By Faith With Christine Hoover

Christine talks with author and Bible teacher Esther Fleece Allen about fighting an allegiance to stoicism, performance, and success. Esther shares about her broken family life and how that broken family life left her with labels like “orphan” and “abandoned” and “abused.” For many years, she tried to outrun her emotions, just trying to put the past behind her and move on. Instead, she pursued success and actually achieved it. But eventually Esther learned that outrunning our emotions is actually outrunning God and that in fact, God wanted her real emotions: the sadness, the pain, and the grief. In our conversation, Esther shares how lament is a pathway to intimacy with God and why performance and success, even with good things, can sometimes just be pretending.LINKS FROM THE SHOWEsther’s book, No More Faking Fine //  Esther's new book, Your New Name // Sara Hagerty’s book, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet // Logos software EPISODE SPONSORS Find out more about the new book, Teach Me to Feel, by Courtney Reissig.F