Gone for Good: Finding Healing, Faith, and Purpose in Midlife with Karen Sjoblom

Dawn Damon: Hey, beautiful Bravehearts, wonderful to be with you again today. My guest is an award-winning author, freelance writer, and editor who's had nearly 40 years in healthcare, science education, high tech, nonprofit communications, and decades in faith-based nonfiction. She's the co-founder of Eve's Daughters, a nonprofit for single moms and their kids. And most recently, she's the author of her fifth book, Gone For Good. She lives in the Midwest, writing, speaking, teaching, and dreaming about what God has up his sleeve for her. Next, please welcome to the Brave Hearted Woman, Karen Show Bloom.

Hey, Karen!

Karen Sjoblom: Hi there! So good to be here with you.

Dawn Damon: Thank you so much for being here, Karen. This story of yours is about going through hard times and transitions, you call it desert seasons. But you say it shouldn't be something that's avoided at all costs, but rather it's critical to our emotional and spiritual growth. How did you try to avoid your midlife exodus?

Karen Sjoblom: Well, the truth was, when I felt like it was time for me to go back home, I thought I was gonna be going back to the place that I left, except there was, you know, 22 years in between. So you can try to return and feel like you're gonna just slip on a comfortable old pair of loafers, but that was not the case.

And so I think that the dry times of realizing how much had changed. How much still needed to be addressed and the growth that was required in that, the things I'd have to let go of. I was in a huge place of transition, not just geographically, but being an empty nester, being a little bit unsettled in my life, right?

I mean, I even lost the family dog during that time, and so it was just a ton of changes and it does feel like a desert that you wonder. If you're ever gonna make it through. But I do believe that there are things that we learn in our desert seasons that we can't learn any other time, and we do have God walking along with us. And so we will eventually reach the far side of our deserts, different than the people we were when we entered them.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, so, so rich, so good. What you're saying, I have a similar story of a transition and all of the things, and then the dog I saw. I saw that and I'm like, oh, my sister. I understand you, can feel me.

Karen Sjoblom: Yes, exactly. And we do try to avoid the midlife exodus. We want to take the easy button, hit the easy button, or the short path, the beautiful path. What do you mean? I have to go through this dry desert, God. But what did you eventually learn and get out of it? You know, partway through writing, I had a conversation with an old friend who made a quip of, Sounds Like You're In Your Own Exodus.

And that is where the subtitle of the book came from of stories from a midlife exodus. It taught me so much about. If you look back scripturally and you look at what the Israelites went through and how they thought everything was gonna be just fabulous as soon as they got outta slavery, right? It was recognizing in my own life the things that I was a slave enslaved to, that I didn't even recognize; it could be the people pleasing, it could be hanging on to this kind of self-righteous victimization of what you've been through in life. You know, the things that are still dragging us down. And I think going through our, our desert times, it peels those things away, and we're no longer able. Or willing or really want to drag those things with us in the second half of our lives. I mean, it really is kind of this abrupt stop. I think that we have a choice to go left or right in the rest of our days, and what are we gonna do?

Dawn Damon: Yeah. That's really powerful. You know, in the book you talk about leaving home at various stages of life. Why is this poignant when it happens at midlife? How did going home to your childhood and all of these things come together for thoughts?

Karen Sjoblom: So it feels to me that we reach a certain age, just as you talk about in your bio as well, of things that are changing. Things that we thought were gonna be forever. If we're raising kids, we're in the midst of it every day. We feel like it's never gonna end, right? But all of a sudden, there's an expanse that opens up, and we get to decide. And by leaving home. I mean, leaving the things that we're used to and we're comfortable with, the things that we did not think were gonna end it is setting out on an adventure.

Sometimes willingly and happily, like getting a new job and moving cross-country. Sometimes we go kicking and screaming. We might go through a divorce. You know, our children might be estranged from us. There are a number of things that can happen that upset our status quo. And so I just personally believe that midlife. Especially for women, because of child raising and all of those things, it is an especially rich but fraught time where we get to decide how we wanna go forward.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, it's so true, and I don't want it to sound cliche, and yet we understand. I think it's the most significant transition in our lives as midlife women and a little bit beyond because everything's different. Our bodies are different, our skin is different, our hair is different, and our relationships are different. Our role is different. We might even find ourselves, you know, the classic sandwich generation, where we're still kind of caring for those kids even though they're leaving and they're independent.

All of a sudden, we're caring for our older parents now, maybe, and so we thought this was gonna be our season, our time. Right, right. But here we are. Yes. Still trying to figure out what I wanna do in life? You know, so, but I liked in, in our opening, you said you're excited to see what God has up his sleeve for your next, right? You didn't grow up in a faith-based household.

Karen Sjoblom: No. I took the Jesus crash course. I joked about that. I was raised kind of lukewarm Methodist and left the church at 14, and it was not an uncommon story. If you are immature, as some of us are at 14, and we don't hear our prayers answered, and we don't see things getting easier, and the things that we've asked for for years aren't happening, it's easier to say to ourselves, you must not be very powerful. God, you know, I'll just handle this myself. And so I ended up walking through what I say as a desert of my own making between 14 and 37, completely self-propelled. And super perfectionistic and super controlling and all of those things, and I ended up going through a divorce, and I had a then 2-year-old to raise, and I just came to a point of realizing.

I'm just gonna have my life if I don't do something different. Like, there's just gonna be a repeat of everything that had happened, and that's when I ended up coming back to God, kind of with fear and trembling. I did not know what to expect, but I did end up doing kind of the face plant and to Christianity and had mentors and counselors and went to 12-step meetings and read every book I could and all of those kinds of things to kind of catch up for the time that I was gone.

Dawn Damon: You really had a hunger and a thirst to know God, like for real, and learning all of those things. Sounds like you took a deep dive, you said a crash course, and that's wonderful. You don't get into the minutia in your book, but you reference experiencing significant impacts and after effects from addiction and abuse in your childhood and early adulthood. How did that color your view of God back then, and how does it shape you today?

Karen Sjoblom: It took a lot of years for me to realize that God can bring good outta bad things, and I know what a simple statement that is, but I tell you what, it took me a long time. I never believed. For years and years, anything good could have come out of being in a family where there was alcoholism and fighting and anger and unsettledness all the time.

And yet I can look now and better understand how God wired me. So if I'm a big proponent of finding out your spiritual gifts, it's because all of us are hardwired for things that only we can do, and it's really helpful to know those things. And so what I came, I agree with that. Know about. What I came to know about myself is I have my top spiritual gift is mercy, right?

But I have come over the years to learn how to communicate well. I have a heart for people who are hurting, and I would not be able to do the work that I feel God has called me to do. Had I not gone through all of the hard stuff, I could not sit with a woman who had been abused with any sort of understanding if I hadn't gone through it myself.

And so those are the things that I think can happen. And he just turns those things on their heads if we'll allow it. We have to be willing to have him do those miracles for us. And I always say that I believe he gets so much mileage out of our healing. It's never just for us. It is always supposed to go through us to other people.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, you're saying so many things that I'm just, I'm such a believer in, and I've experienced myself too, and I know that God doesn't author the evil things that happen to us. It's not like he, you know, somehow constructs these things, but because life is going to happen, because there is an enemy out there, there is evil out there.

It's going to touch us, but God says, I'm not gonna let that crush you. I'm not gonna let that. But I'm going to take it and I'm going to shape you and use it and grow you through it. And I believe there's a depth that you use the word depth. There's a deep well that we can draw from to we can help others. Right, nourish others. Stand with others, going through it, provide that hope, and you do that so beautifully. You've written five books, so clearly you also have the gift of communicating and writing, and putting your words on paper. I love that you've used a lot of the names of God in this book.

Dawn Damon: Yes. And the study of the names of God is so rich. Why did you do that in a book on Gone for Good?

Karen Sjoblom: I didn't realize until I was partway through that the word Exodus actually has two meetings. So one is the way out, and one is the book of names. It is the first place that God refers to Himself. Oh, and so I just thought, how poignant would it be? And I know that other women are in this position. To look back at the hardest times of our lives, whatever the circumstances were, and realize that God, a certain facet of God, was present there. So, for example, when I talk in my section three, which is the hardest, you know, thing, that kind of thing that came up with my family, I was referring to Jehovah Rafa, and that is the God who heals.

Right when I came back to the Midwest and I felt completely invisible, and I wasn't sure really why I moved after a while. The idea of the God who sees me was poignant. You know, it is just recognizing that he meets us so personally and so tenderly in those hard times of our lives, that like he misses nothing about what we're going through, and I just think it was especially meaningful to list out some of those names. They're not in every single chapter, but they do wind through the book.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, that's great. And you brought up the Jehovah Rohe, the God who Sees Me. Right. And that's the story of Hagar, right? Right. When she's running from her mistress in the Old Testament, the story of this woman who was just being abused and heard, and she felt so alone and so abandoned. That's one of the names of God that I really relate to because I could experience those moments. Like, does anyone see me? Does anybody know? Right. What I'm going through, what I'm feeling, but God does, he's the God who sees, and he doesn't just see and go, oh, look at what he sees with love and compassion. So wonderful that you included that in your book. Right.

Karen Sjoblom: And the Jehovah Rafa, that was the reference in the story, the Exodus story of when Moses was instructed to throw the stick into the water because they didn't have drinkable water, and that he made it sweet. You know, and the idea of, there's one of the pastors that I quote in the book, he had talked about in human terms, the idea of throwing a bitter stick was bitter wood into bitter waters, would've been just more bitter. But God's math, right? He changes bitter to from bitter to sweet. And so it was just. The idea that he might be able to heal so many hard things was just I didn't believe for a while. I really had to kind of walk through i,t and then eventually was able to look backward and go, well, look at that. Look what you did. It was amazing. Yes.

Dawn Damon: Karen, tell us, was there a moment when you kind of had the breakthrough? Was it just a gradual belief in trusting God, or was there something that stood out to you and said, I surrender. That's it. You're there. You're doing it. How did that happen for you?

Karen Sjoblom: I think there were a number of moments. I mean, I feel like I went into this particular desert season pretty strong in my faith. I had been through them before kicking and screaming. So this one, you know, you never really wanna go into it, but you're kind of like, okay, I know the drill, but the thing that.

I think what was so meaningful to me was just the recognition at a far deeper level that he could take the most broken parts of my childhood. And weave them into something good. He could take the hardest relationships and bring about something redemptive in them. I feel a lot of hurt and resentment, and misunderstanding peeled away this last trip through the desert. If that makes any sense. And so there's just maybe a softening and an acceptance that came this time around of recognizing that he's never done with us. You know, he doesn't leave us in the desert. Right.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. Amen.

Karen Sjoblom: I quote at one point. There was a quote about the idea that every storm runs outta rain, and I think every desert runs outta sand too.

At some point, you leave, you get to walk out the other side, and you walk out changed, and you get to live differently from that point on, you know? So I just think that there's a lot of healing that can be had. It's funny, we cling to the lives that we have. Not wanting anything to change. And then if we go kicking and screaming and have it changed, we come out the other side and we're like, I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Dawn Damon: Right. Don't wanna go.

Karen Sjoblom: I don’t wanna go through it again. Right. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. That's

Dawn Damon: So true.

And I don't know if you talk about this at all in some place in your book, but some things we do have to grieve over. I know that at this season of life, I trust God. I know what you just said is so true. I know I'm gonna come out better. But is there a place to grieve? 'cause some things are just gone forever, like. It's permanently different. Right? And I have to grieve this. I feel this sorrow. What would you say to someone who might be in that place where it's changed forever? Right.

Karen Sjoblom: I would say, I mean, that is why the book is called Gone For Good, right? There are things that were gonna be gone for good that were not coming back. Some of those things were for my good. However, it doesn't mean that they didn't hurt. Letting go of him. Right, right. So I just believe with all of my heart that grief, if we give it its full due, we come out so much deeper and so much more whole than we could have ever imagined.

I talk in my Section four a lot about, with Henry Cloud, and he talks about how grief is the hardest thing to enter into because we have to do it voluntarily. Nothing forces us into it. Either we're willing or we're not willing. But he also said that is the thing, grief is the thing that heals all of the other things.

I remember reading that and just my mind being blown because our natural tendency is to stiff-arm any kind of suffering, any kind of grief, and we hold it off as long as possible. And what he's saying basically is, no, no, no. Let it come. Let it come. Let it wash over you. You know, like. You'll be supported in the midst of it with your God and your people, and you'll be different for it.

And we get things that we could not get any other way. So I would encourage anybody who is in a place of grief right now to just feel it. Just feel it, and just know that it's not forever; you will come out of it.

Dawn Damon: That's important to know, and I like that you're giving us some definition, like letting grief, stepping into grief, is being willing to feel what we're feeling. Filling our days with busyness and rushing and noise and music and all kinds of things, but being willing to sit knowing that we will not fall into a black hole of nothingness and never right, 'cause it feels like that. It does. But that the sun will come out again, will rise, we'll feel we'll go back down.

We'll come back up. But grief has a way of working its way out. People say time is a healer, and I say, no, time is not a healer. Time, if you're angry, over time you'll be angrier. Right? If you sit in that grief and you let God do your healing, then healing will be right. Time works for you.

Karen Sjoblom: Right. And I would also add that there are levels of grief that we go through on the same topics. A friend of mine really wisely said years ago, it's like a spiral staircase, right? You are working your way up, you're seeing the same topic from a different vantage point.

Dawn Damon: Ah. Right.

Karen Sjoblom: So that's good. There were a lot of things that I thought I had dealt with from my childhood, with my parents, with a whole bunch of things. And yet with age, with perspective, with distance, with growth, with healing, with all of these things, I could look at things differently. Now, see, just maybe another layer that needed to be peeled away. Yes. And so it's not a one-and-done; how I wish it were, it would make our lives so much easier. Right. But we do, when we revisit the grief, I don't know that it is as deep or as sharp if we have dealt with it a little bit before, you know, it's just a, it's some more nuance.

Dawn Damon: Yes. That benefits us. It's like we have the grace to reinterpret our childhood at a more mature level again.

Karen Sjoblom: Exactly.

Dawn Damon: See it and understand it.

Karen Sjoblom: Yeah.

Dawn Damon: So let me ask you this, because we know God redeems everything. How would you suggest readers, you know, study their own stories of redemption, and look at their own lives in this lens that we're talking about today?

Karen Sjoblom: So I have had the opportunity to teach some classes, which I absolutely love, and I love speaking to people about their stories. It is just a huge passion of mine to see what God has redeemed, like to see how they're wired. So that's where the spiritual gifts come in. And then to see how he has redeemed us. And so one of the things I've created is a very simple matrix, if you will, and I call it story scars, mercy, and mission. Okay?

And it truly is looking at our stories. Looking at our scars, the places where our hearts were broken, the dreams that have not come true, all of those things. Then, where did God meet us in the middle of our grief? That's where the mercy came in.

Dawn Damon: Yeah.

Karen Sjoblom: And then how does that change the trajectory of our missions in life? So I have met many women who have, for example, struggled with infertility, and they thought life was never gonna be complete unless they had a baby, and they could not fathom going on. If that never came to fruition, I'm thinking of a person that I know who it didn't. What ended up happening was God provided, if you will, rental kids, right?

There were some nieces and nephews. There were other children and young adults who needed to be poured into, and it became a family. And so God redeemed it in a different way, and so part of it is on us to be willing to have him. Do what I jokingly call the big switcheroo in life. Right? Like you wanted the one thing, but you got another thing.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. Right.

Karen Sjoblom: So we have to be willing to accept that and willing to keep our hands open. Mm-hmm. But also, our eyes open to see how he is redeeming this loss. How is he healing my broken heart over something? And so I encourage everybody to really look at their stories that way. It may be through journaling, you know, my latest edition of this book has 40 questions in the back, that if you are in a small group or there's some good trust that's already set up.

It'd be a great idea to discuss those with each other, but they can also be used for just private journaling because some people's stories have some really gnarly twists and turns in them, and they're not really meant for the light of day. It's just between you and God, right? Yeah. And so looking at those stories and looking at the miles you've walked and where you ended up can be an incredibly healing thing.

Dawn Damon: Say again? It's. The stories' scars, mercy, and mission. Is that what you were thinking? Yes. Stories, scars. Mm-hmm.

Karen Sjoblom: Mercy. Mercy and Mission. And it's on my website, which I know you'll have in your notes, but I will. It is so simple and so profound and it, there's many, many wise people that are talking about story work who have talked about story work for years.

I think of John Eldridge and Dan Aer and people that I absolutely love. Who, you know, they recognize the value of knowing where we're going. You know, I think about that scripture, and I think it is Hagar, right, of like, where have you come from, and where are you going? I mean, those are huge, huge questions for us to look at, especially at midlife, right?

We have done so much by this juncture in our lives, and we're not done. We're not ready to be put out to pasture, right? We know that God has good for us still, but what is it? And are we gonna be lugging all of our hurts with us? Or can we finally kind of put them down and leave them be, right?

Dawn Damon: Yes. Going through childhood, I'm thinking of my own. And you've made the journey. I have made the journey too. I did decide that God's grace was sufficient, and healing and forgiveness were there. I didn. Have to cut any family members off. I didn't have to say, Oh, you're toxic. You're gone. Right, right. But that's part of some people's journey, is it not? It sure is. What would you say about that piece?

Karen Sjoblom: Oh my goodness. I, that's another whole thing, isn't it? It is. It is. I've gone through this with both my parents, honestly. My father has passed. My mom is still here. I do think that there are times. When it is called for to try to prevent more pain from coming in, like somewhere along the line, you need to staunch a wound. If at all possible, where it can be done in love. And that's a difficult thing. One of the things I've talked about so much lately is that it has been made into something almost kind of trite to say somebody, oh, you're toxic. Cutting them off. Right. Or buzzword, right.

As Christians, I mean, we are asked to be long-suffering. Now we're also asked to be wise. Mm-hmm. We're not supposed to be doormats. Correct. But we are supposed to be willing to talk things through with people, to be willing to ask for what we need, to be willing to ask people to be respectful of us. You know, all of those kinds of things that take.

Oh my gosh. A ton of spiritual maturity. It takes so much like we are being stretched way more than we wanna be in our difficult relationships, but God has set them up that way in a way. Right? Yeah. And so I do think for myself, and I write about this at length in the book, I did need to have some time away from my mom, and what I came to learn.

Is that she had come to me her whole life as her little tiny God, her low little lowercase G God, right? And I was gonna fail every single time. I am not the God of the universe. I could not make her happy all the time. I couldn't fulfill every need that she had; what she was bringing to me, she needed to bring to herself.

I was conditioned from a very young age that whatever you brought me, okay, I was gonna just do my best to make it happen. Right. And so that led to a lot of burnout and disappointment and resentment and everything on my end. But after a while and after realizing it and after taking all of my hurt and everything to God, there was a time, and it was kind of like, you know what?

It's time. It's just time. And I remember writing her an email and saying. If you want to try to reestablish some communications, I'm open to that. You know, I don't wanna go back to the way things were, but I kind of joke in there, saying like, I thought maybe we're gonna hash things out. We've hashed nothing out.

It is what it is. Right. I am aware of the limits of that relationship, and that's okay. And I've let her know what you need as you age. Whatever I can do, I will help, you know, but it's just, there's a clarity that came. I do think that sometimes that time can facilitate that clarity, but we have to be willing to let down our righteousness and our resentment and all of those kinds of things.

Dawn Damon: You've taken the journey, you've made the exodus, the pilgrimage. Mm-hmm. All of the things you've talked about. Not just once, twice, how many times it, you know, take another lap around this mountain, maybe. Exactly. But it's the journey.

Karen Sjoblom: It's our collective journey.

Dawn Damon: Yes, it is. And you've done well. And thank you for being willing to take all the experiences and put them into this book, where others can use them. Tell us where to find your book, Gone For Good. Give us the subtitle as well, and where we can find it.

Karen Sjoblom: Sure, it is gone for good lessons from a midlife exodus, and you can find it at Amazon or you can find it from a link on my website. And it has been such a delight to me to hear from women, get emails from all different places from people who are learning things about their own story and recognizing that God has always been there with them, especially during the hardest times.

Dawn Damon: Yeah.

Karen Sjoblom: And that is.

Dawn Damon: Well said.

Karen Sjoblom: A lovely thing to carry with us as we go through the rest of our days. Yeah.

Dawn Damon: You probably just said it, but articulate again, what would you say to a woman who's in that exodus right now?

Karen Sjoblom: You are gonna come out of it different and better and more whole and more faithful and more able to share with others. And yeah, just keep left foot right, footing it, and you will get there.

Dawn Damon: Just keep walking. Thank you so much. We so appreciate you, Karen. Show Bum for being here today with us. The name of the book is Gone for Good, and you'll have the opportunity to click on that link in our show notes today. Thanks for being with us, BraveHearted Woman Podcast, and I am gonna leave you like I always do. Regardless of where you are in your season of life, perhaps this is your moment to find your brave and live your dreams. God bless you!