Julie Stoll

Ever feel like screaming at God? Lamenting that things aren't the way you want them to be? 
During the 2025 Dakotas Annual Conference, Julie Stoll led a workshop entitled "Lament, Forgiveness, and Healing." Stoll has been working with the Dakotas Higher Ground Initiative, leading Scripture Circles for clergy and lay people. Additionally, she has worked with various congregations as they navigated seasons of change or conflict. 

The Friday morning plenary session of the 2025 Annual Conference concluded with a healing service– an opportunity to acknowledge the pain and wounds of the past several years. Stoll’s Lunch 'n Learn workshop aimed to continue the conversation of acknowledging and releasing our pain and hurt to God and discovering how lament and forgiveness are big parts of our walk with God. 

Stoll began by sharing some of her personal experiences of grief, and the way that she was taught about grief while growing up in Africa. 

“I had the privilege of growing up in Africa– in Kenya and Tanzania, and grief in East Africa is handled very differently than what happens here in the United States,” said Stoll.  “A dear friend of ours passed away... we learned during that process how a community in Africa grieves is that the entire community shows up. It is a weeklong process where people wail,” shared Stoll. 

Stoll went on to talk about the idea of wailing and how it is a very effective way to release your emotions and truly grieve. She asked the participants, “What would it be like to be a part of a community that, when something sad happens, they were able to release it and express it to the biggest and fullest magnitude possible?” 

Participants had answers like, “It would be freeing!” and “It would be nice to not be embarrassed for feeling that deeply,” and “I would feel truly supported.” 

After sharing a bit of her story, Stoll read Psalm 27, written by King David, and invited others to read the same passage in different translations so that participants could compare together. Some of the themes that stood out were “be patient”, “waiting”, and “hope”.  

Attendees discussed Psalm 27 as a part of the workshop.

A unique teaching moment that Stoll mentioned was the relationship between waiting and hope. She said, “When you study Hebrew, sometimes one word will have multiple meanings. The word for ‘wait’ is the word ‘qavah’. It also happens to have the meaning of ‘hope’.” 

Stoll went on to talk about an analogy of an arrow in your side representing all the pain you have gone through. Stoll explained, “When someone bumps that arrow, it hurts. The pain wasn’t caused by the person bumping into the arrow, it was caused due to unforgiveness and the arrow still being wedged in.” 

Together, those in the session talked about what it is like to feel pain in our society today. Stoll described, “Sometimes our culture has this idea of ‘forgive and forget.’ But if we have deep wounds, that is not an easy process. In order for me to live my life fully, the way God intended, I need to get rid of my arrows.” 

The group began to talk about all the different struggles and hardships that David had faced in his life. They mentioned moments such as, fighting a giant, abusing his power, being told at a young age he would be king and then having the current king chase after him and try to have him killed, and being rejected as a part of his own family. Life was not easy for David. Yet, through Psalm 27, he shared with us a great pathway that leads us from pain to healing. 

The first step is to start with God. “David is saying, ‘God is bigger than even this. I am safe, I am loved, the Lord is might light and my salvation.’ In order to heal, you actually have to know that you’re in a safe, loving space,” instructed Stoll. 

Next, you need to acknowledge what has caused your pain, and the arrow in your side. “Here is where our Midwestern 'niceness' often has trouble, because we don’t like to talk about the yucky things. We don’t like to acknowledge the pain and the hurt,” said Stoll. “But if we’re going to take an arrow out, we have to acknowledge the whole arrow.” 

After acknowledging all the people who had hurt him and how it had been affecting his life, David turned his eyes back to God. “Psalm 27:4 reminds us that we need to take shelter in the Lord,” explained Stoll. “David went back to the Lord after acknowledging his pain and through pulling out the arrow, he is putting himself back into God’s presence and asking for that healing presence.”  

Julie Stoll used a broom to explain the metaphor of a thorn in our side to represent pain from the past.

The final step is to check your wounds and care for them. “After you sanitize your wounds with the Lord, it is then time for wound care. Just like if you came home from the hospital and you had a wound, the doctors would say ‘You need to check on it periodically.’ It is the same thing with the wounds that pain causes in our lives,” said Stoll. 

“The whole process is forgiveness. It is not just 'one and done'. It is a process of acknowledging the pain, addressing it, specifically going to the very ends of it, pulling it out, sanitizing it in the presence of the Spirit, asking for healing, and then watching to see if the wound is actually healing,” Stoll summarized.

Talking about pain is often uncomfortable, and something that people avoid, even though it's something everyone experiences. “We can’t escape the arrow of wounding each other and being wounded. Even Jesus was wounded and rejected. No one escapes this world without getting some arrows and shooting some, either intentionally or unintentionally,” reflected Stoll. 

If you are struggling to forgive and pull out your arrows, check out the written and audio resources that Julie has provided.
Forgiveness Meditation PDF: Aphiemi
Audio Resource with Julie Stoll

Click here to view the recording of this lunch-n-learn session.