The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 100 – Gordon & Cherise Selley

Episode 100: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

This episode of the Dr. Jeff Show podcast features Gordon and Cherise Selley, respected business leaders from Colorado Springs, who share their powerful testimony about finding Christ’s love amid profound suffering. Gordon, formerly a chiropractic physician specializing in non-surgical healthcare and personal injury cases, experienced a life-altering auto accident that left him with a broken neck, severed ligaments, and three discs pressing into his spinal cord. The episode explores how the couple navigated this trauma—Gordon through intense physical pain and spiritual questioning, and Cherise through the challenges of being a caregiver while questioning her capacity to continue loving her husband.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Welcome to a new episode of the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show’s coming to you from the Mike S. Adams studio at the Summit Ministries headquarters in Manitou Springs, Colorado. And the show is available on Google, Apple, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, actually 14 different platforms. On one of them, hearing the show, would you please go review the show because when you leave reviews, more people hear about it, more people can be introduced to some of these thought leaders that I’m interviewing who demonstrate that our worldview changes everything.

Today’s show’s a little bit different. We’ve talked on this program about the problem of pain, the problem of evil and suffering, sort of the apologetics issue, but there’s something more to it because we’ve been in a place of experiencing personal pain. We’ve been in a place of experiencing, maybe, trauma. How do we deal with this?

A special show today, because I’m going to have in the studio with me, Gordon and Cherise Selley, who have a tremendous testimony about this well-respected business leaders here in Colorado Springs, but their personal testimony about the power of Christ, even in the midst of our suffering, is something you’re not going to want to miss. Welcome to the show, Charise and Gordon. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast.

Cherise Selley (01:20):
Thank you so much.

Gordon Selley (01:21):
Thank you for having us.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:22):
This is a first in a number of ways. First, first time you’ve been on the show.

Cherise Selley (01:26):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:27):
It’s the first time that in our new Mike S. Adams studio that we’ve had two guests at one time on the show.

Cherise Selley (01:33):
It’s really cozy in here.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:34):
It is very cozy. Yes, I know. Even though it’s in the middle of winter in Colorado, it’s a little.

Cherise Selley (01:41):
It’s toasty upstairs. But it’s okay.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:42):
Yes, very toasty. We don’t lack for warmth. But I’m really excited about our conversation because at Summit Ministries, we talk a lot about worldview and apologetics, but everybody comes to the program asking one primary question, which is, how could God allow pain and suffering? And when you just ask one or two questions deep, you realize they aren’t asking something that’s theoretical. Yes, they’re asking, how do we reconcile God’s goodness with his power? And if God knew, if he could do something about the pain, why wouldn’t he?

But more than that, they’re asking, how do I deal with the pain and suffering or trauma that I’ve experienced or that I’ve seen people close to me experience? So we get to take that question and really go deep today. And the good news is that people can, they’ll learn how they can follow your podcast and your story and continue to get encouragement from you as they learn how to stay focused on Jesus in the midst of real struggle.

Cherise Selley (02:53):
That’s so good. Wow, what an intro, Jeff, because it is such a vulnerable question. It’s such a hard question and it’s a real question. And you said that we could go deep today. You’ve given us permission to do that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:08):
The cool thing about the format of our show is that we can take time to dig in. We don’t have to use soundbites. We can actually talk and really figure out, so how do we do this? I’d like to hear a little of your story first just to sort of set the stage. We’re talking about pain and suffering and difficulty. Nothing about, this is theoretical for the two of you, right?

Gordon Selley (03:36):
I’m looking forward to this. So peel away and continue to ask questions so that I don’t just ramble on for the audience, but I want to connect with the audience. I want to connect with those people who are not just struggling with pain the first time, for three weeks to two years. How about someone who’s dealt with it for three decades? How about when their worldview is completely smashed and they believed that God was part of healing? And that’s what I started with here.

I was a chiropractic physician, I was a doctor. I specialized in non-surgical healthcare. I actually specialized in tort law with personal injury cases, with auto accidents. I knew every detail to every detail of what was going to happen with a certain diagnosis and then what the treatment and prognosis would be later.

And then here I was, ironically, I’m the one injured in an auto accident. I’m the one who thought, okay, I’m going to make a comeback. I’m going to show my patients. I’m going to make a comeback. And 45 days after my accident, I couldn’t be the good patient anymore. What happened was that I broke my neck. And so I had, it’s the posterior longitudinal ligament in your neck that holds everything together, and it was completely severed like a horse’s tail.

(05:16):
And I had three discs into my spinal cord that looked like scrambled eggs. So I was fortunate. I called my friend who was a neurosurgeon, went for the MRI, got an emergent MRI. We found all these things. And then what happened was that day I went from complete health, complete prosperity, complete optimism, great leadership, a future that was going to be great. A Christian, a strong Christian. I was your yuppie Christian. Okay, I’ve got your beige khakis on. I’ve got the yellow tie, I’ve got the blue jacket. I’ve read the scripture a few times. I’m involved in leadership. I can do it all. I can do it all through Christ who strengthens me. That was the motto.

And then all of a sudden, my surgeon went through six and a half hour surgery just to pull the fragments out of my spinal cord because he said you could have been a quadriplegic.

(06:18):
And that started the downward spiral. And a lot of folks out there, they start out with an initial injury and they think it’s the worst crisis in their lives. And then all of a sudden little things came on top. I had the things that came to the surface were temporomandibular joint syndrome. Things that came to the surface were rheumatoid arthritis, things that came to the surface. All of a sudden, I have this difficult kidney problem where I’ve already had eight kidney surgeries. So I’ve had all of these ancillary attacks even against my autoimmune system. So my nervous system has been compromised, but I’ve dealt with this for 30 years.

And what I would say is this, is that when I first was injured, the why question was the biggest for me. Why God, is this happening to me? Yeah, I’m a good American. I make good money. I pay taxes. I employ people. I’m a good Christian. I have a moral compass. I love the Lord. Why me? And as you mentioned before in the introduction, that’s what people are asking. And I know for me it came down to a scripture in Jeremiah 15, verses 15 through 18, why is my pain unceasing, refusing to be healed, Lord? Why are you like a deceptive stream where waters fail? This is in scripture. This is scripture Jeremiah 15.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:59):
So it’s not like God is saying, hey, don’t you dare say any of that stuff.

Gordon Selley (08:04):
No.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:04):
It’s actually recorded in the words of scripture.

Gordon Selley (08:06):
Right? So Jeremiah is recording this, and here I was. I loved only New Testament. I had all the healing scriptures. They weren’t working. I’m like, do I not understand scripture? God, is this a puzzle piece? But what I learned from it was, is what came in the next verses, therefore says the Lord, if you return, I will restore you. And if you extract the worthless, the vile from your words, I will make you a spokesman. In fact, my spokesman.

And I’m like, heavenly Father, what does that mean? I’ve already returned to you. I’ve already repented. I’ve already repented of my sins. And what I learned through the why was the Lord was calling every part of me unto him in a deeper intimate way. And so over the years pain, instead of being this ugly monster that was torturous, pain became a tool and a gift and a facilitator of spiritual maturity.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:20):
I want to continue on with that thought because that sentence that you gave just now goes against so many people’s perception of the theology that would be proper to Scripture. The idea that God would actually, a good God would actually work through our pain to make us something that he wants us to be. Cherise, you walked with Gordon through this whole journey.

Cherise Selley (09:46):
I didn’t know him at the very beginning. I didn’t know him as a practicing doctor. So we’ve been married this year, it will be 27 years of marriage. So I came into this journey with him after he had lost everything, but he was on this rebuild stage at that time thinking that he was actually going to go back to law school. We met at a church retreat of all places, and he came into the retreat late and his sunburned and his hair was blown back. He looked a little bit like Jack Nicholson or something.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:24):
Not the good Jack.

Cherise Selley (10:25):
Yeah. But he came in and he was so confident. Gordon had this confidence that I had never really experienced with anybody else. When we connected, it was truly a spiritual connection. We fell in love quickly. We fell in love hard, but the Lord was in the center of that place.

So through that time, I never thought that I would be signing up to be on this chronic pain journey the way that we’ve been. It’s not like I saw him and said, well, okay, let’s go. This is going to be fun. He would’ve shielded me from that if he would’ve known how hard the road would’ve actually been. But the beauty and the grace of God is God sent somebody to be by his side before he knew the full impact of where his health was actually going, because it was on a downward spiral shortly after we got married.

So six months after we got married, he developed complex regional syndrome, which is like a, yes, it’s RSD, it’s also known as that. So I couldn’t touch my husband. He couldn’t distinguish between hot and cold. His nervous system was on fire. And every time that I would, I had to actually sponge bathe him. So he went from feeling pretty good to this complex pain syndrome that happened literally just in a flash.

(12:01):
And that was as a result from all the neck surgeries that he had. And his body just went on overload. So through that, I remember very distinctly going, I don’t know if I can handle this. I mean, it’s one thing to be in pain, but it’s another thing to watch somebody that you’re so in love with have to take that all on and you can do nothing to help. So there’s a hopelessness that can come from being the spouse or the loved one in the journey just like there is for him.

But the thing that was so beautiful is that Gordon really and truly maintained this attitude of praising God. And this sounds so weird, it sounds so weird, but he was praising God through his pain when he couldn’t even get out of bed when I couldn’t touch him. And he had 45 or whatever days of not sleeping, and he was hospitalized and they shut his nervous system down. He was still maintaining this conversation with God. I wasn’t even a part of it.

He was communing with the Lord in the deepest part of who he was, and it was breaking him down to the core. But I think I’ve heard this said, and I think it’s actually a really good saying, that there is no good love story without an antagonist trying to come and steal the love.

(13:30):
And so that antagonist is pain. Is it going to steal the love? And then the deeper question is, does Christ love us? If we’re going through this windstorm of pain together, is there really love here?

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:47):
Yeah. Well, you brought up something that I think a lot of people have suspected is that pain might be the absence of love. Pain would be the absence of caring. The worst thing that God could do is withhold the good from you, and then you would experience what life without God would be like. And it’s a life of pain, and he would never do that if he really loves.

Cherise Selley (14:14):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:14):
But I appreciate you bringing in this perspective too, of being a caregiver, Cherise, because I think a lot of people who are watching or listening right now, they’re helping somebody or they’re trying to.

Cherise Selley (14:27):
Exactly. Trying to.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:28):
And they don’t. And the pain that comes along with that. I know when I went through cancer, there were moments, I’m sure where I was in a lot of pain, but Stephanie’s pain was greater because she had to watch and couldn’t do a thing about it.

Cherise Selley (14:49):
And you would’ve done anything to her.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:51):
I would’ve done anything to shield her from that.

Cherise Selley (14:53):
Absolutely. And so I think the hardest thing is there’s this glass ceiling or something. I can’t reach him and he can’t reach me in that space. And early on in the marriage as well, when it got to a point of this is really just all suffering for that season, I remember very distinctly and very candidly saying, God, I don’t know if I can be in love with Gordon anymore. I may be falling out of love. I don’t know if I can do this.

And so as he’s coming to the end of the rope with his pain, I’m coming to the end of the rope with feeling like, am I going to be the caregiver at such a young age? And how am I going to do this? I mean, I think caregivers feel like there’s a part of their life that might be taken away and stolen too. And I’ll never forget that as I’m reaching out to the Lord, I’m praying, I’m crying, and I just really sensed through my prayer life that the Lord was speaking into my spirit. Finally, you’re at the end of your love.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:06):
End of your love.

Cherise Selley (16:07):
End of my love for Gordon. Now I can love him the way that I want to love him through you. And so I learned at a very young time in our marriage that love isn’t always, it’s not a 50/50 proposition when somebody can’t give something back and they want to, but if they can’t, that’s where God is in the middle bridging this love and actually threading us together in a more powerful way.

But it began when I came to the end of my self effort of love, it was a really tacky, ugly place to be in that self effort. It’s a young kind of love. It’s an immature love. It’s a love that’s based on our effort. And even as Christians, as a young Christian, you don’t realize how much of your own effort you’re putting into it until you have no more effort to give it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:05):
You want to think that you can. I am the one doing the loving here. I can make this happen. The two of you have now developed a ministry to help people that deal with chronic pain, but not in the way of, well, here are strategies for pain management and things like that. All of those things have their place, but helping people grapple with ongoing, chronic, horrible pain through Christ. I’ve got to understand that.

Gordon Selley (17:48):
I would definitely like to talk on this.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:51):
Yeah.

Gordon Selley (17:51):
Okay. Because it starts all the way back to what did you do, Gordon? This happened 30 years ago where I started my chronic pain experience.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:01):
Yeah.

Gordon Selley (18:01):
So what did you do when Dr. Gordon turned into Gordon? And then who was I going to be later? Is it nothingness? Am I going to be disabled? I’ve lost my identity. I’ve lost my security. I’ve lost my safety. I’ve lost my provision. I’ve lost everything that I am. I’ve got nothing left. And heavenly father, the faith that I had, the belief that I had in you is starting to shrivel up into disbelief because you’re not healing me.

(18:36):
Everything that said that was going to happen in the church, 65 to 80% of people right now, today, believe in healing. But 99% of people don’t get healed. So the Lord woke me up and said, Gordon, when you are dying to self, since we’re on that topic, you get to develop movement and growth of a true self.

And I’ve just literally taken a refining fire and gotten rid of everything that puffed you up, everything that seemed important, doctor, everything. That was absolutely what you stood on with your confidence. I want you to grow in me. And when you grow in me, here’s the good news. When you were baptized and you went down under that water, the old person went down the river.

(19:31):
So the new person that’s going to emerge is not going to be like the old person. The new person is going to see unfamiliar dark places. The new person is going to see statistics broken. The new person is going to see the power of God that’s in you. And so from that, going back to that original scripture, you’re going to become my spokesman. If you can speak what is valuable to people and what is worthy, what he was sharing with me is, purpose is more important than your pain.

So what I want you to do, Gordon, is share the healing aspects in your lane with Cherise. Healing is a journey. It’s a sanctified life that we’re growing in new, and it’s better. And you’re going to see the kingdom of God. You’re going to grow spiritually. And by the way, all those fruits that you want, when you put your roots in the streams of water, your leaves, the green leaves, they’re going to stay green.

(20:33):
You’re not going to starve. You’re not going to have famine, you’re going to grow. You may stumble, but you’re not going to go headlong, you’re righteous. So I want you to focus on the spiritual thing. So what is so cool about Summit Ministries? People ask me all the time, they still want the quick answer. How’d you get out of bed? How’d you get out of bed, Gordon, you were bed bound. How’d you get out of bed? People are not going to believe this.

I said to Cherise Selley, my beautiful wife, I said, go get me the best of the Bibles, and I want that Cambridge wide margin Bible. And I, you know what the Lord put on my heart? Do you fully believe in my word? And here I was a Christian for years. Read the word a couple times and I said, no.

Cherise Selley (21:20):
That was in 1996, by the way.

Gordon Selley (21:22):
I said, heavenly Father, I don’t, I’m not healed. I don’t see this. I don’t see the promised land here. I can’t even get a vision of it. And I said, Cherise, get me every Bible. So what did I do, front to cover, every Bible? Marked it up, went through it. That’s what got me out of bed. See, what was happening was literally, it’s almost molecularly with my body. My mind became renewed. And so what happens folks, is when we renew our minds, what happens is our emotions follow our mindset.

(22:08):
And then over a period of time, so does our body, it becomes transformed. So the 30 years of experience that we have with the secret sauce of faith, the word healing, sanctified life, practical things, beating the odds of divorce of 80% for people dealing with chronic pain, beating the odds of never going back to work, beating the odds of living an enriched life. We share those in our programs. And right now we have online courses and we’re creating membership packages to be part of Gordon and Cherise because it’s not just the crippled people that this applies to.

Cherise Selley (22:52):
It’s for people who are backslidden in their faith. Well, how many people are in pain emotionally post COVID through COVID, post COVID and their life, they’re still trying to figure out how to live.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:06):
Now, this is one of the audiences I’m thinking about because a lot of young adults, obviously young adults are part of the two week Summit Ministries programs. A lot of them are part of the audience here. The number one fear of Gen Z as being alone COVID, or more specifically the way our nation responded to COVID, pushed these young adults into their worst fears.

And the result is extraordinarily high levels I had never seen before in all my work with young adults of anxiety, anger, even self-reported depression, self-reported suicidality, aimlessness, purposelessness, the lack of attunement with community, all of those kinds of things.

Cherise Selley (23:58):
It has created a bigger disconnect.

Gordon Selley (24:00):
And you are literally describing the characteristics of the chronic pain community.

Cherise Selley (24:06):
It’s very parallel.

Gordon Selley (24:08):
I wrote a few things down and I wrote them down because I didn’t want to forget them. And we understand about pain, but what do people do besides their symptomatology? Who are these people? And I wrote this down. It’s people who tried to hide behind their pain. So they’re not judged in the church.

Cherise Selley (24:31):
That hurts.

Gordon Selley (24:32):
It’s people who cannot do relationships anymore. Divorce rate is 80 to 85%. No matter how long you’ve been married, whether you’re a Christian or not, whether you’re a believer or not, you’re going to fail, most likely brokenness, finances, housing, employment, career purpose, ongoing discrimination, lack of joy in living, moving from strong beliefs to disbelief. This is what someone in pain, and as Cherise mentioned, it can be emotional pain.

If they carry this for a two year period of time, they’re struggling with this brokenness and this fragmentation of their lives. This is why we created this platform, because we know how to pick up the pieces and move forward. And get ahead of your pain, even though the pain still exists, it becomes a shadow. It’s there, but your purpose and what you can have in transformation is bigger.

But I wrote some things down. Victimization, stuck in pain. Absolutely can’t multitask. You still repeat all your old habits of living because you can no longer temper the pain. And the church, you lose your voice. How many times did I feel like a misfit disregarded from others?

Cherise Selley (25:42):
I remember times where we would just walk out, and it depends. We’ve visited so many different churches at different points in the pain journey.

Gordon Selley (25:52):
And we were in leadership in some.

Cherise Selley (25:53):
We have been. But I remember early on there was a message, does everybody feel good? And raise your hands. And so you’re the outsider if you don’t feel good. So there’s again that disconnect. No wonder people are saying, does a good God allow pain? Because even sometimes the church doesn’t mean to give this message, but the message is you shouldn’t have pain. That’s right.

If you walk into this place, and the truth is, I have found a revelation through this in my walk with Jesus. He’s a suffering Christ. And even as we have grown, and Gordon was mentioning the fruits, really the fruits are the fruit of the spirit, right? So in Galatians 5:22-23, Dr. Jeff, I’m sure you know this. I’m pretending like I know it because I can’t pronounce it, but the Greek meaning or the Greek word for patience is what? Patior? I don’t know if I’m saying that right, which actually means to suffer. One of the fruits of the spirit, to suffer.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:01):
That you don’t have patience in the absence of something about which you need to have patience.

Cherise Selley (27:07):
Exactly. And to have patience with one another in our sufferings and not try. For me, I am a fixit woman. And when I couldn’t fix Gordon, I ran to anything else I could fix. I have to provide for the family. So I’m going to become a workaholic. I’m going to develop a business. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to give Gordon dignity back because he lost what he lost. So I’m going to work myself into a frenzy because I can fix that. So all of those things had to go away too in my life when I woke up to the fact that he’s not the only one suffering I am too. We can both be weak because Christ is strong. It’s okay.

Gordon Selley (28:01):
And I think that’s so powerful. It is powerful. And I think one of the first things that happened for us, I mentioned being in the word of God. It’s this everyone, if you believe in the name of Jesus Christ, you’re going to undergo suffering. But we’ve taken that out of the language of our theology. And when I dove head first into suffering, the first thing I had to do was to do this. Gordon Selley, will you embrace suffering because you want to get rid of it. What happens if it never goes away? What happens if you have residuals? What if it happens? If you have triggers from your trauma, it stays there.

So learning how to embrace your brokenness is also, it’s synchronous with surrendering to Christ more. See, what I learned with this, from suffering everybody, is this, you can get the same thing. I learned that when I was receiving that growth of transformation from the power of God, because of his grace through Christ on the cross, what was happening is the more I received it was because the more I trusted, I didn’t trust on a superficial level anymore. I trusted on hardcore levels. I started to see the kingdom of God.

(29:20):
I could sense spiritual warfare. I learned to develop this pattern, this dynamic to sense God’s voice in our lives. Our prayer lives became real because we became part of the answer to our prayers. He grew us. We would’ve never had that opportunity before. That’s what the beauty is. So people will ask, what does healing mean then? Okay, Dr. Selley, what’s healing? Well, can I read a couple facts?

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:49):
Yep.

Gordon Selley (29:50):
Let’s talk about the body. Let’s talk about the body, real simply every second. Here’s how God created your body. You produce 25 million new cells. Did you know in 15 to 20 seconds, if we compared cells to humans, that that would equal the number of people in the United States per 20 seconds. That’s one person.

There are anywhere between 60,000 to 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. If you were to take those out and lay them end to end, you could travel around the world more than three times. That’s one body in your body, okay? The heartbeats, 2.5 billion times during the life of a 75-year-old, okay? If the red blood cells from one person were stacked in the sky stacked upon each other, they would reach 31,000 miles, one person.

Now, here’s the brain. The human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons. That’s about the same number of stars as in the Milky Way galaxy. These neurons are connected by trillions of connections, which are synaptic junctions, where the synapse goes from one synapse to the next, okay? That’s called a neuron forest. Basically what happens is only your brain is only made up of 10% of neurons.

(31:17):
So can we change things? I learned, heavenly Father, thank you for Romans 12, one and two. I’m going to renew my mind. You’ve already given me the healing ability. We know when we cut our finger, we don’t have to do anything, and it heals. The human body’s unreal.

So if it’s not healing, you’re going to grow me in a wholeness of healing and salvation, where it’s going to be body, soul, and spirit, and I am going to dive into the spiritual part. I’m going to have my mind renewed and change the things that I’m doing. I want to explore the new. I want to be on this journey with you. That’s what we’re sharing with people.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:57):
What you’re describing is at a deeper level than I’ve ever imagined before. I love Romans 12, one and two. Love it. The renewing of your mind. I need to change my mind about a few things. What you are talking about is having the mind of Christ so thoroughly that it replaces all of your own mindset.

Gordon Selley (32:23):
That’s right. And so what happens with repentance, Cherise and I were just talking about it.

Cherise Selley (32:30):
Because we just repented.

Gordon Selley (32:31):
Yeah. Well, here’s the deal. Here’s what’s so beautiful. We’re not repenting only because of what our mind is doing. We’re saying we’re going to set our mind aside and put it on the mindset of Christ so that the next thing that we do, he says in scripture, he’ll direct us to the right path. So the whole journey about healing is being on the right path. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to have an exacerbation of pain. It doesn’t mean the trials stop.

It means this. You’re like a salmon going downstream, and all of a sudden you’re going to swim upstream and you’re going to develop your musculature. You’re going to do it spiritually, and you’re becoming new. You’re growing in the essence of Christ. So you can discern, what do I need materially immaterial. What’s important? What’s my purpose? Heavenly Father, it’s Deo volente. If God wills, on everything.

(33:27):
I know when I was first injured and I knew my body was injured, I kept saying this to myself, gosh, I know how fabulous the body is. It’ll make a comeback. I’ll be okay. I’ll be a doctor someday again, it’ll be okay. He asked me to surrender my body, all of it. And the body was the physical as well as the mind, as well as my will, all of it.

Gordon Selley, you’re going to share in the sufferings of Christ. It is an honor. Every person that feels dishonored, that’s dealing with chronic pain. My message for you is you have a voice and you’re going to be honored. And those rewards in heaven, you keep following him. You’re going to find out what a new body looks like. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Cherise Selley (34:17):
And I think that takes away some of the hopelessness from the caregiver when they see the decay or the eradication or they can’t make something better. That mindset, that very attitude is the strength that’s given me the strength to carry on.

Gordon Selley (34:37):
Well, and I want to say thank you, Cherise, because what a beautiful wife, what she took on, and part of it is that she surrendered to Christ, but she also had to trust in me dealing with the pain.

Cherise Selley (34:51):
And pain isn’t pretty, and we can’t doll it up, and you can’t put lipstick and makeup on it. It’s just, it’s ugly. It’s a monster. It doesn’t mean that we have to love pain, but I grew in many times through this. I’m growing every day in this process. It’s not a one-time thing, it’s a daily thing. But I really grew, when I watched Gordon forgive his pain.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:18):
Okay, tell me what that means. I’ve not heard that before.

Cherise Selley (35:25):
Yeah. He really had an intentional epiphany, I think, from God about this.

Gordon Selley (35:32):
Here I was. We were sitting at the dining room table. I was on disability. I said, Cherise, I don’t want any labels. We just started the real estate business. Cherise was a young pup. We’re going to grow in faith, Cherise. So we sat down and imagined a cross. We’re going to have a funeral for Gordon Selley right now with this pain. We’re going to give up disability. We’re going to give up anything that holds us up. We’re going to give up anything that has a label. And by the way, everyone listening, don’t give things up until you get doctor’s permission. Okay?

Cherise Selley (36:05):
Or God calls you to that.

Gordon Selley (36:06):
Or God calls you to this. But we did, and it was a challenge, and it was a funeral for let’s get, let’s just die to self. And the forgiveness was this. I was like, heavenly Father, I can’t forgive some of the trauma. There’s still triggers. What does this mean? And he said, I know you can’t forgive it. And this is by reading scripture, okay? And praying and meditating, becoming familiar with dark spaces and who you are and settling things down.

What started to happen was, he said, I want you to take the love that I have in you and forgive it with the love that I forgave everyone for the pain that I had on the cross. If you could start doing that, you’re going to grow in love and you’re going to grow in power. You’re going to grow in grace. You’re going to grow in connection. And guess what? You’re going to grow with community.

Cherise Selley (37:00):
And it actually stopped a few things. It stopped the why. It reversed that process. I think Gordon wasn’t questioning the why. He was moving through it, and he was learning, honestly, I think to love himself as Christ says, we are not only to love our neighbor but ourself. And sometimes it’s so easy to go out there and love everybody else and hate yourself. Well, is that love if you hate yourself. And pain can bring so much self hatred and condemnation. When I saw Gordon shedding those layers, I could approach him. I could also reach him. He didn’t have walls up against me.

And it takes a very courageous man or woman to love somebody when they’re in pain and to let them into that space. Gordon was very courageous, but he took me on that journey with him and he forgave himself. And there were multiple layers of transformation you didn’t know, and we’ve known each other, but you didn’t know the Gordon that was from before 2006. And Gordon did not look like Gordon looks now, he was a much different version of himself.

Gordon Selley (38:19):
Well, thank you, Cherise.

Cherise Selley (38:21):
But I mean, it’s along those lines.

Gordon Selley (38:25):
I was 75 pounds heavier. I could not hardly get around. I waddled my legs would give out because of the constriction around my nervous system. I had four neck surgeries at that time. And so I have severe spinal stenosis at six levels. So that means there’s one millimeter of difference between the hard structure of the vertebral column and your spinal cord. So sitting too long can go ahead and fire off things in my legs. And so Cherise was dealing with that.

But see, here’s what’s the beauty of the Lord and it comes out of, you guys, I’m reading some scripture here because of, I love this ministry with apologetics because the word is powerful and it’s real. And I’m telling you, we’re condensing 30 years of chronic pain experience into 30 days of actionable change. Literally when it says this, we rejoice in our sufferings.

I used to think, James, Paul, what in the heck are you talking about? How can we be rejoicing in our sufferings? It’s knowing that the suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now, here’s the beautiful thing. It’s the kind of hope that doesn’t shame us.

(39:46):
And guess what? It was put in us and poured in us by God through the Holy Spirit. And imagine this. There’s different translations that say this. He poured buckets of hope into our hearts that we can’t even explain. And that track record of endurance through suffering makes you lacking in nothing perfect and complete.

And I’m like this. Heavenly Father, I want to be perfect and complete in you. I want to be surrendered to you. I want to trust more deeply in you. I know I’m going to make mistakes Heavenly Father, I know that I’m going to be dealing with things, but I want to discover my true humanity of what my true self is, and I want to discover the richness of who you are through the knowledge of Christ. You can do that through that Romans message, and it paves the way it says this.

We’re going to lift you from the inside out. The inside out is Dr. Gordon turned into Gordon, but I’m a transformed man. Yeah. I’m actually lifting lightweights again. I was on a one pound restriction for the rest of my life. Okay?

Cherise Selley (40:58):
Okay. I’m going to interrupt.

Gordon Selley (40:59):
Please do.

Cherise Selley (41:00):
Because the thing about that though is you never demanded that in the beginning of this journey with no. So he wasn’t looking for all the superficial outer layers, and as he said before, it was the word. It was his food. It was his bread, it was his life. It got him out of bed. It motivated him to not literally to not kill himself or to cast me away to say, hey, go marry somebody younger and a lot healthier than me. The word sustained him, and so it did. It was this inside out.

It took many, many years in our marriage to actually see the physical changes that happened in Gordon’s life. There were years of dormancy in the physical part, but I could see all these changes that, I mean, he’s the same Gordon that I met back at this church retreat. He’s just an even better version of himself.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:55):
Well, you’re a very determined guy. I mean, we’ve known one another for five or six years. I think you’re a very determined guy.

Gordon Selley (42:06):
Very much.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:07):
And I can imagine somebody watching saying, well, sure, if somebody’s that determined, they’re going to find a way through this. But what you’re actually describing is how none of it was you. It was taking scripture literally in its most powerful possible application and layering that into your life in such a way that God began that transforming work in you.

Gordon Selley (42:34):
Absolutely. What happened, as you mentioned earlier, the theoretic or the theological that we watched the Bible sit on the shelf without breaking the gilding on it and it’s got dust on it. I had to pull it out, had to look at the word and say, I want practical evidence of the insight. Heavenly Father, grow spiritual eyes in me, not just my physical eyes that could be attracted to lust, greed, money or appreciation or approval or anything else. I wanted the eyes that could see the things that were purist that you see. That’s how I grew.

(43:13):
And by growing in that way, I didn’t realize the chemical changes and the wiring in my brain and the different emotional state that I would have. I think when I’m a new person, when Char says, Gordon’s the same, Gordon, here’s what’s beautiful. Even in your suffering, God doesn’t come in and say, die to self, get rid of your personality. No, we think, act, and behave. That’s our personality. That’s our emotional state. So he already knows that.

What he is saying is, when you’re dying to self, I still want you to be Jeff, Dr. Jeff. I still want you to be Cherise and Gordon, but here’s what I want you to grow. In the essence of Christ, I want you to know my grace. And so I was on that journey.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:58):
That’s the transformation. Romans 12:2.

Gordon Selley (44:00):
Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:01):
Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Metamorphao from which we get our word metamorphosis. It’s an emerging into what you are designed to be all along, through a death. Well, I guess in a physical metamorphosis, that really is a kind of death.

Gordon Selley (44:22):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:23):
It’s a death to what you were before. You can’t come back to life to that. It’s all new.

Cherise Selley (44:30):
And the caregiver has that death too of what they thought marriage might be or the dreams, or there’s literally a million deaths. It’s not one. It’s almost a million through the process, but that’s the amazing thing about Christ. He doesn’t leave us at death. That’s where the resurrected life of Christ begins is right in that space. So it becomes an art of receiving again and again and again, a daily dose of that grace.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:08):
This is hitting at such deep levels for people who are watching and listening right now, many of whom have experienced tremendous pain, trauma, not always chronic pain, not always long-term, but there are a couple of things that you’ve given as a special grace out of what you’ve experienced to help other people, and one of them is your book Pursue Real Hope we propped it up here so that it would be on the camera so that everybody could see and not forget that that book is there. I read that.

I think I’d have to check with Stephanie to be sure, but I think I read that when I was going through chemo dealing with cancer, and I know a lot of people who are watching and listening right now are dealing with debilitating disease that’s eating them away. Cancers, you don’t always have the pain at the beginning. You feel okay because you haven’t yet realized that this is going to kill you from the inside out. So people are dealing with that, relational issues, the pain of unmet expectations.

(46:21):
There’s so many different things. So the book Pursue Real Hope. It was a very powerful book. I was so grateful to have a chance to get that, but we’ve got to send people to your website as well because you’ve got a podcast where people can receive this kind of hope. And I know from every conversation that we’ve ever had that I don’t know how much time it takes to get the energy to even get together and have those kinds of conversations. I can imagine that you would be exhausted after this and you would have to try to ramp up to it.

But what you’ve done at your website is provide resources, even longer term things, packages of resources that can help people, but a podcast, articles, all of those kinds of things. There’s somebody alongside your journey. If you’re watching this or listening, right? There’s somebody alongside you in your journey and you just want to go to, and I’ll mention this in the outro as well, but Gordon and charis.com, all you have to remember is how to spell Cherise.

Cherise Selley (47:26):
It’s not complicated.

Dr. Jeff Myers (47:27):
C-H-E-R-I-S-E, Gordonandcherise.com. So for folks who want to find how you can walk alongside of them, and I know the message is resonating, we said just before the show began, you mentioned that in all of the different channels that you’re receiving a million contacts a month with people. So thank you. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for sharing your journey with us in such a vulnerable Well, thank you way, and thank you. Gosh, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Cherise Selley (48:01):
Thank you so much for having us and for embracing this harder discussion and helping to bring life to it and hope to people. We want people to have hope that they can have a voice again, and that their life isn’t over. It’s just beginning in a different way, not to give up.

Gordon Selley (48:24):
Amen. Yeah. Wow. And I would just say in conclusion that two things, when we wrote the book, it’s only a hundred pages or so because people in pain, they can’t read 315 pages, and so there’s like 50 to a hundred different nuggets in there to give you encouragement where we have a contact with you, but we’re also developed a better living community on Facebook.

(48:50):
And that’s growing because everyone, if you’re just listening to this podcast, whatever feature you’re listening on or whatever your modality, you’re listening, here’s the real issue. You’re probably alone. Okay? It’s okay to have your mind stirred in your faith, a little bit of a flame there to encourage you to pick up your mat and to do something so you can join a community. You can be part of Summit Ministries.

By golly, you want to know the word of God the right way, and you have a chance to say, hey, listen, I’m going to let the love of God grow in me, and I’m going to share in the sufferings of Christ right now, even though I’m suffering. You are not dishonored by suffering.

Cherise Selley (49:39):
Okay, wait. When we share in his sufferings, we also get to share in his glory.

Gordon Selley (49:45):
Amen.

Cherise Selley (49:45):
It doesn’t end there.

Gordon Selley (49:46):
Yes.

Cherise Selley (49:49):
But when this ends, we’re done.

Dr. Jeff Myers (49:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people who are watching right now. I wrote a book called Truth Changes Everything, and so a lot of people in our community have been reading that, looking at it, studying that, and if you’ve gone through the book so far, you’ll realize you’ll recognize something of Gordon and Cherise’s Journey and just the story of the Middle Ages, the death and suffering, the caused by the Black Death, and out of that, the reason you can see that what you’re talking about, Cherise is so true about the suffering of Christ that he’s suffering with us. As you actually see it in the art, you see a change.

People might’ve said, I’m suffering. God’s not here. He’s abandoned me. I’m going to abandon him. But what happened to people in that time was them saying, he’s right here, suffering with us, and the paintings of the suffering, Christ all of a sudden became shockingly real, but the glory of God also became shockingly real and that it literally changed the course of history. But it’s something that’s very, very difficult for us to grasp if we’re living in a culture where all of us are just living our best life and pretend that nothing is actually wrong.

Cherise Selley (51:12):
I think it’s okay to accept the paradox, death and life that’s part of the faith. There is a paradox that we live in, but it’s beautiful when we enter that space and know Christ has already entered it with us and goes before us.

Dr. Jeff Myers (51:35):
That’s the Lord’s Word. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for joining the Dr. Jeff Show podcast today with Gordon and Cherise. I know you’re going to want to know more information, so here are a couple of things for you. First of all, Gordon and Cherise have written a very encouraging, powerful book called Pursue Real Hope, and you can find that wherever books are sold, you can also go to their website, which is gordonandcherise.com. Of course, that assumes you know how to spell Cherise, Gordon and Cherise, C-H-E-R-I-S-E, gordonandcherise.com.

If you experience ongoing pain or have dealt with trauma, their show can be a real source of hope for you and maybe something that you can share with other friends who are going through difficult times as well. As always, I’m so grateful for you taking time to watch the show, listen, learn and Grow, because we worship a God of hope.

(52:36):
I’ll see you next week. Hey, everybody. The Dr. Jeff Show podcast is part of the ministry of Summit Ministries. Now we’re in the Summit Ministry Studio, the Mike S. Adams studio here in Manitou Springs, Colorado. This studio was built by people like you, people who gave a few dollars, some who were able to give thousands of dollars, but they built a studio and millions of people are being reached through the work that takes place here.

Let me present you with another opportunity. How would you like to have that kind of a legacy in the life of a young person? This year, you could sponsor a young person to attend one of our Summit Ministries two week programs. Basically, it’s $33 an hour for training a young person, and they’ll receive about 60 hours of training. During those two weeks, you could sponsor an hour or two or three or maybe more. Maybe you’d want to sponsor a young person to attend.

I personally interact with young adults who’ve been through this program and whose lives have been completely changed, some of them in just one hour of teaching, changed the whole course of their lives. Would you help us get young adults trained who are going to be the leaders for the next generation?

(53:43):
Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share the show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review if you would, on the site where you download the show that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.