Lori Ann Wood lives with her husband in an empty nest in beautiful Bentonville, Arkansas. Having discovered a serious heart condition almost too late, Lori Ann writes and speaks to encourage deep faith questions along the detours of life.

She has been awarded the Frederick Buechner Narrative Essay Award, and awards from the Evangelical Press Association as well as from Colorado Christian Writers, Next Generation, Illumination, and Bookfest. Her work has been published in several anthologies and dozens of print and online venues, including The New York Times, The Christian Century Magazine, The Joyful Life Magazine, Just Between Us Magazine, Bella Grace Magazine, Truly Magazine, and Pepperdine University Press.

Lori Ann's multi-award-winning book, Divine Detour: The Path You'd Never Choose Can Lead to the Faith You've Always Wanted, was published by CrossRiver Media, and is available at https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Detour-choose-always-wanted/dp/1936501759/. Learn more and read the first chapter free at https://loriannwood.com/books/.

Connect with her on her website, on Instagram or on Facebook.

Living with a chronic illness and struggling with deep faith questions, Lori Ann knows that sometimes we want to give God the silent treatment. If you are on a detour, and find it difficult to communicate with God, get her free gift, 5 Prayers & Promises When You Can't Talk to God at https://loriannwood.com/hope/.

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Lorian.

Thank you.

It's great to be here with you.

Yeah, same here.

It's great to have you here.

What part of the world are you in today?

I live in the northwest corner of Arkansas, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

Wow.

All of the YouTube videos I've seen of the Ozark is beautiful.

Wow.

Amazing.

So were you born and bred there?

No, I was born on a wheat farm in South Central Kansas.

Did marriage get you there?

It did, in a kind of a roundabout way.

My husband grew up near that same wheat farm on a different wheat farm.

We met in high school and then we both ended up going to the same college a little further away from home.

And then gradually we took jobs a little bit further away from home.

And then we ended up a couple of hops later in northwest Arkansas because it's the home of Walmart.

And my husband works ancillary to that, but not exactly for Walmart.

In terms of nature, is that something that did contribute to the decision?

Yes, it is.

We visited here early in our marriage and it's beautiful with the lakes.

And now it's known for its mountain biking and all the trails.

And they've done a lot of development on that.

So it definitely is a draw.

Does it contribute to your writing?

It does in many different ways.

I'm influenced by that.

One particular event we had a couple years ago, which is sort of a downside to living here, is we got hit by a tornado.

And we had 36 hundred year old trees on our property fall.

And we had the task of getting rid of those and trying to clean up after it.

And all of that had a lot of lessons in it for me.

Tell me, what lessons do you learn from such a disaster?

First of all, it was so much out of our control.

And there was so much happening that we really had to learn to trust other people and to trust the process.

And also just the healing power of time.

I didn't think that we would ever have any kind of peace or any kind of tranquility again.

I didn't think the birds would ever come back, but they did.

It just took time.

And that healing power of time is something that I've always struggled with because I'm kind of an impatient person.

And I like to think it needs to happen right now.

But sometimes that time bakes in a little bit extra comfort and a little bit extra understanding.

You talk about being an empty nester.

Was that a similar type of experience in terms of them going away?

Every age, I thought I loved more than the last.

And then you hit the teenage years and it gets a involved in their lives.

When they finally left my nest, my third one, that year that I had my last one as a senior in high school, I was diagnosed with severe heart failure.

And I kind of missed that whole year with her because I was so sick and so done about what was going on that I didn't get to enjoy any of that.

And I kind of felt robbed by it.

How do you navigate life now with this illness?

Well, now I've had a couple of devices.

I'm on a lot of medication.

And because my heart pumps at a very low level, I get exhausted really easily.

So I have to kind of shorten my days and be very selective about what I do in a day because I only have this short window of time that I'm really functioning well.

And the bad part was when I was functioning well and doing all these things and thinking I was juggling everything really well, last year about this time, I had a severe stroke and had to recover from that, which thankfully I have pretty much gotten everything back from that stroke.

But then in July, I was evaluated for a heart transplant at Cleveland Clinic.

And they decided that because I functioned so well and the shortage of hearts that right now they wouldn't list me.

What does life look like being someone who sits on the edge of death?

At my age, I had never really thought that much about before.

Of course, I knew it was coming, but I didn't think it was coming for me anytime soon.

So these are things that I think have given me this appreciation for getting to see some of the milestones that I never thought I'd see.

Because when I was first diagnosed, they said, most of my doctors were saying, you've got a few months unless something changes around here soon.

And so I was thinking, I'll never get to see my children graduate or get married or hold a grandchild.

And I've gotten to see all of those things.

And I'm just so grateful.

So I live in this being very careful and looking forward to these things.

But I'm also living in this place of a deeper gratitude than I had before.

Because if that hadn't happened, I would have just thought, well, that's normal life.

That's what people do.

And I don't think I would have been as grateful as I am.

How did you come to meet Jesus?

I don't think I ever remember a time that I didn't know about him or that I didn't think he was real.

Because I was raised in a Christian home, and my mother was a very strong believer.

And she was one of those that knew that she knew that she knew that God was real and active, and he made a difference in her life.

And I was influenced by that from a very early age.

And then I married a man who had that same spiritual DNA.

And so I've been surrounded by this strong faith influence all my life.

What do I get from this book if I pick it up to read it?

I hope that you'll get from this book that if you're like me, and maybe you don't come to faith with that certainty that my mother did or that my husband does, that you're just as valid of a Christian and you're just as deep a believer if you come to faith through questioning.

Because I found when I was thrown off on this health detour, this heart failure detour, that I just had some really deep questions for God that I just couldn't get away from.

And I was kind of afraid of them at first, because I thought, if I get this down and wrestle with it, I might break this faith that I've been given.

And I don't want to break it.

I want to hand it down to my kids.

And so what I did is I did put that precious thing on a shelf for a while and kind of gave God the silent treatment.

But then I decided one day that we had too much history and I couldn't just walk away from him.

So I got that faith down and I wrestled with it and I poked it and prodded it.

And I learned that I hope the other the readers of my book will learn is that that was my path to deeper faith was to wrestle with those questions and ask them, because sometimes God reaches out to us and invites those questions.

And it's not something that breaks down our faith.

It's something that God's reaching out to us and saying, let's keep the conversation going.

If your children are listening to this 10 years from today or five years from today, what's one message you'd like to leave for them?

I think that message would be, don't give up on God when things don't seem to be going the way that you'd hoped they'd be.

I think one of the mistakes I made early on, and it was kind of a sad realization, is that I was equating the goodness of God with how well my life was matching up to the plans that I had made.

And when that life didn't match my plans, I said, God must not be good.

And that seems silly now, but as I look back on it, we often do that.

We have these plans and we think that's how life should go.

And when it doesn't, God must not be good or God must not be listening.

But those are the times that you can really dig in and get deeper into your faith and you can find the things that last.

You know, my husband said early on in our diagnosis story, he said, we're trading what we can't keep for something we can never lose.

And I hope that that's what they realize is that you're going to lose your faith.

You're going to lose people that you love.

You're going to lose money.

You're going to lose security, but you can trade that for something that you can never lose.

And that's that deeper faith that you can dig into during those times that will get you there.

Lauren, this has been a great pleasure.

Amazing audience.

Links are in the show notes.

Of course, if Lauren's voice or story has connected with you, you can connect with her books there, her website or her social media platform.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

I just want to thank you for this platform and thank you for what you're doing, Angle.

So Lauren, what a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on What is Inspired by 12 Minute Converse.