Jacque Watkins

finding grace through the mud

MS 057 Lelia Chealey: Parenting Teens and Young Adults Through Their Mud

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Welcome to episode 057 of Mud Stories! Mud Stories is a podcast dedicated to bringing you inspiration in your muddiest moments, hope to make it through your mud, and encouragement for you to know, you are not alone. In today’s episode I’m talking with Lelia Chealey, a writer, speaker, and conference director who lives in Nebraska […]

MS 046 Colleen Mitchell: Loss and Ongoing Grief

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Welcome to episode 046 of Mud Stories! Mud Stories is a podcast dedicated to bringing you inspiration in your muddiest moments, hope to make it through your mud, and encouragement for you to know, you are not alone. In today’s episode I’m talking with Colleen Mitchell, wife to Greg and mother to five amazing sons here on earth, […]

MS 012: Kate Battistelli ~ Anger at God & Surrendering to His Highest Good

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Welcome to episode 012 of Mud Stories! Mud Stories is a podcast dedicated to bringing you inspiration in your muddiest moments, hope to make it through your mud, and encouragement for you to know, you are not alone. In today’s episode I’m talking with Kate Battistelli, an empty-nester who’s been married to Mike for 30 years. She’s […]

When You’re Spun by Change and Weighed Down by Grief

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This past month my friend’s mother dies suddenly, the Sauer family says goodbye to Ben, their brave four-year old cancer-fighter, and another friend cares for her husband in hospice, in what are sure to be his last days here on this earth. And they cling to the hope he’ll make it through Father’s day before […]

How God Uses our Messy Muddy Life

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The more I read, the more I see how the Scriptures paint a portrait of a God who sees. A God who knows even me. Especially me. And who uses my life to paint His glory. He who is good and kind, just and righteous, divine and man. Acquainted with suffering and intimate with grief. […]

Choosing to Give Thanks and Fighting for Joy

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I so clearly remember how I wanted to be a mother. I watched new moms with their babies, and dreamed of holding a new baby of my own. Holding and bathing. Feeding and changing–a life of meeting my baby’s needs. And then, I became a mother. Four children in six years. Months and months of […]

When Pain Blinds Us to the Truth

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The truth is hard to see when we’re in pain. Doubt settles in like an opaque cloud clinging to a mountain and never letting go. Confusion rolls in as a fog, preventing us from seeing more than a few inches beyond our face. And we can’t see the sun that shines above the thickness. We […]

When You Wonder if There is Purpose in Pain

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She loses her job this week and walks away with one less key on her ring and a feeling of loss in her heart. It happens so fast. Abrupt, sudden, and unexpected. Everything becomes ordinary all at once, and none of it is easy at all. After years of giving with grace and mentoring with […]