Rescued from Despair: Christy Hubbard’s Story

Dannah Gresh: Dan and Christy Hubbard sensed the Lord calling them to missions from the time they started dating, and years later they received the invitation to go to Peru. But reality kicked in. Christy realized this lifelong dream was going to be very challenging.

Here’s what the trip to Peru was like.

Christy Hubbard: I allowed myself to just become so very overwhelmed. And, silly me, I chose the back row seats. I did pick it. It’s all on me. Those seats, you sit up like this. You don’t recline in those.

So I’m sitting with a six-month-old, feverish baby, a four-year-old beside me. My husband was about fifteen rows ahead of me with the two boys. I felt all alone.

I was overwhelmed when it hit me: I don’t have a return ticket. I cried for two hours solid.

We flew on to Lima and had eight pieces of carry-on luggage, plus pillows, plus everybody’s snugglies, plus everybody’s backpacks, plus the diaper bag, plus the stroller, plus four children. We were a sight.

I believe we had twenty-four bags, because we’re moving there. So we’ve got carts and children and all the paraphernalia. We get to immigration and they say, “We’ve got to go through all of your bags.”

So my husband is hauling bag after bag after bag. Feverish baby. Little girl here who’s exhausted because now it’s 2:30 in the morning. I’ve got another son who’s happy as a lark, just turning in circles. And then my oldest is, like, “Momma.” He’s throwing up in line while I’m carrying . . . I’m just looking . . . You cannot think this stuff up. How does this happen?

We finally get to our ride, and we get to where we’re staying about 3:30 in the morning. As we’re walking in, the lady that had picked us up said, “So, by the way, the lady who owns this place, she really loves her things, so don’t break anything.”

I’m looking around at four very, very little people and then at this house. It looked like a museum, but everything was concrete construction. And I just said, “Ooooh, I can’t do this!”

That is a microcosm of what it was for us from that day forward while we were there—just the circumstances from without, from within, the oppression. It was so real and felt on so many levels.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for Monday, May 27, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Okay, Nancy, I want to quiz listeners with a statistic I heard from the Barna Group. Every month, how many pastors and missionaries from North America leave their ministry role due to burnout? Is it 15 per month? 150 per month? Or 1500?

Nancy, do you have a guess?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, Dannah, I’d have to guess 1500.

Dannah: That’s right.

Nancy: Yes. Discouragement among missionaries really is a significant problem. But as we all know, discouragement really is a problem for everyone, which is why I’m so glad we’re able to share today’s story.

I was teaching in our ministry center in Michigan one day when Christy Hubbard stood and shared just a little bit of the story we’re about to hear.

My heart was sad as I heard about the sorrow upon sorrow and the discouragement that she had faced while trying to serve the Lord as a missionary, and here in the States, and even right in her own home.

I was also struck by how much Christy’s story pointed everyone in the room that day to the arms of our loving Father. He was holding her that day, and He will hold you right in the middle of any impossible situation you may be facing today.

Dannah: When Christy first started dating Dan Hubbard, it was clear. He was interested in missions. They quickly got involved serving Spanish-speaking people in the Chicago area.

Christy: So I dated him, knowing, thinking that we were going to go to Mexico as missionaries.

Dannah: After Christy and Dan got married, they did have a chance to visit Latin America together.

Christy: We went to Mexico, about forty-five minutes outside of Mexico City. It was a beautiful place. We had good friends that were pastoring there. They invited us to come for their music conference. We had a beautiful week.

But then my husband one night got chills and fever, and the next morning woke up just miserable.

Dannah: A doctor in Mexico told Dan to get treatment immediately, and the couple headed home.

Christy: We were walking in the door at Mayo Clinic within just a couple of days with our scans. We didn’t have insurance. We’re walking in the door, and they took a look at his scans, and they had him in a room within about twenty minutes.

In less than a week, he was under the surgeon’s knife. It was an eight-hour surgery. It was intense. It was huge. And the surgeon came in and she said, “Well, bad news. You are one of the rare 5% with a very rare type of cancer that this is actually cancerous.”

It’s so rare that just had a handful of people had it. The demographics were so different, they couldn’t give us any idea of what it would play out to be.

They told us that it would be similar to a steam train, where a steam train starts slow, and it begins to grow in momentum, until it reaches its destination. They didn’t know what that timeline would be, but that’s what we could expect.

Dannah: This family had to be patient a long time, wondering, Was Dan’s cancer going to return? What did this mean for their call to missions?

In the meantime, they continued serving their church and neighborhood.

Finally, a time came to consider missions again, this time to Peru.

Christy: Our church, our pastor began to get a vision for missions to a new level, to a new height. He started learning about the idea of maybe sending a cluster of missionaries together to do group missions so that there’s encouragement, so that there’s resources and manpower from the get-go.

The pastor talked to my husband and said, “Are you even interested in this?”

And he said, “Well, let me talk to Christy about it.”

But he was very interested. It was definitely his mission’s heart that had done nothing but grow all those years. So when that opportunity came, he was ready to jump on it.

Dannah: Well, you already heard what that trip to Peru was like: Kids with fevers and stomach illness, the twenty-four bags, the home where kids couldn’t touch anything.

Like Christy said, that journey was just the beginning of this family’s struggles.

Christy: I allowed myself to just become so very overwhelmed. And, I got pregnant within two weeks of landing on the field, so I had two very close pregnancies and babies together.

It really felt like a blur. That whole pregnancy felt like a blur because everything changed—my language, my culture, my food. I didn’t have the friends I’d had before. I didn’t have the church support that I had before. It was true for all of us, not just me.

We had a lot of stomach issues in transferring to the field, and that’s normal. That happens to missionaries. But it caused us to be sick a lot. Then you put pregnancy on top of that, and all the hormones with pregnancy, and I was still nursing a small child.

I just neglected everything I knew I should do. I was often in the nursery. We had a very, very tiny church plant, and I had the most babies. So I wasn’t hearing preaching, and I wasn’t being intentional to try to hear preaching. That was where I began to just bottom out—spiritually, emotionally, physically—in every way.

Nancy: I’d just like to pause there because what Christy said is so important. All of us are tempted to get busy, even busy serving the Lord, and to neglect spending time with the Lord.

In Luke 10, Jesus reminded a busy woman named Martha, “One thing is necessary.” And that one thing was spending time with Him.

Your season of life may look just as crazy as Christy’s, or it may look different. But would you listen to her warning and make sure that time with the Lord is a priority that you’re choosing day after day?

Dannah: Christy says that becoming disconnected from the Lord made her especially vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy.

Christy: I just slid down a dark, slippery slope. And in that season, Satan came in and just planted lie after lie after lie, and I believed it hook, line, and sinker. I internalized, and I became very, very discouraged and depressed, isolated. I didn’t know who I could call. I didn’t know who I could talk to. I just withered away. I got so bad, I started to become even suicidal.

After my fifth was born, I had such a wrong view of my children. I would imagine them as ball and chains, holding me down from what I wanted to do for Christ. I was just neglecting the gifts that I had been given. I wasn’t grateful. I was so discouraged. And the more I would wallow in that, the worse I got.

We had attempted a retreat with the other families that were there on the team with us to try to just try to find a rhythm in a team, try to create a team environment. It turned out to not produce the edifying experience we were praying and hoping for. It didn’t work out that way. And, I was exhausted. I was so sleep deprived.

I was on a fourth floor room at this resort place. I had both of my little ones in my arms, and I was ready to jump out that building. I had the thought, “I’ll take both babies because that’s going to be too much for him. I’m going to jump out this window. It’s just going to be done. I can just be done with all this.”

As I leaned out, I thought, You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to jump out, and I’m going to kill my two babies. And I’m going to be paralyzed, and I’m going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live with that.” And so I turned around, and I walked away from it.

I was so far from the Lord while thinking I was serving Him. And praise the Lord that He met me and then delivered me from that.

There was a missionary lady who was there. They were there on the team helping. They really were a gift. Her husband was a right hand to my husband. She was the one who came over one day around Christmas, and she was just hanging out. She said, “Have you ever heard of Revive Our Hearts?”

I said, “No.”

She said, “Give me your phone.”

So I gave her my phone. She put the app on, the podcast app. She found Revive Our Hearts. She handed it to me and said, “Just press play.”

I said, “Okay.” I put it away. I did not press play. Maybe a couple days later, I was in my room just having a pity party. I was crying out, “God, where are You? Why did You bring me here? Why did You bring me here to forsake me?”

I just had that still, small voice, “Just press play.”

I picked up my phone, and I looked at the podcast, and I pressed play.

Nancy (on air): You are not called to undertake one single difficulty in your own strength. You don’t have to do it alone. You can try.”

Christy: And I heard Nancy’s voice for the first time.

Nancy (on air): God may let you try to handle it on your own, but part of what He is doing with trials and afflictions—it may be physical, it may be many different areas of our lives, maybe little things, maybe big things . . .

Christy: It wasn’t a (snapping sound), “Oh, I changed!” But it was the first time in a long time that truth began to permeate the very dark place I was living. And I listened again. And I listened again. And I listened again.

Very slowly, all of a sudden, I saw a little light flicker in the very dark distance, and I thought, I think there’s hope. I think I might can get out of this.

Nancy (on air): He’s trying to strip us of self-reliance and make us utterly dependent upon Him and His grace.

Christy: I would listen to Revive Our Hearts all the time. Any moment I could, I was listening to Revive Our Hearts. My entire inside was transformed—literally, just transformed. It came alive.

All of a sudden, I was living again, and I was joyful. My whole image of my children changed. My circumstances did not change whatsoever. In fact, they got very much worse. But what was anchored inside of me was radically different.

At that simultaneous moment where I was at my lowest, Satan was coming full force at my husband. He began a dual life. He began an adulterous affair. So as I was coming out of my very, very dark place, he was going very, very deep into one.

My dad, who I’m very close with now, got a severe sepsis infection and nearly died. And so, knowing how much I love him, Dan said, “You know what, Christy? You need to go to the States. You need to go see your dad.”

I wanted to. With all my heart, I wanted to go be with him. And so I came to the States with the five children and left Dan there in Peru.

As I came back to the States, I began to just really pour out my heart in prayer. I would get alone and just weep and cry out to God to redeem whatever was going on. I determined, “You know what, Lord? I’m not going back to the field until we get help. I don’t know where help’s going to be found, but we’re going to find help.”

About the time I was determining that it seemed like the Holy Spirit was bringing Dan to his knees. While we were apart, he just broke. He said he just came to full confession and repentance to the Lord. He ended that relationship that he had abruptly, completely. He got on a plane, and he came home to me.

I had brought the kids to the airport to pick him up. He was so anxious to tell me he’d confessed and come clean that we stopped at a rest stop. He kind of alluded to something very heavy and dark that he needed to talk to me about. I thought, Oh, no. Not here. Not with all the kids.

So we got the kids to my mom’s, and we went on. I had reserved a room that night because we hadn’t been together for quite some time. As we were driving there, he confessed everything. He just talked, probably for six hours. He disclosed everything, as hard as that was, and he knew how hard that would be for me.

And if there is a kind way something like that could be done, if there is a way that that could be done in a edifying manner, he did it.

Dannah: We want to say clearly Dan’s unfaithfulness was sin. It was inexcusable. Christy’s hurt was real and deep. But Christy had learned about the power of the cross to forgive every sin—hers and Dan’s.

Once again, the Hubbards’ lives were upended, but this time Christy was deeply rooted in the Lord. She sought Him for her hope and for help with practical choices.

Christy: I didn’t want people telling me to divorce him. I knew that was not what I was to do. And so I returned to Revive Our Hearts because how many times Nancy would teach we’re not here to be happy. We’re here to honor and glorify the Lord. And in those hard places where longsuffering is a requirement, that’s where you can find Jesus.

For a long time, I just kept praying, “God, he needs somebody to walk with him. He needs a man. He needs an accountability partner. He needs this. He needs that. Oh, God, he needs this. He needs that. Please, God, where is that man?”

And finally one day, and I’m doing this with my hands—I’ve got my fists. “He needs this, God.” I’m begging Him.

All of a sudden one day, I looked at my hands, and I thought, I’m telling God how to do this. That’s not what needs to happen here.

I opened my hands that day. I said, “Lord, I’m not going to tell You anymore how this has to be. He’s Yours. This marriage is Yours. This home is Yours. This mess is Yours. I’m sorry, but it’s Yours.” And I opened my hands.

I began a season of praying with my hands open and stopped telling God how it had to be. Instead, I let go. And in that symbolic opening of my physical hands, I was opening my emotional, my spiritual hands, “It doesn’t have to be anything. It just needs to be what God wants.”

It was in that exact same month—again, a very slowly—but both of us as we would process together, he said it was in that month that all of a sudden he had hope again.

He got into his Bible, and he began studying stories in God’s Word of restoration stories—of David’s life, of so many Bible characters. He began to see the truth in that, and he began to write.

He began to write about those stories. As he began that, he began a process of healing and growing. We began talking. We began going deep. We began picking up all the pieces. And that amazing guy that we had left to Peru with so many years earlier came back. All of a sudden we were back on one page again.

We began processing all of the things that had happened, and the hurts, and my journey, and his journey, and how it had coincided, and how God had met us both. As we would talk and process, he was writing, and he was writing. He did publish a book on restoration that came from his journey of healing.

And then, the cancer started to make some forward momentum. Dan needed to go to Indianapolis because that was one of the few places in the nation where he could get a special treatment that was unique to his type of cancer.

We’re sitting there holding hands and just chatting about his treatment the next day when the superintending doctor we hadn’t met yet came in. He said, “Well, I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but you’re not getting that treatment tomorrow. It’s too late. There’s nothing more we can do. It’s just everywhere. The cancer is everywhere. You need to call your kids. You may have twenty-four hours. You may have two or three days, but that’s it. It’s done. There’s nothing more we can do.”

And I’m just sitting there . . . I didn’t know what to think. I just felt like I was gut punched. I told my mom what’s happening. I did not tell the children. I said, “Just get the kids here, and we’ll do that when they get here.”

I just prayed over him. What do you say? What do you say when all of sudden all of life’s picture just comes to an end, and you weren’t expecting it?

So the kids got there. We spent a beautiful time together as a family. He prayed with each of them, talked with each of them individually. They cried. We sang. We prayed. He sat there for a while. He was able to have time with each one. And then we said, “I love you.” Those were the last words he was able to speak to me.

I don’t know why, but I just knew what to do. I stepped up, and I got in his bed with him, held him in my arms with his head on my shoulder, in my arms. We started singing songs about heaven, and started singing songs from the years gone by that he had held to in different seasons. Then he took his last breath, and he ran into Jesus’ arms.

We just crossed that one-year mark that he’s been with Jesus. It’s been awful and beautiful and horrible and wonderful and really hard. Everything we were dreaming is not to be—not in the way we dreamed it. That’s not to say that God can’t use it because here I am, sharing and using that story.

But everything I thought would be, none of it exists, and I have no idea what the future holds. That is a very insecure place to be. But as I’ve learned on this very long journey, God knows. He’s one step ahead, and He’ll get me there, whatever that ends up being.

Nancy: In the months after she lost Dan to cancer, I met Christy at a Revive Our Hearts’ recording session. She was there, eager to learn, eager to turn to the Lord in the middle of this latest storm.

She was such a different woman from the one who had stood on that balcony in Peru, considering ending her life and the lives of two of her children.

You may be in ministry as Christy was, or maybe you’re running from the Lord. Either way, if you’re in that place of despair, I want you to remember that you can reach out for the same hope that Christy found. Reach out to Christ. Seek Him in His Word, in prayer, and with other believers.

I’m so grateful that the Lord used Revive Our Hearts to intersect at so many points of Christy’s story. If you’ve prayed for this ministry, if you’ve supported this ministry, you helped offer hope to Christy in Peru by means of the Revive Our Hearts podcast. We want to offer more hope to more women who desperately need it.

The month of May is an important time for Revive Our Hearts as we make plans to offer that kind of hope in the year ahead. As we’ve been sharing with you over the last few weeks, this is the end of our fiscal year, which means we wrap up one set of accounting books and begin another.

We’re asking the Lord to help us end this fiscal year in a healthy position to prepare us for more effective ministry in the year ahead. So we’ve been asking Him to provide at least $838,000 by this Friday, May 31. If you’d like to know how we’re doing toward that goal, go to ReviveOurHearts.com, and you’ll see an up-to-date progress bar.

So, as we have just a few days left in this month, would you pray with us about this need? And would you ask the Lord if He would want to use you to help meet the need at this time?

Thank you so much for your prayers, your encouragement, and your support in these important days.

Dannah: When you donate any amount this month, we’ll say hanks by sending you a 30-day devotional based on Nancy’s teaching. It’s called, Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture.

You know, you could be an encouragement to someone like Christy who felt like she had no hope. This booklet will help you recognize ways to invest in the women around you.

To help meet our current need and to get your copy of the devotional, visit ReviveOurHearts.com. There you can help meet the needs of the ministry and ask for your copy of Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, I’m tired of serving everyone else. When do I get served? A moment like that is an opportunity to show true greatness. Nancy will explain more tomorrow. Please be here for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.