God’s Faithfulness Through Dark Times

Written By Ben Cox in his interview with Cissie Graham Lynch

We first interviewed Cissie Graham Lynch in 2022, from which our first story in this magazine entitled “Fearless Faith” was written. Since that interview, Cissie has had a new baby and has learned more about clinging to God in hard seasons.So, we arranged another Zoom interview with Cissie to find out what God is doing in her life right now and to tell us about the newest member of the Lynch family. What follows is an abbreviated version of that interview, which we will post online at thejourneync.com after the magazine is published.

Ben:

“We heard about your new baby on your “Fearless” Podcast. One thing I appreciated about your comments in that post is also something that I appreciated about you from our first interview. That is you are very transparent. You let people know your struggles. So with that in mind, why don’t you walk us through your birth story and then update us on where you currently find yourself in your journey to baby number three.”

Cissie:

“Yeah, so 2022 definitely rocked the world, my world, and the Lynch family. We had a baby. I was very private about it. I didn’t even tell some of our family till after we were halfway through. Most of my friends did not know until I was about seven months pregnant. We had a little girl on November 29 of 2022. Her name is Georgia Graham Lynch. And I share that story and my journey of those nine months in that broadcast that you’re referring to, ‘I Lost a Bet... And Here’s the Rest of the Story,’ as Paul Harvey would say.

We wanted a third baby for quite some time. And for different reasons, I was just okay with having two.

I had really struggled in all my pregnancies with very deep depression and anxiety. With my first child, I didn’t know anything about that. You hear a lot about postpartum with women. But then it really struck me in my pregnancies.

Depression and anxiety are not words that I used to normally describe myself. But when you become somebody that you don’t recognize, you really just want to hide away from the world. And in my months of pregnancy, I become a person I don’t recognize. For a culture that can talk about depression and anxiety more, I do think there are times that we overuse those words a lot. But for me during those nine months, it was very real. And so it just becomes a dark time.”

Ben:

“So you’re saying that postpartum depression and anxiety happened with both of your prior pregnancies?”

Cissie:

“Yeah, and that was one reason why I didn’t want to have a third.

So anyways, as I’m getting older, as we’re all getting older, Corey and I were just praying about it, knowing that the time was probably short to have a number three if we were going to. Corey got to the point, he wanted a baby. He was so excited and wanted one so bad that he would even ask in front of our friends. ‘Oh, I want one more baby. Come on.’ He would ask in front of my parents. Just as a joke. And so he said it one night in front of our friends at a party in a bar where there was an ax-throwing venue.

Actually, it wasn’t even a party. It was five in the afternoon when they had open slots at this place to go ax throwing, which tends to be a trend around this country right now. I don’t really understand the ax-throwing trend, but we were doing it and had never done it. I was pretty terrible.

And then I was getting in the swing of things. And I was like, ‘I’m pretty good.’ I beat Corey in one of the rounds. I was like ‘I could beat him.’ So I just said, ‘Okay, here it is. If I win, you never ask me again in front of anybody. And if you win, we’ll try.’ So I keep my word. I’m very competitive too. He’s not the only competitive one. Maybe I might be even more competitive than him. So I lost. I couldn’t believe it. So I said double or nothing. I lost twice. And I quit right then. And, like I said, God will teach you about making a bet. And here we are three kids now.”

Ben:

“Yeah. Well, since God is sovereign over the affairs of men and nations He’s sovereign over yours as well. So, it is God’s will for Georgia to be among us.”

Cissie:

“Absolutely. And it was a very difficult time.

A lot of people didn’t understand that because I know pregnancy can be such a happy time. And of course, there was guilt for me, knowing that there are women out there that would want to have a baby. And here I was struggling with deep depression and anxiety which could have been one of the darkest times of my life thus far. And it’s a lonely time when you walk through a journey like that. Even your family can’t quite understand it. They just think maybe you’re private about it. Even your spouse can’t quite understand the extent of what you’re facing.

And what I do know is that even in the darkest moments of life, God can be trusted. Yes. And it’s in those dark moments that he might be closer than ever.

But I did pray, I prayed for nine months, just crying out to the Lord. And it was silent. And sometimes people think that silence means He’s far. But I had to remind myself of the truth that I know to be true; The truth that Scripture says that

“He is”. In Scripture, there are over 30,000 promises that He has made, many about his character, many about his love and faithfulness towards his children. Some of those promises He’s made are dependent on our actions and what we do, but I had to be true. I had to hold on to what I knew to be true, even though I didn’t feel it. Even though the enemy would use that dark time to tell me great lies in my heart.

So it’s when people walk through that dark time, I would encourage them out of obedience, that’s when we walk and we open up our Bible in the Scriptures and read His truth, even when we don’t feel like it. We turn on the music, and the hymns or the worship songs even when we don’t feel like listening. We get on our knees and we pray even when we don’t have the words to speak. And we do it out of obedience. Because in that darkness, we know the light will pierce through that. Scripture says that the light cannot be overcome by the darkness. And I would just encourage people that when you’re walking through that, you just keep going and do what you know to be true.

People would tell me stuff and I knew the right answers. Hey, as a Graham who has been in ministry for a long time, I’ve heard my parents give the right answer. I’ve even been with friends in this situation, and what I would say to them, I just had to hold on to that. And to walk through it and know that He would get me through it. And here we are. And I got a beautiful little girl. I still feel kind of raw at the moment, like a deer in headlights coming out of last year because it was a big year in other ways as well.

Our home was hit by Hurricane Ian here in Fort Myers, Florida when I was about eight months pregnant. I didn’t lose my home. But our street was hit. Our whole town was just devastated by this hurricane. There are parts of our town that are just wiped out, it literally looks like a bomb dropped on it. I had to evacuate by myself with the two other kids.

Corey was still working up in Alaska with “Operation Heal Our Patriots” a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse. And he was gone for five months. So we only saw him three or four times during those five months. And the hurricane hit and it was devastating here in our town. That was right before the baby was born, like a month before. So I had to evacuate to Boone, to the High Country. We had to pray that night not knowing what was going to happen if we lost our home—we might have to kind of turn back to Boone being our temporary home until the baby was born. But the Lord thankfully protected our home. There are many on our streets that did flood. Every street around us flooded. And, thankfully, it just got up to our doors and not in. So yeah, last year was crazy.”

Ben:

“And so you’re saying to us that when you were eight months pregnant, you were in a dark time in terms of your emotions and feelings. And then on top of that, Corey was in Alaska when one of the many devastating weather events rocked your own home town. So I mean, talk about going through the valley, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cissie:

Ben:

“I love the fact that you emphasize doing the right thing even when you don’t feel like it. It brings to mind the scripture that says, “the just shall live by faith” from Habakkuk 2:4. You also mentioned that one of the problems that our culture has is that people let emotions guide them instead of the word of God.

So you’re saying you were anchored in God’s Word even though your emotions and circumstances were telling you something else. But I want to ask you, is there anyone you reached out to share what you were going through at that time?”

Cissie:

“There were only, I think, two or three people that knew before I even let my family know. One of them was Kay Arthur. Kay Arthur [Christian author, Bible teacher, and founder of Precept Ministries International] is a well-known name, in maybe an older generation of Bible teachers. And I’d gone up to spend a couple of nights with her.

She had become a mentor of mine over the last few years, and she asked me the question of how I was, and I just, I couldn’t hide it. I had broken down and just cried; she just hugged me and held me. She didn’t have to say much. She didn’t say anything at first, not for the first session where we’re talking, you know, that first dinner. She just held me and she asked me some really raw questions where I could be really honest and questions that most people probably wouldn’t ask.

And I could be 100% authentic with her and truthful, knowing that she was there to love me. But she didn’t say anything. She asked a couple of questions and just hugged me. And then the next day is when she would open up her Bible, and we would read. And she would, you know, check in with me periodically, and just knew the hardships of what I was facing, and just the true feelings.