Feeding Your Soul, Growing Your Fire with Bunmi Laditan

Series 2

Feb 16

We’re forging ahead in our self-care series and diving into one of the hardest parts of self-care: how to care for our souls, the fire that keeps our zest for life burning. Our guest today, Bunmi Laditan, is a mom of three and a gifted writer who just released a brand-new book called Dear God: Honest Prayers to a God Who Listens (including the viral social media account, The Honest Toddler!). Bunmi’s superpower is getting vulnerable and sitting with people in the dark places—because she’s traveled through the dark herself. Bunmi grew up in an extremely observant Christian home with Nigerian parents, and at 16, she found herself living on the streets then, and a couple years later, married her Jewish high school sweetheart when she decided to convert to Judaism. After she and her husband divorced, Bunmi also felt divorced her from the culture and faith she’d grown to love, and her life began to unspool. Bunmi reveals how God met her in some of the darkest moments of her life, reminding her He loves her—and all of us—right where we are. And when we live in that love, that’s when our souls truly flourish.

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Show Summary

Hi there, Nancy Hicks here. Welcome back to So What? Why It Matters.

Today we're going to turn our thoughts toward how we can care for another part of ourselves: our spiritual lives, our souls.

Our souls need more care than any other part of us. Now, of course, we don't separate our lives into parts, but our souls feed and help our bodies flourish. Our souls feed and help our minds flourish. We're all integrated one's self, and your soul is the center of it all.

Our souls are so important because they’re our fire. And that fire, that core, give us the energy to pursue love and joy and good things and good work and every other thing that makes our lives so rich. In the dark times, that fire lights the way for us to see the way forward.

When we don't care for our souls, that flame gets dimmer and dimmer until we can hardly perceive it. At that point, we're only a shadow of who we could be.

Last summer, I needed to take some time off. My son David was going through cancer treatment for Stage IV colon cancer. And of course, we were also living through a pandemic. My husband Cam and I were struggling a lot. I was just spent. And so, for the month of July, I unplugged. I stopped just about everything as far as work goes. I would sit in the garden every day, sometimes for hours. In the morning, I would just sit with the Lord and sometimes I'd read scripture and sometimes I would sit there and look out at the trees. And I would just say to God, "I don't have much to say, but I am here and I am listening for You. Please speak to me." And it was a really, really profound time for me to just connect with God, to hear His voice.

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My guest today is Bunmi Laditan. You may know her as the writer behind the hilarious social media accounts called The Honest Toddler. If you don't know that, you must check it out. She's a super accomplished woman, a very talented writer, and a very busy mother of three. And by the way, for those Canadians listening, she lives in Montreal.

Bunmi has just written a beautiful new book called Dear God: Honest Prayers to a God Who Listens—and talk about real. She is someone who's wandered, she makes no bones about it. She is someone who has struggled. She is someone who has walked away, but she got to the other side. And maybe you're someone who can relate to that.

I know that you're really going to enjoy what Bunmi has to say to us today. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Bunmi Laditan.

So What? Moments

Bunmi Laditan
One day, your soul will return to Him. This life, it seems so long and so hard, but it's going to pass like the blink of an eye. One day, this body will go. Your home won't mean anything to you. You're going to be standing before Him, and You want to stand before Him as His child.

This life, you can't get through it without Him. I need Him every moment of the day. And I'm telling you, going through it with Him is night and day versus going through it without Him. Talk to Him. Read His Word and talk to Him, and tell Him, "I need You.”

Nancy

Bunmi reminded me of how utterly simple hearing God's voice actually can be. When the world is noisy and intrusive and insisting and wacky, review and play the old songs, the old prayers, the old texts steeped in a tradition of Judaism and Christianity and hear God's voice in a new, fresh, affectionate way.

Thought-Provoking Quotes

“I believe everyone in life has a mission. I almost see myself as a deep sea diver who God helps to just go into those deep places and sit with people there, but also try to help bring them up and tell them, ‘You're not meant to live here forever.’” - Bunmi Laditan

“I left home at 16, wandered, slept outside for a while. I slept on my friend's floor in her house. So I never felt connected to God. I don't even know if I really believed. Sometimes I would pray asking for an angel to hug me, I remember as a child. But I didn't really think that there was a God who cared about me, you know?” - Bunmi Laditan

“I just came to Him broken with nothing like the prodigal son, but the prodigal daughter, and told Him, ‘I can't do it. Help me.’” - Bunmi Laditan

“Little kids will try to hit you because they are just mad and they want to lash out, and you get it. Even as parents, we have our limits where we get kind of mad. I'm telling you that God can take it.” - Bunmi Laditan

“There's this psalm. My favorite psalm is 121. It says, ‘I will lift my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. Help comes from the Lord who created heaven and earth.’ It's like we have to lift our eyes to the heavens, to the hills, to God, to Yeshua because everything around us is screaming defeat. Everything around us is screaming that we have to give up and it's better to die than to be here. But, He's saying, "No. I have a plan, and I love you." We have to lift our eyes. We have to.” - Bunmi Laditan