Heather Thompson Day is a speaker, professor, and author. Her recent book “What If I’m Wrong?” challenges readers to remember what it felt like to believe in themselves before the world told them who they should be and what they should do.

PEER: What inspired you to write “What if I’m Wrong,” and what do you hope readers will take away from it?

HEATHER THOMPSON DAY: My dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My dad was my spiritual person and the most spiritually-connected person I had ever known. At the same time, as I’m wrapping my mind around just this really beautiful human being dying, we were trying to figure out how we could afford a nursing home because it can go up to $10,000 a month. It’s very difficult to be able to afford. I remember I had this moment—I texted my mom and I was feeling a little bitter, and I said, “It just seems like Dad has given his entire life to God and has nothing to show for it.” And my mom said, “Dad has nothing to show for it, but he has you to show for it, so I think you’re wrong.” That conversation just kind of kept replaying in my head. So I just kept looking at different things in my life that I was looking at with very earthly eyes of how this was supposed to look or how I thought God was supposed to show up or what a good God looks like. I had to start thinking that maybe I’m getting some of this wrong, maybe our circumstances aren’t the blessing, maybe God being with us despite whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, maybe that’s the blessing, and how do I really believe that, and how do I live like a person who believes that?

So that’s just kind of a journey that I’ve been on. Like, looking at my life and circumstances and situations and deciding that God is good because He’s here.

P: What do you hope readers will take away from the main message of your book?

HTD: I hope that we understand that we are worshiping a crucified Savior. I think we’ve done a little bit of damage in some ways, I don’t know, maybe it was just me, but I really started to believe that if God was with me, it was going to be awesome and I was going to be so popular and I was going to make so much money and everything was just going to work, and then when real life happened and I discovered that that’s not true, and that God can be with me. I’m in the desert, or I’m in the wilderness, or I’m suffering, or there’s a problem in my marriage, or my kids are struggling at school or whatever it is like, that God can still be with me in that.

It just made me realize I had been looking at so much of faith in my relationship with God wrong, so I hope people know He’s with you, and by the way, I don’t care if you feel it. There are certain situations and circumstances that you won’t be able to feel even what’s real, because I’m so bitter or I’m so hurt, or there’s just so much grief. For me, with my dad, there was so much grief. I want people to know, even if you don’t feel it, God says, I am with you people, period. How do we start to live like that’s true before we feel it? That’s what I want people to take away from it.

P: Do you have any other personal experiences that influenced any other themes in this book?

HTD: Yeah. I learned about passion from my dad. I told you, he had done his entire life in ministry, and so for me, I wanted to be a writer. That was always my dream, is that I’d be some New York Times bestselling author, and I thought if you just loved God and put your whole heart into it and did the right things and did all of the work, that things were just going to work out. That wasn’t what happened for me. I really struggled with this thing and there were days that I wanted to quit writing.

I discovered that the definition of the word passion means to suffer. Passion isn’t what we do because we’re getting so much affirmation and accolades and doors open, passion is what we continue to do despite not seeing those things. Passion is what we are willing to suffer for, because I believe in this thing, or I feel called to this thing, or God has given me a vision for this thing even though nothing’s working in my circumstances, I just can’t put it down. That’s when I decided, “Oh, writing is my passion, I’m going to keep writing a newsletter. I don’t need a New York Times bestseller to write a newsletter that encourages a few thousand people every single week—I’m just going to do that because I feel called to do that and because I feel like this is the gift that God has given me even if it’s not viral.”

I taught college for many, many years, and I am very passionate about talking truthfully to the next generation about what their giftings may look like and what being in the hands of God actually looks like and what serving in my passions looks like, because it probably is not going to look like tons of open doors and opportunities, but it’s what I’m willing to keep doing, because, God, I know you’ve called me to this despite those things.

P: No, I really like that. I like how you say it’s not supposed to be viral and passion is something that you’re supposed to suffer for.

HTD: It literally means to suffer, that is the definition of the word. I was a communications professor for many years, so I always am like, “define the term.” What does that word even actually mean? Well, it means that’s why it’s the passion of Christ. Christ came to earth, He was willing to suffer to stay in relationship with humanity.

P: Did you face any other unexpected discoveries or insights while writing this book?

HTD: Yeah. So many things. One, and this, actually, it was on my last round of edits for it and I was on a run. I often talk to God when I’m running. I felt like the Holy Spirit said, “You don’t have to feel me be good to you in order for you to partake in goodness or you don’t have to feel me in order for you to partake in blessing.” What I received that to be was like, I can be good to people even when I perceive that my circumstances or situation isn’t good. When I choose to create goodness despite my own situation or circumstances, I am partaking in co-laboring with God, I get to experience this incredible heavenly thing called blessing and goodness and beauty by just choosing to create it and that it just made me realize I’m not waiting on anything.

I can have the worst day, sis, and like decide in the car, okay, who is one person I can do something nice for? I’m having a bad day, so who is one person I can impact their day so it’s a better one than the one I’m having? And then I get to partake with God when I do that.

I want people to read the book, change our perceptions and really think through how they can create beauty and goodness and blessing even if they don’t feel. It doesn’t matter if you feel it, even if you don’t feel like God is bringing those same things to you. Well, guess what, they’re never out of reach because I can always create them.

P: How can societal expectations impact our ability to pursue our true passions?

HTD: I think money is just a big part of this conversation. I say, in the book, let’s be honest with ourselves about why are we even saying this is our passion and if your actual passion is money, just say that, because there’s ways to make money. What I’m saying is sometimes we’ll say, “Well, I’m supposed to write a book, so is my passion to publish a book or is my passion to write?” Because you can write whether or not you publish a book. I had somehow told myself that it wasn’t passion or I wasn’t really doing this thing unless I was a New York Times bestseller. Well, that’s out of my control and that may never happen, so is it my passion and am I willing to suffer for trying to be a new York Times bestseller and hitting some arbitrary ranking? Or is it that I believe God has called me to something using the gift of words. If that’s what I actually believe, how do I keep doing that, regardless of whether or not I’m making money doing that.

I would say if somebody wanted to say, “My passion was going to med school, or my passion was to be a lawyer, but I can’t get into med school, or I can’t pass the bar.” Well, is your passion to go to med school, is your passion to serve in health outcomes? How do you re-examine this situation and say, actually, I just want to be around people and improve health outcomes. Are there other jobs that allow you to do that? Are there other things in law, like being a clerk or whatever it is. What does that look like? If whatever you think the thing that you had to do is, if that door closes, how do you still stay in what you’re saying you’re passionate about? I think if we keep assigning passion with money, you’ll never know passion, you just won’t, because passion is about what we’re willing to suffer for.

I would even go so far as to say, who cares if you make money from it? I think it’s a dangerous thing to think if I can’t monetize this, then it’s not worth it. Especially for me, I serve in ministry. We’ve got to stop with this trying to make money off of everything. I’m not saying we don’t have to survive—I know we all have bills, I get that, but there should be some things that we are willing to do because we care about the work, or we care about the impact of it.

I would encourage young people to find what that thing is for them. What are you willing to volunteer doing? I used to go to the homeless shelter once a month for many, many years and I taught a class there. Obviously, I’m not getting paid for that, but that’s where I first learned to speak. I would show up every single week at the homeless shelter with people who sometimes didn’t care about the lesson, and I’d have to think, “How do I get this group to connect with the lesson that I’m teaching?” When you really step into those spaces that you feel called to step into, regardless of what you’re getting back from it, you can’t beat that and you can’t monetize it.

P: What does it mean to remember what it felt like to believe in ourselves? In other words, how can we continue following our hearts, passion and dreams when they seem impractical or hard to reach at the time?

HTD: I have a few pillars to my ministry, and one is I want people to know who God is, but number two, I want them to know who they are, who are you? I think we have to be able at some point in our lives answer that question: Who are you? I had a therapist once where she said who are you? I was like, “Well, I’m a professor.” And she was like, “No, you’re not a job. Who are you? What makes you tick? What gets you excited? What makes you feel most alive and at peace and fulfilled? Who are you?” I think we have to know who we are when our circumstances don’t tell us.

I had a student once who I’ll never forget. She was 18 years old. I first started teaching social media, but this is a few years ago where social media was relatively new, but she was good at editing and putting together videos. She was like, “I’m going to be a filmmaker.” She sat on my couch one day and she said, “I told my parents, either I’m living in LA 10 years from now and I’m in a mansion and I’m making films, or I’m living in LA 10 years from now and I’m in a van, but either way I’m in LA and I’m making films.” I remembered that as I was writing this book, that’s passion. It was about the way being in this art made her feel about who she was and what she had to offer of value to the world. It wasn’t a monetary thing. That’s what I would say. How do you not let society tell you what makes you successful? What if just creating the art makes you successful? Because most people won’t be willing to sit through the suffering of whatever their creative passion brings about.

P: How can a young Christian embrace failure and see failure almost like a good thing?

HTD: Listen, it’s never going to feel good, it just isn’t. I’m 37 years old and I hate failing, I hate perceiving that this didn’t work out. Listen, I don’t know how to answer that, but I do know the more examples that we have of people who are telling the truth about their experiences and what worked and how they survived when it didn’t work, the more I can see my story in somebody else’s story. Know that that doesn’t mean it’s over, that doesn’t mean it’s final, that doesn’t mean that I’m a loser, that doesn’t mean that God is not with me, that doesn’t mean that God is not going to move in whatever other area of my life. The more I can see that modeled, the more I’ll be able to internalize it, when I need it most.

P: What advice would you give to a young Christian who feels often overwhelmed by the gap between their dreams and their current reality?

HTD: You’re looking at the wrong gap. I also feel overwhelmed when I look at the gap between where I am and where I want to go, but if I look at the gap between where I was last year and where I am today, I’m inspired that I can keep going because I see how I’ve changed, I see how I’ve grown.

Look at the other gap—don’t always look at the gap between you and where you’re going to, you’ll always feel like I’m never going to get there, but if you look back and ask:

• How have I changed from when I was 13 years old to when I was 15 years old?
• How have I changed from when I was 15 years old to when I’m 18?
• How has my relationship with God changed?
• How have I changed in my relationship with my parents or my family or my friends or even just how I see myself or how I know who I am?

Look at that gap and trust that the God who got you from 13 to 15 is going to get you from 15 to 17 and 17 to 19 and 20. This is a journey of growth that we’re going to go on as human beings.

P: How do you practice self-care when feeling overwhelmed?

HTD: I had a therapist that told me, “Self-care is what makes you feel better when you’re done doing it.” I remember she asked, “What do you do for self-care?” I responded, “I don’t know, I watched like an entire season of ‘Survivor’ on the couch.” She asked, “Do you feel better or worse after that? I said, “I feel worse.” She explained that’s not self-care, self-care is what we do that makes us feel. She offered I watch two episodes of “Survivor” and that makes you feel better, like, that would be self-care.

Sometimes I’d go visit my grandma at her assisted living center and it’s not that I wanted to go, I had 50 other things I needed to do. But I knew that when I left my grandma’s, I would always feel better than before I had gone, so that became self-care.

I know if I go on a run, I don’t want to go, I’m tired, I don’t want to get up and put my sneakers on at 7 a.m. and do that, but I know that when I run back up my hill and come inside my door, I’m going to feel better because I did it, that’s self-care. For me, running is self-care. Being in relationship with people, I told you earlier, like taking a moment to create goodness in somebody else’s day—that feels like self-care for me because I feel better after I’ve done it.

P: What’s one thing that you do on a day of rest or Sabbath?

HTD: The biggest thing for me is just learning how to rest in Christ. It’s not necessarily about like physical rest as much as it’s about me resting from planning or me resting from goals or me resting from worry and just trusting that I am right now exactly where God has called me to be, so I rest in that. What can I learn and experience with God in this moment right here, not two years from now, where I think I’m supposed to be? What does God have for me right here? That’s the rest that I strive for every day.

P: What’s a Bible verse that’s been on your heart recently?

HTD: One of my favorite Bible verses is Romans 2:4 (NKJV). “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” That’s important to me because I think we spend a lot of time talking about, as a church, the anger of God, the judgment of God, and the wrath of God, and yet Paul says it’s the goodness of God that makes me feel like I can actually turn my life around. What a beautiful picture of who God is. Again, it’s like: What if I’m wrong? 72 percent of Christians see God is angry and judgmental and out to get them. What if we’re wrong about that, what if it’s the goodness of God that actually leads us back to Him?