Running Into Healing: The Story Behind Willow Weston’s Book

Welcome to the Collide podcast. Today is a little bit different, as you might already be able to tell, as I am not Willow.

You're used to hearing Willow ask the questions, but we have flipped the mic today, so we're excited for a really fun conversation. I feel like a kid who's been given the steering wheel. This episode is going to be really special, and we're so glad that you're tuning in for it.

My name is Kenna, and I'm here with Kristen and Michelle, and all of us are former or current Collide staff members.

So this is a little bit of a reunion, and we wanted to do something just kind of different to celebrate the release of Willow's new book, Collide running into healing when life hands you hurt. So instead of her hosting today, all three of us are going to take over and co host and ask Willem the questions.

Oh, man. Guys, I love this so much. I could get used to this every single week.

Good.

We're gonna have a really fun conversation that will not feel like an interrogation. Sometimes when it's three on one, I'm like, oh, no, Poor Willow.

But we won't interrogate you.

We're just going to ask you a bit about your book writing process, and I'm so excited, personally, to just hear about it, too, more in depth and have the time to chat with you. Today we're just going to slow down and reflect and invite people into the heart behind what you've written, Willow. So I'm so excited.

I love it. It's so good to be with all of you together.

Well, I kind of wanted to kick off some questions for you with.

Looking back, I know you didn't set out to the Ministry of Collide, but I thought it'd be kind of fun if you could walk back and tell people the story of the moment that you first thought this could be a book. What was that moment for you and kind of give people a little bit of that backstory?

Yeah, totally.

I mean, I thought I was going to write a book way before I knew Collide, the Ministry was going to be a thing, which is kind of funny because now it's kind of actually unfolded the opposite of what I thought.

But, I mean, years ago, when I had just had my kiddos and they were littles, my mom moved to my town and I hadn't lived with her since I was 15 years old. I. She tried to get rid of me when I was 15 years old and another family took me in.

And so her moving in on my scene she knocked on the door one day, and I went to go answer the door, and I looked out, and I saw it was her. And I just went into this. Kind of reverted back to seeing just all this pain and neglect and abandonment and childhood wounds.

And I panicked, and I didn't want to let her in. And I ran upstairs and I hid in the closet with Bella because I didn't want her to know we were in there.

And I had this spiritual moment in that closet where the Lord said, willow, I have done a lot of healing in your life, but there's more to be done.

And I had this great sense that I deeply knew that I couldn't stay in there and be a good mom, that I had issues, that there were things that God was inviting me to deal with. And so I stepped outside the closet and made an appointment with a counselor.

And I don't know, within a week or something, I. I was in this Christian counseling office. And she asked what brought me in there. And I started making jokes about playing hide and seek alone, but basically had this epiphany in this office.

And it was nothing, the counselor said, but this realization that I had been born into wounds, that I collided with wounds because my parents didn't get healing. They wounded me, and now I was going to wound my children. And I just started crying out, wanting something different.

And I think the same is true for me, and the same is true for you and everyone we run into. We're all wounded, and when our wounds collide, we hurt each other.

And so I. I was just having this epiphany that when I look at Jesus in the New Testament, when he collides with people, they're made more whole than broken. And I wanted that. And I needed that. I wanted it for myself. I wanted it for my mom and her addiction. I wanted it for my friends and my family.

So I pay the lady her $85. I walk out of this counseling office, and I heard God's voice say, you're going to do something with these two words, wounded, collision.

And I wasn't looking to do something because I was just a mess, hiding in a closet. But I had the sense even then, which was so many years ago, that I was going to write a book.

And then out of this place, place, like within the next week or something, a college girl asked me to mentor her. And that turned into a small group of 25 college girls in my living room.

We're looking at Jesus colliding with people in the New Testament and him bringing healing to Their pain. And as he. We were watching him do that in the Bible, he was doing it in our lives. And then that turned into this ministry.

And here I was, a mom of two kids, and I was working out my own pain and need of healing with Jesus, and I'm ministering to all these people and we're being real about our pain. And then more people are coming. Then it unfolds into this whole huge ministry that I didn't have time to write a book. Right.

On some level, I didn't have time to write a book. And now I can see that. I think God wanted me to live the story before I told it. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 15, 20 years.

Yeah, I love that. I'm. I've always just loved seeing your faithfulness to those words. I feel like God gave you those words so long ago and to see all the ways that he.

You have done something with those words. Even though you maybe initially thought it was going to be a book and you took maybe the backdoor route than. Than what you thought.

It's been very cool to have a front row seat after watching that all unfold. Would you say that there was anything that almost stopped you from taking the leap to write this book?

Were there things that along the way held you back and kept you from wanting to take that leap?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a million things.

But the main thing, and I think it's true for a lot of people who want to put voice to their story, I knew that by talking about my pain and my childhood pain specifically, that it would be very hard for my parents.

And that was really something I've wrestled with for a good two decades, really wanting my parents to know Jesus and know his love and not throw them under a bus for Jesus glory.

And I think that the timing worked out in such a way where, you know, now this book just happens to be being released after my parents have both passed, which wasn't like a plan, but maybe it was in God's plan. But I think for me, like, I really.

I really didn't know how to tell my story because on one level, I grew up with one parent who was an addict, and she was in complete denial of her addiction. And so how could I tell the story of my experience in that when she denies it? And I was told all growing up not to tell what happened in my home?

And so, you know, I remember in. Maybe I'm taking too much of a deep dive, but like in fifth grade, or something. I got called into the principal's office, and the.

There was a counselor in there, and the principal, and they said that people had been calling the school, concerned about what had been going on in my home, and that they were requiring that I go to a counselor every week and to not tell home, which is so funny. That would never happen today. But at the time, they were like, don't tell home that we're doing this.

But I also went to that counseling appointment every single week, and I didn't tell the counselor about what was going on in my home. And so I just grew up in this experience. Experience where I wasn't supposed to talk about it. I was supposed to get over it.

And so to be that girl and then to decide to put it all down on paper and come out with it, like, I'm literally not doing this because it's a good time. I'm doing it because I truly hope that the Lord can use it to help other people in their pain. Otherwise, why am I doing this? Right. Right. So that.

That is really has been, like, the biggest obstacles, like, how do I tell the truth of my story? And I think a lot of women can relate to that.

It feels like you're just exposing yourself to people's judgments and opinions, and, you know, you're bearing your soul and hoping that people will connect with it in a way that brings health and hope and healing.

Yeah. I'm curious Willow, too, after so many years. And like, you're saying this is not. Was not an easy book to write.

It's not even an easy story to tell to one person or a room of people or the people, which is what you've been doing over the years. But it's really not an easy story to write.

I imagine.

What season of life were you in when you started writing it? And what about that season of life felt like it was the right time to, like, really put pen to paper about this story.

Yeah. It's funny because I think the book has taken on, like, 20 iterations of itself, which I hear from other writers that that's totally common.

I started writing this book after I had that experience in that counseling office where the Lord gave me those words. But the way that I was writing it wasn't like I'm sitting down and writing page one and beginning.

I started putting voice to different ideas and thoughts and experiences, whether those were about Jesus or those were about something. I had experienced pain. I had experienced, in a way, that God was inviting me into healing.

And so eventually, over time, I Started piecing together all of these things. And some of them were things that I actually in some sense tried out, if you will, with real, live women. Real, right.

Like for whatever it is around here.

14 Years I've been inviting women to collide with Jesus and taking women along a journey and saying, let's be real about our pain and our brokenness and stop sweeping under rug and moving on and all these things. And let's look at the life of Jesus. Look how he enters our pain and our wounds and wants to bring about healing.

And so a lot of the things that I was writing, I was also kind of like teaching, teaching and testing out and sharing those stories and then seeing how they land and seeing how women take to them.

And so this book is really the collection of childhood stories and stories of Jesus and stories of ways that I've seen Jesus show up to real life women in our ministry and in my life and bring about transformation by his power. So it hasn't been what I always pictured.

Like, I always pictured, like, if you wrote a book, you'd sit down on page one and you'd like, start from there and get to page two and get right.

And it's been more of like a jumbled mess of living the story and taking all these pieces and eventually over and over and over again with different people giving their input and their. And their wisdom and spiritual advice and editors and all the things into, like now a piece of work.

Well, I want to go back to something you said earlier, because for me, this has been the most beautiful part of walking this journey with you. And you talked about how you don't want to just tell your story.

You want to really touch people's lives, and you want women to experience what you experienced. So my question is, when a woman opens this book, what are you hoping she'll experience within the first few chapters?

Yeah, I mean, I hope that I'm giving women permission to be real about their own pain. And it doesn't have to be big pain. It can also be small pain.

Unfortunately, a lot of us have these sort of reoccurring experiences with pain that are really small. They sting. They're like a paper cut. They don't have to be as big as maybe mine feels as far as like childhood neglect or abuse or whatever.

But what happens is this small pain, when we don't deal with it, starts to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate and grow an infection. And women have really, all of us have been taught how to deal with our pain.

And a lot of the ways we've been taught isn't really ushering in true healing. And so we're trying to do all these things to heal ourselves, and it's not really working.

And we're trying to move on, and we're trying to escape our pain and outrun it and do all of these things, and it's leaving us with more pain. And then we're hurting other people. Like, I was in the closet that day with Bella, and we're hurting our own lives.

And so my hope is that women will resonate with the experience. Experience of, yeah, I have some mess, I have some pain. I have some experience of brokenness, and I want to invite God into that. And then we get a.

We get to do that together.

Was there a chapter or a section that was just particularly hard for you to write?

Oh, man. I think of a few things.

I think on some level, the editing where you have to go over and over again, word for word, line by line editing, really hard memories, like a domestic violence situation. It just is like, we're so good at disassociating from our own story because we've had to, to survive.

I literally had to survive some things so I can disassociate, and I can do it now. And it was so hard to do that because you don't want to write a book and disassociate from your story to where it doesn't have heart.

And you're just, like, telling your story in this factual way. And so I was really trying to continue to stay present every new round of editing, like, every iteration or round of editing or whatever.

But it meant reliving. Reliving the pain over and over again. And honestly, like, I don't want to cry, but I think it was exhausting.

I think it was an exhausting few years, the last few years of, like, I'm in the trenches of this, like, over and over again. It's been really nice now that it's done. Like, it's in print. I mean, I haven't seen it myself, but, like, I hear it's in print.

And I think there's a lightness to me that I haven't been able to, like, feel in a while because I've been having to, like, to dive back into that hard stuff.

But there's something also probably really, like, symbolic and true to that experience for all of us when we need to heal, which is you cannot heal if you don't name the pain. And so you have to actually go back to the hard places, and you have to name it, and you have to call it what it is.

There's no way that God can come into it if you don't do that. And so you do have to go through the heart to get to the other side in reach healing.

And so I think on some level, writing this book brought me into that process in a way that no person would actually choose to do again, relive that pain. But it did also bring about some new healing for me.

So before you said that, if you had written the book in the beginning, when you first got the idea, it wouldn't have been the same book. So what were some of the things that you feel like you needed to go through in the process to get the book to the place where it became.

Yeah, well, it's crazy because I didn't try to start a women's ministry and certainly didn't even realize I had at first. And so that small group I was mentioning earlier turned into, oh, let's do an experiment, invite some people.

And I think we had 50 college kids, and then 80. And then, you know, at one point, I remember there was an event that we called Collide, and there was, like, 300 women there, and I had another job.

Like, I was in college ministry, and I was a mom. And this was just kind of like this random thing that started happening.

And this woman came up to me after an event, and I talk about this in the book. And she. She walked up to me, and I was in the pews, and she couldn't talk. It was like she was mute or something, or socially awkward.

I didn't know what was going on at first is what I'm thinking. These must be the options, because she's saying nothing to me. And. And I said, my name's Willow. You know, what's your name? Nice to meet you.

And then as she's just standing there silent, I start to see that she has emotions, and they're, like, coming from below, like, from her innards. Like, her stomach, like, it literally, like, traveled up.

And she started to share with me how, you know, her and her husband raised their kids in the church, and they loved the church, and they were part of it. And her. Her husband and her got a call one day. Her son was in the military, and he committed suicide.

And she said, you know, the church couldn't handle it. They either didn't want to talk about it, or they pitied them, or they told her that her son was in hell.

And so her and her husband left the church, and. And her husband passed away.

And then she said, just recently, before she was standing there talking to me, like within the recent timeline, she had got a call that her, her other child had attempted suicide. And she looked at me and she, she had no emotion when she first said this.

And she said, I told myself, it's fine, I buried my, my husband, I buried my son, I'll bury my other kid. And then she just like broke open and she said, but today you told me that God can handle my pain.

And, and so she said, you told me he can handle my pain. She's like crying and she's like, today marks the first day of me coming back into the doors of the church.

I would have written a book about pain and Jesus beginning to meet me in that pain, and Jesus showing up in the New Testament and meeting people who are wounded and bringing healing. But I wouldn't have been able to write a book about how I saw the power of what happens when we share our pain.

We purpose our pain to share it with other people. We give other people permission to be real about theirs. And then together we go to the one together who has the power to heal that pain.

I wouldn't have been able to write that story. But instead, for the last 14 years, I've seen it. I've seen what happens. You guys have been a part of it. You've been on staff.

You've seen when women get together and come to Jesus and they get really real about whatever it is that's going on, whether they feel betrayed by a friend or they're self harming, or they've been told that there's nothing, nothing special in them and they'll never amount to anything, whatever their pain is. And when they can get real about it together, Jesus shows up and he radically transforms them.

But I couldn't have written about that because I didn't have that experience. I got that experience when I started just being real about mine. And then other women started coming being real about theirs.

And then it was like this cataclystic.

I don't even know if that's a word, it sounds cool if it's not, but like one person was colliding with Jesus and experiencing his transformation and then other people were watching and then they were getting real with Jesus and experiencing his transformation and someone else.

And that's a part of what this book is about, is this idea that like God can actually purpose your story of pain, your story of infertility, your story of cancer, your story of losing a parent as a child and he can actually use it for good, to make the world a more whole and better place.

I think that's super encouraging for someone, too, who feels like they've been given this directive by God to do something. And it's taken so many years for that to come to fruition.

But maybe, like your story, there were things that they needed to do along the way, so I find that encouraging.

Thanks. It's been a. It's been a long journey.

Yeah.

I'm curious, Willow, if it feels like we've been talking a couple times now about how long this journey has been and how long this story has been in action and moving for us to get to this point where there's a book. Did it feel like this book was like bursting out of you and you were just like, ready to turn it into what it is with the Lord?

Or do you feel like the process of truly getting to this point, like, across the finish line, took a lot of obedience?

I feel like it's both. I feel like the message was bursting out of me and I was almost like going crazy. Like, I have to do this. I know I have to do this. It's.

I'm so sure I've needed to do this for so long, but I didn't know how I was going to do it. Right? Like, I. I didn't know how I was going to tell my story in the midst of a family who didn't want me to tell my story.

I didn't know how I was going to get published. When you're told you have to have this huge platform and all these followers, and that's just never been something I've tried to accomplish.

And so I was like, oh, it just seems impossible. Like, how will. Even if I had a book, how will I even get published?

So it felt like there's all these obstacles and I'm like every other woman where I have a million things that I have to accomplish in my own personal life. Like, I have a full time ministry job, I have two children I have to raise. Like, where am I going to get the margin to write a book?

And the Lord just said, like, I just want you to show up to the blank pages and put one foot in front of the other. And so I just started doing that.

Like, I just started going, okay, I can make margin to go on a writing retreat and schedule that out and be intentional with it. Oh, I happen to have an afternoon where both my kids are busy with friends. I can spend two hours at a coffee shop.

Showing up to that story, that chapter, that idea that page. And so I think that's what any of us have to do in life, right? Like if we have a big dream or a big vision.

It's not like God downloaded the whole book for me. I mean, I have heard that he does that for certain authors. I wasn't one of the privileged ones.

Like, I think, like, sometimes you just have to show up to the blank pages and start writing and eventually you'll have a book.

And it's so encouraging, I think, to hear you say that and you know, to have a tangible book come out of it, because we do have to make our dreams happen in the margins, in the pockets of time. And I. That's not something that you hear a lot.

You hear of people like quitting their full time ministry job or whatever it is, you know, to focus on this thing or waiting until their kids are like fully grown adults or whatever it is, but needing to, feeling the need to focus entirely on one thing. And I think sometimes God asks us, ask that of us.

But more often than not, I think that we have to be obedient with those margins and with the pockets and make them and create them and notice them for ourselves and for one another too. That's for sure. To hear that that's the process through which you wrote an entire book.

Well, Willow, I'm curious how you feel like this book reflects what you've seen God do over the course of the years at Collide, the ministry, in conferences, in classes and other content you've written. How does the book reflect all that's gone on around here?

Mm, I'm just, I'm. I'm listening to you. I'm listening to your question. I'm thinking about Jesus.

I think there's this weird sort of idea or something that, you know, God's going to show up in your life when you sort of get it all together.

And I think the Jesus that I've come to know and that I've seen around here shows up in the mess, he shows up in, the pain, he shows up in the chapter you never wanted to be a part of your story. And that's where he does his greatest work. And I think that's what we've seen around here.

And what I've constantly seen in my own life and in other people's lives is, you know, we don't need to invite God into our lives, into the kind of rooms of our lives that look clean and put together, but it's actually like inviting him into the messy ones, the dirty ones, the ones that need Cleansing and help and healing. And that's been the biggest, coolest privilege I've gotten.

I think in this whole collide story ministry book, whatever is really seen Jesus show up on the front lines of people's lives. And you know, scripture says in Isaiah, by his wounds we are healed.

We have a God who takes wounds and he doesn't just sort of like, put a band aid on them, but he actually wipes them all over himself. We see that on the cross. Like, he gets down and dirty. He takes on our transgressions. He bleeds for hemorrhages.

He hurts and suffers so that we can know how loved we are. And our pain likes to lie to us. It likes to tell us, us that we must not be loved, we must not be chosen. There must be something wrong with us.

And Jesus wants to set the record straight.

So I think the coolest part about being a part of all that the Lord's done around here in the last however many years is just seeing him show up in women's lives who maybe have been told, like, they're too messy and broken for God, and he tells them otherwise.

How are you hoping that a woman will feel when she closes that final page?

I want a woman to know that not only is she worthy of healing, but Jesus can heal her and he can purpose her pain to help heal other people and be inspired. Like, live your life in such a way where you're like, yes, like, I need help and healing and I'm going to choose to continue to say yes to it.

But also, like, I want to use my life, my story, my experience to help other people in theirs. And that's really what I hope women get from this.

I love that so much. We are going to do a little rapid fire section. Just as rapid of fire as.

Wow, guys.

Feels good. Nothing too crazy. So I have a series of questions for you, Willow, starting with are you a morning or late night writer?

Ooh, I used to be a late night writer. And now I would say I'm more of a morning writer.

When we say morning, like, like 5:00am.

Or like 8:00am no, I'm like a daytime gal. Okay, we'll call it daytime.

She's up all hours of the night. We know that.

It depends. Yeah, if I have deadlines, I'm like, on it any hour of the, of the day and night. But no, I. I think my brain works best after coffee.

I don't even think Jesus wants to be with me until I. After I have coffee. I think he's like, no, let's talk in a little bit.

But I get it. Being a deadline driven gal, then it's anytime.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I know the answer to this, I think, but coffee or tea while writing?

Coffee gotta be right? Way too much coffee.

Possibly related question. What was your favorite place to write? Like coffee shop on the couch.

If.

If go shop.

Which one?

The beach. Anywhere that is like you have a little bit of a water view and you can take breaks and go for walks by the water.

I always like sense God by the water and I could talk to him and work out a thought or an idea or wrestle or pray. So for sure, for sure. The beach.

Yeah. Our beach.

Gal.

Do you remember a most rewritten idea that you had to go over again and again or even as specific as a sentence? Most rewritten sentence.

Wow.

I really don't. But all of a sudden I'm being bombarded with lots of them. Oh, this and this and this. I really have to think about that, guys.

I don't think I have an answer to that one.

Yeah, that was more of an interrogation question.

Maybe the ending. Maybe the ending. The ending was hard for me. Right. Because it's the end. It's the ending that was hard. I sat on that until the end.

As it should be. Did you have any unexpected cheerleaders during the process of writing this book?

Hmm. Unexpected cheerleaders. I feel like I have had a lot of cheerleaders and I'm very grateful for that.

I. I've had like, Michelle, you're here and you for a period of time didn't work at Clyde and you would spend a lot of your days off on Friday, like helping me process and research. And you know, she would give time that she didn't need to give to help me see this vision and dream become a reality.

And there's really no reason why a person would do that for you. You know what I mean? Like, I, I think I wanted to give up lots of times and my kids would tell me to keep going. I think that's unexpected too.

Like.

They believe in this and they want me to talk about this, even though it's going to be hard for them too.

There's just been an amazing community of like Collide staff and Clyde board and friends and my husband and mentors and yeah, I'm grateful for all of, all of that. And I really don't think I'd be here without it. I think it's so easy to give up on a dream or a vision because it's hard and it Seems impossible.

And you can come up with 20 reasons why it would be easier not to do this. And so probably more than 20. So we all need those cheerleaders and champions for our dreams and visions, or they won't become a reality.

And I truly have been blessed to have them.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love that.

Okay, my last rapid fire question before we wrap up with another question or two is when you turned in your manuscript, you were, like, done. Did you do anything to celebrate?

You know what's funny? I want to give you a really fun answer, so maybe you need to come up with one last rapid fire question.

Because if I'm being honest, when I turned in my manuscript, I had one month to rewrite the whole thing, and I turned it in the same week that I said goodbye to my dad. So I wasn't in a celebratory space. I was in a. Like, I just ran a marathon.

And I grieved the loss of my father while finishing up this book and going over all these heavy things that also included him. So maybe I'll celebrate when. When there's an actual book, I'll be.

Like, the first time you hold it in your hand.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right?

It's so funny because the publishing company sent the book. It's like, the COVID So you could do, like, video shoots or photo shoots or whatever.

And so I was so excited, I open it up, and it's, like, someone else's book on the inside. Think it's so funny. Like, someday in Goodwill, someone's gonna pick it up and think my book is about something entire.

Like, it literally look at, like, scientific principles in it or something like. I don't even know, like, form, economic formulas or. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I actually haven't seen the inside of the book, but, yeah, I think we have some plans around here to celebrate. So that'll be good.

We do?

You have to keep the scientific inside.

Yes. You gotta keep it.

It's perfect.

I'll definitely sign that one.

Yes. Well, Willow, what would you wanna say to the woman who is considering buying your book and sitting down to read it? What do you wanna say to her?

I want to say to you that you're worthy of healing big things and small things. Things that happened to you 30 years ago. And you're telling yourself that's so old. It was so long ago. I'm good. I'll be fine.

But also, things that even happened this week that feel small. You're worthy of healing. And your healing will actually help heal the people that you love. The most.

So friends, if you need any encouragement, come and join me and we'll collide with Jesus together.

Amen.

Amen.

Thanks for letting us turn the tables and be the podcast host in your place so that we could hear from you. And and also just thanks for your courage and the faithfulness that it this book.

I know that all three of us have been wildly blessed by your story and have gotten to be intimate with your story over the years, and it just makes me feel personally so proud and excited to have it out in the world for other people to be blessed by it too. So thank you for the obedience that it took to live the story and then to write it and to put it out into the world.

I just, I can't wait to read it and I felt so grateful that it exists and to our listeners, if anything that you heard resonated, you can find Willow's book Running into healing when life hands you hurt wherever books are.

We'll link everything in the show notes for you, and our hope is that it meets you right where you are and reminds you that healing and hope are possible. Like Willow said, whether your hurt is from big, small, from years ago, from recent, we all have it and healing is possible and available.

We're excited for you to read stories of how Jesus has met other women in their pain too. So thanks for spending this time for us and we'll see you next time on the Collide Podcast.