Regrets and Finding Hope
Speaker 1
0:00
Alright , episode number three . We're already to number three , meta Olivia . And who's our guest today ?
Speaker 2
0:05
Today , our guest is Kelly Brandon . She is the one of the co-hosts of the Girl Talk podcast from a radio station in North Carolina called the Light FM . And Brian , she's pretty fabulous .
Speaker 1
0:22
Yeah , she's got some amazing thoughts to share and her heart is just so much for helping people , and Kelly is going to share today with us that . There's moments that she looks back with regret , and I think any of our listeners here can probably relate in some way . I mean , have you had moments like that yourself ? Olivia ?
Speaker 2
0:42
Absolutely . Yeah , I have regrets even from today .
Speaker 1
0:46
I had a regrets too . I probably shouldn't have drank that big soda . But it could be several different things . I mean , maybe you said something that was hurtful , or maybe it was something you didn't say , something you didn't say that you regret . Let's go ahead and just go ahead and get started on the episode and let Kelly share her story . Well , kelly , real quick , if you can , about 30 seconds , just kind of give people a little bit of information of who you are and then we'll start talking about your topic .
Speaker 3
1:13
Yeah , sure , I am first and foremost a child of God . Secondly , I am a mama and wife and have a 14-year-old son , and I work for a radio ministry in Asheville , north Carolina , called the Light FM , and do a couple of things . One is I lead all of our donor ministry work of the radio ministry , and then I also am on a podcast where we get together once a week and talk about the intersection of our faith and all the real stuff that happens in the world around us and in our own lives .
Speaker 1
1:59
When I talked to Kelly , I was like , hey , I actually asked the Meta Libby .
Speaker 1
2:02
I was like Meta Libby , you want to reach out to Kelly and see if she'd like to join us and just talk about ? I said reach out to Kelly and say , hey , is there anything that you would like to talk about that you've dealt with in the past or you're dealing with right now ? Because I look at it at the studio , we like to talk about life challenges and struggles because I feel like we can all tend to go through life and for myself , I've went through life a lot on my just feeling alone and feeling like it was only me dealing with stuff . And then when I started realizing that I could open up to other men and I find out , or other business entrepreneurs and stuff that I that I connect with now and I learned like , wow , they go through some of the same struggles I'm going through right now or the same thoughts that they're hearing . So when , when Meta Libby reached out to you , you said that one of the things that you'd like to talk about is is the guilt of looking back .
Speaker 3
2:51
In fact , the day that Meta Libya reached out , I had just that day , or in the last couple of days , reconnected with the guy I dated in high school and found out I've actually got together again with him because he was a listener to the radio station and became a donor to the radio station and great ending to the story . But I asked him , I said what's you know , tell me about your life , tell me what's going on in your life for the last few years . And he said it's been awful . He said I went down the road of pretty hard drugs and alcoholism and I was homeless for many years and I lost custody of my child and I'm divorced and I've been the lowest of my possible lows . He said I struggle with schizophrenia now and I struggle with I have disabilities and I can't live on my own and all of these things because of his hard past and just it wrecked me , totally wrecked me , because I mean now he's in a really great place . You know he listens to the radio ministry . He said without the light FM I don't know if I'd have made it through my time of homelessness . Wow .
Speaker 3
4:13
But he went for so many years , so many years without a relationship with Christ and without hope was totally hopeless and looking for hope in all the wrong places . And I had the answer . I mean , we were best friends in high school , we dated for almost two years and I never told him about Jesus . So you know not that I can take responsibility at all , for you know his path and his story . That's his path and his story . But at the same time I carry a lot of guilt , because I knew the answer . I knew that , I knew where hope comes from and I never told him about it . But yet I back then claimed to be a believer and claim to know Jesus and claim to have the hope that I actually do have now . So that's kind of where all that came from .
Speaker 3
5:16
That processing of what could I have done better and looking back on my life and looking back on where have I been and what about the lost years . And I heard you , Meta Olivia , say that you had too much fun in college , and you know that's part of my story too . It really hurt my ability to be able to share hope with others because I was so caught up in my own fun . And you know now , as a mom of a 14 year old son , I want to help him not make the same mistakes I made . I want him to make better choices than I made .
Speaker 1
5:59
I think that , well , I'll ask , is anybody here ever can look back and realize like there's some things that you regret ? Maybe you should have said about you know anything that's going on , like to help somebody , and you just felt ashamed or like , yeah , I see hands up all over , yeah , and I think that's the . It's good for us to talk about these things , because I don't think any of us are alone in this . I mean , I feel the same way , Like I was scared .
Speaker 1
6:21
I guess just to share some of those things I got made fun of is like my freshman year and I wasn't like an unpopular person , it was just they , the seniors , found out that I had a , I was raised and I was a Christian . So then it was just like they just kept , like you know , hammering me with that and making jokes . And then I was like at a moment where I decided , okay , you can either Keep going on this path , or you're a freshman , or you can do this and fit in . I'm like , I'm doing this , I'm fitting in , Like , and I just like totally went away from everything in my Christian walk and to fit in with the crowd . And I did . I fit in with the crowd , you know , but but then you know .
Speaker 1
6:58
Later on , through the years , I learned what I did was wrong , and I'm like man . There's more to this world than that , and what I also realized is that there were other people that were going through similar things and I wanted to help them . But I knew I I felt so ashamed about what I had done and that you , since you shared that you felt ashamed . Have you ? Have you moved past that now , or do you still look back with regret ?
Speaker 3
7:23
Yeah , I mean I , I still , I still look back back with regret . Um , I am really grateful for where I am right now and and I know that God is good , and I know that that we're all on paths and I've forgiven for all of the stuff I've done , every bit of it . God doesn't remember any of it , that it's all forgiven . But there's so many lost opportunities , so many opportunities that I never got to take advantage of , because I never , because I just wasn't passionate about it and I didn't understand the importance of it . And so there's so many lost opportunities that I just wish I could , I could take back , you know , conversations that were never had with people I'll probably never see again . So , while there's still that low level of guilt , it also spurs me on to have greater conversations .
Speaker 3
8:16
Now there's nothing I can do about the past except make sure that it doesn't repeat itself in the future . There's a new day and there's all kinds of great things that we can do , and so that's part of why I'm really excited about what Girl Talk podcast is all about , Because that's that's what we try to do . The three , you know , Carol , Trisha and I we get together weekly , we sit down , we have authentic conversations . We just happen to have microphones in our faces , but we have real conversations about real things we're dealing with and we want to create that safe place . We also want to model that safe place for others to have those kinds of conversations and encourage other people to say hey , I have questions and I struggle and I do not have it all together and this is an okay , safe place to talk about that when I was sharing that about you know my past looking back and feeling that guilt and ashamed .
Speaker 1
9:14
Once I started moving back into the relationship with Jesus and and living my life out , I started realizing that my life , that I lived , was telling the story . It wasn't just what I would tell people , it was the life I lived was telling the story . But what story was it telling ? And that that sort of opened my eyes . But I started looking back and being ashamed . I'm like , oh God can't , god can't , use me Like I've did this . I did some really crazy things .
Speaker 1
9:40
But there's a scripture that I that I really open my eyes , and it was in Galatians , chapter three , verse 27 . It says it says and all who have been united with Christ and baptism have put on Christ like putting on new clothes . Now I thought of this verse Okay , so here's the thing . I don't buy clothes a lot . I usually just wear T-shirts . I usually dress like Mark Zuckerberg , but I am not Mark Zuckerberg . I was usually just a T-shirt , blue jeans , that's it .
Speaker 1
10:05
But here's what I thought of . I thought of this verse because when it says that when you've that , when you've been united of Christ and baptism , you've put , you've put on Christ , like putting on new clothes . You put on those new clothes when you go into the dress room . You don't sit there and put on new clothes and then look at the old clothes that you threw on the ground .
Speaker 1
10:22
You're looking at the new clothes and you you know if , if we spent all the time and got all dressed up and then kept staring at the stuff that was pot on the floor , we would never see what , how the new clothes were looked . And that was reminding me like that's the way God wants us to be with him , like put him on and see him and we'll see all of our mistakes and mess ups . And I did like God started to give me challenges and saying , hey , I want you to talk to this person and I'd have to step through , and sometimes I wouldn't still , but at times I felt like he was pat me on the shoulder , like you're , you're doing okay , you're learning .
Speaker 2
10:57
So , kelly , I think it's really cool that you had the opportunity to talk to your old boyfriend , that you had , you know , some regret . So , like now , how do you approach the conversation with him differently ? And , like , what advice would you give for others who are experiencing the same thing , where we might not have shared something we wanted to , but now we have the opportunity ?
Speaker 3
11:23
Oh yeah , Great question .
Redemption, Forgiveness, and Sharing Our Stories
Speaker 3
11:25
So when this , when this guy's first , when his name first popped up and I found his phone number to give him a call , he didn't call me back . And that was scary . And so then when he , when he finally called me , he said I was really afraid to call you because I didn't want , I didn't want to have to admit all of my , all of my baggage .
Speaker 2
11:49
Wow .
Speaker 3
11:50
And so I told him . I said I was really scared to call you because I didn't want to have to admit all of my baggage over the years either . And so in the course of the conversation that we had , we talked about forgiveness , we talked about how God has redeemed his story , and it it was a conversation and that's the best part , I mean it ended with us praying together , Me praying for him . I've never , I never , ever , ever prayed for him when we were dating in high school and and for a little context , that was over 20 years ago , and we got that opportunity to do that and for , I mean , I think the best thing you can do is just have an open conversation with people where you say , hey , I've made some mistakes in my life . I'm sure you have too . I'd love to you know , talk about all of the things that you've walked through . And then , in very natural ways , I was able to insert God into the conversation .
Speaker 1
12:54
Is there anything ? If there was one takeaway you'd want us to take away from today , what would it be ?
Speaker 3
12:59
Don't waste the opportunity . Yeah , and to tell your story and point to Christ when you do . And the second thing is that God uses our messes whatever our messes whatever our testimony is God's . God knows , he's been in it the whole time and he wants us to use that for his glory .
Speaker 1
13:20
So don't , don't be afraid .
Speaker 3
13:23
Yeah , I love that .
Speaker 1
13:24
I love that . It reminds me of Ephesians two , 10 . That's my favorite verse in the whole Bible . It says we are God's masterpiece . God takes our messes and makes them a masterpiece . That's a beautiful thing . So don't look back and we'll regret . Look forward to what God is doing now and just stay close .
