Excerpt from An Untroubled Heart By Kara Stout
We are excited to feature Kara Stout’s new devotional (which launched April 29, 2025), An Untroubled Heart. “This inspiring 30-day devotional invites readers to begin each morning in God’s presence and end each day in his calming embrace, providing a rhythm of peace for anxious hearts. In An Untroubled Heart, Stout shares glimpses into her own struggles including recovering from a carotid artery dissection, struggling with infertility, facing financial hardship, caring for her mother during her cancer journey and eventually losing her, after having already lost her father. She encourages readers to turn to God to find solace and experience his grace and love when they are feeling anxious, fearful, sad or overwhelmed.” We thank Booked PR for the opportunity to feature this excerpt.
Get your copy of An Untroubled Heart here!
The Tenderness of the Lord
By Kara Stout
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
Psalm 103:13–14
When I was twenty-nine, exactly one month after I got married, I had a carotid artery dissection. This is when a tear occurs in one of your carotid arteries, which can compromise blood flow to the brain and lead to a stroke. Yes, this is extremely rare, especially at a young age. I had all the symptoms of a stroke, but praise God, I did not actually have one. I had what is called a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which presented as numbness and tingling on one side of my body, loss of vision in one eye, and difficulty with speech, all of which resolved and didn’t cause long-term damage, thankfully! I was monitored in the hospital for five days. I didn’t need surgery but was on blood thinners for several months as my artery healed.
Surprisingly, I was not afraid or worried during the actual event, or even while I was in the hospital. I felt blanketed by His peace and protection. At one point I was so weak, I was barely able to walk to the bathroom while hooked up to my IV.
In that moment I saw a vision of Jesus holding me up and walking with me. It was as though I could physically feel His tenderness, sympathy, and compassion carrying me. Afterward, when I came home from the hospital, I began to feel fearful and worried a TIA would happen again, or even a stroke. I also worried about work and how I would perform, feeling the way that I did. God saw my anxieties and fears and moved toward me in tenderness. As I came to Him in prayer, my anxieties and fears diminished. In continually going to God, the intensity, frequency, and duration of my worries and anxieties lessened and lessened.
The Lord met me in this experience with tenderness. I discovered His compassion and care, both at the initial moment of crisis and in the days following when I felt fearful. He knew my physical weakness as well as my emotional and mental weakness. He was my Father, showing me compassion. When I had imaging done again ten years later, my artery was completely healed, as if the dissection never happened. It “looked beautiful” according to my doctor!
Can you think of a time when you saw the tenderness of Jesus carrying and sustaining you? I pray that as you recall this time, you would fall asleep tonight remembering that His tenderness remains. In all of life’s experiences, He will continue to hold you up, friend. In your worries and fears, in your human frame, Christ holds you up.
My Lord,
How calming it is for my soul tonight to consider Your compassion, to recall Your kindness and care. Your tenderness has healed me time and time again. I pray that my gratitude for Your lovingkindness will rise up to You like incense.
You are a compassionate God, One who displays sympathy, One who moves toward us in our need for You. Your tenderness meets me in my vulnerability. It holds me up in this season, and I know it will continue to hold me up in every season for the remainder of my life. Amen.
[Taken from An Untroubled Heart by Kara Stout. Copyright Kara Stout© (April 2025) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, http://www.zondervan.com.]
Get your copy of An Untroubled Heart here!
Kara Stout is a writer, wife, and new adoptive mom living in Los Angeles, California. Kara writes prayers and devotionals on her social media and has also written devotionals for Her True Worth, a women’s online ministry. Kara has her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Arizona State University and her master’s degree in counseling from Loyola University Chicago. After walking through a personal medical crisis and the loss of both of her parents to cancer, her life radically changed, and her complete dependency on God for strength and peace became a non-negotiable. Her hope is to encourage women in their faith, pointing them to their Great Comforter and Greatest Companion.
For more Kara:
www.pinterest.com/sincerelybykara/
Gabriela Yareliz
Gabriela is a writer, editor and attorney. She loves the art of storytelling, and she is based in NYC.
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