Listening In preview: Kara Tippetts

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: experiencing grace in life’s most difficult moments.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Christian blogger and author Kara Tippetts died four years ago after a long battle with cancer. She blogged in real time about her fight for life and attracted tens of thousands of followers around the world.

She eventually published several books about finding joy in the midst of suffering. A new documentary about her life, titled The Long Goodbye, comes out tomorrow.

EICHER: Listening In host Warren Smith talked with her at her home shortly before she died in 2015. In this excerpt of their conversation, they talk about the book she agreed to write even though she knew she was dying.

WARREN SMITH: What do you want the book to be and do?

KARA TIPPETTS: I just want, you know, I think so much of our culture is about winning and winning, being the best mom. You know, social media makes us all compete. And my heart is that we would stop competing and start living honestly and in the honest living, help each other, love each other better and Jesus better. And I, and I, my hope is that, um, we wouldn’t be afraid of hard things in our life, but allow those hard things to be the things that make us see how much we need God. And so in the losing by this world’s standards, um, I’m seeing how kept and how loved I am and I want other people to see that because everyone, everyone, everyone has hard in their life. Um, mine, like I said, mine is cancer, but everyone has something and some people are hiding it and not realizing that God can use it in a unique way.

(Photo/Facebook) Kara and Jason Tippetts with their children in the background.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.