Tag Archives: bible

Inside the Refiner’s Fire

Posted in More Theresa's Thoughts, personal stuff, Random, teaching, work life by
Theresa Hemsath sits in her Psychology classroom at a local high school.

It has been a few months since I wrote an update on where we are at. There is so much to unpack, it is hard to know where to begin. But I sit here in a high classroom after school, taking a moment to purge a little before entering quarter grades, and looking out a beautiful window of some sage green hills on a rainy October day.

I’ll start close to where I left off in our last post:

Not only is my husband battling a third round of cancer, but he has had to recover from a Myasthenia Gravis attack in May that almost killed him along with blood clots and pulmonary embolism with pnemonia, then to developing another condition called Pure Red Cell Aplasia which gave him chronic anemia that has required multiple blood transfusions, weakness, swelling, and pain.

The medical bills have piled up.

And Owen no longer works.

We closed our business. returned all the money to clients where we had not fulfilled, and pulled out investment money to live off this summer as I started looking for full-time work.

The idea of trying to salvage our business and grow it without Owen sounded absolutely horrible.

Coaching YouTube made us money, no doubt and helped so many entrepreneurs. But it was never my passion. It was Owen’s. And without passion, a business is not going to be successful.

So what was my passion?

I certainly did miss teaching, and getting my job at Charis helped me rekindle that love and put my foot back in the door by connecting me with the public school system again and reminding me that I am good at teaching teenagers.

So I started applying for jobs and was excited to see a Psychology teaching position pop up at a local high school. While my past teaching experience resided in Language Arts and ESL, I actually minored in Psychology in college and therefore had a credential to teach it. But Psych teaching positions were hard to come by in California. Those who had them, held on to them tightly.

But I applied and I interviewed, and the Lord is good. Out of 25 applicants, they offered me the full-time teaching position at this local high school.

And that is what I have been doing by day since August.

I love the job itself- teaching Psychology is fun! Plus the kids at this school are great, and I feel it a wonderful outlet for me to tap into something that I am good at.

But my oh my, has it been so much work. I’m teaching 3 different Psychology subjects, one of which is AP Psychology. And I have 2 sections for each of these classes, which rotate every other day, and then rotate again every other Friday. Without getting into the weeds of how that works – let me just say – it is overwhelming. It is a lot of prep. Then add that to having a 9 year break from teaching, – there is all this new software and tech I am having to get used to. I’ve been teaching since the old school days where we used overhead projectors with wet-erase markers.

I’ve reminded myself that the first semester will be the hardest. The first year will be the hardest really. So I come in early and I leave late, but I come home with no work to do, so I can focus on my kids and my husband.

I arrive at 530 PM M-F and I begin my second job. Actually it’s my third, because I am still working with Charis to fill in some financial gap needed for our income as well as the mission field it provides me in the pro-life world.

But my job as wife to a husband healing from sickness and my role as a mother to 4 teenagers managing their own emotions through this crazy trial in our lives, along with their own need for growth as humans as they learn how to adult – well it is so much work!

I am tired.

This season is no doubt the most pressing, sanctifying season of my entire life.

More than my first love breakup.

More than my second love breakup.

More than a new marriage.

More than miscarriage.

More than my dad drowning.

More than NICU babies.

More than Cancer round 1 in 2015.

More than my brother relapsing.

More than moving to Utah.

More than Cancer round 2 in 2020.

No, this is so much more.

Through it and in it, as I still am- I am learning so much about where I am actually really strong as well as where I am really weak.

My strength is my endurance.

My ability to shift into survival mode and plow through it without developing addictions or mental illness. To still show up everyday and do it again.

My weakness is my inner world – I struggle with anger, resentment, and a desire to escape.

But I don’t.

I work daily to not feed these selfish aspects of my flesh and to verbally agree with my Spirit, which is entwined with the Holy Spirit.

I want redemption and resurrection, transformation and healing, hope and life, and life abundant.

I do not agree with the desires of flesh, which lead to death – despair – sickness – strife.

So I need to forgive myself and not identify with those desires because the flesh is not me. It is my “old man.”

The biggest lesson I am learning in this – is that I need Jesus for every aspect of my life. I need to come to Him for EVERTHING, reflect him in everything, and serve those around me as if He were serving them – therefore it is my own service to God.

That service is such a blessing as we actually become the hands and feet of Jesus.

This season has given me an ability to fully experience “the body of Christ” through others.

The love, service, and support we have received from our church family has been so humbling. There is no way we could have gotten through and continue to get through any of this without the body. Some may say- what about Jesus? Yes – this IS Jesus. I am not having an encounter with the spirit of Jesus or some vision of Jesus but the living, resurrected Jesus working through the church as his actual body with hands and feet.

This morning – I asked the Lord to speak into me in areas where I can reflect Him more. He spoke to me through associations and lead me to a new conviction:

I desire for him to cultivate in me a “gentle and quiet spirit” that Peter described as pleasing to the Lord.

I currently do not have it.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be gentle and quiet.

But when I feel misunderstood, misjudged, or unappreciated – I am anything but that.

This season of my life has given me many frustrating moments of feeling misunderstood, misjudged, and unappreciated in my home.

And I have failed to respond with that gentle and quiet spirit.

Survival mode doesn’t do that.

Survival mode wakes up that protector inside of me who is quick to run to my defense.

I’ve got to stop letting her take over and instead allow Jesus to play that role. Jade, I will call her just causes more problems for me.

So if you are a believer, please pray for me. Pray that as I sit in the Lord’s furnace, allowing him to burn out the impurities in me through this trial, that I reflect him more with a gentle and quiet spirit. That he begin to see his own reflection in me.

I don’t want to be in this fire any longer.

I want joy. I want rest. I want peace.

I want it here and now and do not want to wait until heaven to get it. I have no idea if that request will be made manifest in this lifetime.

But if He see’s His reflection in me, my hope is that he takes me out of the fire and sit me in the green pastures to drink from the cool streams of living water before bringing me to his dinner table and anoint my head with oil.

In THIS life.

If not, I will still commit.

I have reminded myself and others that this life is but one grain of sand in the beaches of eternity. That who I am is not just who I am here in this world, but who I am in eternity. This is merely stage 1. I have millions of lifetimes ahead of me to lay in green pastures.

But I do desire the kingdom here this side of eternity.

I want my husband completely healed.
I want my children loving and following the Lord, responsible, and loving our family while driven with purpose in their lives.
I want to no longer be financially struggling. That we are able to bring in other streams of income to the meager salary my teaching job brings us.
I want laughter and joy.
I want to travel again, to hike, to snowboard.
I want my kids to be able to be in athletic teams again that require big monthly dues.
I want marital romance and dreams.
I want to have time to devote more to ministry and to counsel because I am no longer so desperate to survive, that I require the ministry and counsel of others.


So this is my short, choppy, update.

No eloquent, complex-compound sentences. No alliteration or cadence.

Just raw, unrevised, authentic, transparent words of a woman in the refiner’s fire.

Our Wilderness of 2026

Posted in #LifeWins, personal stuff, Religion/Christianity/Philosophy, The Hemsath Life by

Back in 2020, I had a vision that I thought was fulfilled in 2022. Now I believe I’m still in it. I saw my entire visual field go black. And it stayed in darkness for a long, long time. And then- a spark of light lit up the bottom right corner and spread slowly at first, then building momentum and finally filling my entire visual field with light. It consumed the darkness.

I knew it was the Lord telling me that I was about to enter a season of my life that would be quite hard. But that ultimately, it would end and end wonderfully- end with hope and love and peace.

When we discovered Owen’s cancer was back in September of 2020, we entered darkness. And it actually started slightly before that when we moved to Utah from California and my 13 year old son did not come with us. I was in such despair over Kanan staying with his father in California. Then add Owen’s cancer and the prognosis of “nothing we can do. You have 2-5 years statistically.” Well…. it was quite dark.

Then we began to fight the cancer and Owen started to get better. Our business grew and while it was so hard to not see Kanan every other week in our usual 50/50 custody schedule, he came to visit often. I was able to actually homeschool our kids and work less in our business. And in April of 2025 I was offered a part time job at a local pregnancy clinic that fulfilled every dream I ever had for a career. One that only the Lord would know- detailed in the private journals of my life. I felt in my gut that he was giving to me for a reason. That it was a stepping stool to something more he was preparing me for.

Then last November of 2025 Owen started developing a cough.

He grew sicker and sicker and worked less and less.

Then on May 5th, I took him to the ER for respiratory failure. And our life entered more darkness than ever before.

He almost died in that hospital.

They saved his life and I’m so grateful that he was there when he went into a Myasthenia Gravis Crisis.

There’s a new prognosis. It is not good. But I refuse to speak it and give it life. Ultimately, God and not doctors are the givers and takers of life. And God is bigger than all. I will let him decide, no one else.

But that does not mean we are not in a very hard wilderness season. Owen’s inability to work is leading to us to have to consider closing our business.

His disability checks won’t come until November.

My part time job will not be able to sustain us.

We have some savings in place to help us through summer. After that, it runs out.

I am trusting that Lord take us to our promise land, but I know that the length of time we spend in the wilderness depends entirely on our faith and willingness to obey him and follow him through it. To not let fear lead our hearts astray.

I’m starting to apply for teaching positions. And I’ve let my director know at the Pregnancy Clinic I work at that I would love to work full time in any area she sees my giftings would be helpful.

And guess what else?

My son, in his folly in college made some choices that lead him to need to come to Utah and live with us. My prayer was that the Lord would redeem the 5 years I lost when we moved to Utah.

It will be a wilderness season for him as well. But my prayer is that Lord timed all of this for a reason.

He is tearing down and rebuilding and redeeming all at the same time.

I do not know when everything is filled with light.

But my director and spiritual mentor from the pregnancy clinic gave me a wise word a couple of days ago.

She said, “do not be fooled into believing this is merely a financial or health crisis. This is a spiritual and existential one. Cling to the Lord. And remember he has a 100% success rate. The biggest lesson through all of this will be spiritual.

Sit it in it.

There is no striving in Jesus.

So I’m here trying to rest. I’m doing the things that I believe are responsible and being a good steward. But reminding myself to not allow fear wear the mask of responsibility. And not allow my responsibility to hide my motive of fear. To see my responsibility merely as a collaboration with the almighty. I can plant. I can water. But it is God who grows and he who produces the harvest.

I can only operate within the time, matter, space, and energy he has provided me in this dimension.

Since he is outside of that, he sees what I don’t see. And he can manipulate any of these laws he set in place to work together for good what he has in store.

Lord, may we I hear one day, “well done my good and faithful servant.”

If you want to help us during this time- we certainly can use the loving hands and feet of our friends and family.

I promise you, I do not want to stay here.

My friends have started this page for us here for support — > https://mealtrain.com/wn4k20

Peter and I share something in common

Posted in Religion/Christianity/Philosophy by

This video touched me so much! I knew Peter had denied Jesus three times, but never read this part of the Gospel of John. I went back into my bible after seeing this and read the passage od John 21. Apparently “Agape” means a self-sacrificing love and “phileo” means a brotherly love. I remember this a scene earlier when Jesus was washing the feet of his diciples and Peter didn’t want him to do it because he felt that Jesus was too good to be doing such a lowly job. Jesus told him that Peter didn’t understand what he was doing but that some day he would. I think that conversation between Jesus and Peter by the Sea of Galilee finally taught him what Jesus was all about. And Peter later became a powerful witness to God and was later crucified himself for being a Christian.

 I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 10 years old, but fell away from the path when I was in high school. And for 12 years, I didn’t go back because I felt like I wasn’t worthy. When we ask Jesus into our heart, we actually form a marriage with Christ. The marriage of Christ and his Church. While this video refers to our “marriage,” it is actually talking about how to apply our marriage with our spouse in the same way Jesus applied the marriage between us and him. Whether we are married or not, I think this still speaks so much about our need to recommit our lives to Christ if we have separated ourselves from him. The conversation between Jesus and Peter, also happend between Jesus and I about two months ago. This video totally captures the emotion I felt when I felt him calling me back. For those of you who have divorced Christ like I did at some point in your life, I hope this video brings you as much hope as it did me. Jesus is truly an awesome God!

 God Bless!