Nikki Walton: Only love is here, only love is here. And when you know this truth, you don’t have to wrestle with your mind. You don’t have to fight your thoughts. You don’t have to silence them. There aren’t any left when you know only Jesus is here.

Illuminating Hope in the Shadows of Adversity: Nikki Walton & Tori Hope Petersen – Episode #453

Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week, we’re joined by Nikki Walton, host of GoOD Mornings with CurlyNikki and an influential voice in personal transformation, who shares her struggles with self-esteem and identity as a young woman to achieving massive success through her groundbreaking platform, CurlyNikki.com. Nikki’s life was filled with accomplishments—but also a profound sense of emptiness.

Later in the episode, we’ll hear from Tori Hope Petersen, an author, speaker, and podcaster. After enduring twelve different homes in the foster care system, Tori aged out without a permanent family. Through the kindness of a foster mom who introduced her to faith, the guidance of a track coach who became a father figure, and her own unwavering determination, Tori rose above her circumstances to find meaning and mission for her life.

Let’s begin with Nikki’s story.

Nikki Walton: I am Nikki Walton. I am the podcast host of GoOD Mornings with CurlyNikki. I’m also a mommy and a daughter and a sister and a friend, a child of God.  

Nikki Struggles with Her Self Esteem

I was born Catholic, and my earliest childhood memory is being afraid to die—like that’s my first memory that I can touch back on. I was probably like four or five years old and I would be up all night anxious, just afraid of the dark, of being afraid that death would look like darkness and nothingness.

By ten, I was in the New Age aisle at bookstores trying to find my own answers and I didn’t find them. I got to college and there were still answers coming at me from everywhere and solutions. I would go down different avenues and I also was struggling with self-esteem just like most young people you know—eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old trying to find your way.

I didn’t feel good about my hair at all. I had kept my hair straightened my entire childhood and then when I got to college, there were no black hair care stylists anywhere, like in 200 miles. I would shut down until I could get back to the hairdresser, which was only like once a quarter. As a psychology student, I could tell that that was not healthy. I started researching and learning about black hair and the science of it and the products that we should be using, and I taught myself just by visiting these forums.

The Advent of Curly Nikki

Curly hair can take all day. I was spending so much time in these forums, and I’m like, You know what, maybe if I shared in a deeper way with others, it would help me feel like I’m doing something very productive with this time. So I started a hair care blog and it became a lifestyle resource for everyone. CurlyNikki.com became incredibly successful.

I’m getting all of these accolades and awards and managed to get on The Tyra Banks Show, which kind of skyrocketed more. I got a bestselling book with HarperCollins, was traveling the world—Forbes covered my travels to South Africa and Tokyo and Greece—all of these beautiful things that I was enjoying in the moment, but there was still this, I gotta get content [mindset], and this was before Instagram.

I was still looking for the next accolade, the next pat on the back, so I can make my parents proud and the world proud and my daughter proud. I knew something was missing because I could look around and see what looked like success, like the American dream, and I felt empty. There was still this void. I had not found God and I didn’t even know that that’s what I was looking for.

“I knew something was missing because I could look around and see what looked like success, like the American dream, and I felt empty. There was still this void. I had not found God and I didn’t even know that that’s what I was looking for.” – Nikki Walton

When Something Is Still Missing

I started meditating, I started praying, I started reading book after book—like 600 books, so many books—in less than a ten-year period. [I] traveled the world—Israel twice, Spain so many times, Italy so many times, Africa, South Africa so many times—just going into these different places, these churches, these temples, and I would find the same presence there. Everyone calls it something different. I call it love. I call it love. The presence of love.

In fact one of my teachers, Ram Dass, who passed away in 2019—someone asked him, “How should we meditate?” He said, “You should meditate like Jesus meditates.” And they were like, “Well, how does Jesus meditate?” He said, “He lost Himself in love.”

Literally, my whole life became not taking a step or a breath, not picking up something, not doing anything until I could feel that love in my chest, like in my hands, in my head. Like I’m breathing it in and exhaling it out and nothing can touch that. There was nothing that was more important than that.

Once you have that, you have everything. And then, things have just been falling into place. My life has rearranged around that so beautifully, not usually at the pace that I would like for it to, but in this very beautiful and inspired way that I would do over and over again if I had to. I feel very blessed to have found this presence, to have been woken up by this presence.

I needed to go down the paths I went down to understand the tradition I came from better. I had to go down all those paths and practice singing Joppa, these names of God, and coming into this love to be able to say, “Oh, I know this. I know what this is, and you all call it this and that, but it’s Him for me, it’s Jesus.” And I am so grateful.

The Deeper Truth of Real Beauty

As I have come more into this real beauty, the space beyond just being Nikki, there’s less of a focus on the outer appearance. I still keep it looking nice and keep it dressed, [but] I don’t do its hair as much as I used to because there’s just not enough time. I’d rather be praying. I don’t wear makeup, so that saves time. I wear a uniform. There’s so much bandwidth that has been freed up.

I am very blessed to be in touch with the soul and how the soul feels in this body, and because of that I feel forever young. I feel timeless. I feel beautiful for the first time. I love myself and it’s not in that superficial, surface-level love. This is from a deeper place because there’s still a place where Nikki can look in the mirror and say, “I wish that was different, that was different, that was different.” That’s ego, and that never leaves while we’re still here. But instantly you can go to that place to where you’re aware of the one who thinks she’s flawed, and it’s a deep place and it’s hard to put into words. But it’s a powerful place to be that I hope everyone can experience. It’s like I went from outer beauty to inner beauty to beyond beauty entirely, and I appear beautiful to some because of His light shining through me.

“I am very blessed to be in touch with the soul and how the soul feels in this body, and because of that I feel forever young. I feel timeless. I feel beautiful for the first time. I love myself and it’s not in that superficial, surface-level love. It’s like I went from outer beauty to inner beauty to beyond beauty entirely, and I appear beautiful to some because of His light shining through me.” – Nikki Walton

Wherever you find yourself, especially in a tense moment, in a tense situation, if you could just for a second take yourself out, pull back, and look at it as if you’re watching a movie about someone else that’s already been cast and shot like two years ago. This moment couldn’t be any other way. That’s another way of surrendering. It’s another way of acceptance. It’s just another permission slip into being able to relax those shoulders back down and find the silence and let the silence speak. That’s how you let the love speak the words that need to be spoken in that moment to that person. It keeps you calm.

Love brought me here to this moment, with you listening. It carried me through all of those experiences, the ones that I deemed bad, the ones that I saw were good. It’s helped me to be of service. It’s holding together everything—everything in this world, your whole life. You think you’re holding it together, love is holding it together. And the recognition of that to me is  love—knowing that it’s not just you, knowing that there’s something higher that you don’t have to imagine, that you don’t have to hope is there—that you can actually feel. 

I listen not for [God’s] voice booming, but for His silence, for His stillness, for His peace, And then I feel His stillness. I feel His peace. I know I’m in contact with Him when I feel lighter. I often flip open my Bible to a random page. I also use Jesus Calling, I use it that way, too. Just yesterday, I opened up to the perfect page—you know that the next message for you is always right here where you are. 

“I listen not for [God’s] voice booming, but for His silence, for His stillness, for His peace, And then I feel His stillness. I feel His peace. I know I’m in contact with Him when I feel lighter.” – Nikki Walton 

I’d love to do a quick meditation with you to introduce you to this love, to give you quick access to it no matter where you are, no matter who you’re with. But in this moment, I pray that you are alone and somewhere that you feel comfortable, and I want you to close your body’s eyes and bring your hands together in prayer. Fold them in front of you and just bow gently. Bow gently, bring your head down towards your knees. And I want you to scan your body and see how you feel in this posture. See how quiet it is down here. See how peace washes over you down here when you are bowed before Him, before love, before Jesus. You’ve laid all of your problems at His feet. There’s silence here. This is called using your body like an antenna. And even as you sit back up, with your back straight, as if your head is being pulled up towards the ceiling. And your hands, you can rest them back in your lap. Notice that you are still bowed inside. You can still be aware of that humbled nature, that humbled posture inside. That way, when you go out into the world, even though you are smiling and walking upright, you’re still bowing to Jesus everywhere you go—no matter if you’re at the grocery store or at the bank or at your kids’ school or in traffic. You’re prostrating before Him, before His throne, at all times. And anytime you find yourself scared or worried or frustrated or angry, it’s because you’re no longer bowing. And you can physically bow again to remind yourself how it feels, or just do it internally and stay bowed. I haven’t gotten back up. I stay bowed. That takes less than a second to do. You always have this choice, this peace, this love in every moment of every seeming day. He’s always here waiting for you to remember. Hear His call. I love you. 

“You can still be aware of that humbled nature, that humbled posture inside. That way, when you go out into the world, even though you are smiling and walking upright, you’re still bowing to Jesus everywhere you go.” – Nikki Walton 

Narrator: To learn more about Nikki Walton, please visit www.curlynikki.com, and be sure to check out her book, Wake Up To Love: Meditations to Start Your Day, at your favorite retailer. 

Stay tuned to Tori Hope Petersen’s story after a brief message.

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Celebrate the Season with Jesus Listens for Lent & Easter

Walk through the season of Lent with an intentional focus on your Savior, and prepare for the joy and victory of His resurrection with Jesus Listens for Lent & Easter. This book offers seasonally-themed devotions from Sarah Young’s New York Times bestseller Jesus Listens. Inside, you’ll find prayers, reflections, and Bible verses based on Jesus’ life and sacrifice, plus stunning spring and Easter illustrations, making this a holiday treasure to cherish for years to come. 

This book makes the perfect gift for anyone longing to draw closer to Jesus during the Lenten and Easter seasons, for families who want to cultivate a tradition of seasonal prayers and devotions together, and for those looking for peace, forgiveness, and a deeper experience of trusting God. 

As you pray Scripture throughout this season of remembering Christ’s death and resurrection, you’ll experience how prayer connects you to God, helps you seek forgiveness, and brings you the inexpressible joy and freedom of knowing that Christ has risen.

Find Jesus Listens for Lent & Easter today at your favorite retailer. 

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Our next guest is Tori Hope Petersen, an author, speaker, and advocate who has turned her challenging experience in the foster care system into a mission to serve and inspire others. Through her work, she shares stories of perseverance, hope, and healing, using her platform to raise awareness about the foster care system and encourage others to support children in need.

Tori Hope Petersen: My name is Tori Hope Petersen and I am a mom and a wife. I have two biological children who are six and four. I have a sixteen-year old foster daughter who has lived with us for some time. We have foster children who come in and out of our home. We are passionate about foster care and serving vulnerable children because I grew up in the foster care system myself, and now, I advocate for kids in foster care. I am an author, a speaker, and a podcaster. 

No Place to Call Home

Growing up, I was born to a single mom. I always like to say she did the absolute best with what she had. She was once a child who was traumatized, and who sadly, was not given a lot of resources through her trauma. And so sadly, she passed down generational patterns that were unhealthy and dysfunctional. When I was four years old, I went into the foster care system for the first time and then I was reunited with my mom. That’s one of the goals of the foster care system—its goal is to make families whole, and that can be through reunification with biological families, that can be through adoption, it can be through foster care. And so I was reunited with my biological mom, but as she got older, her mental health just declined. 

My mom always communicated that she loved me. She always wanted a good future for me. She always had big goals for me and high standards for me. And I’m so grateful that she did that. But she just, sadly, couldn’t be the healthiest and wholest version of herself because of her own trauma and the lack of resources that she had. And so I went into the foster care system again with my biological sister when I was about twelve years old. And that time, I moved through twelve different foster homes, which was very hard. I felt unloved. I felt unwanted. I felt disposable, like truly discarded. A family could at any point say, “We don’t want her right now,” for one reason or another. 

I aged out the day I turned eighteen with no forever family to call my own, no forever home. And like twenty percent of youth who age out of the foster care system, I was actually instantly homeless and I didn’t know where to go. I was bouncing around from home to home. 

Thankfully, my twelfth foster home was a woman who proclaimed the name of Jesus, and she took me to church every single Sunday. I was very skeptical of God, and I asked her, “If God loved me so much, then why did I go into the foster care system? Why wouldn’t God have given me a dad, someone who could maybe have protected me or taken me out of the foster care system or maybe prevented me from going in in the first place?” And she looked at me and said, “I don’t know.” It was the first time that I had heard a Christian say, “I don’t know,” and that stopped me in my tracks. 

I kind of always felt like every time I would question faith or have questions about God, I was just told what I should believe and why I should believe it. To hear another Christian say, “I don’t know,” I just felt less alone. And it softened my heart to start really listening at church, to start listening to the sermons. I just started paying attention. We were singing this song, “Good Good Father,” and as we were singing that song, it was like this clarity kind of rushed over me. It was like the scales of skepticism were slowly falling from my eyes. And it was in that moment, I could see clearly that God was my Father, that He loved me, protected me, that He was there for me. As I looked back on my life, I could see there were moments that God saved me over and over and over again from more pain, from more hardship, from more abuse. And He prepared me, ultimately, to become closer to Him. 

In that moment, I think I kind of realized, Okay, I am going to make a choice and I’m going to try. I started to apply myself in school and just started to take things seriously.

The Support of a Father Figure

I was running track, and in between my junior and senior year, my coach came to me and said, “Tori, I think you can go on to the state track meet. I think you can win the whole thing.” I had never even been to the state track meet. I was like, This is pretty unrealistic, but I’m just going to do everything this crazy old man says, and we will see what happens from there. 

I started to train under him and he really became like a father figure to me. My times were going down. I was becoming stronger and stronger. I was undefeated. But I would still go to him and say, “Do you still think I can win the state track meet?” And he’d say, “Yeah, yeah, I think you can.” And I’d go back to him and I’d ask him again and again, and at one point he said, “Tori, you know, you need to have confidence in yourself that you can win.” 

I was bargaining with God and I was like, Okay, if you let me win the state track meet, then I will give You all the glory. I know that now God just laughed at that because God is not transactional. He doesn’t work like that. I kept training under my coach and I became a four-time state champion in track. 

I knew that my life was going to be different. And my track coach actually said, “You know, you don’t have a family, you don’t have a home.” He had two other daughters. He said, “We’ve talked about it and we’d like to welcome you into our home.” And so I moved in with my track coach the day that I won state. I was able to go on to college on a full-ride scholarship. I had to learn through time that God doesn’t just save us, He keeps us.

“I had to learn through time that God doesn’t just save us, He keeps us.” – Toire Hope Petersen

Faith is Never a Straight Line

Just like healing isn’t linear, faith hasn’t seemed to be linear either. There’s been mountains and hills and valleys and peaks and lows. I think that when I first came to faith, it was this very childlike, giddy faith. I was attending this Christian conference—there were all these people, speakers, communicators, and they were sharing different parts of their stories. It was so overwhelming to me, because in everyone’s story, I could see a piece of my own story. I went to the bathroom and I just looked in the mirror and I started crying. I do think that God speaks to us in the way that we can understand how to do what’s next. I felt like God said, “If you do not tell the story of what I have done in your life, you’re going to waste it.” I felt very ashamed of my story in a lot of ways. I’d just grown up so differently than other people. I know that childhood trauma is not unique and family dysfunction is not unique, but only two percent of people in America have grown up in the foster care system, and so it truly is a unique experience. People would come up to me and they’d be like, “How many siblings do you have?” And that’s a really complicated question when you’ve grown up in foster care with twelve different families and you’re still in contact with some of them. I felt like when I would try to communicate my story, it was too complicated and I felt almost ashamed. 

“I do think that God speaks to us in the way that we can understand how to do what’s next.” – Tori Hope Petersen

And when I heard that from God—[I knew] my story was something to be shared. It wasn’t for myself, but for His glory and His good. And so, I started sharing my story. When I was seventeen, I received my first speaking engagement from my church. They asked me if I would share my story on what some churches refer to as “Orphan Sunday” or “Belong Sunday.” It’s when churches all over America, sometimes all over the world, raise awareness for kids in foster care and for orphaned children. They said, “Will you share your story on this day so we can raise awareness, get more people involved in our community?” And that was the first time that I’d ever shared my story. 

It was probably four or five years later that I received a message from a woman. She said, “I heard you share your story on that day. My husband and I, we’d always thought about foster care, but we just thought, It’s not time, it’s not time, it’s not time. We got in our car that day and we said, ‘We are going to get involved.’” She sent me a picture and said, “We’re adopting a sibling group of three today, and we started because we heard your story.” 

As I look back on that, there’s this Japanese form of art called Kintsugi, and in this form of art, if a ceramic or if a piece of art or something valuable breaks, they don’t believe that it should just be discarded, that it should just be thrown away. What they do is they get this gold powder and they turn it into a kind of glue that they use to mend the broken pieces back together. By doing this, they actually believe that when you carefully mend it back together, it actually makes the piece more valuable. I think this is just such a beautiful concept and I think it’s how God sees our brokenness. We don’t need to just throw it away and say, “Oh, that’s the past.” You know, if I just said, “Oh, foster care is of the past and I’m not going to acknowledge it anymore. The suffering that I endured as a kid is over now. I’m an adult. I have my own family.” I think so much would be lost. Our brokenness does not just point to the deficit in us. Sometimes our brokenness points to the disciples that we are, points to our faithfulness.

“Our brokenness does not just point to the deficit in us. Sometimes our brokenness points to the disciples that we are, points to our faithfulness.” – Tori Hope Petersen

I’ve been sharing my story and my testimony and teaching the Bible in some capacity for the past twelve years. One of the lies—probably the foundational one—is that we can’t love ourselves. That’s selfish. That’s conceited. And so I want to break that lie by speaking over you that you can love who God’s created you to be. Genesis 1 says that, “God looked at all He created and He decided that it was good.” What I like to speak over myself [is] it’s not even about me, it’s about God’s creation. God did a good job making me. And for some people that can sound, Oh, that’s like prideful or that’s conceited. But I think sometimes as Christians we confuse self-hatred for humility and we walk around loathing ourselves. And then we say, “Oh yeah, I’m just being humble.” But really, humility is agreeing with who God says you are. And God does not hate you and He doesn’t want you to hate yourself. He wants you to embrace who He has called you to be, because when we do that, we can walk out the calling that God has placed on our life. We can glorify Him, and ultimately, we reflect Him. We are made in His image. So if there’s any truth that you hear from this, it’s that God did a good job making you and you’re allowed to be loved.

“God does not hate you and He doesn’t want you to hate yourself. He wants you to embrace who He has called you to be, because when we do that, we can walk out the calling that God has placed on our life. God did a good job making you and you’re allowed to be loved.” – Tori Hope Petersen

One of the reasons that I was so excited to be on the Jesus Calling Podcast is because my very first devotional was a Jesus Calling devotional by Sarah Young. It was given to me at my graduation party. I’d never had a devotional before. I didn’t even know what it was because I just didn’t grow up in a Christian home or in the faith. And I [read] it faithfully, I did it every day. And that is kind of where my prayer life started, was with Jesus Calling devotionals and just that simple going to God and talking to Him. God is just so glad when we show up to be in His presence and to pray. He just welcomes me with open arms. He is our safe place. 

“God is just so glad when we show up to be in His presence and to pray. He just welcomes me with open arms. He is our safe place.” – Tori Hope Petersen 

I will be reading from Jesus Listens. The date is November 19th:  

My living Lord,

It’s wonderful—and rather daunting—that You see me with perfect clarity. You know everything about me, including my most secret thoughts and feelings. You understand how broken and weak I am: You remember that I am dust. But in spite of all my flaws and failures, You choose to love me with everlasting Love. I’m so thankful that the living One who sees me always is the same One who loves me eternally!

In Your saving Name, Jesus, 

Amen

Narrator: To learn more about Tori Hope Petersen, visit www.torihopepetersen.com, and be sure to check out her new book, Breaking the Patterns That Break You: Healing from the Pain of Your Past and Finding Real Hope That Lasts, at your favorite retailer.

If you’d like to hear more stories about finding healing from our broken pasts, check out our interview with Patsy Clairmont.

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Next week: Loren Ridinger 

Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from Loren Ridinger, the co-founder of Market America and Shop.com, who vulnerably shares what life—and her relationship with God—was like after unexpectedly losing the love of her life, J.R. Ridinger. 

Loren Ridinger: When you lose someone, you lose belief. You question God. You question all types of things. And then all of a sudden, it’s God that helps you back out of it. It’s Him who says, “You know, we can get through anything.” He puts you through these challenging times, and that’s what happened to me.