The Weight of Stillness Podcast

The Engagement I Didn't Ruin (Just Barely...)

I love talking to my husband and I absolutely love our story, so I thought it might be fun to sit down and talk to Kris today on the podcast. We took Friday (and Monday) off to celebrate our wedding anniversary, so naturally that freed us up to record a little chat about our marriage, our mess, and the miracles God poured out upon us. Today we are going to share our engagement story. It’s a funny and sweet story, and one that really shows you who Kris is at his core, and who I have always been. It wouldn’t be us if I didn’t make it all about me and get upset with him for much of the evening! I hope you enjoy! The poem referenced in the podcast is below: Jamie Let’s Stay Connected If this spoke to your heart, there are a few quick ways you can support my ministry: * Subscribe: Hit the subscribe button here on Substack so you never miss a post or podcast episode. It is always free to subscribe. If you want to support my ministry with a financial donation, you are welcome to do that as well. * Follow along: You can find me on Instagram @theweightofstillness for daily encouragement, behind-the-scenes thoughts, and community. * Share the hope: If this message touched your heart, please share it with someone who needs it. You never know who in your life is waiting to hear that they are loved, valued, and worthy of grace. The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry. There will never be a paywall blocking you from fullaccess to what God is teaching me as I embracestillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Weight of Stillness at weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe [https://weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Learning to Be Loved

In this episode, I’m opening up about: * Why restoring my marriage was easier in those first two weeks than letting down my guard with God. * The fear that kept me communicating with the other man even after I returned to my husband. * How a deep misunderstanding of scripture convinced me that God was only waiting to punish me. * The song I “hoarded” for months, the distractions that tried to stop me from writing, and how God used a grocery store run to break through my walls. Today, I'm taking you back to 2012 to look at the massive gap between what my mind knew and what my heart felt during my first week home. It is a continuation of The Ugly Truth episodes (3 in total) and how my heart towards God began to thaw. Thank you for walking this journey with me. Have a wonderful, restful weekend! Jamie Let’s Stay Connected If this spoke to your heart, there are a few quick ways you can support my ministry: * Subscribe: Hit the subscribe button here on Substack so you never miss a post or podcast episode. It is always free to subscribe. If you want to support my ministry with a financial donation, you are welcome to do that as well. * Follow along: You can find me on Instagram @theweightofstillness for daily encouragement, behind-the-scenes thoughts, and community. * Share the hope: If this message touched your heart, please share it with someone who needs it. You never know who in your life is waiting to hear that they are loved, valued, and worthy of grace. The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry. There will never be a paywall blocking you from fullaccess to what God is teaching me as I embracestillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Weight of Stillness at weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe [https://weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A Foray into Erasure Poetry

Today’s podcast is going to be a little bit different. I’m pretty nerouvs about it, if I”m being honest. An honesty is something I promise here so… I just started writing poetry again after 30 years. Learning about free verse—where it doesn’t all have to rhyme—was a welcome relief. I didn’t know there were so many kinds of poetry. Here’s my extensive knowledge of the different types of poetry: * Rhyming (likely not the offical name?) * Haiku (I just started writing these just for fun about random nonsense) * Tanka (similar to Haiku—I’ve only written one) Free verse (if there’s a full definition and I’ve been doing it wrong, just let me live in my bubble where I make up the rules, okay?) When Mandy Morris [https://substack.com/profile/356500723-mandy-morris] posted about Erasure Poetry I was instantly curious. And since 2026 is the year of trying new things, I began my research. I’ll let you decide if it is…anything…I tried! This is the text I worked off of. It is from one of my favorite scenes in The Chosen. It is an exchange between Jesus and Little James, about the limp he carries, and the pain he lives with daily. Jesus: In the Father’s will, I could heal you right now and you’d have a good story to tell, yes? Little James: Yes, that you do miracles. Jesus: And that’s a good story. But there are already dozens who can tell that story. And there will be hundreds more, even thousands. But think of the story you have, especially in this journey to come, if I don’t heal you. To know how to proclaim that you still praise God, in spite of this. To know how to focus on all that matters so much more than the body, to show people that you can be patient with your suffering here on earth, because you know you’ll spend eternity with no suffering. Not everyone can understand that. How many people do you think the Father and I trust this with, hmm? Not many. Little James: But the others, they’re so much more... Jesus: So much more what? Little James: I don’t know. Stronger? Better at this? Jesus: James, I love you but I don’t want to hear that ever again. Little James: I know how easy it is to say the song of David, that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made, but it doesn’t make this any easier. And in this group, it doesn’t make me feel like any less of a burden. Jesus: A burden? First of all, it is far easier to deal with your slow walking than it is to deal with Simon’s temper. Are you fast? Do you look impressive when you walk? Maybe not. But these are things the Father doesn’t care about. You are going to do more for me than most people ever dream. So many people need healing in order to believe in me, or they need healing because their hearts are so sick. That doesn’t apply to you and many are healed or not healed because the Father in Heaven has a plan for them, which may be a mystery. And we remember what Job said. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Jesus and Little James together: Blessed be the name of the Lord. Jesus: When you pass from this earth and you meet your Father in Heaven, Isaiah promises that you will leap like a deer. Your reward will be great. So hold on a little longer and when you discover yourself finding true strength because of your weakness, and when you do great things in my name, in spite of this, the impact will last for generations. Do you understand? Little James: Yes. Thank you, Master. Jesus: A man like you, healing others, oh, what a sight! So from that, based on my research, you kind of “black out” the words you don’t want, leaving a free-standing thought or idea, and it becomes and Erasure Poem. I’m open to thoughts, but I am sensitive, so maybe sandwich any criticism with something nice, alright? Jamie The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry. There will never be a paywall blocking you from fullaccess to what God is teaching me as I embracestillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Weight of Stillness at weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe [https://weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Village of Montunui

When I started this podcast on Substack, I began with reading through an old blog post about Maui, from the movie Moana. Over the course of several weeks back in 2022, I watched the movie Moana on repeat. Over and over again. There was something rising up in me, and I couldn’t contain it. I had to watch. I had to take it in. And I had to write. And write. And write. And write. What came from that intense pouring out of everything in my brain that had anything to do with the movie and finding your purpose was ten different, very long, blog posts. Each post looked at a different character and showed how we are like that chacracter, or how we can find hope and inspiration in their story. So today, we’re going back to the beginning of that journey into Moana and how God tore my heart wide open and showed me things you wouldn’t think possible through a simple Disney film. I hope that as you listen, you can hear God speaking something new to your heart. Thanks for listening! Jamie The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry. There will never be a paywall blocking you from fullaccess to what God is teaching me as I embracestillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Weight of Stillness at weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe [https://weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Fords of the Living Room

One Friday night, I found myself in a place I think some of you can relate to: exhausted, hurt, and sobbing alone on my living room floor. In the aftermath of a long week and a hard conversation with my husband, Kris, I sat with the weight of my own faults. Specifically, that sharp, sarcastic tone that tends to slip out when I’m drained. Or hot—but that’s a story for another day. As I sat there, I realized that these messy moments of marital discord are very real battlegrounds. A real battle was being waged for our marriage and for our very souls. In this episode, I’m getting a little nerdy and diving deep into two of my favorite scenes from The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings. We’re talking about Lan Mandragoran’s defiant final stand and Arwen’s fierce protection of Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen. More importantly, we’re talking about how Jesus stands in the gap for us when we are too weak to fight for ourselves. And I’ll be honest here. I usually hate books and movies that have battles in them, and that’s putting it mildly. I also detest car/chase scenes, because what are those if not battles at high speed? But I digress… Outside of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I only read once way back in the late 80s, I also grew up thinking I hated fantasy. So I avoided any thought of the genre. Like the plague. On purpose. But something happened in 2001 that shifted my thinking and opened my eyes up to the fantasy genre. It was the release of a small, barely known movie called The Fellowship of the Ring. Barely minutes into the film that I only begrudgingly went to see because I wanted to make my Tolkien-loving husband happy, I realized that I was about to be swept away into an adventure that would continue to speak to my life for decades. After watching those movies, I listened to the books. I never could understand why Tolkien spent so much time describing a tree, but not all writers think and write the same. I simply don’t care for all those details. And yet, I can go on and on and on, if it is a topic I feel passionately about. So perhaps I have been unfair to Tolkien. Perhaps my writing style is a lot closer to his, at the very least, in terms of length! It was a slippery slope after that, and my life was once again turned upside down when I began to listen to The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I could literally write for days about some of the profound truths contained in them. Somehow, after that, I heard about Brandon Sanderson. That put my husband and me both on a path to gorging ourselves on everything he had to offer. And boy was it a lot! We started with Mistborn, and when we learned that he would be completing Jordan’s books after his death, we were ecstatic. And while I am not talking about it today, Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive…well, I would spend even more time on that, if we all had that kind of time. But alas, that is a post (or 100) for another day. If you’ve ever felt like the enemy was closing in on your peace, your marriage, or your mind, this one is for you. We may fall down, but we are still in the fight. Jamie The Weight of Stillness is a reader-supported ministry. There will never be a paywall blocking you from fullaccess to what God is teaching me as I embracestillness. But if you are led to donate to this ministry God is birthing out of my journey, you can become a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Weight of Stillness at weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe [https://weightofstillness.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]