You Are Redeemed: Nana Dolce

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You Are Redeemed

Guest:Nana Dolce

From the series:You Are Redeemed (Day 1 of 3)

Air date:April 14, 2025

Nana:Before creation, God’s plan was to dwell with His people. We know that the fall happened, and this distance took place; but it did not take God’s intention away. His plan has always been to dwell with His people, and He sent His Son to redeem/to purchase us so that He can dwell with His people.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann:Today, we have one of my favorite teachers with us.

Dave:You don’t say that about me every day. Oh! You’re not talking about me.

Ann:You are one of my favorite teachers.

Dave:Okay.

Ann:But we have one of my favorite women teachers with us today. Nana Dolce is back with us in studio. Nana, we love having you with us.

Dave:We do; we both do.

Nana:And I love being here. Thank you.

Dave:I had this weird thing come to my mind—and things that come to my mind shouldn’t always be said out loud—but I had [tune from The Beatles, Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye] “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na na Dolce.” Have you heard that before? I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Nana:Oh, nice! I’ve heard that—”Na-na-na-na”—I hear that; no one’s ever connected it to my last name until now.

Ann:Ohhhh!

Dave:Well, I think—

Nana:I like it.

Dave:There you go: [singing] “Dolce.”

Ann:But will Eric like it?—that’s the question.

Dave:Tell them what Eric’s doing right now.

Nana:I am in the studio with you all; and just around the corner, in the green room, Eric is with Kian Immanuel Dolce.

Ann:The last time you were here, he was with you.

Nana:He was.

Ann:But he was in womb, not out of womb

Nana:Yes, he was in womb. I had the joy of sharing Kian’s story with you all about a year ago, I think; Eric was with me. We told the incredible story of how Kian was frozen, as an embryo, for 20 years. So yeah, his—

Dave:What a miracle! This is incredible even.

Ann:You guys adopted the embryo through an organization called—

Nana:We did; we did. It’s called National Embryo Donation Center. They’re a faith-based organization. Their hope is to redeem. There are about a million frozen embryos in the U.S. alone. Our hope is that these little people would be adopted into wombs; and then, into homes; and would live and not be given to science or not be discarded. Kian’s bio mom and dad donated him in hopes that someone would adopt him and raise him as their son. It is our honor to do so.

Ann:And tell us what you did yesterday.

Nana:Yesterday, Kian met his genetic mother and grandfather for the first time.

Dave:Whoa.

Nana:Yeah; Kian’s story is just amazing. Last time I was here, I mentioned how I was looking for a Scripture during this whole process. This is very different to give birth to your adopted child. I wanted the Lord just to ground my feet in a passage; and He sent me to Psalm 1:39 [paraphrase] that talks about: “I knitted you in your mom’s womb.” But there’s a part of the Psalm that says that: “Even before my body was formed, You knew my unformed substance. And in Your book was every word of my story already written.”

God is writing an amazing story. Kian’s genetic mom is not parenting any children. They created five embryos, and they transferred the first two to her. She was pregnant with twin girls. Sadly, they were born premature; and they passed away. Those girls were born on August 11. Exactly

20 years later, Kian was born on August 11.

Ann:Gives me chills.

Dave:Who could write that? Wow!

Nana:Who could write that?—the greatest Author.

Ann:She’s seeing a visible picture of what her twins could have looked like, possibly. But to see Kian in the flesh must have felt incredibly miraculous to her, and her father as well.

Nana:She called it a miracle.

Ann:She did?

Nana:She did.

Dave:And Kian, what’s it mean?

Nana:Kian means “the ancient one or the enduring one.” Of course, Immanuel means “God with us.” We like to say “Our little enduring Kean is with us because the Ancient of Days was with him and preserved him all those years, frozen—cryopreserved, I think, is what they call it—but there was still life; there was still life. And now, he’s born.

Dave:It’s like he’s 21 years old.

Ann:It really is.

Dave:Wow!

Ann:To think that God has known him even before he was formed—in that little frozen embryo and before—is pretty miraculous. And what a good reminder for all of us that God knows all of us. He knows our future; He’s never forgotten one part of us.

Nana:He’s writing a story for all of us with all our lives.

Dave:I know we’re going to talk about this a little bit; but it does make me think: “A lot of us/a lot of people feel unseen. Even what we’re going to talk about today—in Moses in Exodus—there’s some of that as well.” I just want to give a call out: we have a place where you can go, at FamilyLife, if you feel unseen; and get resources and know that God sees you. It’s FamilyLife.com/Unseen. As we jump into this today, just know you can go there; and know that God sees you. We’ll help you know that.

Ann:Sometimes, we just need to be reminded that God sees us.

Dave:So what is You Are Redeemed? Tell us what this project is.

Nana:Yes; You Are Redeemed is a 40-day devotional. It’s an eight week—five days out of the week—40 total devotional that is written specifically for women. It walks women through the book of Exodus/through the story of Exodus.

Ann:Why Exodus this time? Because you are definitely a Bible scholar; you love God’s Word. Why Exodus?

Nana:The project is called Gospel Truths for Women. What it is—it’s a devotional series that walks women through a specific book of the Bible—so when I was asked to be part of this project, I went instantly to the book of Exodus. It is such—

Dave:You got to pick it?

Nana:I did.

Dave:Oh, wow.

Nana:Yeah. I got to propose what it is that I would want to do, and it was Exodus for me. It’s an epic narrative. If you tell the story of Exodus, you cannot tell it—just think of a dramatic epic movie, with an incredible soundtrack behind it—that’s what I think of.

Ann:If you’re older, you might remember the movie, The Ten Commandments with Charleston Heston; that was an epic movie.

Dave:We are dating ourselves. It’s interesting—we both went the same middle school, three years apart—I was out of that middle school by the time Ann got there. But we both had the same choir teacher, Mr. Wilford.

Ann:Yes, yes!

Dave:I don’t know when we were dating—at some point—I just went [singing The Exodus Song with a deep voice], “This land—

Dave & Ann:—”is mine, God gave this land to me.”

Dave:I’m like, “You sing that song?” It was because Mr. Wilford, that’s all he knew.

Ann:Well, we sang it like that because that’s how he sang it.

Dave:That’s how he sang it. But when I was at that middle school—not a church-going kid; not a believer—I did not even know where that song [came from] and what it was about. And it’s about this epic; you picked the right book. I would either pick Genesis or Exodus.

Ann:Wait; wait; No, I would not have picked Exodus. Why did you pick it?

Dave:What do mean? Why not?

Ann:I mean, it is epic; but why? There has to be a personal reason why you

wanted to do it.

Nana:Sure; sure. Well, two reasons. One: I teach a course for women at RTS [Reformed Theological Seminary], and we study Exodus.

Dave:Tell us what you teach, because it’s really fascinating.

Nana:It’s called Women’s Teaching Lab. It’s for women’s ministry leaders and women who teach the Bible locally in the DC area; it’s a fall and a spring course. What it does is: it equips women; it gives them eyes to see the Scriptures, and it gives them tools to dig into it. For the most part, these women are teaching other women; or maybe, they’re teaching children. We want them to give their women and their children good stuff; we want them to give them the riches of God’s Word. I think it’s wonderful to train women to do that work well.

Dave:And we need to train men the same way.

Nana:Yes, we do.

Ann:But we don’t always get the opportunities as much as men, especially having babies and being busy.

But why Exodus?

Nana:We study Exodus in that RTS course, and so I felt comfortable taking on the project.

But the other reason is that the book of Exodus is such a beautiful picture of redemption. And so the title of the book is: You Are Redeemed: Devotions for Living a Whole New Life. It’s a beautiful gem that foreshadows a greater redemption to come. But I think that the Author—we talked about God being an Author—when you look at the story of Exodus, He’s pointing forward to something that’s going to blow our minds. It’s so well-captured and illustrated in the story of Israel’s redemption.

Those were my two reasons; I wanted to tell that story of redemption.

Dave:One of the things I’m thinking, as our listeners are listening: “This would be something that as, a mom goes through”—I’m guessing we, men, are off limits. We can’t; I’m sure I can read it; we could grab it, and it’d be awesome—”but as a mom goes through this, this is something she could then transfer down to her kids, right?”

Nana:Absolutely; it is. When you’re writing a book, publishers and other people tell you: “If you are on the elevator with someone, how could you quickly just summarize the main thing?”

Dave:The elevator speech, yes.

Nana:And so for that mom, for that college student—for whomever it is who’s reading this—I want to convince them: “When you hear that God loves you, He really loves you. His plan, from the beginning, was to dwell with you. You don’t want to live with someone you don’t love. From the very beginning, before creation, God’s plan was to dwell with His people. We know that the fall happened, and this distance took place; but it did not take God’s intention away. His plan has always been to dwell with His people, and He sent His Son to redeem/to purchase us so that He can dwell with His people.”

God intends to dwell with His people; we see it from the beginning of Scripture. We definitely see it in the book of Exodus. He rescues this group of enslaved people, not just to send them into the desert to be free, but He redeems them for Himself and tabernacles so that He can dwell with them. It’s a small picture of what’s going to happen. Revelation 21:3 says that the place of God and man will be together; we will dwell with Him. That’s already happened in Christ—the Spirit is with us—but we’re going to see the fullness of it.

I want these sisters, reading this book, to believe that He loves you so much that the whole plan of redemption is to bring you to a place where you are with Him; and you are dwelling with Him, and He’s dwelling with you.

Ann:Did that have anything to do with you naming Kian his middle name, Immanuel?

Nana:Oh, I can’t say that I was connecting it to Exodus.

Ann:Okay.

Nana:I wanted to name Kian Immanuel because God was with him, this little frozen embryo. When Eric and I went to adopt Kian, we purposefully wanted to adopt embryos who were not as likely to be chosen. If you want a chance at a baby, you want to choose maybe an embryo that’s relatively younger; you want to choose an embryo that maybe you think might be more likely to live and to be born into the world.

But when we went, we were interested in a minority embryo who had been waiting for a very long time. There were two embryos we adopted. We named one of them Zion, because he went home to be with the Lord in Zion. But God sent us Kian, the enduring one. God was with him, so we named him Immanuel.

Ann:Isn’t that so true that God chooses the unlikely?—those who are passed by and feel like they aren’t seen or nobody would choose? God does; He chooses us.

Nana:He does.

Ann:I think that’s beautiful that you guys did that intentionally.

Dave:Walk us through a little bit—I don’t know how much we can cover; there’s a lot of chapters in the Exodus, not as many as Genesis—but you start your study with “God Remembers” the first week. I don’t know if that’s where you want to start, but take us on a journey; there’s nobody better.

Ann:And let me say to our listeners: “This is an easy study and devotional to go through in that it’s five days a week of study. Each day begins with Scripture reading in Exodus; I like that the Scripture’s in there. And you also have an illustration that ties to it. I just like that you always tie the Old Testament with the New Testament—you draw them together—and it makes sense why both are so important.

Nana:Absolutely. Reading through this devotional, you’ll get a good sense of the story of the Exodus itself, which is wonderful. But I didn’t want to leave you there; I wanted you to see a greater redemption. I wanted you to see someone greater than Moses; and I wanted to take you from Mount Sinai to Mount Zion, which is a far greater mountain because there we see a far greater covenant.

Ann:And I love your questions that you bring into it at the end of each one. You’re asking pertinent questions that help us to grow and see all of that, and even apply it in our own lives.

Dave:And as simple as this sounds, I don’t think the majority of people have any connection with Genesis and Exodus to Jesus. You know what I’m saying? If you would walk up to the average person, and say, “When did God first tell us that a Savior was going to come?” They say, “Oh, the book of Gospel of Matthew, maybe.”

Nana:Sure.

Dave:Actually, in Genesis; the first three chapters.

Nana:Yeah; so true!

Dave: He gives us a signal, like: “This is the beginning. Thousands of years from this, it’s going to happen. But I told you all through Exodus.” Oh, my goodness. So let’s go!

Nana:Yeah; yeah. I want to say that I want to believe Jesus when He told His disciples, in Luke 24 that all of these Scriptures point to Him. I want to believe that that’s true. So I want to read it, looking for: “Okay, Jesus, where is this pointing to You?” I think we can see—even in Exodus, Chapter 2—there’s a small place here that helps us to remember who Jesus is.

Speaking of “God Remembers”—at the end of Exodus, Chapter 2, verse 24, I love how Moses is writing this story; he uses three verbs here that helped me to remember Jesus—Exodus 2:24: “And God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob; and God saw the Israelites, and God knew.” God heard; God saw; and God knew: “This is a group of enslaved people.” We remember, from Chapter 1, that this Pharaoh was ruthless in how he really was abusing, subjugating; killing the children of Israel, ordering that their children be thrown into the Nile. They’re in a terrible situation; but God is not some distant God, who’s far away. He heard; He saw. And I love that He knew—He knew their pain—He knew what they were going through.

When I was writing my devotional, I started out the second day of the devotional with an illustration from—he is a comedian; his name is Rob Delaney—he’s a comedian; he makes people laugh. But he’s written this very serious book about death; because he went through the horrific experience of his young son, two-year-old son, dying of a brain tumor. While his son was in cancer treatment, his sister’s husband committed suicide. He says that he and his sister went through—he uses the word, operatic-level of tragedy—just unimaginable pain. He said, now, it’s really hard for him to be in a conversation about suffering with someone who’s never been through anything. He said, as soon as he shares his story, there’s a look that they give of almost being scared. There’s something about it that distances him from that person instantly. But when it comes to his sister, because they’ve shared that experience together, it’s almost bonded them; they know each other a little bit more.

In Christ, we have a Brother who’s gone through an operatic-level of pain—if I can use Delaney’s words—Jesus knows! The book of Hebrews talks about how He became like us and how He’s experienced—except for sin—He’s been through whatever you’re going through that is so horrible: whether it’s rejection, whether it’s physical pain, whether it is false accusation,—

Dave:—betrayal.

Nana:—betrayal. Jesus knows—He knows; He hears; He sees—but He’s not a God who knows just because He’s omniscient; He actually experienced it. There’s something amazing about sitting across from a person, who knows what you’re going through, because they’ve personally experienced it. This is our God! This is who Jesus is. That’s amazing to me!

Ann:Me too.

Dave:Yeah; I think, in many ways, it’s the longing and question of every soul’s heart: “Does He hear me?” “Does He know me?” “Does He see me? I feel alone.” I think parents realize our kids sometimes feel that, and we get to be the embodiment of God’s love for them. But I think it’s everybody’s question, and here it is in the second book of the Bible.

Ann:As I’m looking at this, Nana, you ask in Day 2: “Do you believe that Jesus knows and sympathizes with your pain today?” What about the person who says, “No, I don’t! I don’t believe that Jesus knows or sympathizes with my pain; because I’m still in it.” The Hebrew people were in it for a long time.

Nana:Yeah, I think I’ve come to see more and more in my little Christian journey—I’m pressing on in age now; I’m 43—I’m pressing on a little.

Dave:Yeah, you’re way up there. You’re like a kid!

Nana:But I have come to see that God’s intention isn’t always to get us out, immediately, from painful situations. I think it’s to convince us that He is with us in that painful situation.

Ann:Me too.

Nana:And that we can trust Him in that painful situation.

Ann:Because we think that love is removing us immediately from what we’re going through, because it’s so painful. But you’re saying that His love is really that He remains with us.

Nana:Yeah; He is Immanuel, the God who’s with us. And remember: my big elevator speech for this book is that God wants to dwell with you. He is working right now to get you ready for the day when you are dwelling with Him. He uses those painful situations in that work of preparing us for Himself.

Ann:Can you think of a really painful situation that you needed to know that He was with you?

Nana:I certainly can. Like I said, I’ve been on this road a little while now. This was an incredible painful situation; I think it’s still a little tender in some ways. I grew up in a family where I think a lot of our Christianity was cultural Christianity. We’re immigrants—I was born in Ghana, West Africa—I came to the U.S. when I was in fourth grade. Like all immigrant families: love to gather with other immigrants who speak their language, who eat their food, who know what you’re going through.

Sometimes, that happens within the context of church; because you’re not working—you get together—you’re there all Sunday. And so for me, growing up, a lot of church was that. I didn’t really know the Bible; I didn’t know the gospel; I didn’t love Jesus that much. When I became a Christian, it was a little difficult for some members of my family because: “We’re all Christian. We all go to church; we all read the Bible; we all pray. Why are you, all of a sudden, wanting to—almost tying Christianity—making it so important; defining your whole life by it?” Some people began to distance themselves away from me a little bit.

I saw that even when I married a very Christian man—my now pastor, husband Eric—there were some people who did not attend our wedding; some people who didn’t meet my children for a long time. So when you ask: “… a painful situation?”—that was painful; literally feeling alone for a very, very long time. There’s a Scripture that says: “If mother and father forsake you, I will not forsake you; but I will take you in.” The Lord took me in. We’ve never been without grandparent figures, auntie figures, uncle figures. I’m here with you in Orlando. My children are being cared for, right now, by an auntie from our church whom they love as if she was blood. The Lord took us in and showed how, even in that painful situation, He was with us through His people and through the church.

Ann:Because life is hard, we go through some really hard times. When my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s—she’s one of my best friends—and so to watch her suffer, to lose who she was—to grieve and mourn that—I think, humanly speaking, we can say, “What is the point, Jesus? I just don’t get it. Why?—she’s so faithful, loving, serving; she loves You—why would You take the last part of her life?”

We can ask a lot of “Why?” questions. I think the real question is: “God, what do You want me to know?” And for me, it was the same, Nana. What I felt like He wanted me to know is: “I’m still with her,” and “I’m still with you. And there will be a day that you’ll rejoice together for all eternity.” But if our hearts become bitter, it’s hard to see His presence and His power in our lives.

Dave:We did a service one time at our church that—I don’t know if it was on the internet or whatever, where people—there was sort of this idea: you take a card or something, and you put a word/one word that defined your life before Christ, and a word defines after Christ.

Ann:You turn it over.

Dave:You try to match the word. And you know what mine was? I grew up with no dad. As I thought through: “What would my word be?” It could be a lot of them, but the one that was dominant was “Unseen.” I didn’t feel seen; he wasn’t there, and he didn’t come back much. And then, when I came to Christ, I realized: “I’m seen. I have a Father who sees me and knows me,”—and all the things you just brought out of Exodus: He remembers; He hears; He knows; He sees—you talk about life-changing. That’s what today’s been all about.

Again, I’ll say this: if you’re feeling what I felt—I felt that for 20 years: unseen—if you’re feeling that, go to FamilyLife.com/Unseen. We’ll help you know that you’re seen.

Ann:Nana, we’ve talked before with you on some of these topics. We’ve actually created a great devotional video series for people, who are just wondering, “Does God see me?” Again—our listeners—you can still grab that series now by going to FamilyLife.com/Unseen; and then, we’ll also link it in the show notes for you to get.

Dave:Yeah; we’d also love to send you the book, You Are Redeemed by Nana. It’s not really a book; is it a book or a workbook?

Ann:It’s a devotional.

Nana:It’s a devotional.

Dave:Yeah, it’s a devotional book. So any amount of donation, we’ll send you: You Are Redeemed. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com; you can do it there. Or give us a call at 800-358-6329. That’s 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and the word, TODAY.

Ann:We would love to pray for you. I would personally love to pray for you, and we even have a team at FamilyLife who can pray for you. Just go to FamilyLife.com/PrayForMe.

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