Chronic Illness, Suffering, and the Idols We Don’t Recognize: Kimberly Phinney's Story of Perseverance
About this episode
Kimberly Phinney shares her journey through chronic illness and the impact of suffering on her faith and identity.
“Suffering brings you to the end of yourself and you have to decide—do I love the Giver or do I love the gifts the most?” That realization didn’t come easily for Kimberly Phinney. It came after years of chasing the kinds of addictions people rarely call addictions at all—perfectionism, workaholism, people-pleasing, and the relentless drive to prove your worth. And it came after chronic illness stripped away the very things she once used to define herself and led to an unraveling. For Kimberly, that unraveling eventually led to a nervous breakdown in her twenties. But the story didn’t stop there. Years later she was diagnosed with severe stage-four endometriosis. What followed were multiple surgeries, catastrophic complications, sepsis, months of being bedridden, and the long process of learning how to walk again. In a short span of time, the things that once shaped her identity—productivity, professional success, physical strength, reputation—were stripped away. What remained forced her to confront a deeper question: when suffering removes the gifts we’ve relied on, do we still love the Giver? In this episode, Kimberly shares…
More episodes of Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seidl
- Theologian Brenna Blain Gets Radically Vulnerable About Her Addictions and Faith: “I Knew I Wasn’t Supposed to Do It”
- A Pastor's Confession: Andy Reveals His Secret Addiction, Affair, and How God Met Him in His Mess
- Drunk Poets Society: Poet Amy Leigh Wicks on How Alcohol Stole More Than It Ever Delivered
- The Identity Crisis We're All Facing: Jamie Winship on Fear, Finding our Identity, and His Own Alcohol Addiction
- He Loved Jesus but Couldn’t Stop Drinking: How JP Graves Went from Hidden Addiction to True Freedom
- When the Drinking Problem Doesn't Look Like a Problem: Heidi Mills on the Signs Alcohol Might Be an Issue
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seidl podcast page.