Getting to Know Judy (episode 1)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. Welcome to the first episode of the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. My name is Judy Douglass and I am so excited that you are joining me on this prodigal wilderness journey.

0:42 Now, before we talk about what it's like to love a prodigal over a long time, which we will be over many episodes, I thought you should get to know me a little bit. And so I'm just going to spend today introducing myself. First of all, I'm from Texas. We'll just get that out of the way. I try hard not to be as obnoxious as Texans are known to be and I will not spend a lot of time on that, though I know I could. I've tried to put all of my Texas love into my Texas room at my house so that you wouldn't have to bear the burden. I grew up in Dallas and have a wonderful family.

1:24 My parents are no longer alive. I have three fabulous sisters. We get together every other year, except of course, last year COVID interrupted our plans. Now, from the day I was born, it would appear that I was very stubborn. In fact, my parents and my sisters have informed me that throughout my life, I've always wanted my own life. And I won't argue with that. But still, one of the defining things about me is wanting my own way. Growing up, I had two major loves. The first, horses.

2:05 I loved horses. I would draw horses. I would watch TV on horses. I would watch all the cowboy shows for the horses, not the cowboys. And I started a book of horses and I asked for a horse and I asked for a horse. And I finally got one when I was 11 years old. And I rode that horse for years. And that prepared me for later when I was in college, my summer job was teaching little girls how to ride a horse at a day camp. Fabulous, wonderful job, except of course, outside in the summer heat in Texas.

2:47 My other love was words. And from that came a love for writing. And I can't remember when I wasn't trying to write things. I started a novel when I was eight. It's my only novel and I never finished it. But I kept writing and in high school I did journalism. Actually, even in fourth grade, I started a writing club with another girl because we both wanted to write. And so those two things stayed important in my life. But the most important thing in my life happened in high school. And I had a friend who invited me to go skiing in Colorado at a young life ski camp.

3:33 She said, you'll meet cute boys and you'll learn to ski. And I thought that sounded like a good way to spend Christmas break. So we took a train with a whole lot of other teenagers up to Colorado. And there were a lot of cute boys. And I did sort of learn to ski. I was really good at going fast down the hill, but I never got the traversing thing down very well and stopping even less. So I just, when I got to the bottom, sat down and that would do that. But that ski camp was so important in my life because that's where I met Jesus. Now she didn't tell me this was a spiritual camp, but that's okay.

4:16 I liked God and was glad to be there. The speaker was talking and he was telling us all that Jesus did to show his love for us and out of that to pay the price for our sins. Now some people think they're not really sinners, but I knew I was because you know that one in my own way deal. My parents didn't like the guy I was dating and they told me I couldn't see him anymore. And I wanted my own way. So I determined that I would find a way to see him. So what happened was my best friend and I exchanged boyfriends in a sense.

4:58 Her boyfriend would pick me up and my boyfriend would pick her up. We'd meet, stay together or go separately. And when it was time to go home, her boyfriend took me home and my boyfriend took her home. That went on for about nine months. And I don't to this day think that my parents ever knew or they probably would have stopped it. So when he says Jesus came to pay the penalty for your sin, I knew there was sin in my life, things that weren't right. And then as he was asking us to hold in our hands what was most important to us, and for me clearly what was most important was my own way.

5:41 Was I willing to let Christ come into my life and forgive my sins and show me his better way for my life? I'm sure my head jerked up because God has a better way for my life than I do. And I decided, yes, I would turn my hands over and let my way drop and choose the forgiveness that Jesus offered and the better way that he offered. It was almost like I signed a contract saying, I choose God's way, not mine. And I thought it was done for my life until the next morning when somebody did something I did not prefer.

6:28 And all of a sudden I realized, oh, I'm going to have to keep making this decision every day probably, maybe moment by moment. Will I choose God's way to respond or to act or to speak or will I choose my own way? It was a major turning point in my life. I broke up with that boyfriend pretty soon too. When I went to the University of Texas, come horns, I was excited. I was going to study journalism. I wanted to walk with God. I wanted to find Christian friends. But that didn't happen the first semester. And there were a lot of fraternity parties and other things going on.

7:12 And at the end of the first semester, I said, Lord, help. I need Christians to encourage me in my walk with God. I need to know how to live this Christian life and how do I get the power to make these right choices? And the next week, I ran into somebody from a ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ. It's called CRU now, but then that's what it was. And I started talking to this woman. And everything I had asked for could be mine in a sense as I got into this group and could be a part of it.

7:53 Absolutely, it happened. My life was really beginning to be transformed more into the likeness of Christ. And I learned how to walk with God. And I learned about the power of the Spirit of God. And I learned to tell people about what God had done in my life. It was a wonderful time. When I was graduating, God really seemed to say to me, I have something I want you to do. And right now I want you to come on staff with Campus Crusade. I went, okay, yes, I would love that. I just had two problems.

8:33 The first problem was I was engaged. And when I talked to my fiance, I said, Isn't it wonderful that we're going to join the staff of Campus Crusade? And he said, I'm not. I said, Oh, yes, God's calling us. He says, not me. And it's like I heard God whisper, If you marry him, you won't be able to do what I want you to do. And I said, That's a hard decision. But I broke my engagement. My other hard problem with joining the staff of Campus Crusade was that since I was very young, I wanted to be a writer.

9:19 And in college studying journalism, I knew I wanted to write for a magazine and eventually be a magazine editor. And at that time, the only thing to do in Campus Crusade that I knew of was to go on campus and talk to people about Jesus and help them grow in their relationship with him. And I was happy to do that. But it was like I said, God, you drive a hard bargain. You say, I have a good plan. Come and do this. But then you say, Give up the man you love and give up your dream. Now that man is still my friend, but he's married. I'm married, not to each other.

10:00 That was okay. The other, well, I went to our staff training and was loving meeting people and getting ready to go do ministry. And Dr. Bill Bright, the president and founder of the ministry called me into his office. He said, You have a journalism degree. I said, I do. He said, We have a magazine. It's a campus magazine that the staff out there use to help talk with students about Jesus. Instead of going to one campus, would you be willing to come to headquarters and work on this magazine for all the campuses? And I'm like, Seriously?

10:41 Talk about getting your dream back multiplied. The fact that I could do what I wanted to do right for a magazine, I eventually became the editor, but also to be doing it for eternal rewards of people's lives being changed. What an incredible gift that God gave me. Now while I was on staff writing on magazines and other things that I got to work on, I met this man named Steve Douglass, and he had come basically to help Dr. Bright in managing and leading the organization because he'd just gotten his MBA.

11:21 And we became friends because I saw him often. And then we sort of started to date and then we dated a while and then we kept dating. And that went on for a long time. And I'm thinking, All right, I'm out of this. She's never going to want to get married and I would like to get married. And so I said to the Lord, I'm done. I quit. This is over. And the Lord said, Oh, no, Judy, this is where you need to be. I said, I don't like not knowing what's going to happen. I don't like not being in control. And God said, Exactly. That's the issue.

12:01 Remember, you're choosing my way and I telling you, it's best if you stay in this relationship. And so I stayed. And after five years, we got married. And I'll tell you this, he was worth waiting for. So we went into our life. I was still working on the magazine. He was busy traveling a lot. Eventually, we had two daughters. The first one cried for four months. That was a little challenging for someone who wants to be in control. But as time went on, I was doing more writing. I actually started writing some books.

12:41 And then I started a lot of speaking, which was never in my plan. And then one day when I was really upset about something, I know I heard God say, I'm going to send you a son. And I went, Really? He says, Yeah, you don't need to do anything about it. Just wait. And I went, Okay, if that's what you say. Next week, we're going to get into details of that son. But let me tell you, it is that son that God did send us that gave me the reason, the ability to be able to do this podcast and to have written my book by the same name as the podcast When You Love a Prodigal.

13:34 The rest of the title of the book is 90 Days of Grace for the Wilderness. Let me give you a definition of what I mean by a prodigal. Now, the original meaning of prodigal, you may be surprised at. It's a very positive word. It means extravagant, lavish, abundant, bountiful. But it's come to mean something else. And I tried to define that by putting that together with those words to a person who is extravagantly wasteful, lavishly reckless, abundantly profligate.

14:15 A prodigal is someone who's making bad or destructive choices for their life. And so that is the kind of situation we're talking about on this podcast. Loving a prodigal, living on a journey with a prodigal over time. And here's what we'll look at. How God walks through the wilderness with us. I can tell you over and over and over how God has walked through the prodigal wilderness with me. I can also help you understand why they become prodigals, bad or rebellious.

14:57 But I think most of all, we're going to learn about God and ourselves and loving a prodigal. Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. And for more helpful information, resources, and books, check out judydouglass.com.

15:38 That's Douglass with two S's. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.