Shannon Popkin (00:00) I am so excited to have Rachel Wojo here with us today. Rachel is an author, a speaker, and a podcaster. She blogs at RachelWojo.com. And through Rachel’s biblical approach and personal life experiences, she empowers women to discover strength and hope in everyday situations. We’re going to be talking today about her brand new book, Desperate Prayers. So if that’s you.

I’m excited that you’re here with us and Rachel, welcome to Live Like It’s True.

Rachel Wojo (00:32) Well, thank you so much for having me, Shannon. I really appreciate all the work that you are doing on your podcast. You do an incredible job and I know your listeners are blessed.

Shannon Popkin (00:43) Well, we’re blessed to have you with us today. This is going be a good conversation. So I just wondered, you know, we’re going to be talking about Hannah and she is a mother who is praying. Well, she’s not a mother yet, praying a desperate prayer. But I just wondered if you could give us a peek into your world as a mom. You know, I know you have six kids and I know you’ve lost one of them to.

maybe a miscarriage, but then you lost an adult child too. So tell us a little bit about your experience as a mom.

Rachel Wojo (01:18) Yeah, so what a bustling household we still have. We have five at home currently and one living next door. Our oldest daughter, who is my stepdaughter, lives next door to us with her husband. And then in the house we have 22, 20, 19, 15, and 13. And so they are, yeah, I know you know. They are.

Shannon Popkin (01:40) Whoa! Wow.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Rachel Wojo (01:47) busy kiddos, all some starting to spread their wings.

Shannon Popkin (01:53) Yeah, it’s that.

When I hear those ages, that’s what I’m thinking. It’s just a whole different experience parenting young adult children, right? Because it’s just all the tension of, wait, who am I in this situation? Am I still the parent? Or am I more like a coach? Or am I just, I don’t know, here to pay the bills and feed you dinner? Right? So anyway.

Rachel Wojo (01:57) right?

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly that.

Our 22 year old is getting ready to get married in the spring. And so that’s a whole, whole thing going on. I had the privilege of going with his bride to be last week to pick out her dress. And it was such a sweet experience. So there are still beautiful blessings along the way of, of parenting children as, as they grow into adulthood,

Shannon Popkin (02:23) exciting.

Rachel Wojo (02:44) We do have a busy bustling household has always been this way. Since I began having children, you mentioned that I lost a daughter who’s 22 years old.

On January 2, 2019, she had lived with a rare metabolic disorder her entire life. And so that shaped our lives in many ways. Our adult children now were shaped very early on by having a special needs sister. And so it’s a different kind of dynamic, I think, when you have lived life a certain way for so long.

And then when that need, that pressing need is gone, you almost feel guilty for some of the relief. So a gamut of emotions, I guess that’s why I relate to Hannah so much.

Shannon Popkin (03:40) For

sure, for sure. So what were her special needs? I think you mentioned,

Rachel Wojo (03:45) she was born with a rare disease. We did not know it at her birth that she had this disease. The panels showed that she had a hearing loss of some type, but we didn’t know until she actually started to lose skills. One day at the age of three, she sat down to put her socks on and I came back and she was still sitting there.

Shannon Popkin (03:51) Okay.

Rachel Wojo (04:12) And I said, Taylor, put your socks on, prompted her again a little, and she had been dressing herself for a little while. So she looked at her socks and she looked at me and I knew that she didn’t know how to put her socks on. And so that plunged me as her mama into a journey of figuring out exactly what was wrong with her. And it took a little while, about 18 months before we received

heart full diagnosis but bucopolysaccharidosis is a rare genetic disorder. It’s a lysosomal storage disease. So everything that you eat consists of long chain sugar molecules and in her body what is missing to chemically break down those molecules is not there. The gene that she needs to produce what is needed chemically is not there. And so what happens is the body stores those chemicals

they attach themselves to the connections between the nerves and cause nerve damage. And gradually, as you can imagine, your whole body is a connection of nerves, right? It’s a neuro pathway. And I imagine this like a map where you have these detour signs that keep getting put up all across the map. And eventually the pathways stop working altogether because there’s no other place to go.

Shannon Popkin (05:22) Yeah.

Rachel Wojo (05:39) And so that sort of puts it on everyday terms. Some have called it a childhood Alzheimer’s. It really is a childhood dementia where every skill is gradually lost. So that path of urgency and desiring God to do something in circumstances that are outside of control, I think that path is why I relate to Hannah so much.

Shannon Popkin (05:47) Ciao.

Yeah, well, and you mentioned control and that’s what I’m thinking, that I have wrestled with control, have written about that topic a lot. And I can only imagine a three year old, where you had maybe grappled with the hearing loss, but that’s pretty minimal compared to this rare disease and just watching control just slip out of your fingers.

And then what do do with that? You know, that’s, think that’s really a pivotal question, especially for women. Cause we, like I make the case in control girl that we all, our daughters of Eve and we all have this desire to reach out and, pluck that fruit and do what we think is best for our family, and for ourselves and for all the people that we love.

putting fruit into people’s hands, know, like the way that we see it rather than trusting God and his, the way that he sees it, his perspective. And so I can only imagine that grappling, where is she in birth order? she, was she your oldest?

Rachel Wojo (07:15) She

was my first child. she was my first. apparently God believed I had a lot of lessons to learn before I had any other. No, I say that tongue in cheek. I don’t really believe that. But I can imagine though, if you’ve written a lot about control, I hear you saying that we all feel that desire to be in control. And it actually brings me comfort that I’m not the only one because I’m

Shannon Popkin (07:17) Okay.

⁓ And yes, of course.

Rachel Wojo (07:44) so tempted to just,

Shannon Popkin (07:45) Yeah.

Rachel Wojo (07:46) you know, in any situation, I have strong administrative skills and I just tend to sweep in and take over and, you know, get the job done kind of person. And so with that drive and personality came a lot of lessons that the Lord wanted to teach me.

Shannon Popkin (07:53) Yep.

can only imagine. I have some of those skills myself. And when I’m faced with the thing that is out of my control, I just want to clamp tighter and dig my heels in and I want to find all the information if it’s out of my control, I want to get it back into my control. And that just produces in me such anxiety and fear

anxiety about the things that I see, but fear about the unknowns in the future, right? And then anger, know, anger is often me reacting to the things that I can’t control or wanting to control the things that I can’t control. And, you know, imperfectionism too. All of these, I see these as little dashboard indicators that are tied to this deeper desire that we as women have for

control. And the reason that I am seeing women in particular is because of God’s words to Eve. Your desire will be, it means your desire will be to control your husband. That’s the New Living Translation. This is like, this is our consequence and we don’t have to live in that consequence. We have an escape hatch toward freedom. Jesus is our way to be.

completely remade into different women. And yet we see such commonality. And so as a young mom with a three year old, did you pray desperate prayers at that point? Like is this book, Desperate Prayers, is this somewhat rooted in your own story?

Rachel Wojo (09:42) I am so amazed that you picked the word rooted there because that was the word that was coming to my mind as you were talking. Absolutely, yes. I struggled so much with letting go of that control and trying to figure out what God’s plan was and even manipulate His plan like so many characters in the Bible come up with some other option. And I think sometimes He puts us in those places

where we don’t have the control and we never will have it and he puts us there in order to teach us lessons that we otherwise wouldn’t have learned and I just know the kind of person that I was before I had Taylor and the kind of mother and the kind of person I became after.

I had Taylor and especially over the course of years, even early on, I look at how I processed and how I dealt with so many different situations and I just, the one thing that I did do right Shannon was I just kept going to God because I didn’t know what else to do. And so, yeah.

Shannon Popkin (10:57) Yeah. And that. That is pivotal, isn’t it? Like

we can try and, know, when I wrote Control Girl, I studied seven controlling women of the Bible and most of them did the opposite of going to God, at least in the beginning. And the only way that any of them ever found any peace or security or joy or hope

was in surrendering control. And so that’s what I imagine was the transformative process that I hear you talking about in your own life. Was it surrendering? Was it giving control to God? And how did prayer play into that?

Rachel Wojo (11:24) Mm.

I think that prayer was the thing Initially, I was not surrendered at all. I will just tell you, I was mad at God. I was frustrated at God. I, for a while, kept him at our arm’s length and wanted him close enough to where I could run to him if something really came.

about but generally speaking I wasn’t having conversations with him because I was angry at him but gradually I began to take that anger and take those feelings to the Lord. He was working on my heart and I knew him from the time that I was a child and so I listened to those whispers of the Holy Spirit when I would read the Bible or when I would show up at church for a message and

I never missed church. There was something about that ingrained in me as a child that even when I was mad at God, I still went to church every week. And so that allowed his spirit to really speak into me. But I would say that that time in my life was such a long journey. Even some people say, why do you have so many years between your books? You know, because one more step was written.

in 2015 it released and this new book did not release it until this fall and so nine years between books is a really long time. Most people maybe wouldn’t write a second book after that length of time or maybe the average person is like well you should be writing one book a year as a writer but in my life a lot of life has had to happen and I’ve had to live.

Shannon Popkin (12:55) Okay.

Rachel Wojo (13:20) those messages before I could write about them.

Shannon Popkin (13:24) Yeah, well, and I think it’ll be a better, more well-developed message because of those. mean, think often books are written prematurely, right? Either the message isn’t fully developed or it hasn’t been lived, right? And I think what a beautiful thing to have a book that has been lived for nine years before.

Rachel Wojo (13:29) and

Yeah.

Well, and I

think, you you ask about prayer and what that that, you know, played in the role of all of all of that. When I got to the point to where I was ready to write another book and I felt like God was working in me to do that, I said, Lord, what do you want this to be about? And his reply back was that’s what I want it to be about. I want it to be about your conversations with me and how you have journeyed.

through learning how to have open, honest conversation all the time. So I hope that that answers the question well.

Shannon Popkin (14:23) fantastic.

⁓ it does. So just tell me first how the book is arranged and then we’re going to dive into one of these prayers, these desperate prayers from this woman named Hannah.

Rachel Wojo (14:37) Yeah, so the subtitle is embracing the power of prayer in life’s darkest moments. And if you’re listening now, you’ve either been through a dark moment or you’re going through a dark moment or you’re about to go through something. And so I feel like all of us can relate to that subtitle. But the part I really wanted to emphasize is that we have this incredible opportunity to embrace that power.

and it opens up our desperate pleas open up a powerful pathway to peace. So in each chapter, there are 15 chapters in this book and in each chapter, I dive into one Bible character per chapter and I assign a three word prayer to that Bible character. So for instance, God help me, God heal me, God hold me, God fill me. And so there are 15 short three word prayers.

that encapsulate what that Bible character was going through. And so for Hannah, the one that we are talking about today, that subtitle is God Remember Me. And some people get confused about this. Did God forget? You know, they think, well, God’s forgotten me. And then you read language that says God remember me or

We read the English versions and we get a little confused thinking, well, God needed a reminder. But that really isn’t what this prayer is. It’s God make a memorial of me. God, I want to yield myself to you and glorify you. So use this to glorify you, whatever your situation is. In Hannah’s, it was infertility. She was saying, turn this thing around so that I can praise you about it.

Shannon Popkin (16:25) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Wojo (16:31) And

so the book itself, I think, just guides us through those prayers and encourages with between the Bible stories and our family’s personal stories, encourages you to focus on each chapter on a three word prayer that will hopefully move your prayer life forward.

Shannon Popkin (16:54) Yeah, I love those three word prayers. I do. And just I think those are memorable. It’s a great way to encapsulate these stories because even as I was reading through the list of them, I’m like, yeah, I remember that prayer. I remember that person. I remember that story.

And so the first part of first Samuel one just kind of sets up the problem in Hannah’s life. and it’s rooted in polygamy which

Not a fan. I don’t think I would do well in a polygamist marriage, Rachel. But This was accepted in their culture, even among God’s people. It’s pre script or it’s descriptive, not prescriptive. We should not adopt this in our Christian homes. But there’s this man named Alcana. Is that how you would say it? Alcana.

Rachel Wojo (17:23) But

Shannon Popkin (17:40) who has two wives, Hannah and Panina. Hannah’s the one that he loves and Panina is the one having babies. And I’m sure that was hurtful to Panina also to be the one who was not loved.

They would travel to the temple in Shiloh every year and sacrifice to the Lord and So when they would sacrifice, there would be a feast afterward and this man Alcana would give double portions to Hannah, so fill her plate double full like

I don’t know, there’s just something about those visual reminders that somebody else is the favorite. ⁓ and so every year this would go on. And I think it’s interesting that she would, Panina would, ⁓ torture Hannah during this time. I’ll just read the verse. It says, ⁓ and her rival Panina.

used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. So Panina is like, like, rubbing salt in the womb. the wound is that Hannah has not been able to have children and Panina is like pressing on that sore place in her life. And it happens annually, at, at this, the sacrifice every year they go to Shiloh.

And I think, you know, there is something about painful reminders that come on the calendar year. You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if you had any of that with your loss, with your daughter. Are there any, is there something about the calendar year where, even you’re anticipating maybe the day of her death or, Christmas? Is there anything about that annual pain?

Rachel Wojo (19:24) Well, thank you for bringing that up in this conversation because I do have one little spot that has always been hard for me because Taylor’s death is January 2nd, 2019. And one time I was reading a book about grief and I’ve read probably over 50 books on grief. but I was really enjoying this particular book and I got to the end.

and she talks about the holiday season and how difficult it is for so many people and how so many who have lost a number of loved ones or who have lost a loved one around the holiday, they wish they could just skip from Thanksgiving to after New Year’s, a lot of them. Like we could just forego this time. And I’ve never been that way, but when I was reading that particular book, I never wanted to skip.

Maybe because I feel like I have so much else to live for. know, God has just given me that ability not to get stuck in that place. But when I was reading that book that particular day, she said in her writing, she said, I often wished I could just skip to January 2nd. And so it was like a knife went in my heart. And I thought, lady, you’ve just written a whole book about grief and

Shannon Popkin (20:22) Yeah.

No.

Ugh.

Rachel Wojo (20:47) at the end here, I know that the enemy was just trying to twist this in my mind and use it to say, but she doesn’t know January 2nd is the day you wish you could get past. And so in that moment, I thought, you know what? All of us have those days. What you just mentioned, all of us have some day that we wish we could pass over, skip over, whether it’s

Shannon Popkin (20:53) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Rachel Wojo (21:15) holiday season or whether it is maybe just that particular season that those reminders of what the season was like up to the time that you lost your loved one or you experienced that heartache or you got the diagnosis whatever it is so I do think that we can all relate to Hannah in that way.

Shannon Popkin (21:39) Yes. Well, and this author didn’t intend harm or pain. And, and I see a parallel in Hannah’s husband, because he turns to her and he’s like, Hannah, cause she can’t eat. She’s anxious. She can’t eat. this comes every year at this point. And he says to her, Hannah, Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than 10 sons? It’s like,

⁓ my goodness, the misunderstanding in those words. Why? Why? Why? He couldn’t possibly understand because he is a man with two wives and he doesn’t understand what it feels like to be one of those wives who can’t bear him children. And it’s great to have his love. But, I just think there is something about nobody else can understand why.

Rachel Wojo (22:14) Right.

Shannon Popkin (22:31) they or something else can’t fill the void of this other thing, this other loss, this other longing.

Rachel Wojo (22:37) Yeah, we know he was trying hard too. Like it wasn’t like he wasn’t trying. It says he was giving her double the portion and because he loved her and I think, you know, maybe he thought that gift giving was her love language when it wasn’t filling her up, right? It wasn’t doing what she needed it to. But then I often think sometimes we look at these questions in the Bible and like,

Shannon Popkin (22:39) He was! He was a good-hearted… Exactly! was a

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Wojo (23:05) for him, he asked four questions in a row. Okay, so if we apply that to our own behaviors, typically if we’re rattling off four questions in a row, it means our emotions are at a high, right? So we know that he probably didn’t gently take her to the side and hold her hand and look her in the eye and say, ⁓ Hannah, that’s probably not what he was doing at this point. His emotions were just like,

exasperated with her behaviors. And so you know when someone tells you not to cry what happens. You cry harder. Right. So I doubt that her response was exactly what he was looking for.

Shannon Popkin (23:35) Yes.

Yeah.

That’s so true. And I mean, I love that you pointed that out. Four questions in a row are not information seeking, right? He’s not asking why, hoping to understand. He’s asking why it’s provocative. It’s like he’s exasperated. And so this is just adding insult to injury. It’s like this poor woman.

you know, she’s probably been dreading this trip. It happens every time, you know, she gets the double portion on her plate and then Panina starts, you know, jazzing her about like, and the reason back in verse six of first Samuel one is the reason that she irritates her is because the Lord had closed her womb. Like, you know, maybe she’s saying, why, why hasn’t God given you children?

Why does it give me babies and not you? Like, what is it? Is there something going on here? Something we don’t know about you, Hannah? She doesn’t know why the Lord has closed her womb. And neither does Penina. But there seems to be some connection with the way that Penina is provoking her and this fact that God has closed her womb, or just infertility in general.

But the beauty of the story is what Hannah does with all of this provocation and grief and struggle and pain because so many times we see people doing exactly the opposite of what Hannah does. In fact, there is another story in the Bible where Rachel is in exactly the same situation. It’s kind of interesting. She also is married to a man who has two wives.

Rachel Wojo (25:21) Right. Right.

Shannon Popkin (25:33) And she also is the one that her husband loves and the other wife is having the babies. And there also is this rivalry, which no surprise, you But Rachel doesn’t do what Hannah does. Here’s what Rachel does. She goes to her husband and I almost picture her with her hands around his neck saying, give me children or I will die. Right. She turns everywhere. But to God,

there’s idolatry in so many different scenes in Rachel’s life. ⁓ Rachel’s trying to control everything. She’s turning to herself and what she can control and what these idols.

in her life can give her Jacob is an idol, sex is an idol, the Mandrakes are an idol. And in another scene, we see her sitting on the household gods of her father, like she steals the idols and she’s sitting on them. so she there’s never a point in Rachel’s story where she turns to God. Her story is very unfulfilling. It’s one of those that I that I studied in Control Girl.

But Hannah, what a beautiful contrast. Hannah does not turn to control. She’s not wringing anybody’s neck. She’s going to God in her grief with her desperate

prayers.

So next what we’re going to see is Hannah going where Rachel didn’t. She went directly to the temple and she cries out to God. She pours out her heart to the Lord and she tells the Lord, look, if you will remember me, if you will give me a son, then I will give this son back to you, which is just astounding to me. Rachel, is it not?

Rachel Wojo (27:18) Yes, yes, that she could be so God oriented in that moment. Like she had taken the focus off of herself and said, I want this to be for you, Lord.

Shannon Popkin (27:31) Yeah, so we’re going to have to pick this conversation up next time because there’s just too much to unpack and I don’t want to cut it short and I want our listeners to able to listen through to the end. But we’ve talked about how there are those times on the calendar where we’re grieving and there are times that people don’t understand and they say things that are provocative in our grief and in our loss and in these out of control situations.

Give us a time that you went to the Lord in your desperate prayer over your daughter and that was helpful to you in some way.

Rachel Wojo (28:09) ⁓ yeah. So I do remember that one particular day where she was, had just finished having seizures and had finally come to a point of rest and the seizures were every day, often multiple times a day, uncontrolled by medication. And I just remember sitting at the edge of her bed wishing that we could be outside. I was looking at this beautiful sunny day and so many days.

We had spent, you know, going in the stroller and walking around the neighborhood, looking at the flowers or going to the park. And this particular day, I wished we could have our walk. And I was so angry at her suffering. And I said to God, God, I just wish that we could be outside. I don’t, it’s such a beautiful day. I just wish that we could be outside.

And I remember the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart and saying, you can wish you were outside or you can be grateful for the sunshine that’s coming through the window. And just that perspective shift, I think is what you’re talking about. You know, the difference between Rachel and Hannah was that perspective shift of how do I choose to look at this, this issue, this hard space, because it doesn’t change just because we’re looking at it differently.

but it changes how we process and how we’re able to effectively help others. So I think that was one example. And then one more example that’s coming to my mind is I just remember being so upset and saying to the Lord, you don’t know what it’s like to watch your child suffer and die. And his response back to me was, yes, I do. I watched my son suffer and die for you.

And so again, just that deep communication with the Lord was the fuel that enabled me to shift perspective and to say, God’s love is, if my human love for my child could be this deep and this great, imagine God’s great love for us. And so that’s how prayer is transforming. That power transforms us from the inside out.

Shannon Popkin (30:34) Yeah, looking at this, the perspective, I mean, in both of those situations, you’re inviting God to give you his perspective on your story, which, like you said, Rachel didn’t do that. You know, when she had her baby, Joseph, she looked into his little face and she said, she named him Joseph, which means may he add. And so she’s all about her perspective. She’s like, yeah, God, thanks for this one. And I need another one too.

Rachel Wojo (30:40) Right.

Shannon Popkin (31:03) because she is all about trying to win the birth wars with her sister. know, the text says that when her assistant, when her servant has a baby, she’s like, I have won the mighty wrestlings, you know, with my sister. have won. It’s like, for her, was all about winning. It was all about her little small minded perspective of her little life and, you know, getting out in the sunshine and having things go her way and filling.

you know, her baby stroller with the child that she wants. But God wants to give us his perspective, which is so much richer and more more fulfilling than if we could manage our little lives. Like if I could control my life, Rachel, I would want just one happy scene after another. I’d want it to be like, you know, those little chunky board books that they give little toddlers. Like that’s what I would want for my life story.

You know, one sunny page after another, after another, the end, you know, get to the like, wouldn’t want the plot line. But but in that story, I wouldn’t be looking to God. You know, it’s just all about me and my perspective. And God’s perspective on our story is this. He did give his son, right? He did empty his arms of his son. So he knows what it’s like to not

Rachel Wojo (32:12) Right, right.

Shannon Popkin (32:29) have, you know, your arms full, not have your life full to be laying down his son. Yeah, he does know what that feels like. And so when we go to him in our desperate prayers, like all of this desperation, what it has to do with is this broken world, you know, in your title, it talks about darkest moments. We live in this dark age and this world is so dark. There is so much hurt and pain and struggle. And our God knows that. And how did he respond to it? Jesus.

Rachel Wojo (32:49) Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (32:59) Jesus

who is going to set everything right. You know, Jesus who was born to a woman and to experienced all of the human condition, you know, up close and personal and yet chose to go to that cross so that he could redeem back for us all that has been lost, all that has been sucked into the darkness, all of the disease, all of the brokenness, all of the, you know, the peninas in our life who are

Rachel Wojo (33:18) and

Shannon Popkin (33:26) provoking us or the misunderstanding and the mistreatment, all of that he came to redeem. And I always say, I think it’s helpful for us to read the story backward. Like let’s look at the end of the story and not misjudge where we are in this place on the timeline. So with that in mind, Rachel, could you give us like one way to live like this story is true?

Rachel Wojo (33:51) I think that when we look at Hannah’s prayer life and we look at what truth is in this nugget of this Bible story, what truth really digs us out of the hole and how can we live it out, and I think it’s just that simple choosing to go to God in prayer at the first sign of distress. And it almost seems so basic, right?

I really believe that that can be the turning point for many of us in whether or not we wind up wallowing in bitterness or, you know, it gives us a way to process our grief. It’s not that it removes it, but it does provide us with that incredible peace that we’re looking for. And so hopefully that encourages someone today to know that when you go to God in prayer,

Shannon Popkin (34:29) Yeah.

Rachel Wojo (34:50) He is looking for you. He’s longing to communicate with you and things can change and happen because of your prayers.

Shannon Popkin (35:03) It’s so true. Thank you. So Rachel, where can where can our guests find desperate prayers?

Rachel Wojo (35:11) Sure, if you go to desperateprayers.com you’ll find the book there as well as many other resources, a discussion guide, a When You Can’t Pray Prayer Guide, and most effectively there is a class called How to Be a Prayer Warrior for Your Family in Dark Times and it’s just chock full of tools and resources. So if you’re saying this episode has been great, you’re gonna wanna head over there to just grab some more.

Shannon Popkin (35:39) That would be great. And I mean, I want everybody to get this book, Desperate Prayers, and let Rachel walk you through how to respond to those desperate situations, those dark situations in your life. But I also want you to come back next time because we’re going to see a powerful change in this story in the second part, and you’re not going to want to miss it. And Rachel has a lot more to share about her story.

Rachel Wojo (35:57) Yes.