Overcoming Loss & Inviting Jesus into Your Mess

"I could either sit in the graveyard clinging to a tombstone with bitterness and rage, or I could climb on up out."

Apr 30, 2025

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Laurie Meek Watkins, a 68-year-old woman of God who knows a thing or two about overcoming loss. After her husband of 40 years walked away from their marriage, Laurie’s world came crumbling down. Then, in 2022, Hurricane Ian took her home. In the midst of all of this, she lost friends – and any stability she had seemed to vanish. Throughout our conversation, Laurie offers precious gems of wisdom on surrendering, slowing down, being present, finding your identity in Jesus, not giving attention to what other people think, and a whole lot more. If you prefer listening, you can listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

What’s one of the most important things you’ve learned on your walk with God?

The biggest lesson I have learned, especially in the past five years, is I cannot control anything but myself. And I must learn to be flexible as I walk this road that will, guaranteed, be filled with losses.

Well, you may not be married. You may not be able to relate to losing a love of your life. Well, have you lost a friend? Have you lost stability in a situation? Have you lost your dream? Or are you sitting in the middle of a situation where you thought, I thought I'd be somewhere else by now, but I'm not there, so I'm frustrated. This is not where I thought I would end up. I think everybody of all ages can relate to losing something.

What do we do when we lose? How do we deal with it? And like I said, I have lost friends, I have lost my spouse, I have lost my home to Hurricane Ian, which happened after my spouse walked out on me. And as I sat in the rubble of that hurricane, throwing books out of windows and photo albums and things, God whispered in my ear, ‘Let it go.’

And what I heard a beautiful pastor once say, I can either sit in the graveyard clinging to a tombstone with bitterness and rage, or I could climb on up out and I could either have a fist toward God and the world and my ex-spouse, or I could open up my hand with forgiveness and love and, not always understanding, but just letting it go and I could move forward in my life and look what God is doing.

I had to learn to stop focusing so much on what other people were doing and focus on what God is doing. And that can apply to everything in our lives. That can apply to the politics of the day, to the chaos of unanswered questions, to transition in life, to your job. You’ve got to let it go and know that some of these things are not in your power and then to trust. And for me, falling into the arms of my Savior has been a way to know that I'm a part of something bigger than myself.

It took me probably 36 years to figure out that I was a churchgoer, but I hadn't chosen to give everything to Jesus. I was singing in the choir, I was teaching in the Sunday school, I was dabbling in the Bible. So I was looking good on the outside, but on the inside I was quaking because I had a lot of this little perfectionism, controlling tendencies, and insecurity.

And until a dear friend said to me, well, have you chosen to follow Christ? And I thought, you know, as a Type A lady, I had chosen everything. I was the women's lib of the time, I can bring home the bacon, I can fry it up in a pan, I can go to the right college, I can choose when I get married, I can choose all these things. But had I chosen Jesus? Had I let Him into the closets of my insecurity and my tendencies of just trying to control everything and heading myself toward a nervous breakdown? I hadn't done that.

And thank you for a lady who was bold enough to say what I'm gonna say to your viewers: have you chosen Christ? Have you chosen Him fully and completely? It's one thing to go to church, but that doesn't make you a friend of Jesus. And if you have committed your life to Christ, you've done everything you need to do. Signed, sealed and delivered.

Lessons from a Q-Tip

[Laurie holds up a Q-tip and asks: what is this?] A Q-tip. And a dental hygienist taught me: Quit Taking It Personally (Q-Tip). So what I had to do is to Q-tip: quit taking the dynamics of other people personally. When my dear sweet friend went away for a period, I had to say, maybe it's not totally because I have alienated her, perhaps she needs to take a pause because something has been triggered within her.

And when you're rejected by one you have loved for 40 years, my gosh, all the paranoia in the world springs up. For two years, I have to say I did try to thrust my love upon someone who wasn't going to accept it, someone who was caught up in the fantasy of what could happen in a flirting world.

But I had to stop looking for my identity in other people's eyes, turn around and find my identity in Jesus, who loves you fully, completely, warts and all, type A lady, a little crazy. Who loves you for who you are and knows your quirks and knows your tendencies. Jesus, God, our Creator knows us fully and completely and we have to quit taking other people’s perceptions personally and become validated by the One who loves you best and who knows you best.

And that reminds me of another beautiful thing. A beautiful Christian therapist told me, ‘Stay in your own hula hoop.’ Because all of us in this world, we all are trying to keep our hula hoops going. And I'm not saying don't care because we do care. We do what we can to help those who ask for help. And yet we don't let them get into our hula hoop because that will then cause us to get out of rotation and disrupt everybody’s rhythm.

Don’t wait to invite Jesus into your mess

You don't have to clean up your act before you give it to Jesus. I'm a mess. I'm still a mess. I will be a mess in this journey. I will make the same dumb mistakes over and over again. I'm constantly going back and saying, God put your arms around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth because what do I do but say the wrong thing?

But my errors are not condemnation sentences. My errors are simply little bumps along the way, my way of appearing human. You know, I have not navigated everything correctly, but I have learned from my mistakes.

But first and foremost, don't wait to clean up your act before you fall into the loving arms of the One who loves you best. Ask for His forgiveness because let me tell you, even if you've lived the best life, you've made some errors along the way. So say, I've blown it, Jesus. There's many areas that I'm messed up. I don't exactly understand how to follow you, but I'm going to trust you.

At that point, I did not understand. I had never really cracked open my Bible. I had not learned that what's in the Word is really relevant to me, is really relatable and is personal. And Jesus is personal, too. I think people have trouble with Jesus because He is so personal. You know, we can all kind of deal with this omniscient God out there and say, God, I'm going to pray for this because I need this. But when you've got somebody walking alongside you, looking you straight in the face and saying, how are doing today? Or what are you doing today? That’s a different story.

That’s why I call my Bible studies on Tuesday, ‘Back Door Bible Study’ because don't all of us kind of clean up the front of our house and have that pretty? And don't we throw all the dirty laundry and the muddy shoes at the back door? Don't we hide the wheelbarrow back there? Isn't there like the lawnmowers stacked up, you know, throw the garbage bag out the back door. And then you open the front door and act like you're housekeeping, like I got it together.

Well, Jesus is standing at your back door, honey. And He knows your garbage. Have Him step over the laundry. Because that's where He meets you at the back door. He knows it already. You don’t have to wait to have it cleaned up. He’s walking through the messiness of life with you, if you let Him.

Other wise words worth echoing:

- “It's what God thinks of you that counts. Don't focus so much on what others think and do and feel and what they're doing. Focus on what God is doing and Jesus is over here saying, ‘Hey, I love you fully and completely. I love you just the way you are. I created you, by the way.’”

- “I think sometimes Jesus, like a loving mother, takes our face in His hands and says, ‘Look at me…will you just slow down and look at me? Slow down. Quit taking everything personally, including the person who may have just terribly offended you.’”

- “You choose how you're gonna respond to trigger that makes you sad. Will I grip this with my fist and sit here in my mucky, feel-sorry-for-myself state and get nothing done? Or am I gonna say, well, that was sad. But God, what have you got for me to do today?”

- “Don’t let people suck the whimsy out of you. Whimsy is sort of like a happy-go-lucky state and people wonder what you got. Well, I got Jesus, first of all, and I can still be whimsical. I can still flop myself down in a pile of grass and look at the clouds. I can dance across my kitchen with or without my grandchildren, and I do. I'll tap dance if you want me to. Keep them wondering about you and do not take it personally if they don't agree with you or think you're a little crazy.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

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