Ep. 232: Communion as Comfort When Your Female Body Feels Broken, with Hannah King

It's not easy being a woman in the world, especially physically. As much as we would like to pretend it doesn't make a difference, it impacts our lives, not only on a physical level, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And especially when that physical reality is painful or broken or abusive, where is God to be found? For author Hannah Miller King, it was in the simple act of communion. Today's episode looks at the beauty and power of communion for connection with Jesus and healing the broken places we feel in our bodies as women.

NOTE: Please be aware that this episode does mention sexual abuse and trauma. 

GUEST BIO: Hannah Miller King is a mom, Anglican priest, and writer. She is the associate rector at The Vine Anglican Church in Clyde, NC and the author of Feasting on Hope: How God Sets A Table in the Wilderness.

SHOW NOTES:

Hannah's Book: Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness

Hannah Miller King on Substack: @hannahmillerking

⭐️ See Caitlin at one of these upcoming book events!

Dallas, TX -- August 29

Denver, CO -- September 2

Raleigh, NC -- TBA

⭐️ Order Woven Well: A Christian Woman's Guide to Reproductive Health, Fertility, and Wholeness ⭐️ 

Transcript

Caitlin Estes (00:00)

Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. Like it or not, being human means living, breathing, and moving as a physical body in this world. Now, certainly there are tech bros out there working on alternatives, but those kinds of things make me feel gross. Like I don't even know what to think about that kind of stuff. We are human and that means we are spiritual and emotional and physical. And that's not always easy, especially in the realm of women's health and fertility. Our physical realities can often feel like giant pain points. So what good does God have for us in this design of our creation? Now, if you have my new book, you know that we explore this and how understanding our human design, our female human design impacts how we make reproductive health decisions and advocate for ourselves in the doctor's office. But I'm not the only one out there talking about similar topics.

Hannah Miller King is a mom, Anglican priest and writer, as well as the associate rector at the Vine Anglican Church in Clyde, North Carolina. She released a book earlier this year called Feasting on Hope, How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness. And invited her here today to talk more about this together with us. Hannah, welcome to the show.

 Hannah Miller King (01:16)

Thanks so much for having me.

 Caitlin Estes (01:19)

Now for those listeners who may be new to you and to your work, would you tell us just a little bit about yourself?

 Hannah Miller King (01:26)

Sure. So, as you already said, I'm a mom and a priest and a writer. I grew up in a Christian home and I'll share more about my kind of journey of faith through childhood as the conversation gets going. But I serve a church part-time right now and I write part-time and I parent full-time. So it's kind of all, you know, it's all mixed up together in my vocation and this season of life and it's busy and sometimes chaotic, but really happy.

 Caitlin Estes (01:56)

Yeah, I'm sure many listeners can understand that. The part-time jobs we have, the full-time responsibilities that we have and how those things interconnect to you. absolutely. So tell us a little bit about what inspired your new book, Feasting on Hope.

 Hannah Miller King (02:12)

So I mentioned having grown up Christian, but early on in my family's life, we had a tragedy. My father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And in our Christian home, we prayed for a miracle. We were very faithful church attendees. We believed God could heal my father, and then he didn't. And my dad died when I was a freshman in high school. I kind of, I was introduced to sort of personal theodicy, you know, why does God let bad things happen? In my teen years, well, my faith was still sort of developing and I felt really out of place in my kind of affluent evangelical subculture where, you know, everyone's life is supposed to unfold according to this formula and God blesses you if you're good and all those kind of insidious lies that we kind of attach to the Christian faith. So the book is really about how I've learned to understand the meaning of Christian hope amid unanswered prayers, like when things don't go the way we expect them to or want them to, what does it mean to still live as people of hope? And I come to that through describing my experience of receiving the Lord's Supper, taking communion at my church, and how that kind of gave me a different, a bigger frame for the Christian story and how we indwell it.

 Caitlin Estes (03:43)

Wow, beautiful. I'm, I know listeners are really resonating with that when things don't go the way that you expect them to or hope them to or pray for them to.

 And certainly within women's health, have a lot of options there for what that could mean and what that could look like. Well, I'll be honest that I have not yet had a chance to read your book, but one chapter in particular that caught my eye was chapter three, which is called Embodiment, Broken Bread for Broken Bodies. And this goes along with what you were just talking about there and our connection here to our listeners. But I think your role as an Anglican priest in a female Anglican priest, which I think, you know, means something. It also means that your take may be different than what we could hear elsewhere.

 Hannah Miller King (04:30)

As women, our embodied experiences are different than the experiences of men on a handful of levels, biologically, women's health is different from men's health. But also culturally, women are much more likely to experience sexual abuse.

 I think the shame that women carry about their bodies is different and kind of our image obsessed culture. And so to hear a female articulation of what does the hope of the gospel mean for our bodies is just going to be able to speak from some of those contours, you know, that I think are important.

 Caitlin Estes (05:11)

Yes, absolutely. So when I think about the Anglican tradition, you know, I know they know a thing or two about the significance of the issues affecting women. You know, we've had episodes before talking about how the Anglican bishops conference back in 1930 was one of the first to talk about using contraception and all that sort of thing. But

 Also in combination with what you just said, I'm interested, is that what made you want to address embodiment in this book on communion? Or if not, what was it that made you want to address it specifically?

 Hannah Miller King (05:47)

Yeah, well, I would say two things. The first, I mentioned having lost my father to cancer and early in my Christian faith, I didn't have really a theology of resurrection. So I thought, well, Christian hope means that when our bodies die, our souls go to heaven and that's the part of us that can be saved. So when I became an adult and discovered like the historic creeds of the church and realized, the resurrection of the body, is kind of a basic tenet of Christian faith. And to stop short of that is to stop short of full Christian hope for people who've died, you know, that our bodies will be redeemed and renewed through Christ. But the second reason I wanted to address embodiment has to do more personally with my experience as a woman. I am the survivor of sexual abuse. And my response to that was basically to dissociate, but to baptize that in Christian language. So, well, what really matters is my soul and what's done to my body. Isn't that big of a deal? You know, I can just forgive and move on. I really didn't reckon with sins done against my body and the impact, the embodied, you know, embedded trauma within me until about halfway through seminary when I started receiving communion every Sunday and it kind of got inside my head a little bit like why is the central practice of Christian faith a meal that I'm ingesting and what does that mean about how God comes to us and which parts of us he's come to save.

 Caitlin Estes (07:30)

Yes, absolutely. Wow. I kind of want to just talk about that for a little bit, but there's I know there's the whole book is about those things. So people need to read it. But yeah, the physical effects of emotional or spiritual distress are one thing. The emotional or spiritual effects of physical distress is another and that reminder that we are one human being mind body spirit all together and we can try to dissociate like you're talking about but we can't ever stay there it all comes back together but from a place of healing that God wants to heal those places and allow you to be whole in that way. I love that communion was the connecting point to you for you in that journey.

 What do you feel like is the hope there for most women who are walking through a season of feeling disconnected from our bodies? Whether it is from sexual trauma or maybe they're struggling to conceive or maybe they feel like their body causes a lot of pain and it's betrayed them in some way. You know, that sense of just disconnection and distrust of the body. What hope is there to be found?

 Hannah Miller King (08:56)

Yeah, that's a great question. think it might start with lament, which is sort of paradoxical.

 But I think a lot of times we just suppress what's hard about our embodied lives because a lot of times it can feel beyond our ability to fix, you know, or we try really hard to fix and then that doesn't work. And then we just, we give up, you know. So I think being able to lament kind of the not yet-ness of life in the body right now that there will be enduring pain, lingering effects of trauma, unhealed chronic illness, you know, what have you, and that Jesus uniquely meets us there because he also experienced life in a body and he experienced physical pain, I mean, you think about what he endured on the cross, kind of takes the ivory tower out of our vision of a savior in the sense that, okay, he's actually with me in my experiences of bodily shame and pain and agony. So I think there can be a real profound sense of solidarity that we can find in the gospel and our embodied experiences, even though it might be one of great sorrow.

 But then because Jesus was raised, we will be too. And so we do have this ultimate hope in the resurrection. One day this disease will be lifted from me. One day my body will be completely whole and renewed. And we get glimpses of that now. You know, so we do seek wholeness and health, but even in the places we don't experience that in this life, we can expect full bodily restoration when Jesus returns.

 Caitlin Estes (10:49)

Yeah, absolutely. There's something about the fact that our faith is an embodied faith, that our savior is an incarnated, know, mean the incarnation that is so unique and so different and so healing for us. And a lot of times like you're saying we forget about that. We think that the spiritual life is separate and that's all that matters and the body doesn't really matter at all. But when we actually live life, we know that that's not the case. We experience it, we know that it matters and we see how it affects us on so many different levels.

 I'm so encouraged just to think of the role that something like communion can play in reminding us of that. What a healing thing.

 What an encouraging thing. As you think about women who are experiencing whatever struggles or trauma related to the body that it may be, or it could be a similar situation. They've prayed for things that don't happen and they're just struggling in that season. Do you have any encouragement for them as they come to the table? know, as they approach communion, because we'll have listeners who maybe do it on a weekly basis within their church, but it could be something that happens the fifth Sunday of the month or, you know, once a quarter or that sort of thing. But the next time that they come to the communion table, how can that experience be a new experience for them? What would you recommend as they approach it?

 Hannah Miller King (12:23)

I think I would say two things. One is to receive communion as an act of God's love for their bodies. know, so if you think about God as like a granny who like made you cookies, you know, I'm feeding your soul through your body. I think in communion, we realize God conveys his love to us through our senses. And there's something of that kind of holistic care, nurture that God gives to us in the meal.

 And then the second thing I would say is as you're bringing your body to communion, to imagine that God longs to dwell with you in even the parts of you that might, that you might feel ashamed of or that maybe don't belong in church, parts of your story, your embodiment that you've maybe been brought up to think of as kind of yucky or carnal.

 I mean, I think a lot of women have this with religion, right? But to think that I am the place that God longs to dwell and my body is not a source of shame, it's the site of redemption and embrace.

 Caitlin Estes (13:46)

Yes.

 Hannah Miller King (13:47)

For me, it was very healing.

 Caitlin Estes (13:49)

I'm so excited about this book. It sounds fantastic. And so

 Hannah Miller King (13:54)

Thank you.

 Caitlin Estes (13:55)

I hope that people will order it and we'll certainly have a link to it in the show notes. I think there's something about really coming to a renewed place of love for our own bodies and the fact that we don't have to start with that love because sometimes it's hard to muster it up ourselves but that God first loved us means God first loved our bodies too and that can be a very redemptive thing to embrace and pursue and knowing that communion can be a source of that pursuit both God pursuing us and us responding in kind can be a really beautiful thing. So thank you so much for that. Any last minute encouragement for our listeners?

 Hannah Miller King (14:38)

I think I would just say that, you know, in a way, so even though like female challenges are unique, I also think female strengths are unique. If you think about historically, women are often the people caring for the bodies of others. You know, I mentioned the granny making cookies, you know, moms of young children, they're doing a lot of hot and heavy work in that department. You know, the women at the tomb caring for Jesus' body after he died. So I think I would encourage our listeners to maybe consider the different ways in their ordinary lives that they're giving and receiving love through the body and to think about how God is a part of that, how he loves our bodies through our physical experiences and also how we can share God's love with others through even nonverbal things like cooking for them and holding them when they're sick and that those are tangible expressions of God's love that are really important for people. So women have kind of a unique position within that, think.

 Caitlin Estes (15:43)

Yeah, a very good reminder, very important. Well, thank you so much, Hannah, for being on the show and sharing with us.

 Hannah Miller King (15:52)

It was an honor.

 Caitlin Estes (15:53)

Listeners, like I mentioned, if you'd like to get Hannah's book, we'll be sure to have a link to it in our show notes just for your convenience there. I realize that not all of our listeners are Anglican because we have a beautifully diverse listening audience, but whether you are Catholic or AME or Orthodox or Baptist, I hope that you've been encouraged by our conversation today.

 If you're looking for a place to receive education and empowerment about all things natural fertility while still honoring the connection between your fertility and your faith, you have found the perfect place. That's what we do each week here on the podcast and through our daily work at Woven Natural Fertility Care. If you'd like to learn more about us, we'll have links to our website in the show notes as well. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.