy for me to jump to judgment and let me tell you what is right, or even let me tell you what the Bible says, like when it came to my daughter, right?

And so sitting down and saying, “Are you hearing what she’s saying? Are you listening to what she’s saying?” A lot of that respect is kindness and patience Same thing with my husband, not just shutting him off and saying, “You’re wrong,” or whatever, but say, but listening. I think that has a lot to do with it.

I also learned a lot about boundaries to love someone doesn’t mean that they can do whatever they [00:20:00] want. Like kindness doesn’t make you a doormat.

[00:20:03] Misty: let’s just go there then. Okay. Kindness doesn’t make you a doormat.

So how do you convey kindness when someone is not treating you with respect or honor or kindness?

[00:20:24] Katina: the thing that the Lord really taught me about boundaries is that a boundary is not about self-protection as much as it is about loving them better.

 let’s say that they’re not treating you with respect.

If you let them continue to treat you with disrespect, you’re letting them sin. And love stops at sin. It doesn’t stop, but it halts, and it says there’s a line, and we draw a line at sin. So when I allow you to run over me or be unkind to me, I’m allowing you to sin, and that’s not loving. So instead of saying, “I think that you’re treating me wrong, and I deserve more, it’s about what can I do to love you better?

And I can’t continue to let you behave like that because it would not be loving, and I’m gonna stop this because I love you too much to allow you to talk to me like this.

[00:21:22] Misty: That is… So simple, so true, I don’t know that I’ve heard it put that way before.

[00:21:32] Katina: So it changes the way you look at rudeness. And the other quote that I s- I probably say all the time is that God does not ask us to love others in order for them to love us back.

He wants us to have a loving relationship. He created us to need love in our lives,

But He makes us have that need, not just because we need other people in our life, but because we need more of Him in our life, so He uses people in our life that rubs us the wrong way to bring us closer to Him. And to learn to love them with His love. So it’s not us loving others out of an empty cup.

It’s us loving others through His fullness.

And so in His fullness of love, We can’t expect anyone to love us back. And when the relationship turns, which I’ve seen so many relationships turn, it’s amazing. But if there’s one thing I can say is, it needs to be your heart that turns, because we can’t guarantee what the other person will do. Like, when you put up a boundary, other people who are used to running over that boundary aren’t gonna the boundary,

So it can be worse before it gets better. So if we are just measuring how are we doing based on how the other people is responding to us, we can be very disappointed It can look, it can end up looking worse because people don’t know how to act. Sometimes they don’t know how to respond.

[00:23:11] Misty: Yeah, ’cause you’re breaking the normal.

And when you break the normal in some way, shape, or form, people don’t know what to do with that initially. And usually it does get worse before it gets better, and so if we bail because it gets worse, god’s gonna take us around that mountain again, let’s back up a minute, ’cause we’re talking a lot about love and God’s love and, in our Western culture we have probably some false ideas about what love is.

And what love should look like. And, you’ve mentioned a few, patient and kind, Give us the lens to look at what love really is.

[00:23:57] Katina: Okay. I’m gonna read to you from 1 Corinthians [00:24:00] 13 so we can have a definition.

[00:24:03] Misty: Okay.

[00:24:03] Katina: So it says, “Love is patient,” this is from the NIV. “Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.”

So when you think about what love is, in the book I break it down into what love isn’t, and what does love always do as the umbrella. So love is patience. It… Love is patient. Love is kind. It’s kindness, and it rejoices in truth. it is not envious, it doesn’t boast, it is not proud, it doesn’t dishonor others, it’s not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, it does not delight in evil it tells you more about what love isn’t, and most of the things like being envious, and boastful, and proud, and dishonoring others, being rude, all of those are opposite of kindness.

 And then he goes back and says, “Overall, over all of this, here is what a- love always does.”

And he says, “Love always protects.”

And you’re like how does that look? What does that mean? I’ve really spent time with the Lord about what kind of protection is he talking about, and he really is talking about spiritual protection. He’s talking about, “Don’t gossip. Don’t tell everybody about what your kids are doing or not doing. Be very careful with your words.” This can be s- the same with your husband,

Be very careful, because you don’t wanna side with Satan in being the accuser of bad things. You want to pray for them, protect them with your words. So your words are protecting them, and that you’re protecting them through prayer, just like Jesus prays for us He prays over us and asks for protection over us. It always trusts. That one was like who am I trusting? ‘Cause I’m not trusting the people that are giving me a hard time.” How do we always trust? And that’s where the Lord’s “You always trust me.” You know that I have a plan. I have a plan for them.

So when you are trusting, when you look at them and they’re not walking the way that you see the Lord wants them to walk, you s- can still love them because you can trust that God has a plan. Always hopes. That kind of goes along with trust. You can hope in their future, and you can hope in them because your hope is in God, not what is in front of you. There’s so many times where what I was seeing in front of me was like, “Lord, I don’t see where this is gonna go.”

And the Lord would say in my head, “Where are your eyes? Where are your eyes, Katina? And I’d be like, “I am looking this way.” And he’s saying, “Look this way. look this way and trust in me. Trust me and put your hope in me, not in what you see right now.”

[00:27:17] Misty: when we do this, we get anxious and agitated and- Matthew 6 where he says, “Look to the birds of the air.” He’s telling us to look up. that’s what you’re saying we do. We get anxious ’cause they’re not changing, they’re not behaving, they’re not doing what I think they should. What’s next? This is good.

[00:27:33] Katina: And so then the last thing is that love always perseveres.

And and when I looked up the root word the word perseveres is the Greek word patience. So when you look at it starts with love is patient, and it ends with love is patient. And it says, “Love is patient,” and then it ends with, “Love is always patient.”[00:28:00]

And then you see the Lord more than anything, if you look at how patient He is with us, and He loves us so much, do we always show Him love back? No, but He never stops loving us. And even when we’re sinning, He still loves us. He draws a line at sin and says, “This is not what I like.

This is not what I want for you. This is not God’s best for you” but He s- doesn’t stop loving us when we’re His children,

[00:28:35] Misty: when we’re trying to figure out what love is, right? We don’t really have to look any further than Jesus.

Like you’re saying- … the model He does all of that perfectly. And there’s a translation of Matthew 11 in the the message. And Matthew 11:28 is about, come to me all you are he- who are heavy-laden. And when we’re not loving people, we’re burdened because it’s just heavy and, everything’s hard, so He’s inviting us to come, but the translation it says Walk with me. watch how I do it. Learn from me, and work with me.” And when we just walk with Him, like you did at 3:00 AM in the morning, you were learning from Him. You were gazing on who He is and what love actually looks like.

 That’s really simple And yet it’s really hard. You must have been kinda desperate.

[00:29:44] Katina: I was definitely desperate, but desperate times make you do desperate things. Yeah. And and it was a choice to walk with God, I could have just said, “Forget you all.”

How many people do that? Maybe leave their families or just check out or start drinking or, whatever else, and I wanted to do it His way. I knew that He had something better. He wouldn’t ask us to do the hard things if He didn’t have something better. like I said, I never intended to share this with other people.

This was such a God thing when He was like, “And now you’re gonna share what you learned with other people because as much as you sat crying at night, there are other women who are crying at night. There are other people who are in the same boat, who are suffering, who are crying out to me and saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my sister,’ or, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do about my mom, or my husband, or my child that I’m pleading over so it became really important. I didn’t at first create the Bible study. I actually did it as a speaking engagement first, and then He started to show me that each of my pillars to talk about were chapters.

 I wanted other people to see that the Bible is relevant for today, and for you to use it, and how to use it for even people who’ve never done a Bible study. people are shocked at how much it has changed their perspective about themselves and what kind of person they are, and realizing that maybe they’ve added to the relationship.

[00:31:27] Misty: So did you feel unlovable in the season? Or was it just really about you didn’t love them?

[00:31:38] Katina: Ooh, that’s a good question. I think there were even times based on the way that I was treated by them that I didn’t even know if I was worthy of any love.

Yeah. I think that one of the boundaries that I learned going through this process is that [00:32:00] I definitely in my people-pleasing, I felt like I was looking for their approval all the time, and when I wasn’t seeing their approval, I was not feeling loved by them either.

And then it made me start to wonder what do I carry? what do I bring to this, to any of these relationships if I’m constantly disappointing people? I was feeling like was a constant disappointment. I was not a good enough daughter. There’s no way I could do enough to make my mom happy- I couldn’t do anything to make my husband happy. I couldn’t do anything to make my daughter happy. And then feeling like my sister was wanting my daughter was making me feel like- I’m not a good mom. Now you’re betrayed on top of it all, right?

Yes. And so you start wondering what do I bring to the table? I’m not good enough for anybody. So there is actually a chapter that talks about healthy self-love in the book, and that was something that I had to really understand as well is how much God loves me and pours into me, and what He thinks of me, and how that needs to stand above what anybody else does-

Or thinks of me, in your time of prayer, God brightens your face, and He shows you who He is, and He shows you such beautiful things.

And that’s the thing I want for other people. I want them to shine and love so brightly that people will ask them, what do they have and what do they know, and they can point to God. And they can say, “I can love this difficult person who’s making my life miserable right now,” whether it’s an in-law or your own husband, or whoever it is.

Oh, yeah. I can endure this. Because that was another way of saying always perseveres, was some translations says always endures.

And how do you endure that? You endure it because God endures you, and he gives you what you need-

…

In order to love well. Makes sense.

[00:34:07] Misty: Yeah, we can’t give to others, we can’t give that enduring, patient, kind love if we haven’t received it.

I’m, it’s that empty cup, right? I’m giving from my own filthy rags, and it’s not very good. But when I sit with the Lord, when I receive, when I look to him like we were talking about and not to the person I am filled up with the love of God. And one of my favorite verses for 30 years has been out of John 17, and it’s where Jesus is in the garden and he’s praying to the Father, and it’s his dying wish, right?

It’s like I- I envision God standing over him, “Son, I’ll give you anything you want. What- what is it you want?” And he says, “That the love that you love me with would be in them, and I in them.” So when we sit with the Lord, when we invite him to teach us what love is, we’re answering the cry of his heart. That’s what he desires. He said, “I desire above all else” For us to know the love that God loves Him with, and that He would be in us so the world may know, right? So that’s what you’re doing, Katina. you’ve talked a lot about your Bible study.

[00:35:38] Katina: so I call it a Bible study handbook because I feel like it’s something I would want people to refer back to.

[00:35:46] Misty: I was in the bathroom at an event, I was saying something about, “Yeah, I tell all my kids they’re my favorite,” And a lady was there. was like, “So if you can have a favorite, then I [00:36:00] can admit that I have a least favorite.” And I was like, “Yep.” I think that’s where it’s gotta start, we have to be aware, and we have to be willing to confess it or say it out loud, I’m having- … a hard time loving this person,” no matter who it is, and I think that is a bold, brave step to take because God can do something there, We’ve talked a little bit about boundaries, but you have a boundary blueprint, and I know boundaries are just such a hot topic.

F- we’ve misconstrued what boundaries are, what they aren’t. I just came off of a coaching call and it was the hot topic What are boundaries? How do I have boundaries and be loving? Boundaries don’t convey that I’m loving. So is there anything about your little boundaries blueprint that you can tell us

[00:37:00] Katina: I do feel like it starts with love, If your boundaries are because you love someone, it’s hard to go wrong. In the boundaries section of the book, I talk about God’s boundaries and what it looks like, and that it’s okay to have boundaries. Even in nature, there’s boundaries, like where the ocean stops.

some people will ask me about keeping records of wrongs, and they’ll say, “But what if they keep doing it?” And Jesus tells us to keep forgiving, right? 70 times 7, the number 7 is the perfected number, It’s until it’s perfect, is we just keep, forgiving other people. So what I will tell people is that it’s really important to understand a pattern, but when we keep records of wrongs, we are keeping it with an emotion

“And another thing, let me tell you that you did wrong,” right? And it usually comes up when we’re the most upset, and we start conjuring up because one thing reminds us of another thing, and another thing, and it’s the way our brains are built. You touch one thing, and it starts opening up other cabinets that are similar.

And then all we can- I thought we locked

[00:38:12] Misty: that baby shut.

[00:38:14] Katina: Yeah. And we’re like, “Oh, now that just reminds me again about that,” and that’s really frustrating. And so yes, if you see a pattern, a sin pattern, then you need a boundary. We’re not keeping records.

We’re saying, “We don’t think that it’s wise for you to open that door.” that’s a sin pattern, and we should never enable someone to continue to sin.

So when we see it as a loving thing to do instead of a harsh thing to do, then it changes our viewpoint about what a boundary is. So that’s what I feel like is the most important thing.

[00:38:58] Misty: Yeah. Starting with love. You just keep bringing us back to this love thing.

Yeah. It’s amazing- I know … how it flows through everything. I know. It’s crazy. So your book is a Bible study, Where can we find it?

[00:39:13] Katina: Amazon.

 It’s called Love Is Complicated: A Bible Study Handbook on Learning to Love Difficult People Well. It includes videos I taught the Bible study, at an independent living where most of them are in their 80s And they love this Bible study so much, but they’re like, “You went way too fast.” They’re reading every sentence that I write, and they’re looking up every verse together. they want to master this.

 And I think that is incredible. how do you love others if you don’t understand God’s love for you or have a healthy self-love? If there’s a section that you’re caught in and you want more individual coaching or you wanna go through the Bible study with a coach I have that.

I’m about to [00:40:00] come out with a group coaching that I am putting together for the fall,

[00:40:05] Misty: I’m excited to hear you’re going to be offering it in a group, guiding a group maybe later in the fall.

So if women want to get ahold of you like a waiting list or something for the cohort in the fall- … is there a way that we can track you down?

[00:40:25] Katina: if you are a Facebook person if you go to Katina D.

Wilkins and add me as a friend, I’ll be putting a lot of things on there when that gets closer. I do have a website, which is mbmlifecoaching.com, and that’s for Morning By Morning, MBM, lifecoaching.com.

[00:40:49] Misty: we’ll put all of your social links and your book link on Amazon in the show notes, because sometimes- it’s hard to grab all that when we’re talking. And so we’ll make sure everybody gets that. Okay, Katina, we talk about a lot on these episodes, and these are busy moms, and I know when I was a busy mom, my brain could only handle so much information. So I love to leave women with a one thing.

If they don’t remember anything else from this episode, what is one thing that you feel like is that nugget for them

[00:41:29] Katina: I think the one thing is that Jesus asks us to love others as ourselves, and then He tells us again that He leaves us a new command, and that is to love one another so that others will know that we’re His disciples.

And so my one thing is that you are to love others, not to get love back, but just to love.

[00:41:54] Misty: Thank you for bringing that home for us. That is truth. And when we let ourselves, as hard as it might be to hear that, it is the truth that will set us free to truly be able to love. So thank you.

Thank you for not shrinking back from what God has called you to do and from the journey He’s had you on. You are- … truly a blessing as you teach us how to love like He loves.

[00:42:25] Katina: Okay If there’s one thing I wanna invite you to take away from today’s episode, it’s this: loving someone difficult is not about trying hard. It is about looking up, looking to the one who loves you perfectly, who loves that other person perfectly, and who can pour through you what you could never, ever manufacture on your own.

[00:42:59] Misty: You don’t love from your strength. You love from His fullness. I think about that question I asked God at the beginning of the episode: How do you keep loving someone that is so difficult to love? And what I know now that I didn’t know then is He showed me.

He’s been showing me every step of the way, slowly, over the years, not all at once. That’s the nature of this kind of love. It’s patient, and it’s the word love starts with. If Katina taught us anything today, it’s that love also ends with that word. Love is patient. It endures. Love always perseveres, and God has more patience for that person you’re trying to love right now than you could [00:44:00] ever imagine, and what that means is He has more patience For you in the trying than you could ever imagine. So if there’s someone in your life right now that’s hard to love, a child, a parent, a spouse, a neighbor, a friend, a sister, your struggle to love them is not evidence that something is wrong with you.

It might just be God’s invitation for you to go deeper into understanding what His love is all about. Katina’s book, Love is Complicated, it’s on Amazon. all of Katina’s links will be in the show notes for you.

If you’re ready to go deeper with a coach who has actually lived this out from the inside out, she might be worth reaching out to. and to the woman I spoke to at the very beginning of this conversation, I haven’t forgotten you. I hope something today gave you language for what you’ve been carrying

I hope that you heard somewhere in this conversation that God’s love for you is not a reason to stay somewhere unsafe. It is the very reason that He makes a way out, You are seen. You are not alone. And love, real love, the kind that Katina has been teaching us, it always protects.

Please reach out to someone safe. It’s not a weakness. This is wisdom. If this episode helped you, would you do one thing for me? Share it. Text it to a mom who’s in a hard relationship season right now. Sometimes the most loving thing that we can do for someone is to put the right resource in their hand.

I wanna leave you with the words of Jesus, because Katina reminded us today, when we want to know what love looks like, we don’t have to look any further than to the man Jesus himself. You are here to be light, bringing out the God colors in the world.

Loving people well, even the hard ones, especially the hard ones, is one of the most luminous things that you will ever do. It is light. It draws people towards God, and you are capable of it Not because you’re strong enough on your own, but because He lives in you.

Next week, I’m bringing someone very special back to the table. My handsome hubby, Craig, is joining me for another one of our heart-to-heart conversations. We’re still nailing down exactly what we’re gonna dig into, so keep an eye on social media for the preview of what that conversation will be all about.

You won’t wanna miss it. I’m Misty Hughes. This is Mom to Mom Mentoring. Now, go shine, because when you shine, you give others permission to shine, too.