From Domestic Violence and Homelessness to Strength and Faith, with Jennifer

Jennifer’s story is heartbreaking yet also powerful as it provides a unique lens into domestic violence, homelessness, and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit. 10 years into her marriage, she reached a breaking point after barely surviving an episode where she was beaten and almost set on fire. But it was the love of her son and eventually God’s spirit that put her on a long path of recovery towards finding a better life. Jennifer’s serendipitous encounter with Matt at the Logan International airport is not surprising once you get to know Jennifer and feel the grace and love that pours out openly from her heart. Her faith drives her and she is not one to miss an opportunity to help someone whose heart is also open or is in need of help. In the lively dialogue with Matt, Jennifer provides listeners with a deeply personal and enlightening perspective about her experience enduring domestic abuse, which led her and her son into a life of homelessness. As they faced the challenges of living in shelters and depending on soup kitchens, she sheds light on how she pulled herself up and found God healing her wounds and energizing her days. Now Jennifer is the one who takes time to advocate for local shelters and help others who are victims of domestic violence. Enjoy her story and how Jennifer dismantles societal misconceptions about homelessness and highlights the humanity, struggle and path of a person who might live these circumstances. Make sure to catch the end of the episode as she prays over all the listeners in the same way she prayed over Matt in the Boston airport. Whether you listen or view the interview , be prepared to be inspired and feel the energy from Jennifer and her extraordinary story of courage and faith. 

Transcript

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Well, hello with gratitude Matt listeners, my name is Matt Moran and I'm the host for the With Gratitude Matt Show. Our goal with the show is to inspire our listening audience to practice gratitude regardless of how powerful their storm is. We found that the practice of gratitude works much like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. I am so delighted to have my friend Jenny today. Jen is the proud mother of Anthony Thomas. I met Jen and Anthony recently while at the airport in Boston waiting for a flight back to Buffalo, New York. I am so grateful that I was present to both Jen and Anthony on that particular day. I simply said hello to them and what transpired next will amaze many of our listening audience. Jen shared with me how 18 months prior she was nearly beaten to death, lit on fire and stabbed. It is a miracle that she's alive today. But today the true miracle is that she's inspired to help other people find the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives today. And she shared with me on that particular day at how Jesus Christ was so present in her life. And then when she did so, I started to share with her a little bit about the work that I'm doing around with gratitude that the cancer journey that I'm on. I was so delighted when she asked me if she could pray over me as we sat in the terminal in Logan Airport. She simply put her hands on me and prayed a prayer of healing. Jen. I was so grateful that I met you. It is such an honor to have you on today's show. Thank you, Matt. I am. Like I say, you are actually my blessing. I love. And I'm gonna tell you why. You're my blessing quickly. You are my blessing because. Because of what I. What I've went through and because of the storms that I have weathered and overcame. I love when God allows me to speak into someone's life because I love to feel you. I've been used my whole life by people. I love when God uses me to speak life, speak, healing, speak over someone else's situation, and just remind them that God is with them. And it's almost like he'll put me in a perfect place at the perfect time. It was it was so crazy as to there were no other seats. And Logan and me and my son are like two little kids that love each other so much. We just wanted to sit together. So we squished together in the seats in front of Matt and made it kind of uncomfortable because he had all his bags. We put all our bags there, but we was we just wanted to sit together, so we just sat down. And as you're getting ready to tell, I am a talker and I love to talk about Jesus, so just say hi to me and you're going to get an earful. So I got the right person at the right time to send. No question. No question. And he was certainly present on that particular day, just like he's present right now. Jen, you know what kind of caught my heart, really, or kind of struck a chord with me was and I don't even know why you shared it with me, but you did share with me that, you know, just I think it was 18 months prior, you were you nearly lost your life to a an assault by your ex-husband who stabbed you, beat you. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how you're alive today and a little bit about maybe what transpired that evening. No problem. I going to tell you, I love to share my testimony. Right. Because the word of God says that we overcome by the word of our testimony in the blood of the lamb. So, you know, God gives us a testimony to tell others and help others to show them that they, too, can get through it. So I was a little it was a little longer than 18 months ago, but around that time, I was in a in a relationship that I had been in for probably about ten years of my life in a domestic violence relationship. And I had very low self-esteem. I was struggling with drug addiction and some other things, some mental health issues and stuff. You know, my mom was addicted to drugs and I didn't you know, I struggled a lot with my weight, had a lot of weight issues, mental health issues. And I got with this man and it was it was more because, you know, he manipulated and told me the words that I never heard before. So I loved to hear that I was beautiful and that he loved me. And even though it was lies and he was beating the crap out of me and stealing my money and taking my money and embarrassing me, and it was the it was I just didn't know any better. And I didn't love myself and I didn't know how to love. So I stayed with this man for over ten years. The day that I became disabled, I actually had gotten him a job at the job that I was working at in Chelsea, Massachusetts. And I was like, This is going to be a fresh start for us. And, you know, this job is going to be great from So I get him the job, but then the supervisor of the job calls me, you know, to the to the at the end of the day and says, hey, listen, we had to fire him because he just wasn't working out. And he has a really bad attitude. Jen But you've been working here a long time, so we just want to tell you this. I'm going to be honest with you. I knew on my way home that this was going to be a problem, that he got fired. So I was already nervous to go home. I've already been to this job several times with black eyes, broken noses. I was actually terminated from this job because the manager said, I can't see you come in here beat up everyday, John. So we got to let you go. They took me back because they knew that they couldn't get rid of me for that. But it was hard. It was like, I think that he did it more like he thought that, Oh no, I'm not going to have this job. Let me get rid of this man. But that's not how domestic violence works in the mindset of a battered woman. So I go home and I already knew as I turn the corner, you know, we live in the city. Chelsea is a city. It's, you know, kind of a little rough. He's sitting on the front porch with a bunch of his friend and he's already drunk. And I'm like, Oh, this is not going to be good. And so I go upstairs and we had two big dogs at the time, and they, you know, had went to the bathroom on the floor and everything. And he comes up and he's just livid and and he says, you know, clean the dog crap up. And I said, You been here all day? You couldn't clean the dog crap up yourself. We ended up getting into a little tussle. And at this point, after ten yards, a tussle, and now it just becomes a a full out war. And and so he just started to assault me. And at the end of the assault, he tried to he burnt me with a curl and I and he I had a broken nose. I've had I was stabbed in the leg. I was cut in both of my legs. And he tried to set me on fire. But at the end what he did was he threw a metal bat. And to be honest with you, he tried to throw it at my son because my son was always my protector. Sadly, my son would have to run outside and go get people from the street to come up and break up our fights. My son has seen a lot and, you know, he was trying to jump in the middle and he threw this metal pole and it missed my son, but it stuck in my forehead right here, and it gave me a hematoma and it broke off a piece of my skull. And so the hematoma grew like this. So I had like another head on top of the head. And so my whole face turned black and blue and purple from the abuse. When he hit me, I didn't get knocked unconscious. I went down on one knee like a football. I went down on one knee and I said, hold on, hold on, don't hit me again. And and my son freaked out and he went to go call the police in the man and let him out of the house. So he let the dogs out because I had two big dogs that try to attack him when he started fighting me. So he let the dogs out. The dogs ran out the door. He wouldn't let my son out the door. So my son went into his bedroom and jumped from a fourth storey floor window and ran from Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Everett, Massachusetts, because my abuser was chasing him from city to city so that he couldn't get help for us. And I was and I was kind of like in and out of consciousness at this point. I remember that the next thing that I remember is I remember waking up for a minute in the ambulance and I remember they had him in handcuffs. I remember one of the Chelsea police officers saying, Ah, don't make a big deal out of she's going to take him back tomorrow anyway. And then I remember my sister diving from her car and jumping on him in handcuffs and swinging. I remember my sister trying to beat this man to death with handcuffs on. And and then I just fell unconscious and I woke up the next day in the hospital when I was disabled from domestic violence with a traumatic brain injury. Oh, my God. And I had, like I said, a broken nose. I had I was stabbed. I was burnt. I was I'm burnt here on my face here with the curling iron. So my skin kind of goes down on top of my eye a little bit. None of my scars that I have from the abuse, like my forehead or my eye or, you know, my legs where I was stabbed. It's I don't even look at them any more like scars. I look at them as trophies. Now, trophies that God has gotten me through something. And I'll be honest with you, that domestic violence thing was just the beginning. Because after I became disabled, me and my son went on a ten year journey like, not ten year, but like, we'll see like eight. That's like exaggerating by like the whole two year journey of being homeless and, you know, going back and forth state to state. We have been in shelters in Cleveland, Ohio, Jackson, Mississippi. We now are in upstate New York in that crazy thing about it is we are actually still dealing with the abuser. And because of how the bail reform is in New York, he is here in the town that I'm living at. And they have arrested him and charged him with stalking and harassment for coming out here after me. But they can't keep him incarcerated because of bail reform in New York. So basically, I have to live well, stay here in this town while he is living at the homeless shelter, because the state of New New York will help him find housing so that he can live in the shelter and stop me. But that's what I was doing. But anyway, through this journey, I it's it's it's been to be honest. Honest. I think you guys are going to feel like I am so crazy when I say this, but I am so grateful that this happened to me because as before this happened before I became disabled, I worked all the time. I worked two jobs. I lived in Massachusetts, so I worked two jobs all the time. I had no relationship with my son. He just basically went to school and I work to pay that high rent. So we didn't know each other, had no relationship. I didn't know the Lord at all whatsoever. I thought everything that I did was something that I could do for myself. I would work harder if I needed something. I was just doing out of control things, you know, Also, through the domestic violence, I did some horrible things myself. So I don't want you to feel like, Oh, I'm this poor, you know, this also sorry, girl, because that wasn't me. You know, during the domestic violence, I myself got addicted to drugs and I was on drugs myself because of, you know, they try to put me on anti-spike meds for all of the mental stuff. You know, I just came out of losing my mother to a very long battle with addiction in the last day of her life was a very bad day for us when I was taking a dialysis. And that will be on my mind forever. I had to took take me a long time to forgive myself for that. And I've tried to commit suicide and my son found me. I have even, you know, done things which were horrible to say, but I just need you to know where God has taken me from and to I have prostituted. I have sold my body to get drugs. I have done and been in anything that you can think of that's bad, that's not good. That is suffering. That is hell. I have done it. And not just by someone else, you know, by my own choice, by what I thought, because I didn't know any better and because I didn't love myself and because I didn't most importantly, I didn't have God. I didn't know Jesus. I went to Catholic school my whole life, but that consisted of stand up, sit down, kneel. The nun say this. The priest says that you don't really know. They don't explain this personal relationship with you. They don't get into that. It's just more of a And I don't want to say this, Please don't let me offend anyone. It's like a robotic thing, like, get up, sit down, say this prayer, say the rosary like when I went to confession, I used to make up lies just so that I could say something like, Oh, I yelled three times that my sister didn't even know. Right. But this is the great thing about God. So this is my part that I love. The great thing about God is that He knows you in your mother's womb, right? So he knew in my mother's womb that I would be almost 50 years old and almost lose my life to domestic violence. And I will find him at 50 years old and he would turn my life around. And in turning my life around, he is going to turn my family's whole life around. None of my brothers and sisters know the Lord. None of my brothers and sisters talk to me right now. You know, I only have a relationship with my dad and I have six brothers and sisters. But through this journey, God is reconciling and, you know, he's restoring. And that's what God does. God. See, I want to tell you something about God. And when I start talking too much, Matt just cut me off. And I do I have a question for you. God, tell. Me just like that. And I'd like to get into what you're getting ready to talk about. But, Jen, you were with this individual for ten years. Yes. In, you know, the evening that he tried to burn you and stabbed you. I mean, this was not the first time that you dealt with this domestic violence. So why what transpired on that evening or when you were you know, it sounds like transported to the hospital in an ambulance? You know what transpired then that said enough's enough and I no longer want to be with this man and I'm going to stand up to him and I'm going to say he's no longer my he's not going to be involved in my life anymore. Well, what gave you the courage to start thinking like that? It was really my son, Matt. What it was, to be honest with you, is that when one of the it was it was kind of like already coming. It was an upcoming thing. Because I'll tell you a few other things that had transpired in the meantime. When he had broke my nose, I went to the hospital with my son and the nurse at the hospital said, We can't see you or do anything about your nose until you clean some of the blood off, because I had big blood clots that were coming out, you know, and my son and me had to go in to the shower room and here I am. I'm watching my son try to, like, wipe blood off of me. And and a screwdriver fell out of my son's pocket. And I said, What are you doing with the screwdriver, babe? In the hospital? You know? And he said, My mom was going to kill him. And I said, Whoa, whoa, you know? And then I said, okay, You know, I talked about it with him. And and then he got arrested for beating me up that time. And then I said to my son, which, you know, people are going to think crazy about, you know, they're going to think horrible about what I say, Matt, because but I'm just very honest and transparent because I don't ever want anyone to go through what I went through. The next day when he got arrested, I begged my son if I could sell his games. Now my son is a computer guy. He loves computers, he loves PlayStation, he loves all that stuff. I begged him to sell his PlayStation so I could go bail this man out of jail. And my son was like, Mom, I know when you bail him out, he's going to come back and beat you up again. I'm like, No. And then he called collect on the phone, and he promised my son, If you bail me out, I'm not going to drink no more. And I love you. I love your mother. You know, this, that, the other thing. And as soon as we got off the train and got to the house, my son said, Look out in the backyard. And I looked out in the backyard and he's sitting out there with six of his friends drinking. And I'm like, okay, this is this is about the end now. And so that day I'm going to tell you what it was. It was it was really my son. It was my son. I just I love my son so much that I couldn't allow him, no matter what hard things we had to go through, no matter where we were going to go. I decided that day that it was going to be me and my son. And and the crazy thing about it, Matt and I feel like God is having me see us. And I really don't share the story too much with people, but I feel like God just put it on my heart. That's why I pause for a moment to share this right before this happened, me and my son were walking into Faneuil Hall Marketplace, you know, down in Boston. Haymarket Right. And there's a McDonald's right on the corner there. And we're walking into McDonald's. And I'm talking about this is three days before I almost died. There's a there's an older black man in an Emmanuel, which wheelchair in front of this McDonald's. And I'm all the time in Boston. There's always homeless people, you know, and I always give them change if I haven't our dollars, though. So we walk in and this man says, you know, God loves you, right? And I said, I know I love God. And something when I went into McDonald's said, buy this man some food. Right? And I said, okay. So I got a two for three sandwich. I came on. I gave him an empty cup and a sandwich. I said, Sir, I wish I had more money to give you. And and he said, you know, any and he just he said something about God loving me. And then he pointed at his eyes and me and my son was standing in this man's eyes, not even joking, went from Brown to green to blue, back to brown again. And me and my son were freaked out, Right? Because we're like, this is some type of trick to get money from us or something. So we go right, because we're like, We're from Boston. We know there's always some type of hustle, a scam. So we go run off and this man, we come back all because we wanted to McDonald's because I was like, Man, I'm going to go to the ATM and give him a couple dollars. I come back out of the men is gone. Do you know, we searched for him all over Boston that day and could not find this man in a manual wheelchair. How far could he have gotten in a manual wheelchair? And so it was crazy because even though I almost lost my life three days later, it was almost like even like when I tried to commit suicide to all this, I said to God that day, I don't want to die. I just want the pain to stop. And God always had me in the palm of his hands. It just so happened that on that day God freed me from the chain of domestic violence and broke that off of me to be all the way honest. It was the love of my son Matt, and just the love of God that just culminated at the right time for a power punch to rip me out of domestic violence and send me on a very long mission of homelessness. But it was okay. You know, it's amazing to me that, you know, in this very, very turbulent situation, you are embracing God, you're embracing Jesus Christ. You're embracing the love and mercy that he has for each and every one of us, which is truly fascinating, given what you're going through when most people would probably turn the other way. What do you think it was about your particular situation that allowed you to be open enough to feel God's presence during this turbulent time? Well, I think what it is with me and God, right, because that's what it really is, is this personal relationship. Right. I think what it is what God is that God knew that I've never had anyone beside my son that truly loved me and showed me love. And, you know, don't get me wrong, I love my dad, I love my family members. But because of the sad situation of them and how they were raised, they don't really know how to love. Like, I'll be honest, I don't think my father has ever said the words, I love you. So it was not a very loving environment. It was more like rub dirt on it and keep going. And so that's what it was like a survival. So we all grew up in a survival atmosphere. Me, I was like a little princess. I was one in love and I just want everyone to get along and flowers and butterflies. And in the end, I'm going to tell you how God pulled me in, because even though I was doing the most horrible, horrible things in the world. Matt, I'm talking like driving through the back roads of Pennsylvania to go escort to make a couple of dollars to buy us food. And, you know, after all this, when we became homeless and had nowhere to go, like, yes, we were getting SSI and stuff, but it's so small that, you know, it can basically pay rent and then you're on your own, you know, And if you have a traumatic brain injury and you've been through so much trauma, you you just you're kind of like, oh, what do I do now? You know? And so I think it was God's love. I think that the mercy and the ways that he showed me, like the ways that he would come through. Like, I'll tell you just a couple simple ones, you know, I mean, you know, this I'm in the process of getting a book together right now of my whole journey with all my stories of Mississippi. And it's going to be crazy. But I'll tell you a few quick ones. One time we were just coming from a homeless shelter and we got in an apartment and the people downstairs was was getting pizza. And I said, Dang, and I wish we could get pizza today. And we went about it. You peanut butter and ramen noodles. And then about an hour later, the woman, her name was Faith. She came upstairs and she banged on my door and she said, Hey, I just wanted to know if you and your son wanted a pizza. And she gave me and my son a large pepperoni pizza. And I know, like, these little things that you guys think like, Oh, just small. You think that it's something that is just not even significant. But what you have to understand is everything happens in God's world on purpose. There is nothing that is small or insignificant. Nothing happens without God having his finger on it all. And, you know, I, I love when people say, Oh, God's not real, because look at all these bad things that happen. But you know what's so crazy about people? They will love God when he's blessing them, but they will hate him when he's not. But the thing is, how can you so quickly accept the good but not accept the bad? And some of us, we're hardheaded. Me, I'm a stubborn, hard hat. I'm a dummy. You know, he had to smash me a couple of times for me to get it right and, you know, I didn't listen. I wasn't a good listener. My father would tell me something, admits, I don't do this and I wouldn't listen. But how God does it, He breaks you in a loving way to put you back together the way that you should have been to begin with. And and if that means going through some domestic violence and some suicide and, you know, the way God is when he calls you, you know, in the Bible and John, it says, you didn't choose me. I chose you. So if God chose me to do this, why would I worry about anything else? The good and the bad and all that stuff. It takes cake, it takes cake. Mix oil, flour, it takes everything to make a cake. Right. I'm taking it all. I want it all. I want everything that God has for me. The good, the bad, the ugly. That's so beautiful and remarkable that you're able to have that perspective given everything that you've been through now. So, Jen, we when we were talking, I guess it was a week or so ago, you were telling me a story about a woman that you met. You met her. You saw her on the street. Someone was right out front of my house. I want to tell you, Goggles. And I'm going to tell you people think I am so nuts when I say this, Right? But it even just happened yesterday that God will send me somewhere, right? And I won't even know why I'm going there. I'll think I'm going there for one reason. Like, I'll be honest, even when I came to see you, I got in so much trouble by my father for taking that trip that he didn't talk to me for three days. Wow. He said I wasted my money. I didn't have to come and see him. But I knew the reason why I was taking that trip. It wasn't to see my father because he's going to ring the bell. He's fine. It was to see you. And so it wasn't about my father, that trip. So I was okay getting yelled at. So a couple weeks ago, I went outside and I said, I want to go get ice cream. Now, mind you, I'm on this whole, like, workout kick, so why am I going to get ice cream right now? But ice cream was on my heart. So I said, Let me go get some ice cream. I pull outside and there's a woman sitting out there just sit in. Where I live is kind of like desolate. There's like ice in here. So I pull up to her and I, well, first I pull past her, and I felt like God told me to rewind. So I go back and I open my window. I say, Hey, are you okay? Do you need anything? And she says, I could really use a bathroom. I really I really need to use the bathroom. And I'll be honest, I'm very iffy about certain people. I don't let anybody in my house because I'm a very spiritual person and I feel like certain. I just don't want certain things in my house. But I said to her, Hey, listen, I'm going to the store. Come on with me. And you can go to the bathroom at the store. And then, you know, and so she gets in my car and for some reason she is that's telling me all about this addiction. She's struggling with math and, you know, she lost her husband. She lost her kids. You know, her kid has you know, they she can't see her kids and all like she's just crying her eyes out. And I pull into this parking lot down the street from my house and I say, look, I want to tell you something. I said, I know you're going to think I'm crazy. I said, But I am you. And I said, I went through the same things I said I was a drug addict. I was. And I told her my my test was for the drug addict. I was a pass. I was everything that you could think of. I was. And I ran from God. I ran a different states. I tried to run from him. I said, you can't run from God. She said, Oh, well, my, you know, my boyfriend is getting all into this God thing, but I just want to know if God is real, if this is the real thing. And I said, Girl, I'm on a diet. God just sent me to the store for ice cream, but I'm sitting here in the car. What you talking about? God. So do you think God is real? You know, and so and so you know, God does that. He does that so often, right? It's unbelievable. Like I said yesterday, I went to Wal Mart, didn't eat a thing at Wal Mart, just was bored. Went to Wal Mart. There was a woman named Nelson Si in front of Wal Mart. I pulled out and I felt like God said her and I said her and he said her. So I pull up to her. I said, Hey, do you need a ride? Because I'm going into Jamestown and I don't mind giving you a ride. And she's like, Are you serious? I'm like, Yeah, because why not? What are you waiting for? The bus as it It's very hot out here. Jump in. You know, I'm not going to hurt you. I said, you can go out. The ladies and Wal-Mart, they all know me. They said, I'm not going to hurt you. And so she gets in and she's like, This is so crazy. She's like, me And my brother just moved here from Puerto Rico. I'm a teacher. I went to school to be a teacher. I can't find a job. That's that the other thing. And I said, well, look, I'm leaving Jamestown in a couple weeks, right? Because God is moving me on to my next you know, my next thing that I got to do for him. I said, But I'm going to hook you up with some people at the church that I go to. They're all teachers. They're they're going to hook you up with some jobs. We're going to get you hooked up out here before I go in. And I said, here's my phone number. Call me if you need a ride or anything else. Okay. And so I sent a message to my pastor at the church, his wife, and I said, Hey, listen, there's a woman, Nelson, She got her degree. She's looking for a teaching job. She's having a hard time on here. She's moved out here. So just look out after. And so I don't know what's going to happen with that, but that's another seed planted. So I'm being honest. I don't. What are the seeds, Matt? I don't water them. I just plant them because I'm not good at water and I'm a talker. I give my little speech. That's it now, That's great. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, no, I know. And you call these little God instances there. God nods, right? God nods. I love that word. Don't you love that? Does it? I just do. I like it. Well, I call them God nods because it's like, not only is God nodding on you, but God is nodding on that other person. And it's so wonderful because it's like, I want to tell you something. I saw this thing on Facebook, right? And I got to say this right. I'm from the hood, right? Like the hood, right? Like gangsters, man. Right. Like I was. My father's from Charlestown. I was bank Robin Hood. My, you know, I was raised by a black woman in Roxbury in a crack house. Like, it's. I'm telling you, my life is crazy. God chose the right person for this job because I am sold. I don't care. I don't care what anybody thinks about me except for God. So if I get out of the car, people will be like, All right, here she comes. For a while here, I would walk around Jamestown and pray for drug addicts at night on the first and the third. It's just like I saw something the other day that said you could have all the money in the world, right? You in that could make you feel great. You could live in a mansion this money. But then people are sick. But imagine when God nods on you and allows you to talk into someone's life and someone says like that girl, You know that girl that I saw outside of my house? You know, at the end of that conversation, she told me that she was just getting ready to jump off the Third Street Bridge. And and it's funny because I said I thought of that a couple of times when I first came out here, too. I said, believe me. I said, Stay away from the Third Street Bridge girl. Ed So I just know it's like it's the it's the most it's better than any drug I ever did. It's better than anything in the world. When God put you with someone who was going through something wrong, and at the end of that, God denied you leave failing fulfilled. And that person, you know that that person leaves touched by God like you know that you left something from the Lord on that person. That is the I want to do that for the rest of my life. I never want to do anything else. I don't care how much I sit in the cardboard box in Buffalo at the new mission and just go and just pray for people. I don't care. Jen So you've clearly been through just a lot in your family has as well, but what do you do to prevent you kind of falling back into some of the the old patterns? Yeah, patterns that once existed in your life. I'm going to tell you. That that don't exist today. Right? Don't exist today. I am actually two years sober on July 3rd of 20, 23, I'll be two years sober. So I'm going to tell you as far as sobriety, okay, When I talk to people about sobriety, I always say, although we can't say it, I am a friend of Bill, but I say get yourself into a recovery program, because what it is, is it's easy when you're when you're first getting into recovery and struggling. It's is very, very hard. It's very easy to fall back the slightest little trigger, the slightest emotion that you're failing. C Drugs stem off of emotions. You're trying to hide something, you trying to, you know, dull the pain. So what you need to do is you got to get a strong support system. You got to throw yourself in the middle. You have to do anything. This is what I tell everybody you have to do any and everything that you did to get high to stay sober. It's a fight every day that you have to get up and choose to fight every day and not let the devil win. He does the same the same painful thing about him as he comes to steal, kill and destroy. He's not your friend. He's not trying to help you out of this. He knows what you like. He knows how to tempt you, and he's out to get you. So as far as recovery, I said, get into a group, become friends. Bill, get with some people who are sober. Get around sober people. As far as domestic violence, I'm going to tell you this. A man that puts his hands on you or a man that disrespects you does not love you or himself, especially if he's doing in front of children a lot of these men. And I'm not I never bash men because men hurt too many awful things. Men are raised wrong. Two men don't no love either. So it's just a sickness. It started back in Genesis because the apple gladly and there was always sin. So it's not just the man's fault. Believe me. There are men out here who are just abusive, but there are also men out here who just don't know any better or raise like that. I tell women, listen, that if he puts his hands on you or disrespect you, he's going to always do that. In relationships, you teach someone how to treat you. So if you allow someone to talk a certain way to you or treat you a certain way, they will always do that. You have to have good boundaries. You have to have very good boundaries. When it's time for you to get your life together. And it hurts. It hurts about it. Because believe me, Matt, I want to go help everyone, every girl that tells me a story. But you know what? The good thing about how bad but it he can put me through everything so I don't manipulated with the best on a game, with the best. And so every story they run on me or tell me how I did it. I've been there, done that, you know. But the thing that I tell people, you have to have very good boundaries and you have to work at it. And most importantly, and that's probably what I said first and I get up very early in the morning every day and spend a lot of time with God. I spend at least an hour with God every morning I do praise and worship. I read some Bible scriptures, I do some meditation, because if I don't spend time with God that day, I will have a bad day and I will actually come home and be start my day and get back on my knees. Because without Bible, I don't even want to start the day because I need him to go before me to show me where to go and what steps I need to take, where I'm going to be taking them on my own and doing what I think is best. And we are, you know, when Jennifer what things what Jennifer that she's going to end up beat up in a hotel in Mississippi. You know your story in your testimony is is truly remarkable. It really is. And what amazes me more so and I already touched on it, is how you you know, after all of this year, you you've enriched your relationship with God in Jesus Christ. And now it's for you to be able to share that with other people. You're obviously experiencing it. But the fact that you're actually sharing this with others is really remarkable because you're you're passing the baton to others and allowing them to to live the life that you're living in lockstep with Jesus Christ. So truly, truly a testament to the type of work that you're doing. You know, Jenn, I wrap up each one of my shows in a very similar fashion. I have to wrap this show up a little bit differently just because of the trauma and devastation of what you had to deal with. Clearly, you know, you've been through a lot of hurdles. I think oftentimes some of our greatest growth opportunities come when we're faced with hurdles. And I would love to hear maybe from your perspective, if there's a particular hurdle that you've had to deal with in your life that allowed you to grow so much that today you can look back on that particular situation and say, Wow, I am really grateful that I had the opportunity to experience X and I don't I don't expect this at all to be, you know, the the domestic violence situation that you were involved in for so long. So, okay, So the greatest the greatest thing that I grew from all of the horrible and traumatic situations that I've been through was being homeless, homeless, being homeless made me grow. You know, it's a very humbling experience when you have to be as low as you are at homelessness because you have nothing. You have to depend on other people to feed you. You have to sleep in a bed that's not your own. One thing that I will be grateful for once I get back to Boston in 30 days and this is going to be so simple. I am going to be grateful to have my own. That was not someone else's bed. That is not. I just want to get me in an apartment with a big old bed, you know? And like I said, to watch my son. My son grew from the experience as well because, you know, like I said, my son would used to say when I went before, when we had money and I worked, he ask for something, and if he didn't get it right away, he would say, You're going to make me wait three days for that. And then the first time we ate at the soup kitchen, I looked at his face and the food that he was eating, and it was just a humbling experience. It just turned my son's whole life around. And that's what we're really here for, right, is for to go through some things, to change people's lives, to help them out, to even help your kids and your own family members. So I would say being homeless taught me empathy, sympathy, compassion. It taught me that although there are a lot of homeless people, they're not all on drugs. They're not all doing It's something of their own fault. A lot of women that I've met through this journey are homeless because they fell in love with the wrong man, and now they're in a homeless shelter with their kids. And I, you I just need to get the word out that, you know, it's very important. You know, honestly, I always say always, if you have anything extra, donate it to your local battered women's shelter. Anything, clothes, toys, anything you're getting rid of. You don't understand what these women go through and how much stress. And sometimes you have older kids and they're mad at you for having them in shelters. I remember me and my son and my son doesn't mind if I tell you this. We have gotten to verbal altercations that he would be like, Oh, if you didn't do this. And I know that. And I know that if I didn't make these bad decisions, I wouldn't have him in this situation. But it brought me and my son closer. So I guess even being homeless in I remember like my son is an older man, as Matt knows, my son is older. And at one point we were in a shelter in Mississippi and we had to sleep in the same bed together. So imagine being a 20 year old man having to sleep in the. But the thing is, my son would not leave my side. I had people tell him, just come, come stay with me, come to. He would not leave me, so he would in the same bed with me in homeless shelters in it. And I'm telling you, it was really the greatest thing that ever happened to our relationship in my life, because I would never know God without this situation. That is so beautiful. John, and such an honor to have you on today's show. You're doing some amazing things in Keep doing what you're doing. I you know, I didn't mention this on the Friday. No, I did. I did mention that you did, in fact, pray over me. And I'm going to ask you, if you don't mind, I'd love our listening audience to experience a little bit about the way you pray, how you pray. If you could just close our show out with a little prayer of gratitude, of healing. I sure can. You know, that's my faith. That's my zone is the prayer zone. You know, that's where I work wonders. All right. Okay, Jen, I'll let you take the lead. Okay? Let me take it out now with some prayer. Father. God, I lift every single ear that is listening to this podcast that will listen to this podcast in the future. Any person that sees this, any person that needs healing, any woman or man that is going through domestic violence, I lift them to you today. God, I ask you to put down strength over the life that they can just depend on you and get out of that situation. I ask you to break the chains of addiction. Often every single person listening, every single person that struggling, any single person that has said to themselves today, I'm tired of this God, I'm tired of getting higher. I'm tired of I ask you to break it now. I ask you to shake it. Now I ask you to just loosen it from the pits. A hell got to ask you to just touch each and every person out there today. God, I don't know what everybody needs, God, but you do God. I ask you for healing over people who are struggling with disease and health problems. I especially lift Matt and his family to you today in prayer. God, I always lift Matt to you in prayer because I know what you told me. I know you said that Matt is going to be healed. I know we're going to come back in a couple of months from now and Matt is going to ring the bell. I know that. I know what you said. This too, shall pass. That's what you told me about Matt. Father. God, I lift anybody who needs just some encouragement, anything that they need. God, I ask you to pour it down, Ask you to pour down strength, pour down healing poured down Most importantly, someone to come and talk to someone about you. God, right now, in these end times, God, we just need all of our brothers and sisters to come home. We know that you love God. We ask to forgive us for our sins. Forgive us when we fall short. Father God, just wrap your loving arms around the whole world. Around Buffalo, around anybody listening to this podcast? God, I just love you so much, Father God. And I just thank you. I asked these things and more and everything exceedingly, abundantly over what you can do in Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Jen, thanks so much for being on today's show. It's truly amazing that we connected the way we did and listening audience The way Jen just prayed over each and every one of us is exactly how she prayed over me in Logan International Airport. If today's show inspires you in some way, shape or form, please to the show. Today's guest was Jennifer. Comment on the show, share it with others and with gratitude. Matt Listeners. Until next time, Buying the courage to be grateful. Godspeed, my friends.