Kulcharama With Diva

Transcript source: Whisper (large-v3, cleaned).

Ladies and gentlemen, we begin our final descent as we prepare for landing. Please make sure your seatbelts is fastened and your seatback and tray tables are stowed. Also, this time, please put away all carrying items, including laptops and devices of similar size for landing. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to enter Culturama with D.Va. hello culturama listeners and welcome to this exciting inspirational moment segment with of culturama with diva where simplicity is the best thing i’m your host princess tia and this program is brought to you by inner sanctum entertainment ltd and caribbean professionals llc we are inner sanctum entertainment limited proud sponsor of culturama with diva we encourage you to listen and join us in a journey of cultures ideas and innovations as diva takes us around the world with her guests an amazing show with an amazing host we thank you for accepting the challenge of opening your mind we are inner sanctum entertainment limited and we are a proud sponsor of culturama with diva now i have a very special guest in my studio her name is caris Meier and I find her bio really interesting. Now Karis is a mother of four children, also a wife. She has her degree in counseling and Christian education. She suffered with a chronic illness and she is passionate about helping people and passionate about her woman’s ministry, and so much more. But what really strikes me are these very interesting topics, specific topics that she has chosen to speak about. Hi, Karis, welcome to the program. Thank you. Good to be here. Tell us about who is Karis Meier, and then we’re going to go straight into your chronic illness and how you overcome it. Okay, so I would say first and foremost, I am a child of God. I am a believer in Jesus, and that kind of forms my whole identity. I grew up traveling around. My parents are missionaries, so we lived in different countries, and now my husband is in the military, so we travel. We move around a lot. I’ve been to a of different places and i love i love that part about my life just being able to meet new people um experience new things and yeah i like you said i have four children um ranging from two years old to 12 years old two boys and two girls they keep me very busy i love being a mom i’ve been married to my husband ben for uh let’s see 17 years now we live in northern virginia um that’s where we are right now we’ve been here for three years so a little bit about me okay so tell us about the chronic illness that uh you placed here in your bio so i um about a little bit bit before I got married, so it was about a little over 17 years ago, I went over and visited my sister who was living in Pakistan at the time. And a few months after I returned, I started feeling ill, losing weight, and things just continued to get worse and worse. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me for quite a few months. It turned out that I had a few different kinds of intestinal parasites and by that time they had done quite a bit of damage internally and also started affecting different organs. So a lot of treatments, got rid of the parasites, but they left a lot of lingering effects and ended up having to be in and out of the hospital for, for years, really. And I started having heart condition and pancreas problems, kidney problems. So it was kind of, kind of just affected a lot of different parts of my body. And then I ended also ended up also getting lyme’s disease which also affected um my immune system and so it’s it’s been a long journey and very much um you know just just hard because it kind of changes um kind of migrates and my body is just kind of had to adapt to the different things that it that it migrates to but um Yeah, it’s right now I’m at a place where I am stable, but I still, I still live with pain. I still live with, you know, difficulties with my health every day. But I’m not, I’m not, there’s a few times where I’ve had to be admitted to the hospital because things got pretty bad. So that’s, that’s kind of where I’m at. as as you as you mentioned you’re living you’re living with the pain on and off one of the topics I find really interesting here is learning to suffer well and I kind of I see where it connects with your pain what do you mean by that yeah so I um you know for the first few years when I had the illness I thought you know eventually this will go away and I can just move on with my life but as as years went by and I realized it’s not going away right now and I need to learn how to live well even when life is not what I expect or my body is not healthy you know because we all have we all have things in our lives that are that are difficult and you know I think for a while I just tried to kind of ignore it like oh I can just try to be strong and just um push past this um but there came a point where it where it was it was pretty severe and I realized I can’t just um I can’t just do this by myself and I and I also can’t become depressed because there’s there’s days where I just didn’t want to get out of bed I was like this is it’s too hard to live yes too hard to go on i just i didn’t feel like i had any desire um and i you know so it got pretty low for me and i realized like you know we i have a choice to make in this and i um you know we can’t choose a lot of what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to it. And I, by the grace of God and by the help of God, I think, you know, I started to shift my mindset to, oh, I just can’t wait until this is over. I can’t wait till I’m out of this too. How can I live fully right now in the condition I am with what I have to the fullest you know and a lot of that is looking past myself looking past my pain looking past you know my own desires and seeing seeing other people and seeing and asking God for the strength each day to go on and seeing the gifts that he gives me and us you know even even if I’m missing out on some of the benefits of health or of eating things that I want to or whatever there’s still so many blessings so there’s there’s so much that encompasses the the suffering well um that kind of that that kind of came to me but that’s part of it that’s that’s kind of a snapshot i guess just a reminder folks that i’m speaking with the awesome lady caris meyer and this program is brought to you by inner sanctum entertainment ltd and caribbean professionals llc if you need instrumentals recording mixing or mastering maybe a music video photo shoot or graphic designing need bouncy castle space painting popcorn cotton candy or characters for the kids want to do online or offline promotion maybe both let’s print your t-shirts and everything else here at inner sanctum entertainment limited we got you covered reach us on fb and instagram at inner sanctum entertainment ltd youtube at inner sanctum entertainment and twitter at isanctum studios or call us at 1-868-338-4123 that’s 1-868-338-4123 So Karis, before we jump onto our next two topics, tell us the life lessons that you have learned from this chronic illness. Living expecting like a miracle can happen or God can move or life can change, but also living surrendered and living, I say peaceful because when we’re anxious to get out of our situation, to get out of our suffering, to get out of our trouble, that’s not helpful and so i think learning to live surrendered to god’s will and to the purposes beyond you know our understanding but then also to not lose hope to not give up and defeat and say well you know just kind of like the victim mentality like oh this is just this is happening to me and i can’t do anything about it um and so that that’s one thing um i think also So learning how to reach out in pain is something that I am still learning. As I mentioned in the beginning, I think I just try to put on a smile and pretend everything was okay when it really wasn’t. And I did that for a long time thinking, oh, I don’t want to be a burden to other people. I don’t want to ruin other people’s day by saying how I really am. You don’t want to ask, how are you doing? I’m good, you know, rather than I’m actually having a really, really hard day, you know. And so I think, you know, we there’s so many wonderful people and we have such an opportunity to have community in our suffering, in our pain. If we are willing to be vulnerable, if we are willing to open up ourselves to other people and share that together. Um, and then just the last thing I would say is I, I have learned the beauty of, of how suffering, how struggling with something really opens up our hearts to other people. And, and, you know, I’m able to, I just have such a compassion for people who are going through difficult things. and I think it takes going through something difficult yourself to really gain that empathy um and so I’m just I’m thankful that that I am able to use what you know I’m not thankful for the pain of my for myself but I’m thankful that that pain has been able to open up such a big heart you know in me to be able to reach out to others and to embrace others who are who are struggling awesome tell us about the importance of soul care body mind and spirit when we have a problem we often just tackle it from one perspective sometimes mental health you know we try to just tackle the mental aspect of it or if it’s if it’s a physical problem so like for me you know it was it was manifesting physically but we’re such complicated beings we’re everything is so related so our bodies and our mental state and our emotions and our spiritual being you know they’re they’re all very connected and so um just as the years have gone by, I have, I realized that I need to be more holistic in, in how I’m caring for myself and also how I’m maybe going after the root of, of, of an issue, you know, because sometimes a problem can manifest in one way, but, but the real problem maybe is, is a relational problem where it’s manifesting physically or, or you’re having problems, you know, in relationships and the problem maybe is physical or spiritual and so there’s i think there’s different ways that we can care for ourselves you know both spiritually and you know i know different people have different beliefs about spiritual yes yes but however however you um you know are able to grow spiritually pursue that and um and then you know our emotional beings are so complicated and can become very overriding for everything else and so you know just just being very aware of our emotions and how we’re expressing them and who we’re expressing them to whether whether we be tend to be people who um express too much or too little you know i mean there’s just there’s so many different aspects to our emotional health um but it’s also very tied to our mental well-being and just always being aware i think for me i have a very busy mind and And so I have to constantly be taking, taking thought for what, for what my actual thoughts are, right? Cause we can be thinking about all the negative things in our lives and those things will just continue to grow as we think about those, or we could be thinking about the blessings we have or, you know, um, so there’s the mental aspect and then of course our bodies and how do we do, how do we take care of our bodies? How do we how do we take the rest that we need? You know, how do we exercise, exercise, diet, and there’s so many different parts. Exactly, exactly. And, and it’s different for every person, you know, so you really have to be in tune to like, what is my body saying to me right now? And sometimes I think we don’t let our bodies, we don’t give our bodies what they need, because we think we should be, you know, doing this, or we should be more busy. you so right yeah a younger person may be listening to the program because we tend to have young people uh my age or younger than me listen to the program they may be asking what’s the difference between uh spirit and soul yeah so the spirit at least i mean different people kind of divide them differently but at least in my research and how i understand it is a spirit is is our connection to the spiritual world you know if you believe in god it’s it’s your connection with god your relationship um with the higher being that you believe in and um and it’s more of the you know the part that we don’t see the soul is more our emotions and and the inner being of our person, our identity, and how we relate. And that often connects with how we relate to other people, our relationships and interconnectedness with other people and their souls. People, Kharis has a book on the market, and I want to get to some pointers. I’m still reading, but trust me, it’s a really good book to sit, reflect, and know your true identity. So, Karis, tell me, first of all, what do you mean by, with God, suffering can be redeemed? Nobody would say suffering is a good thing. I think suffering is something that we would all naturally try to avoid at all costs and get out of, which is a natural human reaction. So, but with God, God is amazing and that he can turn the evil and all the difficulty and the suffering into our lives around for good somehow. I think I, we don’t understand how it all works, but personally in my own life, um, I have been through years of, um, lots of different, uh, chronic illness problems with my body. And, um, you know, I have seen how God can, can use the hard things, the, the, the suffering, the illness the trauma the you know whatever the difficulty is in our lives that that is not it’s not good god did not create evil or the difficulty but god can use that difficulty if we allow him to bring good things and some of that is you know like our inner sanctification god god can can make us more like him he can he can open up our eyes to see see, um, see things from his perspective more, you know, give us eternal perspective. Um, he gives us more compassion for other people. He can use us, um, for the building up of his kingdom and for reaching out to other people who are suffering. So those are just a few things, but I think there’s, there’s many things that I have, um, learned to see that, wow, like God, God can turn things around in our lives that we think are just lost forever or that you know are just dead you know like god god can do that and but we have to be willing to um to be patient yes to be patient too right because sometimes it takes time what do you mean by suffering well it’s not a one size fits all each person is different and you know unique what do you mean by that so i think one of the beauties about being human is we are all so different we are god has created each of us wonderfully uniquely perfectly you know um but uh so i think we need to, we need to approach things not as a one size fits all. So I, so I say that, so first of all, suffering well, um, is there’s not one way to do it, I guess is what I was, what I mean by that. Um, sometimes we need to learn how to let go. Like for me personally, I held all of my negative emotions in for way too long and didn’t allow myself to express anger, frustration, sadness, depression, because I thought I had to hold it all together. And so I realized that, you know, I need, I needed to learn to express those both to God and to other people to allow myself, um, to have more of a honest, vulnerable connection. Um, and so that, so that’s something for me personally, but I think also when you’re in suffering, it’s so easy to become very, um, focused on the suffering and to become self-focused really because we, we, we kind of turn inward and we can become you know we can have self-pity we can feel sorry for ourselves like oh poor me um and you know it’s okay to have moments of you know feeling of lament and learning how to lament learning how to grieve what we are what we have lost but then also to turn towards god and to turn towards other people and to you know to learn how to practice gratitude to to practice um giving thanks even when we don’t feel it you know so that’s just another example of of you know we can we can suffer and bring everyone down with us or we can um share honestly but then also choose to see the blessings, choose to rejoice in what we do have. And so, yeah, that’s just a little bit of what I mean by suffering well. So, Paris, I see you last published a blog, published your blog on August 30th, 2022 of this year, Sweet Silence. What do you mean by Sweet Silence? yeah i you know i notice more and more in our world how uh we just there’s so much noise there’s so much busyness um there’s always something on we it’s a lot of people um are afraid of silence you know so we turn on the tv turn on the radio you get around more people you get on social media and I think God really values our being silent. There’s a lot of scripture to talk about being silent before God, waiting on God, learning to just be still and know that he is God. And so I think sometimes what we’re afraid of is what we will discover in our silence. You know what, and maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s just quietness of our minds that we need to, we need to just settle our minds and learn how to practice being quiet, practice resting. And so I say sweet silence because it’s, it is a very sweet place where we can be with God when we are listening, when we are just resting from the busyness of our lives, of rushing from one activity to another, you know, and, um, and there’s just, there’s a lot of inner strengthening that can happen in silence, um, and, and discipline too, that we can grow from. And I think it also, it kind of prepares us to, and learning how to listen well to other people because, um, listening is such a, it’s such a valuable thing and, and people love to be listened to. And so So, yeah, it’s it’s it’s something that I am I am trying to grow into because honestly, for me, I have I have a busy mind. And so I really need to practice moments of quiet and of just waiting on God and his timing. Yes, his timing. And we get so impatient. We want to move things along. So we try to push it. But yeah, exactly. We need to wait. it’s like listening and learning to take action wow jumping on the line to january 26 2022 um suffering too well yeah so that i was i was talking a little bit what i mentioned earlier for me um i think i felt at least in the beginning years of, of my illness, I, I kind of felt pressure to be a perfect Christian. I say perfect in quotes, cause I know, I know I could never be perfect, but I wanted to, nobody’s perfect, but I wanted, I didn’t want to dishonor God. I didn’t want to, um, you know, I didn’t want to say the wrong things. I didn’t want to come across as complaining. I didn’t want to be a burden to other people. And so I just put a smile on my face a lot of times and tried to just hold it all together by myself rather than inviting and opening up myself to lean more heavily upon God in an honest way. And also to open myself up to be loved by and cared for and carried sometimes by other people. You know, I think that the beauty of, of community is we, we all need each other sometimes to support each other. You know, we all have our ups and downs and, um, and, and that takes being vulnerable, you know, in our weak moments and saying, I just, I need help right now. I’m having a really hard day. Can you, can you sit with me? Can you pray with me um can you speak some encouraging words to me so that’s what i mean by suffering too well i think we can try to be strong in ourselves and sometimes and for me that was really out of pride um which i had to discover and confess because i realized you know i wanted i wanted to hold it all together myself and i couldn’t and the last one on my list i have um wonders of his love christmas eve yeah so i took that song from the from the christmas carol but in wonders of his love it talks a lot about the wonders of god’s love and just um so just there’s so many amazing things about god’s love that we can take for granted and um to take the time to really sit and think and wonder and sing about and contemplate and meditate on just the greatness, the steadfastness, you know, um, of, of God’s love for us. And, and that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s never ending, you know, and that his love is not, um it doesn’t change you know it’s not conditional upon how good we are or you know how we are acting you know just it’s amazing it’s it’s so different than human love i think our love you know we tend to base our love you know on how other people are loving us or you know how we’re feeling that day and god is just so different and i think you know to really embrace and learn how to receive that love is just, it’s just such a, it’s really a lifeline. Yeah, it’s how we have to live. So it’s awesome. God’s love is awesome. What do you mean by learning to lament? So it’s actually something that one of my sisters brought up to me several years ago now. And there was actually a book called Learning to Lament that she recommended for me to read because there was a lot of loss, a lot of things that I lost because of my physical condition. And I had never really taken the time to grieve. I had a lot of sadness. I felt sad a lot, but I had never really taken the time to actually sit down. And for me, it was really, it really helped to journal, to write, to write that out and to learn how to process those things before God and with someone else and say, yeah, this is really, this is really hard, you know, and there’s a whole book in the Bible of lamentations. There’s several true songs that are a lot about just lamenting, like just sharing how difficult and, and, and loss. And, and so I think it’s something that we don’t take the time for because it’s uncomfortable. It’s, it’s hard to, to, you know, just realize how hard things are and how sad you feel sometimes. So for me, I had to learn how to do that and how to do it in a way that I didn’t stay there. You know, we don’t want to stay in lament forever, but we do need to process it. Peaceful expectations of surrender and faith. I love this. Yeah, it’s something that I have struggled with immensely because I think for a long time, I felt like I either had to surrender or have faith like either had to surrender to for me it was you know my illness like I’m just like okay well God I just surrender to this because this is what’s happened to me um or like to go forward in faith and like God you can heal me you know I can come out of this you can bring deliverance and I think I kind of swung back and forth on that pendulum like you know what should I do what should I be doing right now and just coming to the realization that we can do both that we can be fully surrendered to God we can be fully surrendered to what he allows in our lives but then also be fully expected you know expectant that he can he can move he can work he can do miracles at any time in our lives so so we can be at peace um fully surrendered and we can also be fully expectant and hopeful of, of what God is going to do. Awesome. How can persons find your book? So my book is on Amazon right now. It will be out in libraries and bookstores, um, probably next month, but right now it’s on Amazon, both on ebook for 99 cents and, um, paperback. You want to say hi to anybody out there in the world? I’ll say hi to my mom and dad in China and to my sisters and brothers. my parents live in china yeah well very inspirational very inspiring karis uh thank you so much for your time and your knowledge to supply to the world out there where can find your website carries what’s your website address yeah so my website is karrismeyer.com k-a-r-i-s-m-e-i-e-r.com karrismeyer.com and it’ll be in the show notes and in my social media pages so guys with that being said life is a journey live good love god one love one heart let’s get together and feel good see you soon this is caribbean professionals LLC where simplicity is the best thing we provide a wide range of services including audio editing website building and maintenance music production just to name a few are you an entrepreneur or music producer or tired of office management handling let us take care of it for you that’s right you heard me we We provide virtual assistant services to take care of your office management needs. 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