GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

Note: Seminar 1 of this series is missing due to technical issues.

Grace for the Broken: Finding Healing and Restoration Through God

<p>For over 30 years, she has specialized in trauma care and supported missionaries during times of crisis.</p>

Ann Hamel

Loren Hamel

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

We All Have a Story

So if you were here in the first session, we spent time talking about how life is beautiful.

Anticipating that we're gonna be talking about tough times, but obviously recalling, remembering, praising God for where he has blessed us is helpful, is protective.

You know, in this session, we're gonna talk about some things that are, in fact, challenging.

And recognize we put our toes in the water in the first section, we're gonna get fully wet on this round, and I'll start.

I shared with you how I thought my life was beautiful in Berrien Springs.

A young physician, owned his practice with a house and a wife and children.

And by the way, as young children, we brought them to Florida many times.

This is the medical conference capital of the world.

You can always find a medical conference in a nice hotel next to Disney or someplace else that is fun.

My wife decided she'd rather live somewhere else and moved to the West Coast.

And I'm a young physician, divorced, 4 children.

And obviously when things like that happen, you know, everybody has something to learn.

I certainly had things to learn, many things to learn.

But that is as tough a period as I have gone through in my life.

The sense of shame, of loss, of loneliness, of exhaustion runs very, very deep.

My youngest daughter was about 6, 5 or 6.

And all of a sudden you're responsible for everything.

You know, for laundry, for food, for transportation, for keeping the house clean, for all the medical things that I, of course, had to do to support the family.

And when you look around your home, if you've ever gone through divorce, it's pretty typical, and it's certainly the case in my divorce, that half your furniture is gone and more than half your money is gone, and debt has increased.

We enjoyed it, had a nice car, sold it, got something that was much more modest.

1 of the things I did at that juncture that I did not learn from the literature, that I learned from watching my patients who had gone through tough times, 1 of the things I worried about is doing stupid things.

Because oftentimes when you're in a situation of trauma or suffering, you don't make smart decisions.

And I'd seen that enough time that I said, you know, I really can't afford to do that.

And so I actually named a few folks and said, if I'm going to make any big life decision, I'm going to talk to you first.

And with my staff at the office, I recall this well, taking them aside and saying, I need you all more than ever.

You know, if I'm not living up to my commitment to take great care of everybody that comes through this office, if I'm turning away people because I'm tired or needy at home, but they need to be seen, they need a doctor, I need you to call me out.

Make sure that we're taking great care of our community.

I mean, that is pretty common when folks have been traumatized.

And so I would be alert to that in your own life, be alert to that in the life of your friends and your loved ones.

And by the way, oftentimes folks in that circumstance don't listen well.

It's harder to listen, much harder to listen when you're suffering.

Your brain is preoccupied with your needs and your emotions and your feelings.

I at that point made a commitment to not to date for 2 years and not to marry for 4.

And that may sound fairly arbitrary, maybe it was, but I thought that's what it would take to make sure that I did things in the best interest of my family and in the best interest of myself.

So that was a commitment at that point in time.

I don't know, is there anything you want to say then I'll move on to Job.

As I shared in our last session, I loved being a missionary in Rwanda.

I loved being the mother of 3 adorable little boys.

Africa, Rwanda was such a perfect environment for them to grow up in.

The government of Rwanda had given the church a 240 acre deserted plantation for the university.

And our boys, with the other missionary kids on the campus, explored that and had fun.

I loved being in a supportive role to my husband.

I loved being involved with the landscaping of the university.

And I just enjoyed so much about being there.

You know, the challenges and difficulties didn't feel like challenges and difficulties to me.

But I remember some missionaries coming back from the market in tears.

For me, it was a, you know, I loved bargaining.

To me, it was an opportunity to practice my French or my Kenyirwanda.

And I remember buying a whole big bucket of lemons once and I had spent like 45 minutes getting a good price for these lemons.

And I showed my husband proudly, look what I bought, I did it all in French, it was so fun and exciting.

Did you forget that we have a lemon tree?

And I had completely forgotten that we had a lemon tree and it was full of lemons.

And you know, the bargaining is a part of the culture.

And my boys would go, they thought they were selling the chickens for pets.

There were parts of the market I didn't take them to, but they enjoyed it as well.

You know, the water was dirty and none of our clothes were white.

They were all tan because and if they were originally white, they became tan, because our water had a lot of mud in it.

You couldn't see the bottom of the bathtub.

I looked around me, and I had a faucet where I could turn it on and fill the bathtub.

And there were ladies walking by my home with jerry cans on their head, walking sometimes 5 miles to get a bucket of water.

And the challenges didn't feel like challenges.

And I remember my husband and I got a letter from his mother, and she said that his aunt and uncle were moving to Zambia.

And we thought, that's a great place for us to go and visit.

We wanted to visit Victoria Falls and we had been so busy helping to build the university and getting it established that we had not traveled a lot while we had been there.

So we began planning a trip to Zambia to see Victoria Falls.

And another couple with 3 young children as well, they decided they would go with us.

And it's always a good idea to go with 2 families.

If you have car trouble, the other can help or whatever.

But it was at a time when communication was very slow.

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Ann Hamel

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We All Have a Story

48m

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We All Have a Story

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Grace for the Broken: Finding Healing and Restoration Through God

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Dec 31, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026

GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

11 series

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