BookWorthy Chats with Emily Assel

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Valerie -Welcome to Bookworthy. Today we're talking with author Emily Assel. Emily is a speaker, a nurse educator, a mom, and the author of the Generation Claimed book series,

which includes You Are, Tonight, and Chosen. She desires to share the importance of speaking God's word over your littles and creating usable tools, particularly books, that enable you to do just that. Her latest board book, When It Hurts, comforting promises for hard times, aims to help little ones overcome fear, worry, and sadness with faith-filled promises that foster hope on hard days. Welcome to Bookworthy Emily.

Emily -Thank you for having me. I am very excited to be here.

Valerie -It is a pleasure. I followed you for a while, so it's kind of extra exciting to have you here on Bookworthy, so I'm thrilled. But before we get started, we have to do our random question of the week. So here we go. Our random question is, do you prefer your coffee or tea hot or cold?

Emily -Ooh, it's like so seasonal, right? Like usual in the Midwest, right? So, I'm not sure where you're located, but in the Midwest, we have such extreme seasons that it could be a hundred degrees, or it could be like negative 32. So, I guess I'm a seasonal coffee drinker depending on what we're slugging through here in the Midwest as far as weather goes.

Valerie - Yes, I am in Texas so we can have all four seasons in one weekend. There are those days. Yes, I remember a few years ago we had a tornado on Friday, and snow on Saturday, and what was it? I think like 80 degrees on the next day. All in one weekend.

Emily -Yes, yes, and one day sometimes, right? Yeah, I mean, we're at the end of October and I think in four days here, it's supposed to be 78 in like near Chicago, Illinois. But we have had some Octobers where it's been snowing and freezing. And this past weekend, hit, you know, below-freezing. You know, it is what it is. I base my drinks on what comfort I need at the time.

 Valerie - There is something different about iced tea and, you know, hot tea. It definitely does range. Too fun. Well, Emily, why don't you tell us about this new book in the Generation Claims series?

Emily -So the newest book is called When It Hurts and I started it probably a very long time ago, actually in the middle or around COVID season, which I feel like is probably when a lot of people started books. My grandmother did end up passing around that time and I was struggling with not only the loss of my grandmother but also some personal things and struggles that my family was going through. Had a lot of hard things that I was going through. At the same time, I also volunteer with a group called Love Moves Us, which is an organization that supports families who choose to foster and adopt. And obviously, those kids have gone through a lot of hard things. So it really kind of just had me start thinking and going through like, what does biblical grief look like? And what is our response to that? Sometimes, especially when we think of kids, it's easy to brush things off or push them away or not think that's a big deal, depending on whatever the situation is. But what we see in the Word is that God is a God of compassion, right? And he is a God who doesn't just brush our stuff away and say, it's not a big deal, it's not a big deal. But we are, you look through, goodness gracious, the Psalms and Job and Lamentations and even Jesus himself, some of the things that they say, that they express, I don't know that we would even be comfortable hearing or expressing in church these days. When you look at some of the things that Jesus said, you know, he said, my God, my God, why? Right? He said, like, while he's in the garden, like, please take this suffering, take this

pain away from me. Like, I think one of my favorites is, you know, he's riding into Jerusalem, and he starts weeping and said, if only, and I'm like, man, Do we feel comfortable expressing that ourselves? And if we are having people express that to us, how do we respond? A lot of research these days is showing that it's not only the event that causes trauma or whatever happens later on down the road, but it's how we react to that event that sometimes causes more problems than the event itself. And are we showing the response that God is showing us? And the more that I dug into it, the more I got in the Word, I just was so very overwhelmed with the compassion of God and how much I had to learn about how I react to my pain and sorrow and how I react to my children's pain and sorrow. And what does that look like? How do we work through that process? Michael Card, who I know like he's a singer, but he also writes some amazing Bible studies. And he has this book called The Sacred Sorrow that I was reading through at the time. And so many of those principles impacted me. And I thought like, man, as an adult, I didn't understand this much less as

children working through a hard thing. So how can we give them hope and help them to work through it? And I'm sure that you know with children's books we always have two audiences, right? Like, yes, some children are being read to, but some adults are reading. And how do we do the best that we can to walk through that process? And, you know, in my mind, I just kept thinking like holding someone's hand and walking them to the foot of Jesus. So that's what I hope this book will do for people who are going through hard times, whether it's you know, feeling left out at school or whether it's, you know, the loss of a family member or a loved one or something much harder.

Valerie -I love that message and that, you know, God can handle our hard questions. It's something I tell my kids all the time is, you know, they get frustrated with just, just like any of us do. And it's like, God can handle that. You know, it's like, you may not feel like you can, but we know the person who can. And to remind them that he is approachable. He's part of the situation. He doesn't love the situation. He doesn't want us hurting, but he's willing to use it to bring us closer to him and I love that about just that message of grief and walking in our emotions and understanding our emotions that's becoming a little more common in the Christian book market which is so sweet.

Emily -Well, and even realizing, think, that God experiences some of those emotions with us. Right? If you think my daughter recently had just an incident where a kid had been mean to her and she felt left out and she came and she was on my lap and she was crying. But as a parent, like, my heart broke. I got angry. I was upset. Like, I felt that pain even knowing what I know is that, you know, what her worth is, that she will overcome all these things. And we see that again, even with Jesus and Lazarus. It's not that Jesus was like, okay, well don't worry, I'm gonna bring him back to life. There's no need to have faith, or there's no need to cry, just have faith. Jesus knew what the end was, that he would eventually bring Lazarus back, but there still was this moment of grief and real anger towards what the situation was, and he allowed himself to experience that. And you know, again, we see even the Romans 12 are instructed to like to rejoice with those who rejoice, like grieve with those who grieve and to realize that like, that's not just an instruction that we have, but God is also doing that with us. And I think that's sometimes so important to me that no, like I'm not the only one who's hurting. Like my father is hurting with me. His heart is hurting as well. And there's something so comforting about that, right.

Valerie -Yeah, and to take this really big concept that's hard for us adults and to put it in a board book for young ages, you know, kind of zero to three to allow them to be equipped at such a young age to understand their emotions, to understand that God made emotions, he made them good, that they're important, even the good ones and the not so good ones, right? And so that God is working in all of them. And I love the message of your book. Kind of what do you hope kids will walk away with or learn from this book?

Emily -Yeah, I think my heart is to bring them again to the Lord, have that intimate place. I think in my own life that's been the most amazing thing. Again, we've had hard times. I don't know how many people know my story, but we've been through really hard times. And what has always been a comfort a joy and a peace to me is the presence of God, right? And so if I can help get you to the presence of God. That's enough, even if my whys aren't answered, even if the situation doesn't change, being in the presence of God, having that intimacy, bringing the child into that, that's where there's peace and comfort and healing. I do hope kids know the promises. I hope they can express their feelings. I hope that they have hope. I hope all of these things, but ultimately, my real desire is to bring children to the feet of Jesus, bring them into his presence, and realize that he wants you there. He wants to hear how you're doing. And I think when we, any person adult child come into the actual presence of God, into the intimacy with him, I believe that he will meet them there and he will deliver to each person what they need. So that's my ultimate heart is just bringing them to our father.

Valerie -Yeah, just bringing him bringing them to the comforter, the one that is the source of all comfort, and to help them know that they can approach God when it hurts when it's hard. And because God can seem unapproachable because whether the hurt or the heart is our fault or whatever, it's there's that shame that Satan wants to throw on us. God wants to welcome us. He wants us to step towards him and to be like, look, my peace passes understanding. My comfort is never ending and so I love that what your books are trying to do is just to make these hard concepts, big concepts, accessible for really young kids.

Emily -Yeah, and I love that you brought that out. One of the lines in this book is, you know, because every page is a declaration and a verse and one of the declarations in there is, you know, it's God speaking. Said, I will take the blame. And I think sometimes it's like we feel like we can't be sad if it's our fault, right? Or we're going through pain and we're trying to blame it on somebody else. And I think that blame tool, all it does, just like you said, is it keeps us from getting to the Lord, whether it's you know, the unforgiveness factor, whether it's for ourselves or somebody else. That the verse goes along with that talking about how Jesus took the sins of the whole world, every sin everywhere. So we don't have to come and say, yeah, it is my fault. I'm in this situation, but it still hurts. That's OK. God will still be in pain, even if it's your own fault. He still mourns with you. Think. We sometimes think God's like, yeah, you did it. You faced the consequences. I hope you do feel the pain. And it's like, no, like that's not our father's heart. Even if we, know, less than perfect parents would like to see our child, my children tend to be climbers fall on, and many times I'm like, put your shoes on, know, be careful, whatever, whatever. But still, if I saw my child fall out of a tree and cry, I wouldn't be like, well, it's your fault too bad. Like, no I'm going to go there, I'm gonna comfort you, I'm going to help heal you from that situation. I'll get you a cast if you need to or whatever it is. I wouldn't just leave you there in pain and be like, well, your fault, too bad, hope you learned a lesson. But sometimes I think that's what we think God does. And so I hope, like you said, even that blame portion, especially when we look at kids who have bigger things that they're going through, again, when I... think about the kids that we work through who

have been fostered, have been adopted. There is so much shame that carries along with it. Even in my own life, don't think sometimes I realize, okay, unconsciously I was blaming myself for something that either wasn't my fault at all or was my fault. But the thought that like, God already paid 100 % of it. It is not like, he doesn't need my extra self-loathing, my extra sadness, my extra whatever to make his sacrifice complete. He already did all of it. And so, I think that was so important to be able to leave in there to say like, God will take the blame. I think it kind of gives the, okay, right. That's true. The deep breath and the release of it. But I'm glad that you brought that up because that is such a huge thing to be able to mourn even whether it's truly our fault or whether we just feel like it's our fault is so important for sure.

Valerie - Emily, tell us a little bit about how your writing journey began.

Emily -Yeah, so obviously I wrote as a kid that was kind of always something fun that I did but never really took it seriously. It began back in, I don't even know what year it was, a long time ago, I was getting ready to throw a baby shower for my youngest brother-in-law's baby. So, I mean, he's my brother-in-law, but I've dated my husband forever. So he's like my baby brother as well. So, my baby brother Was having a baby, and we had gone through a lot of different things in our life. And I had seen the power of the word of God. So I was lying in my bed trying to take a nap because my daughter was not sleeping through the night. And I remember, you go in your mind, your list of things to do. And I was thinking about like, okay, Lord, like, I don't want to give this kid just a blanket or just a stroller. Like this is my baby brother's baby. And I thought like, knowing the power of the word of God, I remember saying like, Lord, I want this little boy to have everything that you died to give him, everything that your word said that he could have. And the Lord was like, I want that for all of my kids. You should write a book about

it. And I was like, whoa, no God, seems like, know, someday I'm busy. The kids don’t sleep through the night. didn't have, you know, you give a million excuses. You look it up on Google and Google tells you it's not going to happen and all of these things. But eventually to make the story short, about six months later, my husband and I do Daniel’s Fast with our church at the beginning of every year. And my husband, not knowing any of this, looked over at me about halfway through the fast and said, I think God's telling you he wants you to write a book. And I was like, OK, I give. I give. We'll do it. Let's do it. So my

husband was working nights as a nurse and so I put my kids to bed. My husband was gone, and I sat and wrote our first book, You Are. This is our self-published version. So, I first self-published, and we took the like one step at a time, yes God, yes God, yes God, had my sister-in-law do the illustrations who was just dating my brother at the time. So, like, let's talk about a leap of faith. I was like, you, I'm gonna be on Team Lauren. So, if you break up with her, like just to let you know. But thankfully, you know, they got married. She's part of the family officially now.

But we self-published at the time. We took what was supposed to be a down payment on our house. We were living in a double-wide trailer at the time, which is a much longer story. We took the down payment for our house, and we turned it into books and we self-published, made a website, showed up at the farmers markets and the consignment sales, and all of the all of the things with our self-published little book. About three months into that was invited to an

event I wasn't even supposed to be at, invite only. I didn't receive an invite. It was like a third-hand invite. You know how God works. And we sold a ton of books. There were like Mary Kay people there, and Lula Rowe, Osborne, like, know, all the like Christmas mom craft fair stuff. And for whatever reason, Tindall House publishers had a table there. And I was packing up, we had sold a ton of books. And I felt like the lawyer was like, Emily, you should go give them a book. And I was like, no, God, that's not how this works. You obviously don't understand the publishing industry. Like, I don't have an agent, I don't have a proposal. They don't just take books from people off the street at mom's Mary Kay Christmas sales, you know, like. So I packed up my whole car. Again, this is a cruddy October in the Midwest. So, it was like sleeting. I packed up my whole car. I went to go shut the trunk and I heard the Lord say like, God calls me we're tight like that. He was like, if nothing else in your life have, I not taught you obedience? So I was like, okay Lord. So, I went back in, I'd even bring a book with me. This is how I was like whatever, like that's not gonna work. So I walked in, you waited for the table to clear, like, you know, like, it's gonna be embarrassing if other people are standing around. I waited for the table to clear, and I said, hey, you wouldn't take a book from somebody off the street, right? Like you wouldn't want my book. And the girl at the book table, bless her heart, was like, yeah, sure. And I was like? Okay, had to go back out to the back of my car. Like this is like...The ridiculousness sometimes right grabbed a book. I went to give her my elevator speech like we all know and I'm like I just was so like Took a deep breath. I was like, you know what? We'll just see what god does with this and hands her the book This was Thursday afternoon Monday morning the head of children's publishing at Tindale emailed me and said Hey We'd love to talk to you about publishing your book We signed a three-book deal. Now we have a fourth one coming out. Yeah, so it's Yeah, it's the Lord. again, I always laugh that like, you know, we plagiarized half the book. I mean, I cannot plagiarize, but it is it's Bible verses. So, it truly was the Lord leading us one step at a time. One yes, God at a time. His favor has been the whole process. And I'm just I'm just glad he picked me. I'm like, Lord, thank you for picking me because I feel very honored to be able to be a part of helping to reach so many people with the Word of God.

Valerie -I love that you're doing that because I know like I know in my parenting journey, sometimes my hardest steps of faith were in those first few months with my little one. And even though I've said here like they're two months old and I'm still reading books because that's what I do. And so, it's like to have books that are speaking truth to children. But golly, there were so many devotionals that I've said here reading my little bitty kid and I'm like, this is what I needed to hear today. And just to remind ourselves of truth and those hard seasons of parenting, hard seasons of life, sometimes we need those picture book style books to keep it simple and to remind us of those foundational truths that we can get lost. I read my Bible in a year. I've done this. I've done that. But sometimes we just forget that we could just stand on these simple, simple truths and rest in them and comfort from them as well. So, I love them. Well, Emily, what is the most impactful book in your life other than the Bible?

Emily -This is it's so again, I'm just gonna be honest like I feel I was like I read this book I was like, Like doesn't it feel like it's like well what season of my life of my in I feel like the Lord has been so faithful to me to bring me the books that I have needed in whatever season I'm in so

I'm just going to like start telling you 50,000 different books and I Lisa Bevere's Be Angry and Don't Blow It was a huge life-changing book for me Humble Roots by Hannah, I want to say her name is Anderson. I don't know. It's green, Humble Roots, look it up, transformed my life. Sarah Hagerty wrote a book called Unseen, which changed my life. I mean, Grit, which Grit is not even a Christian book. Grit, I think that the Lord is so good to meet us where we're at. Even some basic like, goodness, anything C.S. Lewis wrote. Madeline L’Engle, she wrote a book. Walking on Water, Talking about the Intersection of Faith and Art. Beautiful book. And this is probably that, I'll just keep going. I feel like there have been so

many books that the Lord has used to impact my life because when we're listening, we can hear him. He will meet us. And the Bible is, I'm so incredibly passionate about, but he has been so good to use his children to be able to continue speaking to us. And if we're hearing him like I said, even Grit is not a Christian book, but there are so many principles in there that the Lord was like, think, think, think, highlight, highlight, highlight. And I'm like, okay, I got that. Got that. So again, I would like to go on and on. I'm like looking at my bookshelf and I'm like, I forgot to say this one. I forgot to say Relentless by John Devere. I forgot to say, I could go on and on. But those are some of the ones I guess that stick out to me a lot. But I know that's not a fair answer because you said one and I gave

you like six, but I did narrow it down if you can believe it. That is like the narrowed-down version.

Valerie -I love that God does that. He says in his word that he'll have the rocks cry out to his glory, that he's going to use anything and everything to get our attention, to get us to see him, to get us to recognize our need for him as well as just the, wherever we are in our walk with the Lord. Like he's going to reach us with whatever book or... podcast. We'll go with that. That is going to come across our path and he could use it all I love that books are one of those things that could connect people and to be like, golly, this book changed my life. And

even that one, one of those authors, they might not be like, this is just my journey in words, but to that obedience that they had to follow through and be like, you know what, maybe somebody else would like this impact they can have is amazing.

Emily -Yeah, amen. Yeah. Yeah, amen. I've never thought about that before, about the rocks crying out. I love that. I'm gonna hold onto that one.

Valerie -Okay. Well, Emily, what can we expect next from you?

Emily -So obviously, you know, my book when it hurts is coming out in February of 2025. but a brand-new venture out into the adult world is that in March of 2025, I actually am releasing my first book for moms We had a lot of moms wanting This is great. Like you said, I use this term mine myself. Can you write one for me? So I have a devotional coming out in March of 2025 and it's broken into four sections about different things that I think sometimes as moms we struggle with. At the beginning of every section, there actually is a whole chapter of part of my life, what I've gone through, how I struggled through it. But then there are a hundred devotionals that are meant to be done quickly, right? When I first started writing this book, was way before Tyndale had contacted me and they, my friends, were like, I can't even take a shower by myself, much less do devotions. Like, what do you...What are you talking about? Like, I would love to declare the word of God over my kids, but like, I can't even take a shower. So, it's meant to be under five minutes. It has scripture in it, a few sentences of encouragement, but what I, it is very close to my heart is there is a declaration for you to declare over yourself, but then also to be able to declare over your family. So, every day be able to declare God's word over you, over your kids. And then again, having time to you know, reflect and spend, I think I say put a timer on the audiobook has like a dinger on it. That's like, ding, it's been a minute. If you've got more time, great. If not, deep breathe for a minute in the Lord's presence. But yeah, so that's coming out. I'm really excited about that one. That'll be my first venture out into the adult world. But again, just trying to meet moms where they're at and bring them into the presence of the Lord and, realizing that our words are powerful. I think as moms, we know how important that is, but I also, it's hard to, I don't have so much time to be looking up all of the scriptures and what to declare. So, I'm hoping, I told my husband, said, I feel like I'm arming for battle a generation of moms, right? So, I'm arming a generation of moms to be able to stand on the word for themselves and their families.

Valerie -That's amazing because I know as a mom, as a Christian mom, I want to speak God's truth over my kids and my family, but I don't always do a good job of speaking that truth to myself. And forgetting that even though I'm an adult and I have children and those things, I'm still a child of God. I still need to hear those sweet, sweet truths. And I love that you're taking just the rock-solid things that you've written in your board books and moving them to those moms who are watching. Those seasons that don't have a lot of time, that need to hear they're loved and cherished and chosen and you even when it hurts, you know, there is hope and that kind of thing and so I love that you're doing that for months as well as the little ones in their arms too. So sweet. Now Emily, where can people find out more about you and your books?

Emily -So my website is GenerationClaimed.com. I also am pretty active usually on Instagram and Facebook, also under Generation Claimed. You can find me there.

Valerie - We will make sure those links are in the description so that people can find you easily for sure. Thank you for joining me today, Emily.

Emily -Thank you for having me. It was wonderful to talk with you.

Valerie - It was, I enjoyed it. Thank you for joining Emily and me on this episode of the Bookworthy Podcast. Check the show notes for any books or links that we discussed and let us know in the comments if you prefer your coffee or tea hot or cold. Or are you a seasonal drinker like Emily? Be sure to like and subscribe to discover more great books together.

Happy reading!