Have you ever found yourself in a season of life you didn’t sign up for?

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Nicole Unice to talk about navigating life’s unexpected seasons, grief, and the challenges that come when everything familiar changes. Nicole shares her personal journey of leaving full-time ministry, moving through uncertainty, and leaning into God’s faithfulness when life felt unfair. Through her story, she offers insights on faithfulness, emotional health, and discovering God’s blessings even in the pit moments of life. Whether you’re facing loss, change, or a season you never planned, this episode will remind you that God is with you, shaping your story in ways you can’t yet see.

Meet Nicole Unice

Nicole is a pastor, author, speaker, and former therapist with decades of experience helping people connect their emotional and spiritual lives. She is the author of Not What I Signed Up For, The Struggle is Real, and other faith-centered books that guide readers through life’s hard chapters. Nicole is passionate about helping women navigate grief, uncertainty, and unexpected life changes while remaining rooted in faith. Her story is a powerful example of resilience, courage, and faithfulness through seasons no one plans for.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How to navigate grief and loss in seasons you didn’t anticipate.
• Why faithfulness doesn’t always look like strength or victory—it can be as simple as staying with God.
• How to reframe blessing and see God’s work in unexpected places.
• Practical ways to hold your emotions while deepening trust in God’s plan.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

This conversation will inspire you to embrace God’s presence in difficult seasons, release the pressure to “fix” your life immediately, and find freedom and hope in the midst of uncertainty. Nicole’s insights offer practical and spiritual encouragement for anyone feeling lost, overwhelmed, or stuck in life’s “not what I signed up for” moments.

Connect with Nicole

Website: nicoleunice.com

Books: Not What I Signed Up For, The Struggle Is Real, Brave Enough, She’s Got Issues

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Hey there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston, and I am so glad you hopped on today.

I hope you are ready to let Jesus run into your life and open to receive today what he has for you. I just got to interview Nicole Unice.

She's the author of several books and also the host of how to Study the Bible, a super popular podcast that is reaching people in 188 different countries. There's so much to say about her.

She lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and she has three young adult kiddos, and she is just full of wisdom. Today we talked about how to navigate a season that you did not sign up for.

And whether that be big and hard or whether it be just challenging and grueling, I don't know what it is for you. I only know what it is for me.

But as she was talking, I thought, wow, so much of this I can directly apply to my life and my faith and my grief and my hopes. And so I hope the same is true for you today. And as you listen, keep someone in mind.

If there's someone that you think could be encouraged by this episode, make sure that you press that simple share button, because that will impact more lives than just yours and mine. So take a listen. Nicole, it's so fun to have you on the podcast today.

Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad to be here, Willow. I know we're going to have an awesome time and a great conversation. I'm excited.

Hey, and I mean, we're making it work. Technology challenges and all, so good for us.

You know it. Yes. Let's go.

You're joining us from Virginia. Just tell us about a day in the life of Nicole. What does daily life look like for you?

And then I really wanna start talking about the work God's doing through you, but would love to hear just some snippets of daily life for you.

Do you know how normal questions can lead to, like, existential crises? Like, I'm always like, I don't know. What is a day in the life of Nicole? I have no idea. But I'll give you guys a few things.

So I am first and foremost wife of 28 years, mom of 33. My kids are. One has just graduated college, one is in college, my daughter and my second son is a senior in high school.

So right now I'm just soaking up the, like, eight minutes a day that I spend with him, four minutes that he wakes up before he leaves for school, and the four minutes that he has before he starts homework and after volleyball practice. And it's just we love this season of life in our family. We absolutely love young people, love young adults. So having a great time with that.

For my professional work, I travel and teach, so I'm like an itinerant preacher. I go to lots of different churches and preach on Sunday mornings.

I write books, and I try to create a community where people can really grow in freedom at the intersection of emotional and spiritual health. My background was first as a therapist and now as a pastor. So I try to bring that into the work that I do.

And, yeah, every day looks a little bit different. Different depends on if I'm traveling. I work for churches. I do consulting and coaching for executives and pastors and senior teams.

So that's a little bit. Oh, and I have a podcast. I forgot about that part. So a few different things.

You sound super bored, Nicole. You sound like you have no clue what you're going to accomplish any given day. I love it so much. You wrote a book called not what I Signed Up For.

And there's so many things I want to ask you about this book because I think so many women can resonate with being in a season that they didn't sign up for. Just funny off the bat. I mean, I'm imagining you wrote this book because you hit your own season of something that you didn't want to have happen.

Don't you wish God would have, like, given you a calling to write a book about, you know, recipes that you.

Serve at your farmhouse? Well, here's. I know exactly my modern farmhouse because, like, what I'm great at is decor and dining. I wish. I really do. Me, too. Although I'm sure.

I'm sure these. I'm sure those people have their own struggles. If you're one of those women that's listening right now, we see you, we know you.

We know it's not easy. However, that is not what God called me to.

And what I've learned, and I continue to learn, is that I write a book because I think that God's taught me something that is worth sharing in the book. And then I live out the book for multiple years more after the time that I already thought that I knew it.

So my first book was called She's Got Issues. Clearly, I still have those. The second book was called Brave Enough. It feels like life is requiring more and more courage.

The third book is the Struggle is Real. And so, yes, I live out these messages, but particularly not what I signed up for.

I very much wanted to be doing what I was doing and also very much knew that I was being called to be obedient to that call out. There was no call in to something else, which is very, very challenging. It just was out of this.

We left the church community that we. Every single stable thing in my life outside of my marriage and family, which is a big but. Cause that obviously is huge.

But every stable thing and everything that I had kind of hooked my identity to went away. And I found myself facing a season that, you know, again, God brings us back to these thoughts again and again.

And one of those things that God continues to bring me around to is really thinking that if I'm the good girl who does the right thing, I'm gonna get a certain respons. I had moved through ministry. We can talk about what it's like to be a female preacher in the south, but it's not easy.

And I had worked faithfully in a ministry context for 15 years between seminary and when I was actually ordained as a pastor. And this call out came like four years later, like I thought I had spent, you know, almost two decades moving toward what God really had for me.

And I was ready to be settled in that. And then it was over.

And I was mad and sad and felt unsure of how to process all of that alongside of friendships, relationships, community, church, neighborhood, all of that changing all at one time. And I found that the cry of my heart was, this is not what I signed up for.

And so I went to my community and went around to people that I've had time to spend with. I just went out to my email community and was like, hey, who wants to come to a focus group?

Who wants to tell me what this means to you and what it feels like? And so I spent six months or so in person and online just asking people, like, when I say, not what I signed up for, what does that mean to you?

And hearing this story and this emotion that is not easy to describe, but the best way that I could distill it down was that these not what I signed up for seasons, they have unknown outcomes and uncertain Timelines and something about those two things together just really puts us back on our heels and takes us to deeper places in our faith.

When we have an unknown outcome and an uncertain timeline and we're called to be in that in between season, how do we go about discovering what God has in times like that, that are difficult?

As you're describing that I'm sitting here just resonating with, oh, yeah, I have unknown, unknown outcome with an uncertain timeline. I think so many people listening can resonate with that.

You talked a moment ago about how you often are a voice for people connecting our emotional and spiritual life.

Can you invite us into this season you were in and how were you making space for the emotions that you had and kind of holding those and caring for those while also holding faith and trust that God knew what he was doing even when you felt mad and sad and all the things.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.

Well, one of the tools I would say in my toolkit that has ended up being incredibly valuable and that I'm constantly inviting others into, is that God gave us stories in scripture.

Not so that we could see these people as superheroes or super villains or cartoonish, which is easy to do, but actually because every season of the human life and every kind of personality that we have is found somewhere in scripture. It's the greatest psychological work in addition to being the greatest spiritual work of all time.

And so I had that tool in my toolkit and I knew that.

And I found myself circling back to a story that I had taught previously in a retreat setting multiple times around the story of Joseph, and went back to that and really was living deeply into that story and finding that there were some spiritual realities personally, in addition to the ones that I was teaching that really weren't sticking to me. Like I didn't believe them. And one of them was that you can go through an unexpected season and it, it might not be your fault.

Like, it's not just sin that leads us into wilderness seasons. Because it's very clear, although Joseph was not sinless because only Jesus is our sinless savior. Joseph is really portrayed as righteous.

He's the first righteous character in the whole Bible where we really don't see like these big mess ups. He's kind of like, he kind of kept. Keeps doing the right thing and things keep getting harder and he does the right thing again.

And right when you think the story's gonna turn, it gets even harder. And there's something about that.

And as I was reading, teaching, studying that story, which Is the backbone of the book and the Bible study, not what I signed up for. God was revealing in me these truths, these lies that I was believing about what a life of faith looks like.

And also some of the deeper, harder realities that he invites us into that actually build a life of tr.

A lot of those were also based around grief and understanding loss and grief, not just permanent loss that comes in the form of death, but also the losses that we accumulate over a life, the grief that comes with those losses, and how God invites us to walk with him through our sorrows.

Let's talk about Joseph a little bit, just as a refresher for people listening you bring up. There was a lot of things he went through through that weren't his fault.

Tell us what some of those were and how that encouraged you a little bit more specifically.

Yeah, for sure. And this is like one of my favorite stories in the Bible. There's nothing I love more than teaching this live because it's got so much richness in it.

But, yeah, if you haven't, like, watched the Disney movie or read the book in a while, it's a long story. You know, Joseph's story is a long story. It takes place over several decades. There's something even about that, like the opportunity to be like.

What does life of faith look like shaped over time? It starts when he's 17. He loses everything that he knows. He loses his family, his community, his religion, his language, his culture.

He really is in exile. He's sold into slavery. This is a very difficult place to begin. So we start in a story of emptiness and of loss.

And then from there we see that he just keeps faithfully being who God has made him to be. And as he faithfully is that person. We have this refrain of the Lord was with Joseph, and the Lord prospered Joseph.

However, prosperity for Joseph looked like he was a slave in an official's house. He was then thrown into prison, where it again says that he prospered, which challenges our understanding of blessing and prospering.

One of the things that happens in the story is that the way blessing plays out is that really blessing is about God blessing others through Joseph, that other people's lives got better because Joseph was around. Most of us would say that Joseph himself was not blessed. Which again begs the question, what is God doing with us and in us in unexpected seasons?

How might God be using you in the faithful place that you keep showing up? What if faithfulness looks like a small season in your life where life feels hard?

It feels like survival but you just keep faithfully showing up to whatever that hard thing is. Because a lot of Joseph's story is that now what we learn over time is that as the story gets worse and worse, God is at work.

And in this pivotal moment, which is not actually the redemptive moment of the story, I'm leaving some cliffhangers here.

But in the pivotal moment of the story, where Pharaoh has a dream that no one can interpret it, at that very moment, Joseph, who had been left in prison and forgotten by one of the royal officials who. Joseph asked him to help him and was completely forgotten at the very moment where Pharaoh had a dream that needed to be interpreted.

Joseph was in the right place at the right time. Like God ordained that he would be staying in prison. He was literally under the king's feet.

He was in a dungeon in the king's court so he could be brought to the king within hours. So here he is, we see this story that seems like loss, loss, loss. Loser, loser. Like continuing to be difficult, difficult.

And yet in all of it, God ordained that he was in the exact right place at the exact right time for the thing that God had next for him. There is still so much sorrow in the story.

In the Disney movie, everything gets happy at this point because there's power and prosperity that now comes into Joseph's life. But Joseph is not happy. There are stories and hints of his continued suffering, his longing for his family, his living in a foreign land.

And we get this picture of what does it look like to be faithful to God, to hold on to both the favor that he gives or the opportunity that he gives, while also knowing that there can be a place of sorrow in your life or a place of sadness in your heart. And that that doesn't preclude you from God's work in the world.

There's so many things I wanna break down about this. Joseph's in a pit. There's all these things that have gone wrong. His family's betrayed him. All the things that you just said.

What are the lies when we're in that place that we're tempted to believe about God and about ourselves?

Yeah, well, I mean, that first one that, you know, has a lot of personal resonance for me is that temptation to reverse engineer. Whose fault is this?

And that deep temptation to replay the story and think about places where you could have done something different or someone else could have done something different.

So whether that is you placing the blame squarely on yourself or you placing the blame on another person, another party, it's our way of getting control. The only thing that's worse than feeling like we've sinned and done wrong is actually feeling out of control.

Most people will go to great lengths to avoid the place that is the great unknown, the place where God invites us out of the boat to walk on water, because it's a place that doesn't feel like we can control it.

And so step one, the lie we believe is that there was a way we could have engineered the circumstances that we're in differently, and we wouldn't be there. Or there's someone did something wrong to us that's got us to this place, and if that thing hadn't happened, we wouldn't be there. And.

And I think the invitation of Joseph is to see our story is embedded in a much larger story that God is writing in the world. And you might not know why you're where you are. And that doesn't mean that God's not with you, doesn't mean that God is not faithful.

It does not mean that the season isn't gonna be used by God. And even just starting there, now, that opens up again now a whole nother conversation, Willow, that we probably would take a.

It would take a theology 201 to get into, which is, how does a good God allow this kind of stu. Suffering? We talk about that in the book. That's a deeper conversation. But we're.

Now, if you've never done this work before, and all of a sudden you're in a position where you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm questioning my faith. It's not maybe so much that you're questioning your faith. It's that maybe you're deepening your faith.

Maybe you're asking questions for the first time that you need to be asking. You need to ask the question, where is God? When things are hard, you need to ask the question, how can people suffer?

How can I suffer and God still love me? You need to ask the question, what do I do with loss?

Because if God's going to use you to be his vessel and his instrument in the world, he needs believers who have deep roots and who have strong hearts and who have let their hearts be broken open so that God can reform that heart into a heart of compassion and love that's even bigger than the one that you have right now. That is a very rigorous journey. It is not one that everybody takes.

But sometimes it's that unexpected season that maybe propels you forward into these deeper waters.

One of the things that fascinates me most about Joseph's life is that he continued to be. And you talked about this so faithful in hardship. I mean, to the point where you're like, this guy is crazy cool, crazy faithful.

Like has such integrous character, does the right thing over and over again when he's mistreated.

What are your examples or how have you seen this kind of women take cue from Joseph in their own lives and their own faithfulness in a way that inspires you or how are you seeing? How can you charge us or challenge us? Like, here's some examples of what faithfulness looks like in a hard season.

Yeah, maybe we can start with what faithfulness does not look like in a hard season. Faithfulness does not have to look like strength. It doesn't have to look like victory. It doesn't have to look like. I know the end of the story.

It doesn't have to look like a faith that refuses to engage in what is hard by just. Absolutely. I talk about this in the book. It's like we either skip and stuff.

So we're like, I'm going to skip over the hard part and I'm just going to give you some Christianese to describe how I'm doing. And it's going to be like, well, yeah, XYZ is happening. And you see a person's life falling apart and they're like, but God is faithful.

And I'm like, are you even living in the life that you're living? Or is this. So there's a. There's this place of like, I'm going to live in the superficial. I am not going to engage this now.

Usually those people are very unhappy. Pain has to have an outlet.

So if you're stuffing pain, one of my like great therapy like analogies is like pain that you stuff is like holding a beach ball underwater. It takes an enormous amount of energy.

If you are holding pain underwater, you are taking so much emotional capacity and dedicating it to holding, holding that stuff down, which gives you less capacity for the world. It actually, in its own weird way is very self centered because it takes so much out of us.

And now you could be listening and be like, nicole, you don't understand. I was abused. I'm just dealing with that. I had an abortion when I was 15. I've never dealt with it. I get that.

I'm not saying that God is asking you to fix and reveal all the hard things that you've ever gone through all at once. However, I would say that there is an invitation to healing that God does want to Heal us. And that sometimes that.

That.

That pain that we've held underneath finally needs a release. And it's never too late. It is never too late to experience God's healing work in your life.

Whether that comes via therapy, whether that comes via confession, where you finally really speak aloud about your life. Like, there is so much freedom available for you. I don't care if you are 88 years old or 18 years old.

If you're 88 years old and you need to deal with something that happened when you were 18 years old, God is still desiring to heal you. And that's a beautif. Beautiful thing.

What I do think faithfulness does look like is the way that I've been inspired by so many women's stories, women who have gone through really hard things. Like, the hardest of the things. It's all the hardest of the things. It's losing a child. It's losing your marriage. It's a cancer diagnosis.

It's all the hard things that we fear the most. And you meet these women, and they have joy. Like, they literally have joy and peace in their life.

And you're like, there is no possible way that you could act that way and have that if God was not real. And it builds our faith.

And it doesn't mean that they necessarily have peace and joy right in the moment that they're in, but they are able to tell a redemptive story about a thing that's happened in their life. And they might say, I would never choose this, but I'm so glad that I'm a different person because of it. And it's so inspiring.

Faithfulness to me looks like just staying with God. At one point, I was lamenting with my spiritual director in a really hard season. I had been crying so much, Willow.

I feel like I cried for, like, three years straight. And every time I would get on, every time I would talk to my spiritual director, I would cry almost the whole time.

And at one point, I said to her, I am so tired of crying. I'm so tired of crying. And I just want this to be better. And she said, but you're faithful. And I was like, no, I'm a mess.

She's like, no, you're faithful. You haven't left God. And I realized leaving God wasn't really on the table for me. Like, I wasn't happy with God. I didn't feel close to God.

I was struggling with God, but I never would think of leaving God. It's kind of like when Peter talks to Jesus and Jesus Gives this has this really vulnerable moment. This is in the garden.

And Jesus has given this really hard teaching. And Jesus turns to his three best friends, the closest guys to him, and he's like, you're not gonna leave me too, are you?

All these people had fallen away. And Peter says back to Jesus, where would we go? Like, you alone have the words of life. To me, that is such a real conversation.

Like, the vulnerability of the full humanity of Jesus with the resignation and the confession of faith by Peter, like, the resignation is. There is no other really good plan. Like, I don't have a good plan. There is no plan. Like, you have the words of life.

I know that you have the words of life. So even when it's hard, even when I'm not following closely, even when I'm not sure where you are, like, where else am I really gonna go?

And I love that. I love that faithfulness can look like that, that can be faithful.

Yeah, I love that you're talking about this idea that faithfulness doesn't look like saying, we like this chapter when we hate it.

And I think that there's been a lot of people in our lives and well intended people, people who love us, family members, spiritual mentors who've sort of. And I actually write about this in my book.

But the idea of, like, they ask you to move on and you think you just have to move on, but without letting Jesus come in and heal that pain, you just keep moving with the pain keeps going with you, and you're traveling into.

That's a great word.

The next year, the next 10 years, the next four decades. And so you become like, you're talking about, you might have six beach balls under the water.

And I love your illustration of, like, how much energy it takes to, like, keep all those down because your pain's starting to buoy up and come out sideways. And so you're inviting us, us to not let go of God and to be faithful in the midst of those chapters. But I'm curious, you mentioned grief earlier.

What does it look like for us to go, you know what? I hate this chapter. It sucks. I didn't want it. I didn't sign up for it.

It's come with so much loss, and I'm so confused where you are and where I'm going and how we're going to get out of this. And yet I still choose you. Like, do you. Did you have some sort of, like, personal pep talks?

You gave yourself, like, sermons that, like, what can we do in those moments where we're Like, I'm grieving and I've lost, and I think this chapter sucks, but I'm holding onto you.

Right. Right. Well, yeah, I think. Right. How do we hold those two things together?

We don't, like, love that in our instant gratification culture and our very black and white. You have one minute on this reel to impart truth. We don't really love gray. And this is like the really gray space of life.

I asked a lot of people, like, how do you get through grief?

And interestingly, a lot of people's answers were creative, meaning like doing something creative, which is interesting because I feel like grief is destructive. Grief in our life kind of destroys things. God can reuse that broken stuff, but let's just be honest.

Like, we weren't made for grief in the original design in the garden. When God created, he didn't create us to be separated from him. He didn't create us to live a life where we experienced him death.

And yet that is what life is. So there's this existential disconnect between what we've been wired to love and experience and want and what we do experience on earth.

Which is why when I am pastoring or counseling people who have lost someone in death, even when they lose someone, let's say a mother or father who has lived a full and long Life and they're 93 years old, and they know it's a mercy that they pass on and they love Jesus, all them of the things, like, all the things that would make it a good situation, the perfect scenario, the perfect scenario, they are still shocked. We find death shocking because we weren't made for that kind of permanent disconnect. We just weren't made for it.

And so anytime we experience loss in our life, it is destructive. It does something in our soul that is, it feels like it tears us down.

So maybe that's why when I ask folks, and I think about it, doing something that is creative is one of these coping mechanisms of just being present in life, whether that's baking or gardening or, you know, for me, it was writing. One of my great spiritual mentors that is my favorite spiritual author is Henri Nouwen. And Henri Nouwen wrote.

He actually released a book that was written from his journals in one of the darkest seasons of his life, where he knew not what else to do other than write his own soul.

Words that he imagined God would say to him about truths that he needed to know about loss, about forgiveness, about quiet, about his ego, about, you know, and I had a list and I just one day was like, lord, this is what I need to hear from you about. About. These are all the things I need to hear from you. And I would just sit with my pen and paper.

Cause God designed me as a writer, and words would come, and those prayers are in the book. And it really was these moments to be like, what does God want to say to me in this season? And a lot of times it was, you are not forgotten.

You are growing. You are changing. It was beautiful, comforting truth that I could not, not find for myself. It was not gonna come out of a personal pep talk.

It had to come from a deeper place. It had to come from the spirit and the quiet and the gentleness that we need for that. The patience with ourselves that we need for that.

I say in the beginning of the book, if you're actually in a not what I signed up for season, or if you know that you've got this, like, closet or room in your own soul, that is the not what I signed up for season. Even if other things are going on well, which really is the case for a lot of people, be gentle with yourself. Don't try to fix it so fast.

Don't try to rush through it. Just being gentle and making the space to be gentle with yourself is what is needed to allow the soul to actually heal, to rest, to grow, to learn.

And that's, I think, probably the biggest takeaway that I have from that season.

That's a good word. I mean, I just. I'm just thinking, don't try to fix it so fast speaks to me. Even currently, it's like, you.

I'm doing this, I think, right now in an area of my life where it's like, I just want to write this chapter with an ending that I'm gonna feel good about. So let me pick up that real quick.

And, like, the more you try to fix stuff, the weirder and worse you make, like, the current chapter you're in, which is just a good word to not. To not try to fix it so fast is good. You talked earlier about reframing blessings, and I love that so much.

I mean, you're literally saying, joseph being in the pit, like, locked up in the basement of the king's quarters, was actually a blessing.

Well, it's called a blessing. That's the challenge. We might not think of it as a blessing, but somehow it's very clearly called a blessing.

So it's like, oh, my God, gosh, have we misunderstood what blessing is all this time?

Like, yeah, so we don't Understand? We don't understand God's timing. We don't understand the way he's moving chess pieces.

We don't understand, you know, when scripture says God works out all things for the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose, we don't understand how he's working it out. So all we see is like, hey, I'm down here, locked up and forgotten. And yet he's like, planning this, like, crazy cool redemption story.

What can we do to get better at this reframing blessings thing?

Yeah, I mean, this was actually one of the harder chapters to write because I wanted to hold together those two things where I was like, please be gentle with your soul, but also you got work to do. Like, there's. Both of those things are true. It's just that we wanna work on making the chapter end.

And God's like, no, like, I want you to do the work that is in that chapter. Like, you have work to do in that chapter. It doesn't have to be work that's gonna connect to the season ending.

And I teach this through this little part of the story where Joseph has had, like, again, he's been completely, completely unjustly detained. He's been unjustly accused by Pharaoh's wife of trying to sleep with her. He's thrown into the king's dungeon. He's in the dungeon, dungeon.

And it says that he was prospering because he was. It said that God showed favor to him and he was like. He was kind of the prison warden's right hand man.

And it says in the story that one day two royal officials were brought to the prison and Joseph was the one who attended them. And it says that Joseph noticed that their face was downcast one morning. And he said, why is your face downcast? Now stop there.

Think about what it takes.

Now, if you're holding your pain and your beach ball underneath the water and it's taking so much of your energy, my first question for you would be, do you have eyes to see the needs around you? Because somehow, in the midst of the worst chapter of Joseph's life, God's calling him to be humble, obedient, and be a blessing to other people.

And if he was so wrapped up in his own story and his own needs and what he wanted, he wouldn't have been able to see the expression on the face of that royal official that had him ask, why are you downcast? Which then had the royal official say, because I had a dream.

Which then had Joseph say, well, don't all dreams, don't all interpretations belong to God? Like, I know I can. Tell me your dream. Which led them to an opportunity where Joseph was able to say to the guy that he knew he would be restored.

He said to him, when you are released from this prison, do not forget at me, we see humble confidence and the reality of Joseph's actual lived experience all in that little piece of the story. Because Joseph was humble enough to show up, to be present, to be obedient in the little things. He was confident enough to ask for help.

And the end of that chapter, it says that the. The cup bearer was restored to the royal court, and he forgot all about Joseph. You're like, what? Like, for two years, two years.

Like, imagine being Joseph.

And this is actually, to me, the most poignantly difficult part of our unexpected seasons, because a lot of us have had moments where we thought, this is the end of it. This is it. Like, God's gonna. God's gonna do something here. God's gonna do a work here. This is the end. I'm gonna be out of this chapter. Like this.

We see a change in our kid. We see a change in that relationship. We see an open door for a new opportunity. And we're like, this is it. This is it.

And Joseph was right there in that. This is it.

And then imagine what it was like to go to sleep on your pallet in the dungeon that night, full of hope, because God's given you an opportunity to actually say to the cupbearer, don't forget me. I've been unjustly held in this prison. And then night two, and then night three and then night 14 for two full years. Nothing came of that moment.

But then again, I told you guys the story. He was at the right place at the right time, exactly where he needed to be. Be two whole years later.

I mean, I don't know about you, Willow, but I'm not really interested in God delaying, like, 20 minutes, much less two months, much less two years. And that is. That's why this story is so amazing and also so. So challenging. Like, man, what if my season lasts longer than I want?

And what if God's doing amazing things that in it? And do I have the trust and the humility to show up present in my life every day? Because God says, I see you.

I know you're hurting, and you have work to do.

I love the challenge. I mean, I wrote it down and. And put a star by it. I mean, we work to make it end. And. And you are Inviting us to do the work in the middle of it.

And that's underline that for the day. I know we could talk all day long, Nicole, but one more question about the Joseph story.

And that is the infamous verse, what you intended for harm, God intended for good. What do you want to encourage us with in that one?

Yeah, I mean, I call that the Joseph blessing. That's the basis of. Of the whole thing. And the thing I want to encourage everyone to know about that verse. I think this is the thing.

There's a lot to be said about that. But I would say, you know, there's kind of three parts to the verse. He says, do not fear. Am I in the place of God?

What you intended for evil, God intended for good, for the saving of many lives. So there's kind of three parts to that. We talk about that in the book.

But the part that I think is really important is the part where Joseph says, what you intended for evil. Evil. Because I think a lot of people think that forgiveness, Christian forgiveness looks like forgetting.

Christian forgiveness means that I have to be in relationship with people who have harmed me or even abused me. And I have to act like that never happened because that's what it means to be a nice Christian girl.

And I'm like, listen, Joseph had already forgiven his brothers. I actually, my theory is he forgave his brothers long before this moment, long before he even saw them again. And I talk about that in the book.

But when he got to this moment, which by the way, was like 10 years after his brothers had already been restored to him, they were still carrying the shame and the guilt of their decisions. And Joseph does not let them off the hook. He doesn't pretend like it didn't happen. He doesn't say, no big deal, bros. Like, it's fine.

He doesn't say, no big deal. He says the thing that you actually, actually you did intend evil. Like you. You did. You did bad things. But I don't hold it against you.

I've moved forward. I can forgive you. I can be in relationship with you. God has used it for good. But it doesn't mean that it was not intended for evil.

And it doesn't mean that even at the end of the story, 40 years later, Joseph's still calling it what it is. He's like, that wasn't good. And I think we all need to hear that. That God allows space and makes plenty of room to say.

In fact, I think it's Tim Keller who said the Bible is the only. The Bible is the only religious text that allows bad things to be bad. It's like God doesn't try to make bad things not bad.

He just redeems bad things. He uses bad things. He uses bad things for good, but he doesn't make bad things not bad. And I think there's a lot of comfort, comfort in that.

So much wisdom. Nicole, I can't help but think that God used your season that you didn't sign up for. He's using it in so many lives now, including in ours today.

So I want to thank you for the faithfulness that you held in that hard season and the ways that the Lord's doing it. I'm grateful for the that. So I know there's going to be women who want to follow along with your podcast and your books and all the things.

How can they do that?

For sure. So my podcast is called How to Study the Bible and we just walk through a passage of scripture every week. Easy to find.

And my website's nicoleunice.com you can jump on an email list and kind of stay connected there.

I want you guys to know I wrote this book a couple years ago and just having the chance today to read replay some of that story, both of Joseph and in my own life, is encouraging to my soul.

So thank you for that opportunity and I share that maybe as a final invitation for our listeners that the scary thing that you think you can't address or you don't know how to talk about or you don't know how it's going to turn out.

There's a lot of freedom in finding a safe group of women to walk through those stories with because God uses it to encourage not only our own faith, but the faith of those around us. Us.

So good. Nicole, thank you for being with us.

Thank you. Thanks, Willow. Appreciate it.

Friend, I hope that you received something today that you can hold on to and put in your back pocket to pull out throughout the day and the week as you continue to need courage and encouragement to face face this unexpected season with faithfulness. I love the charge. It's a hard charge and challenge, but the charge to not work, to make this chapter end, but do the work right in the middle of it.

And I wonder, what work is Jesus asking you to do right now, right where you are on this page? What is the work? What is the healing? What is the invitation? What is the rest? What is the reconciliation?

What is the thing that he is asking you to do right now besides just close this chapter up? Friend, he is a God who speaks and he will speak to you. If you go to him and ask him this question, I'll be asking it right alongside you.

Let's keep colliding and we'll catch you next week.