Transcript
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And welcome back to Pastor Plek's podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor Plek, and joining me today is Cindy Brinker-Simmons, author of a book titled Restored Reconnecting Life's Broken Pieces.
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Cindy, you have experienced front and center in your life death and it's affected you and you've had to then lead others through it.
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So we're talking about grief, we're going to talk about healing, we're going to talk about Jesus and we're going to talk about parenting and family through that.
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I'm a pastor and today I had one of my people come up to me and said hey, my sister just died.
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I mean literally happened today, and she's probably 41.
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It's her sister and so she's a little bit younger than that.
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She's like in her 30s, but still it's like that's a sister, not sure where she was spiritually, just really struggling with that.
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And so grief is something we're very familiar with right at this moment, in my church specifically.
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But this is something that people are dealing with and when they're dealing with it it feels like a hole.
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I would assume.
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I lost my father about 11, 12 years ago and I've been in combat and battle and so death and grief is sort of a part of life ever since my 20s.
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So I really wanted you to get into this from a domestic spiritual battle that you're walking through, and so take us on your journey.
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Well, pastor Fleck, thank you, I'm so excited to be here with you and this is real.
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This is Fleck, thank you, I'm so excited to be here with you and this is real.
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This is real time, real life, because in my book, restored, I make a statement and that is really.
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It's really the nucleus around which the whole book gravitates, and that is that suffering is a universal experience.
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I mean, the Bible says and just to pick out a verse 1 Peter, 4, 12, it says Dear friends, why are you surprised at the painful trials you're suffering?
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Is there something strange happening to you?
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I mean, the Bible predicts suffering.
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It predicts that misery coexists with gladness, the pain coexists with joy and trouble, as you know, because being on the battlefield and this life is a bloodied battle.
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Pastor Black, life is that, literally, that every day you don't come looking for trouble, but it sure comes looking for you and your dear sister.
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You talked about your sister in Christ that just lost her sister.
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She has a hole in her heart that no ekg will ever detect, because that that happens when we lose loved ones.
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And let me just also say on the onset, is that suffering and grief comes in all shapes and sizes.
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You don't have to have lost a loved one.
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That that's my story.
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I'll talk about that in a moment.
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You don't have to have lost a loved one, you don't have to have lost your favorite dog, or you don't have to have a prodigal child or have a life-altering diagnosis.
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So just reading the paper today and listening to the news and reading about what's happening, the chaos, the calamity, the confusion can really break our hearts.
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So we've got all shapes and sizes and I understand that it's been said.
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Just to add an exclamation point or maybe a period to what we're saying is that it's been said that we're either in a crisis, we're leaving a crisis, or we're entering a crisis.
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So the bottom line is crisis happens and in this beautiful, messy, confusing thing called life, you will suffer.
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So the question is how do we suffer?
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Yeah, so talk us through that.
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Yes, yes.
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So, chris, when I was 12 years old, I was sitting on a very uncomfortable QC.
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I was sitting next to my grieving 10 yearyear-old sister and my grieving 10-year-old, my grieving 37-year-old father.
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We had just buried my mom and I was so confused, so angry, so heartbroken.
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I really thought God hated me.
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I thought I had done something so bad, so terrible, so unforgiving that I was incurring the wrath of a very angry God.
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And because not only was I suffering and our family suffering, but it just so happened that the entire world was suffering with us.
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Because, even though mom was known as mom to me, she was known to her adoring public in the 1950s as a tennis champion Maureen Conley, or nicknamed Little Mo.
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She was number one in the world in tennis.
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Oh, wow.
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She was a couple of years ago when she was the first woman and still the only American woman to win the Calderon Grand Slam.
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And just to put that in perspective, only five players in the history of tennis have won the Calderon Grand Slam.
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Wow, she did not lose a match her last year of competitive play, number one.
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Oh wow, a match.
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Her last year of competitive play number one, oh wow.
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But there was one opponent she couldn't beat and that was ovarian cancer.
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And so at 34, she passed ovarian cancer again.
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I was 12, I was 10, I was 12, my little sister was 10, my dad was in his mid to late 30s and I parked my heart thinking that god hated me oh really.
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And that's a tough place to be Cause.
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Again, I thought I had done something so bad that I was incurring the wrath of God as punishment.
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So that's where I that was kind of my benchmark.
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So I thought, of course, that if I thought that God hated me, I needed to earn back his love.
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So I started literally a track of performance, and not just to perform but to perform well, because I knew that God didn't love losers.
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So that's where I began my journey.
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Oh wow, I was trying to perform doing God's love back.
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So when did you get saved?
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When did you accept Christ and understand man?
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It's not about what I do, but what he's done.
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Yes, yes, and you know, god's outrageous grace reached out to me at age 16.
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We were the daughter of a pastor.
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We love our pastors because we love our pastors.
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And so a daughter of a pastor spoke with me.
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She worked for my dad, interestingly in business, and she and I had some time together and she said to me that there was nothing I could do to earn my way to heaven, that God loved me with an unwavering love and no matter what I did, he loved me, and that I didn't have a target on my back and we all fall short of the glory of God.
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And so let me just pause right here, cause I think there's a lot of people that really struggle with the idea that you really brought up that there must be something you had done.
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And let's talk about that for a second, cause I think that cause there is some truth, right.
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The Bible says, like some of you are sick because you're taking communion in an unworthy manner.
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There's some of like sometimes God does allow us bad things or sickness to come because of our actions.
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However, however, that is not always why, and probably for you at 12 years old, that definitely wasn't why.
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But I think that's a real struggle that people are wrestling with is how do I know if what my circumstances are reflecting are because of my own sin, because of you know God's trying to teach me something.
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You know why is this happening.
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Speak into that about you know you know why is this happening.
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How speak into that about you know a person in that struggle, probably wrestling with a very real thing, and maybe look at their life, cause sometimes some of the consequences of us living and making mistakes bring on bad circumstances.
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For sure, for sure.
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Great, great question.
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And I would imagine, as with me, chris, that a lot of your listeners are thinking that God is inconsistent, that he's inactive, that he's indifferent.
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He doesn't even hear your prayers, much less answer them.
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I mean, because that's where I was.
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I thought that God was so far away that there was nothing I could do to earn his love.
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But, to your point, we do do things.
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The Bible says that we say things that we know we shouldn't say Right and we do things that we know we shouldn't do.
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I mean, sadly, because of something that's very dark and used so effectively by the enemy, called sin.
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We are imperfect people.
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We love imperfectly, we act imperfectly, we do things.
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Imperfect people.
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We love imperfectly, we act imperfectly, we do things imperfectly.
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So there is consequence.
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Absolutely, when we do things that hurt people, or we do things that cheat in business, or we do things that just do not characterize what God wants us to do, there's consequence.
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There's broken relationships, there could be jail time, there could be literally a breach with people who matter.
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So there is consequences and we need to deal with that.
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I think a lot of challenge in this society today is that people are not held accountable.
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Oh 100%.
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You know so much.
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But many times there are circumstances outside of your control.
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Many times there are things, circumstances that happen you have nothing to do with.
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It's kind of like this freight train that's coming at you.
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You did nothing to cause it come at you.
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You didn't see it happening, you didn't even know what was there, and it's coming at you with a velocity and you can't get out of the way and it flattens you.
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Many times we can't control our circumstances, but we can control our responses too.
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I love that here's one of the things that, as you were talking, this made me think of this.
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This one thought is that, in the midst of, like the struggle of dealing with death or dealing with the circumstances being really horrific and thinking, oh, what part did I play, I think the thing that, no matter what, I know that I am that bad, like the reality of my depravity and my sin is that bad, but but God is that good, even if let's just say, let's just go like because let's go there with the person who says it's all my fault, fine, fine, it was all your fault.
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You know, moses was a murder, david was a murder and adulterer, Like there's consequence to those actions but there's great forgiveness.
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And then what God promises those who are his children is that he will never leave you or forsake you and that when you come to him with a humble heart, when you draw near to God, he draws near to you.
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When you humble yourself before the Lord, he lifts you up.
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So talk to me about that reality of how you experience the Lord lifting you up, how you experience God drawing near to you after you drew near to Him.
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Yes, and just to add to what you said, an important thing to remember is God is glorious even when your circumstances are not.
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The character of God does not change.
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His mercy doesn't change, his grace doesn't change.
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His goodness doesn't change just because our circumstances look bad.
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And I'm going to answer a question, but you just made me think.
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I didn't want to forget this that many times, what looks good to us looks really bad to God.
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Or what looks bad to us, god is saying I've got you right where I intend you to be.
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So God is working behind the scenes.
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Just you said that's working behind the scenes.
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He's always working behind the scenes for our good, because that is the nature of god and that's what the bible describes.
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God is splendid, he's perfect, he's loving, he is holy and he loves with an unwavering love.
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Because what this daughter of a pastor said that caught my heart and changed everything was when she said that there was nothing I could do to earn my way into heaven.
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So we all fall short of the glory of God.
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And because God loves us so much that he sent his he said his son, his perfect, holy son.
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His whole mission on earth was to die for me and that was so, so mind blowing that someone would die for me.
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And so she talked about Jesus died for me, the son of God, perfect for me, the son of God, perfect so that my sins could be transferred to Jesus and that I would become holy and righteous before a perfect God.
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So it doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect at all because I still have my sin nature, but because Jesus died for me, that now I had a place in heaven, that when I breathe my last breath on this side of it, that I now will have a place in heaven, that he's prepared for me.
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That was a game changer.
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But what that also did is she said that God has a plan, a purpose for me, that even in this 16 years of real hardship and sorrow, that he had a purpose for me and that he was going to use that.
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And, chris, it's so amazing to me and I want your wonderful listeners and viewers to hear this when I was 12, burying my mom on that uncomfortable pew, I was 12 years old, my 10-year-old sister on my side and my 37-year-old dad on my side, that day, of all the days in my life, of any day in my life that I've breathed was the darkest day in my life, ever, ever.
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But what I didn't know, that day was the start of my ministry.
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That day that broke my heart and broke my soul and just broke me, was the day that God, without me knowing, was starting my ministry.
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And it started then.
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But the journey became one that, at age 16, when I came to meet my Savior, I really understood His purpose and a plan for my life.
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I really understood his purpose and a plan for my life, and, you know, our lives can be so messy and he can still use our lives.
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No life is wasted.
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God uses lives.
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And one of the things I also realized is God wants us to share our wounds Because, as you know, chris, as a pastor, we're all broken people, all of us are broken people, we all fall short of the word of God, but we can share our wounds and God calls us to share our wounds, to see, then, and to share how he then has come and prepared us and the very word restored.
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And I learned this through a president of dallas theological seminary, that seminary where you graduated yeah uh, uh.
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This is president mark bailey shared with me.
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It's one of his endorsements in my book.
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He said that rooted in the word restored is the word three words renew, repair, renew, repair and return.
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Renew, repair and return.
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And what?
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And God's goal is to restore and redeem us, and what that means is to return us back to you, to restore, to renew our broken hearts, to repair our broken hearts, to return us back to a relationship with Him.
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So so, when I found or actually when jesus found me, see, I was pursuing g, I was pursuing this god.
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I was trying to figure out who this god was, because I was trying to earn his love.
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But in reality, chris god was pursuing me.
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And how sweet that that, when I accepted jesus, that totally changed everything.
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And what a praise report.
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That was chris.
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Because my life went, went on.
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I graduated from college, I had a great return back to Dallas and had a great job, robust, great things were happening to me and this very handsome and Christ-centered man entered my life, captured my heart.
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We married Bob Simmons, we had a darling little boy named William and we were just about to adopt a little girl for worship.
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We have a little heart for adoption, because, after all, we're all adopted into God's family Amen.
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Children of the great, perfect big daddy, the Avraham.
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We're all part of his family.
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So we were about to adopt a little girl from Russia and then we heard four terrifying words Bob, you have cancer.
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So once again cancer into the inner sanctum of our family.
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But, chris, this time it was different.
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This time I knew that God, this time I knew I didn't have a target on my back, that I wasn't being condemned by God, that he didn't unlove me.
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I wasn't being condemned by God, that he didn't unlove me.
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The same outrageous grace that he had shown me when I was 16 still was real.
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As a matter of fact, when my mom breathed her last breath.
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He loved her as much when she breathed her last breath as when she hoisted that Wimbledon trophy over her head.
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She loved my beloved Bob and I never called him.
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We never called each other by our first names.
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He called me Sweetie Pie, I called him Beloved.
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So when we heard that diagnosis of my beloved, god didn't love us any less.
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And when we walked out of that oncologist's office, it took a while to understand what kind of cancer he has.
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It was very, very aggressive, a very grim prognosis, my beloved said.
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Bob said sweetie pie, I don't know, and we were only given three months.
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We only give three months.
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I don't know if we have three months, three years or three or 30 years, but this day forward, we are going to choose joy, we're going to give the glory to God and we are going to share our story.
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And, chris, that's what we did.
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We gave the glory to God and, you know, people can see a person's dedication to Christ and they joy when they are afflicted, when god, jesus, is transforming power, embraces a person and and a watching world is seeing how you respond.
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Yeah, and those moments of being a dark valley.
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And bob and I, we gave the glory to God because in God's word he tells us to choose joy and it's intentional.
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It's intentional.
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I mean, choosing joy is an intentional decision because, believe me, we weren't doing cartwheels or flip flops or sending the hospital today anyway, but somersaults, when we heard that diagnosis, we had plans, chris.
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We had plans to adopt a little girl.
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We had great plans.
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Our life was flourishing, we were knocking it out of the ballpark, so to speak.
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Yeah, we were leading Bible studies, I mean, except when it isn't Right and yet, and yet God used us and that transforming power only because of Jesus to let us choose joy.
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People were watching and hundreds, if not thousands, of people came to the saving grace of knowing Jesus because they saw Jesus in our hearts, even our caretakers in the hospital, because we had to live in the hospital quite a bit during we were given three months, but God in his outrageous grace gave us three years we
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we live.
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I've lost you a little bit.
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I can hear you, can you hear me?
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Here we go.
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I just lost you for a second.
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We can.
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Maybe God, in his outrageous, gave us three years and even while we were living in the hospital, bob's caretakers would come up to him and say Mr Simmons, mr Simmons, what is it that you have that causes you so much joy?
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Because those caretakers knew the grim prognosis.
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And my beloved would say in just such a tender voice he'd say, oh, oh, no, no, it's not what I have.
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It's who has me.
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Nice, you know, because it's all about Jesus.
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I mean, really, the whole point of the gospel is to point to Jesus, and in Romans 15, 13, it says says that God is the giver of hope, so that that in turn is a source of peace.
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That is the source of peace, and that hope is a source of peace and joy.
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Let me cut in real quick.
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Let's talk about when you were 12.
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That hope is a source of peace and joy.
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Let me cut.
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Let me cut in real quick.
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Let's talk about when you were 12, was your mom a believer then?
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What was her faith like?
00:21:21.988 --> 00:21:22.949
Mom was a Catholic.
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She was a very strong Catholic, okay, and and so we did not.
00:21:27.432 --> 00:21:36.268
But she had denounced her Catholicism because she just thought that it was more of a ritual than a relationship.
00:21:36.268 --> 00:21:43.749
So she had recognized that that's not what she wanted to ultimately pursue.
00:21:43.749 --> 00:21:46.002
So we ended up going to a Methodist church.
00:21:46.002 --> 00:21:49.964
But then she got sick.
00:21:49.964 --> 00:21:58.384
So really our focus on our family was really to take care of her, and so she was in and out of hospitals quite a bit.
00:21:58.384 --> 00:22:05.575
But I do know that friends of hers, a number of friends who I'm friends with now, say that she had a strong faith in Christ.
00:22:05.575 --> 00:22:18.002
It's just that when she got sick, of course my dad's and mom's focus was on getting her well, and back in those days in the 60s, you really didn't talk about that.
00:22:18.384 --> 00:22:20.371
So what do you mean?
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Talk about the 60s for a second.
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In the 60s, you didn't really talk about cancer, or you didn't talk about sometimes very deep things like breast cancer, or you didn't and know, and and and.
00:22:33.286 --> 00:22:40.222
In the sixties, you, there were shows like the Mary Tyler Moore show where the husband slept in.
00:22:40.222 --> 00:22:41.307
You know, the husband and wife slept in twin beds.
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You didn't.
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It was.
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It was a little bit more of a, a few decades of purity where, where certain things were discussed in certain parts.
00:22:47.567 --> 00:22:53.086
So mom and dad never shared with us that mom was sick or that she was dying.
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We never knew that.
00:22:54.067 --> 00:23:02.455
So and it wasn't to be disrespectful to us, it was really to protect us, sure, that's.
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What I mean is that those things were discussed in our household.
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But she was gone quite a bit and I didn't really know why it was, because she was going to hospitals, even outside of dallas, and so we, but, but brenda and I were still going to church.
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:28.556
We were going to a wonderful methodist church and, uh, but we didn't pray as a family and do some of the things that that my, that bob and I did with our son william.
00:23:28.556 --> 00:23:53.920
But but my friends, uh, my mom's friends that I became very, very close with in the years following her passing said that she had a wonderful faith, that she had a very strong faith, and actually that's what kept her engaged, which is being persevering and being strong, Because she was an athlete she was a world-famous athlete, so she had that perseverance, but her faith is what kept her moving forward.
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:58.567
But it wasn't something, chris, that was really discussed in our in our family.
00:24:02.397 --> 00:24:05.169
And I think that's just something that's shifted over time.
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Back then that would have been like almost rude probably to talk about such things, and today that's sort of seen as being completely closed off and inauthentic.
00:24:11.958 --> 00:24:15.026
It's so funny how just things change.
00:24:15.026 --> 00:24:24.986
So talk to me then, about how many people have you been able to minister to, who've had loss, who've been grieving.
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Did God open up a door for you?
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Even at 12 or beyond?
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Even with your own son, obviously?
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But in between 12, your own son and beyond, how many people have really come up to you and said like I need you to walk me through this struggle?
00:24:43.156 --> 00:24:46.137
Oh, absolutely, it's been kind of my life.
