1661: Christian Trauma Healing and Forgiveness with Kari Dumouchel-Parker

Robert Plank 0:00 Kari Dumouchel-Parker is the author of the book Sanctuary and also the author of God Reigns. And her new book, which is Sanctuary, is a novel that mixes romance with some much heavier territory: trauma, abuse, forgiveness, spiritual conflict, and the question of where God is when terrible things happen, and Kari says that she's more of a communicator versus an author. And she wrote this amazing brand new book, Sanctuary, which you should check out right now as a way to show what a relationship with God can look like in your everyday life, especially if you are hurt, angry, afraid, or trying to rebuild. So, Kari, welcome. How are you?

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 0:42 I'm great, thank you for having me.

Robert Plank 0:44 Happy to have you. And so, what did we leave out of that introduction? What are you all about? What has you excited these days?

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 0:51 Well, I'm retired, so you know, retiring isn't what they what you think it's going to be like. You know, you think I'm not going to have anybody owning me and that sort of thing, but you find you can only do so much nothing. You know, you have to find a purpose in life, and so I'm writing a third book, which helps with that. I'm kind of sort of piggy banking on the the sanctuary book, and then I'm just I moved up to Murphy, North Carolina, so I'm learning the neighborhood. I like to hike. Part of the part of the an aspect of the book Sanctuary was my backpacking experiences. I backpacked in the Smoky Mountains for more than 30 years, once a week for six days, and learned a lot in that process about you know danger and discovering yourself. You're alone by yourself for 35 miles, six days, and you you find out a lot about who you are. Face different difficulties, problem solve, and so that's that's in the book. Some aspects of that. So so you can hike around here. The Akoi's,here. Nanahela is here. Lake Jattug is here. So I have a lot of opportunity to get out and see nature and enjoy life and enjoying it.

Robert Plank 2:15 Very cool, you're a tour guide.

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 2:17 Well, come on over.

Robert Plank 2:20 Yeah, the Chamber of Commerce should hire you, right? Just to tell tell us about all the amazing landmarks nearby.

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 2:26 Put in a good word for me.

Robert Plank 2:29 Okay, well we sure do that. And so you've, you've done a lot, you've experienced a lot, and I hear about this right with retirement. If you choose to just sit there and do nothing to watch TV. Then you'll like you'll die pretty quickly, right? And you'll just kind of like break down. Next thing you know, you'll be in the nursing home, and the next thing you know, you'll be dead. So it's important to you know stay alive, stay stay active. And I mean, I think we can all even relate to this because we've had like you know summer vacations when we were younger as a kid, and sometimes we had summer camp and activities, and it was fun. And then there was like those years of, or the maybe days or weeks of like sitting around, and it's it's not as fun, right? It's like that's what they do in in jail or prison, right? There's solitary confinement, sitting there with nothing else to do, and so you gotta you know get off your butt, get off the couch, and and go do some things. And so the like six days of back backpacking and 35 miles, like it sounds scary, right? You're just you're one sprained ankle away or stepping off a cliff from from death. So, I mean, did you have any scary experiences when you're out there hiking, or like what have you seen?

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 3:33 Oh yeah, oh yeah. We had I don't know if you remember when those two girls were murdered on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, quite a few years ago. Anyway, on the very next weekend, I was going backpacking on the Apple. I would be on when you go in the Smokies. The Smokies, the Appalachian Trail runs through the Smoky Mountains. Anyway, so my girlfriend and I were going to go the next weekend, but we were going to be in North Carolina, Tennessee. The girls were murdered in Virginia, but you didn't. They hadn't found the guy, so you didn't know what the story was on the AT. You know who was hiking it, and anyway, so we had to kind of talk about should we go? You know, we didn't know what was going to happen. Anyway, so I decided that I'm not going to die because I'm in the Smokies. I'm going to die because it's my day to die. You know, God's sovereign. My birth and death are in His hands. It's not because you know if it's my day to die, I'm going to die at home. Anyway, so we decided to go, but it was probably the worst trip. I've had bad trips, but that was probably the worst trip I ever had. We got off on the wrong trail the first day, and then we met these hikers coming down from the Appalachian Trail. From I think I guess they're from Scandinavia, and they were agitated. They were telling us that at the the you you when you when we start we start at ground level in the local camp areas, and then we hike up the mountain through switchbacks and get on the Appalachian. Trail and they hiked back around. We make a circle. Anyway, so they were coming down from the Appalachian Trail, leaving the park, and they had found a backpack right off the Appalachian Trail. A brand new backpack with brand new gear, and was lying on the ground, and all the gear was scattered around. And then the thing that that disturbed them most was there was a pair of eyeglasses that were sitting in a stream bed, you know somebody's eyeglasses had fallen off their head, so they weren't sure what had happened. Why would anybody buy that? That equipment's expensive. Anyway, so there was this concern that maybe they ran into the guy that killed the girls. They were going to go tell the backcountry rangers about it. So that started our second day on the trail, and then we were on Hazel Creek Trail, and it wasn't at that time well maintained. It had a lot of huge logs that were strewn across the path, and it had rained a lot, so the water levels were really high and swift moving, so getting over those logs with with 50 pound backpacks, and you know there's a lot of scrapes, and my girlfriend ended up bleeding a lot, and the river crossings. When you're crossing a river and it's high, this the river was like up to our thighs, so when we're crossing, you pick your foot up, you've got a pack on your back, you pick your foot up. the The water wants to take that foot downstream, so you're now standing on one leg, right? Anyway, so we'd have to cross these streams, holding hands and with a hiking stick to get across. Well, there were eight of those, and by the time the day was over, with my girlfriend was just exhausted. So the next day, we started going up the mountain, and we've got about I don't know 40 minutes up there, something like that. And we came around a switchback. The it goes like this. So we came around a switchback, and the trail ahead of us was completely gone. It was completely washed away, like 20 feet across. So we had that discussion. Should we should we go back? My girlfriend said, "I'm not doing that. I'm not doing those river crossings again, or the the whatever. So I had to. I looked down the mountain. I thought, "Well, all right. If something happens, the worst that could happen is I'm going to break my leg. There's a lot of trees down there that could catch or fall. I had that discussion with myself. So I had to like kick the dirt and claw them out and get across, drop my pack, go get hers, and she anyway. That evening we were on the Appalachian Trail, staying in a shelter, and we we discussed that you know that whole situation. And I said, yeah, well, you know, the worst that could have happened, I could have broke a leg. And she said, break a leg? Hell, that would have killed you. So I mean, you know, I hadn't thought about if I had thought about that, I probably would have gone back down the trail. But anyway, there's just the sort of things you have to kind of power through to, to anyway. So we got at the top of the trail. We got where that backpack was, and the the rangers hadn't come there yet. So I don't. We stopped in at the ranger station at the end, and just reported it to them. Make sure that they had the information on that. But it was probably the most. Some of those trails are really bucolic and idyllic. You know, you walk through the meadows, and you get the sun filtering through the trees, and you can hear the birds, and you see remnants of the old settlements there. You know, they have barrier walls that they built, and old chimneys that are still standing, and little roads. One trip we had, I went over this rise, and it was behind a chimney, and it was an old homestead, but it was their cemetery plot, the family cemetery plot, and it had just little tiny stones that had been etched in, you know, like 1867, and the ones that were for children, and it was just like being in the middle of somebody's life. You know, it was really very moving. You know, you felt like you'd been honored to be part of their history. So it was a. I really enjoy backpacking, but I brought some of that to the point about my experience.

Robert Plank 9:01 Yeah, I can kind of sense a little bit of your your fun. Like, there's the the unexpectedness. There's the beauty. There's the history. There's the deep thinking, and there's even a little of the the fright, the terror. Right. Like the whatever whatever happened to the guy with the eyeglasses, we'll never know. So there's just quite a variety of experiences.

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 9:20 Right, it's true.

Robert Plank 9:22 Well, and, and I also know about your kind of your philosophizing that you're you're big on this idea that that growth comes through pain, right? And that the if we if we had an easy life, we wouldn't learn anything. And sometimes these difficulties, like there's like physical difficulties, like the backpacking and like the the soreness, but there's also those the stress and the life difficulties, and it's like the the problems in our lives make us grow, but then we don't appreciate or really understand it as we're living through it because it's it's definitely not fun. But then coming out of it, we can look back and say, oh my gosh, like you know the this and that bad thing in my. Life, I'm so glad in hindsight that it happened because it led me to better things.

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 10:08 Well, I mean, if you think about, if your life is easy, you don't have any reason to grow because you don't have any chance. You think you think you're okay, you know. You don't you don't see that there's a personality issue that may have led you down the the wrong road, or a bad situation at work with people, or you you don't know. And when you have a bad event, you have you have several options. You know, you can obviously you're going to have to pass through it one way or the other. You're going to have to this. You know, but when you get on the other side of it, you can take two things. You can decide, okay, what happened? Analyze it. Try to figure out what did I bring to the situation? Why did that happen? And then from that, you figure out where to go in life. But if you decide that was a bad thing, and I'm going to be angry about it, I don't, you know, whatever happens, you just you you internalize it, and it becomes a bitterness. And you see, you you know, I'm old enough now. I'm retired, so I get to see people in various stages in life that have. You can tell when people have learned and grown, and you can tell when people are still stuck back in that event. So I think that's important. That you know God puts a a spirit in all of this. There's a scripture, it's Ecclesiastes 311. It says eternity is implanted in the heart of man. So each of us has I call it a godship. So we all have an internal voice that kind of directs us and guides us. Some of us recognize it as kind of like a checking, you know, like maybe you know, or you get a little voice that goes, "Wait a minute, think about that. You know what I'm saying? We all have those things, and so we have guideposts when we go through things. If we if we actually stop and listen, but we're so busy now with life's a lot. When I was growing up, life wasn't quite this complicated, you know. It was, you know, a little simpler. I think you have a lot more, a lot more distraction in your life, and it's harder to get focused, to get alone with God or get alone with yourself and sit and think about things. You know, we're entertained constantly. You know, so those are those are obstacles, and I think the best thing that could happen to you is, you know, like a good example. You know, you see people who've gone through a tragic event, and you know, when they come forward and say that you know that they're not, they they forgive this person, you know, they're not. You know they're going to release that situation. You know that think about forgiveness is if you think about a lot of people don't want to forgive somebody because they feel like if I forgive them, I'm releasing them from the bad event that they caused me. So they don't want to forgive. They want to hold on to that because they think by holding on to that they're punishing the other person, where they're actually punishing themselves because you're locked into that that dynamic with that person. When you forgive them, God says they're my problem; they're not your problem. So you forgive them and you give them to me. I can reach them in places that you could never possibly touch, and there's a peace in that. You can move forward and build your life, and you're not locked in that. One of my sisters said, "It's like being in the ring with somebody. You just you can get out of the rink and go on and live your life, and whatever that person's situation is, not yours. It gives you a freedom, and a mental freedom, and an emotional freedom. I think so. I'm hoping that the book I talk about a lot of the stuff that I've gone through. Tessa's a younger woman than I am in the book, but I bring a lot of the questions. You know, like why did that happen to me? You know, we all want that great love. Why is why don't why don't I get that? You know, where is that person? And when you there's different kinds of romantic love. I lost my husband, and part of my grief is in the book. And the backstory to the bad guy Sam in the book is a true story. It actually was something that that I I can't disclose what it was about because it was part of my profession, but it was an actual event that happened, and so you pull. I pulled those things into the book, the things that I knew about, that I could talk about, that I understood, and bad things that happened to Tess. She, she has. I'm not gonna do a spoiler on it. Like you to read the book, but anyway. So I just, I just, I hope the book communicates to people, you know, how to look at who you are as a person, and then how to find who you are, and what. You know, there is. We're having an identity crisis. You know, we can't even figure out what sex we are. You know, but there is a beauty in knowing what you are. If you, if I understand that I'm a woman, there's something amazing about being a woman. And when I discover that I'm a woman, and there's something amazing, then I can be fully what I'm supposed to be. I can. There's a plan for my life. There's a plan for your life. There's a plan for everyone that's born, and we have a purpose for being here. When we when we know what we are, who we are, we can then figure out where our calling is in life. You know what we're supposed to do because there's a lot of great things out there that we could be accomplishing if we we put those issues to bed, you know.

Robert Plank 15:44 Can you tell us about the two books and what makes them stand out, and why we should get them?

Kari Dumouchel-Parker 15:50 I think that the books perhaps will help a lot of people in just about every aspect of their lives. It's both books. God reigns will introduce God to people and talk about the obstacles that keep you back spiritually and why what it is that we battle every single day. But it also talks about the fact that you're deeply loved by God and that you're special. And the romance novel is. I think you know. Look at all the books and movies that are out there about romance. Again, it's a big issue for a lot of people having somebody to to be in love with and a partner in life. So that book really deals with those kinds of dynamics and the problems in dating and the problems and heartbreak. And then Tess is out there finding a new life for herself. She's left everything in Florida. She's gone out west, so she's trying to find a new, a new path for herself, and that's frightening. And then she encounters two men that she falls in love with, and each of them have a different kind of love.

Robert Plank 16:55 So these two books that we're speaking of is called one is called Sanctuary by , it's a riveting and amazing story of romance and adventure, and it reflects the essence of hope and faith, and takes you, that reader, into the heart of God and to find out that with Him anything is possible, irrespective of life's detours, horrors, and difficulties. Joy in life's greatness and hope can still be found, and that is the book *Sanctuary* by , and her other book is called *God Reigns* which is an inspirational book about God and His attributes and His relationship to man and this planet. It covers the snares that Christians experience that hinders spiritual growth, and it discusses the three areas that impede growth, and has a chapter on the love of God, and that He is passionate about each and every one of us. So you can find out those two books on Amazon: Sanctuary and God Reigns by , and her website, which is the hub for all this is authorcarrydmichel.com, and we'll have a link to that underneath the podcast in the show notes. That us name is D U M O U C H E L, and we've been speaking with who is the author of these two books, Sanctuary and God reigns. Her life has been a journey of both radiant mountaintop triumphs and harrowing storms. And through descriptive imagery and insightful narration, she offers a guiding hand to those navigating the heights and depths of their own lives. And we normally ask for a fun or interesting quote or lesson at the end of these shows. Kari, her connection dropped off, but on her website she says, "Throughout our lives, God woos and calls us to Him. At each of these moments, we weigh the call of God against our lives. I pray that this book helps you say yes to God calling you yes to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So check out these two books by . That's Sanctuary and that's God Reigns. We'll have a link to the author website directly, plus to those books on Amazon. Get them. You'll love them. They'll help you to reconnect with nature, your past, your baggage, your forgiveness, and so much more. , Sanctuary, and God Reigns. Check out those two books right now.