Carolyn Rayne's story is a vibrant tapestry of trials and triumphs, showcasing her transformative faith journey. Each chapter of our conversation delves into the heartfelt battles and victories of guests who have discovered their identity in Christ. The narrative explores cultural and religious expectations, emphasizing freedom in the unconditional embrace of the gospel rather than strict doctrine adherence. From parenting struggles to missionary life challenges, our guests share moments of revelation that reshape their faith. The dialogue concludes by highlighting the transformative power of the gospel, evident in the resilience, enduring faith, and joy discovered by individuals on their paths to redemption and love. Join us in exploring the profound impact of a gospel that shapes lives, heals wounds, and renews purpose.
💰 DONATE & SUPPORT our Ministry: lovereality.org/give
📚 LEARN more at our site: lovereality.org
0:00 - Transformation Through the Gospel
5:15 - Faith Journey to Missionary Midwife
19:27 - Struggles With Faith and Parenting
22:48 - Forgiveness, Redemption, and Finding Love
32:43 - Faith, Love, and Life in Africa
43:18 - The Journey of Religious Commitment
57:17 - Moving to Ireland, Ministry in Montana
1:03:10 - The Pressure of Ministry and Shame
1:08:23 - Struggles and Changes in Ministry
1:18:46 - Surviving Stress and Moving Forward
1:33:05 - Discovering Unconditional Love Through the Chosen
1:44:24 - Discovering God's Unconditional Love
1:58:19 - Relationship Lies and the Power of the Gospel
2:02:18 - Cultural Expectations and Finding Freedom
2:07:27 - Worship Songs and Personal Transformation
2:13:49 - Rediscovering the Gospel and Finding Freedom
Carolyn Rayne's story is a vibrant tapestry of trials and triumphs, showcasing her transformative faith journey. Each chapter of our conversation delves into the heartfelt battles and victories of guests who have discovered their identity in Christ. The narrative explores cultural and religious expectations, emphasizing freedom in the unconditional embrace of the gospel rather than strict doctrine adherence. From parenting struggles to missionary life challenges, our guests share moments of revelation that reshape their faith. The dialogue concludes by highlighting the transformative power of the gospel, evident in the resilience, enduring faith, and joy discovered by individuals on their paths to redemption and love. Join us in exploring the profound impact of a gospel that shapes lives, heals wounds, and renews purpose.
💰 DONATE & SUPPORT our Ministry: lovereality.org/give
📚 LEARN more at our site: lovereality.org
0:00 - Transformation Through the Gospel
5:15 - Faith Journey to Missionary Midwife
19:27 - Struggles With Faith and Parenting
22:48 - Forgiveness, Redemption, and Finding Love
32:43 - Faith, Love, and Life in Africa
43:18 - The Journey of Religious Commitment
57:17 - Moving to Ireland, Ministry in Montana
1:03:10 - The Pressure of Ministry and Shame
1:08:23 - Struggles and Changes in Ministry
1:18:46 - Surviving Stress and Moving Forward
1:33:05 - Discovering Unconditional Love Through the Chosen
1:44:24 - Discovering God's Unconditional Love
1:58:19 - Relationship Lies and the Power of the Gospel
2:02:18 - Cultural Expectations and Finding Freedom
2:07:27 - Worship Songs and Personal Transformation
2:13:49 - Rediscovering the Gospel and Finding Freedom
The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is death to life.
Speaker 2:We started to see that we had put ourselves in the center of the Bible and it was all about I, what I'm going to do here and I'm going to do there, and we became the center of every story and it's like wow. But when you start seeing Jesus and you realize that he is the genuine center of every story, you realize where you fit into, that it definitely isn't in the center. And so my Bible I've always marked it with all the things I was supposed to do- Yo, welcome to the Death of Life podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is Richard, I'm the host of the Death to Life podcast and today's episode is with Carolyn Rehm, and her husband was, last week, paul. But guess what? She has her own story and it is super powerful. And I will say this guilt, condemnation and shame, people pleasing legalism, they all rear their heads in this story. But by the power God, freedom comes in. So I'm excited for you to hear this story and the blessing that it is. We're going to jump into it Without further ado. This is Carolyn Buglupstrap, and love y'all, appreciate y'all. So when you're thinking about your story, are you thinking like man all these years caused this, or like any kind of doubt or any kind of you know, whatever you have been walking in prior to freedom? Or did you think of it as ideas or trauma that caused it? Or is it a combination? Do you think?
Speaker 2:I think it's probably a combination, and yesterday, when I was you know, I started to write some things out last week and I got to a certain point and then I just couldn't seem to get anything else down on paper, and so I left it for a few days and then I was looking what Paul was doing, and yesterday, as I was like, okay, lord, I've never been a last minute person, I'm always the girl that would study for a test months before, and then the day before I didn't even look at the books, such as how I always have been. So it felt like I'm coming up for a test year and I haven't even opened the books yet. What's the test?
Speaker 1:And the test is Carolyn's life. Right, I get. How do I talk about it? How do I talk about my story?
Speaker 2:So I was, I just said to Paul yesterday that we were listening to some Christmas music and the words hit me in a whole new way. And that's that week for the end of this story. But it hit me that this isn't my story, this is his story. I'm pursuing me for 60 years that I didn't even know he was doing. I mean I did a certain points along the journey. Really, that's what this is about. What he's had in the past is a lot of things that he's been doing, how he's done that over all these years and the diversions I've taken off here and there and how he's brought that back around. And here I am, at 60, finally understanding the gospel, and it's like wow, and I don't feel angry or ashamed of that, it's just more blown away that finally now here's this truth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's beautiful, the truth that was been there all along.
Speaker 2:I just it got hidden behind all kinds of other things. I think that's what we'll talk about here.
Speaker 1:So where does this start for you?
Speaker 2:Well, childhood in the UK I guess Country kid born and lived in a British village and parents were super poor. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. My dad worked in a factory, in a foundry, and so until I was 16, 17, they didn't have a phone in the house. Oh, wow. We had to go to the call box down the street. I left home at 18, and my dad had learned to drive when I was 19. And so there was no vehicle, so we had to walk over where we went.
Speaker 1:You said your dad learned to drive when you were 19?.
Speaker 2:I was 19. I don't know how old he was I haven't figured that out, but anyway plenty old and so we literally got public transport wherever we went or walked. And you know, church was two, I think it was two miles away, and we would walk to church every Saturday. Wow. And you have this big briefcase with all our Bibles in there and the Hemnols and everything else, and that's what we did. So from a child I always had a very simple childlike faith and I'm really thankful for that. I'm not one of these people who's a big theologian and getting into all complicated stuff. It was more just a simple faith in God and that is carried through my life, even though there were times when it seemed like it disappeared or choices I made kind of clouded over that faith. But underneath it all there was this kind of simple childlike faith. There was a real country girl and introverted, very happy to be alone, got one sibling, my brother he's four years older than me and I think he's pretty introverted too, and so I would enjoy being outdoors a lot and I thought like God spoke to my heart through nature, particularly birds. I was a great bird lover and there are many times in life when birds have shown up that I really felt God's call to my heart through it. So it was that kind of experience growing up. The culture in the UK at that time definitely was less emotionally demonstrative of showing love, and so I think it was more. It wasn't that it was a Victorian era I'm not quite that old, but I think there was more corrective discipline than love demonstrated, although I did have a really good relationship with my father and I knew he loved me and there was no question. My mom has always struggled to demonstrate love and affection or to understand it, and as an example of that, as a kid growing up, whenever there were movies that animals died I would get emotional because I was always very connected to animals and if my mom saw me she'd be like well, don't be silly, what's wrong with you? If my dad saw that, in fact he would know and he would pull out this white hanky out of his pocket and as soon as I saw the hanky I would start to cry because I knew that he was entering into my emotion, which was not that common at that season of life, I guess in that culture I grew up with a lot of fear. My dad's next to the Bible, Great Converse he was his textbook, and so we grew up hearing a lot of that, a lot of end time time of trouble, such as never was type talk, and that left me always feeling like I might never get through that time. And if I make it through that time I still might not be good enough to receive sorrow, Good enough to receive salvation, and so that that, so the fear was of God himself, then not in a respectful way.
Speaker 1:but if you wouldn't match up to his what he's asking you to do, then you're in trouble.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's kind of strange, because it was combined with this simple face, that bad things could happen, but I knew God was taking care of me, I was okay. But underneath all of that was still that, but I might not make it, which I know sounds really wild, but I think it was because it was a lot of performance based religion. It was a lot about what we did and also growing up, and a lot of love was gauged by you know what I was doing. If I did good, I was more loved, more loved. If I didn't do good, I was less lovable. So a lot of performance based on that in the home, but also within family. We lived in a small village and our church was the next village over, and most all of the church members were family members, so uncles and aunts and cousins and everything else, and so we saw that kind of culture played out a lot as a family, and I think I just assumed then that if that's how love operated, then that's how God was too, and so not that anybody told me that. I think I just could have put that on it myself. There was a lot of shaming, and not necessarily from my parents. So, though, I think you know that using that as a motivation for good behavior, you know, kind of disappoint you, disappoint me. Shame on you If you don't type of thing. There was some of that, but especially in school. Now, I went to public school the whole way there wasn't options for an Adventist school and so as an Adventist in a public school, the only Adventist are my siblings, or my sibling and my cousins, and you would think that. You know, england is supposed to be a Christian country, but there were no other Christians. There was one Jehovah's Witness boy in our school and that was it. We were the only Professing Christians and so of course we came in with all kinds of whack stuff. You know, do sprites on Friday afternoon because Sunday's coming in Can't be in the team, or Sabbath because it's Sabbath. You know, eat all kinds of weird things because you're vegetarian, and so a lot of shaming by other kids because you felt kind of stupid, basically because nobody viewed that as a good thing, and then even teachers would also do a lot of shaming at the time and I don't know where this came, but somewhere in all of that I now realize that it affected me. My brother was very able to shrug it off and just go. You know that's their problem. I couldn't, and I think it's because I'm a people pleaser, conflict avoider, a peacemaker, and so whenever there was anything, I interweave with the community. So whenever there was anything, I internalized it and took it and she couldn't just shake it off. It was more yeah, this is my problem and I'm feeling ashamed of yourself because you were so different and stuff like that. So there was just a lot of that rattling around. It wasn't that it was a bad childhood. There was a lot of really good stuff, but there was a lot of that kind of stuff rattling around. You know had its effect when I was eight years old. Some missionaries came from Africa to. In fact, they were a young Adventist couple that were newly Adventists and then they had gone out to Africa to be missionaries and they came back and they were sharing the stories of mission life and the wife was sharing how she'd been delivering babies in the African bush but regretted that she didn't really know how because she wasn't a midwife and at that point, as an eight-year-old-girl, I got this kind of clear aha moment. It's like you know, then that's what I want to do. I want to go out into the bush, but I want to know how to be a midwife first, and then I'm going to go out there and that's what I want to do in life and that's pretty much what I chose. I went through school doing the things you've got to do went to nursing school, went to midwifery school, became a registered midwife there in the UK, all with the aim, at some point of going out and being a missionary midwife. Wow. So that's kind of my childhood years. In my teen years I was very independent. I think I've always been that way and it is amusing to Paul and I now because we didn't really think of it as we were raising our children. But we raised them to be independent and our daughter is very independent and when she got to like 18, 19, 20, we were like, man, what did we do here? Because she was already, she got a big dose of it from both of us and now we've got an added to that. So she was you know. Yeah, well, she can tell, she's told you her story and some of the things that she would do. I'm a very independent kind of girl and whenever I would challenge her on it she'd say but mommy, you did way more. I'm like oh yeah, I guess you know traveling Europe solo on and you know hiking, backpacking over mountain solo and all that kind of stuff is what I was doing and she's like I haven't done crazy stuff like that. So anyway, I was very close to my dad and I was always very fearful that something would happen to him. I would lose him even from like eight, nine, 10 years old and there were. It was back in the time when the IRA from Ireland were bombing towns in Britain and our closest town had gotten bombed and so in my father had to travel through that town on his little moped back home from work and I used to be obsessive about seeing him turn around that corner on his way home that I would see it was safe. And so that was always something underneath didn't really understand it, but it kind of carried on through life and I guess it was probably because we were so close that it was like I just felt like if I lose him, then where am I? Because I wasn't that close to a lot of other people. I did have other, some other close friends, but I think I was looking for my family laughed at this but I was looking for love in a lot of other places, and so from about the age of 12, I started having boyfriends and I had an awful lot of them From age 12.
Speaker 1:From age 12. All right.
Speaker 2:Which is funny because my herbie, who wasn't raised at, and he had like one girlfriend before we met and he was 23 when we met. And here was me by the time we met I'd had dozens. I don't even know, but I think it was that I was somehow looking for acceptance, that culture where our life was looked down upon because we were different to everybody else in school. I think it was this. There was an acceptance here in spite of that that I kind of yearned for, and so early on they were non-adventist boyfriends, even though I knew that wasn't okay. Right by the time I was 15, I got baptized and I think I've had several notes in my life, whereas there have been oh how moments with God and I think that was one where it's like, okay, I'm getting baptized, I'm going to be a good girl, I'm going to do the right stuff, and I don't know if I was thinking that would earn me something. I'm sure probably I was because of the culture, but I don't remember that. But I started then having Adreley's boyfriends and got severely brokenhearted after one five-year relationship and another two-year relationship and I began to realize that our Adventist wasn't everything and just because a boy professed a faith doesn't mean he lived it, and I found myself being drawn away from God rather than closer to him through these relationships and ending up getting involved in all kinds of stuff that I wasn't raised to do and I knew was wrong, and I felt very guilty and ashamed about it. But I was a people pleaser and so I was wanting to please these guys and so I was getting into stuff that I didn't think an Adventist boy would want to get you into. But anyway, there I was, and so that was kind of my mid to late teens and right into early 20, around 2021, where I'd qualified as a nurse and I was in mid high school and qualified there, found myself in the same place as I was. I found myself in the second largest city in the country. I'm a country girl, so it was a very strange environment for me, but that's where I was now working as a midwife.
Speaker 1:And what city is that?
Speaker 2:Birmingham.
Speaker 1:Birmingham.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which I don't know if it's the second largest now, but it was then at that time, right Next to London, it was the largest city and had this broken relationship. Now, after two years, where I'd really made some huge compromises and I felt like I had completely failed, like I had completely disappointed God. I really couldn't talk to him because I felt so ashamed and nobody really knew, because on the outside I was a good little girl going to church and doing all the right things, but then on the inside my heart was breaking because of choices that I'd made that I didn't feel like I could ever get back to God from.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's the kind of shame, like I was telling my story last weekend and it's you didn't think you were this person. And then you're like, oh, I guess I am this person that I didn't think I was and that's heavy. But then you don't want to be that person because the way you thought about that person growing up you've probably put like weird, like when you're not doing it to, somebody else is doing it. You think, oh, tisk, tisk, how could they do something like that? And then if you fall into it, you're just like what? And then like you have no place to stand on. If you were going to look down at somebody anymore and you understand it, but now you can't even talk about it because you don't want to. I don't know if that's your experience, but that was my experience Very much so.
Speaker 2:I mean, I actually really wanted to tell my dad and I would say things sometimes in the hope that he would pick up on something didn't stack up and he'd start asking questions, because I didn't have the courage to just say, dad, you know, I've been doing this and this, but I think he didn't. I think he was too scared to ask. I think deep down he knew, but he didn't want to ask questions, and so that was just kind of. My brother did ask and I did share one time with him. He was the only person I shared with and by this point that relationship had disintegrated. And now it was just me and I, yeah, I felt very scared. I, yeah, I felt very far from God, and so it was your brother able to comfort you or to say I don't know that we ever talked about it really on a spiritual level at that time. It was just more he understood. He kind of guessed that's what had happened in my life. But you know he was very caring. But yeah, I don't know that we really had any answers at that point and I don't remember exactly when this was. But I remember feeling so far from God and so alone that I don't know if I was depressed, but it kind of sort of felt that way. You know, I'm working as a midwife that's my job and in a local hospital and on this particular day I felt so discouraged that I couldn't even get out of bed and I stayed. And I was a day off, one of my days off, and I stayed there until like 4.30 in the afternoon because it's like I've got nothing. It's like I've got nothing to get up for and I've got nobody that I can share this with. This weight was huge and somehow in all of this I did finally get out of bed and I got down onto my knees in absolute desperation. And I've always said since that moment that the devil, sometimes he pushes us so hard we fall to our knees and at that point we catch sight of a savior again, and that was my experience at that moment, and I poured my heart out to God. I had already asked forgiveness, of course, for all the shameful things that I have been involved in, and now I was asking again, and somebody, an older lady, had given me this little tiny book called Daily Strength for Daily Needs. It was not in his book and I opened it to that day whatever that day was, I don't remember now and what I read was just enough of a thread of hope that I wasn't, I hadn't committed the unpardonable sin, I wasn't rejected by God, and then I could pour my heart out and actually come back, and so Don't you think that this colored a lot of your life moving forward?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, so, because the answer at the end was it seems like I am forgiven, but I just remember thinking I want to teach my kids how to live the right way. My parents, and this is what I was thinking when I was like 19. And I know that my mom and dad taught me the right way. But if I mess up, how can I tell my kids that I did it the right way? And so when I messed up, I think that's the thing that actually kept me from going all the way crazy and doing something that like. But it wasn't a right motive in my mind. It was how can I tell my kids one day? I remember vividly thinking this when later did you have an answer for any of this? Or was it just like no, it was deception. Did you know? Or were you just like I got to try them that much harder?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I didn't realize that it was a deception. I didn't realize any of this was a deception until it banned me. I didn't realize any of this was a deception until about a year ago, 18 months ago. But I lived under. Now I knew that God could forgive and I felt forgiven. But even after years later meeting my husband now and all of that years, for, years after I would still get washed over with guilt and shame and then I would ask God for forgiveness all over again and it was almost like a jar and it got topped up for a while but then it would kind of empty out and I'd have to ask for forgiveness again. And that was just how I lived. It wasn't the best experience, but that was just my way of, and then it would be dealt with and then I could carry on. But it was always kind of there in the background. But after that moment on my knees I reach my life to God and I've had several of these moments in my life where it's like I started afresh with God and nothing, nothing like what took place about a year ago. But just to say that I had some of those along the way, little kind of lights along the way, and this was one of those, you know. I recreated my life to God. I was now having devotions, going to church every Sabbath, when I wasn't in the hospital working, and one thing I was sure about I was never going to get married and I was going to be a midwife, and that would be my life until Jesus came, and hopefully somewhere in the mission field. Why weren't you going to get married? Because I felt like the wrong that I had done, I couldn't. I wasn't good enough to be married to anyone. It wasn't fair on anybody else. I'd make choices that I said that I never would, and now that would that. It wasn't right. It was almost like, probably my way of doing penance. It's like, ok, so if I just make this decision now that, no matter what, I won't get married, I won't get into another relationship, they all take me away from God. I don't want to be taken away from God any more by anybody else, and so that's just how I'm going to do it, and so that was my determination.
Speaker 1:I think that that's such a lie that gets into people who have made mistakes that if they don't get married, they believe maybe at first they go in with your mindset, but then when they realize, oh, I am created for intimacy, and they don't realize I'm created for intimacy, they're just like I do want intimacy. And then they blame God for withholding somebody for them because of their mis Like. It's this weird mixture of double-mindedness Like I don't deserve to be married, I made all of these mistakes, oh, but I'm not married and so God's punishing me. And so then you get angry and it's because we don't understand what has happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I mean I didn't. But to make up for that, I was just all out for God. So I was looking for the opportunity where I could go and serve him in the mission field and that would be my life and it was my dream anyway. But it was now going to be my soul saying until I died. Basically that was my plan. So I started talking with an Adventist midwife who was out in Zambia and she was older, she was going to be retiring, and we just chatted back and forth over letter and she would tell me all these amazing stories of her experiences out there. Well, it wasn't long afterward that she started asking me would she be willing to take my place? Because I'm going to be leaving? They need a midwife and I've been praying for somebody to come out here and take my place. So that whole conversation was starting to happen. And also at that time I went to a church I hadn't been to before. People kept telling me you've got to go to this church, there's lots of young people. And I'm like I don't care about meeting young people because they just want to set me up with a guy and I don't want to do the guy thing. So I didn't go. But eventually I did go to this church sitting in the sound school class. There's this cute guy sitting there and something you have to know about Britain is so little that you pretty much know all the Adventist young people there in the whole country. You know because you've gone to camp or whatever. You've met people, so there really isn't anybody new. So now I walk into the sound school class and there's this really cute guy sitting there with his Bible and the teacher starts talking and before the class even gets going, this guy says well, I don't know what the lesson was about this week, but I didn't get a thing out of it. But here's me now on fire for the Lord, really deeply studying everything, and I wish we knew what the topic was, but we knew that was remembers. But anyway, I just totally disagree. I thought this lesson was amazing and gave all my reasons why it was such a blessing to me and that was our first interaction.
Speaker 1:You're wrong. That's your first interaction. I love it so then.
Speaker 2:Then you know, there were used Bible studies and I would see him His name was Paul and I would see with these Bible studies and I found out that he had not been raised Christian and he got baptized about nine months before having gone through a revelation seminar. And I was blown away because the only guys I knew were trying to drag me out of the church, not give up all of that stuff they were dragging me to and actually give it up and come into the church. I was just so blown away by that. What kind of a guy is like that? Because I haven't met one. And so I was very curious and you know I would observe him as he would be praying and talking different things to the Bible studies, and I just kept thinking, wow. And then I was like, but God, I'm going to be a missionary midwife till I die, so don't be doing this guy thing on me now. And so anyway, long story short, he called me up and asked me on a date, and on that same day I got my confirmation that I had had received a call to go to Zambia, Africa, with Adjo to be midwife at that missionary hospital in the bush. And so it all happened on that same day and I know he's told you the story that three weeks later we were engaged. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is about. You Reigns, but you just, you got to get it while it gets. Good, I guess, Like you're just like well, and the amazing. Thing is that my son?
Speaker 2:there who was, was very conservative, very kind of quiet country guy. The day he met Paul, that very next morning, he said that will be my son-in-law. And I'm like daddy, sure and sure enough, by the end of that weekend we had come to that conclusion too. And I'm like God. But I thought, and it was as if he was just saying I know what you thought, but it's OK.
Speaker 1:And interesting. I really like your dad. I do. Just from these first minutes here hearing it, he just sounds like a good old chap, I don't know, like 19 learning how to drive a car or when you're probably 40 learning how to drive a car, just loving his family. He just sounds like a great dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you would have loved him. Yeah for sure. The interesting thing is that on that trip with Paul the first trip to take him home which in which my dad said, carolyn, you're going to Africa in 10 weeks, why are you bringing a guy home? And I'm like, daddy, I don't know. All I know is this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't know either, but, of course, when he met him, instantly he fell in love with Paul and he realized why this guy was so special. And on the way down to visit my parents, they were two hours or so from where we lived. On the way down there, I felt like, ok, there's this guy, he's come into the church from the world, who knows what he's experienced out there, but he's assuming that he's coming into the church. Any girl there is pure, never done anything shameful. And so I've had this huge burden. Lord, before I get any more involved with this guy, I need to share my story because he needs to know, so that if he wants to turn the vehicle around and go back, I would understand that. And so I did. I just poured it all out as we drove and the amazing thing was he was like it's fine, it's your past, we've all got one, it's no big deal. And I couldn't hardly believe that because I lived under this shame. I was for sure that when I would tell anybody that a significant person, that would be that. And he was like, yeah, we've all got a past and then we're moving forward into the future. And I was like, wow, what kind of a guy is this, yeah. So anyway, three weeks later, yeah, we were engaged, praise the.
Speaker 1:Lord.
Speaker 2:But I had made my commitment to Africa and we both felt like I should keep that commitment and I really wanted to. After all, it was my life dream, and so the plan was we'd get married two years later, when I came back from my two year commitment I had made.
Speaker 1:OK, this is kind of a fast forward question, so maybe we can get to it later. But did you feel like still because of the shame in your life that you are making things up to your husband later in life? No, like you owed him something, like he didn't position you like that?
Speaker 2:No, he was so free of any condemnation. It was as if, in his mind, I didn't even need to talk about it.
Speaker 1:That is so beautiful it is. It is. I mean, I wish I would have lived like that because, like now I'm telling a little bit of my story with your story I lived with shame, but then I married a lady who maybe had done worse things than me. So in my shame I'm projecting and I may like I don't think I ever said it, but I felt entitled, that she owed me something. Oh wow, and that leads to trash, like any kind of entitlement, any kind of like, and I didn't, I didn't even know that I was doing this or felt that way because I would. Maybe for a man it's different. Now, obviously Paul was fine. I felt like maybe it's just insecurity. I felt like you know, something was taken from me and yada, yada, yada, and so that leads to just trash.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can. I can see, how that would be.
Speaker 1:You're like that's rough, richard. Well, it's a terrible story.
Speaker 2:It is. Let me interview you, no.
Speaker 1:I'm just in your story and all this stuff's coming up in my heart.
Speaker 2:No, I think he wasn't an insecure person and that probably helped.
Speaker 1:Praise the Lord.
Speaker 2:And in his mind, he, he, he didn't see it as something to be even talking about. It was just yeah, ok, that's you know. I'm sorry that you got so hurt, but now you're not dirty in God's eyes. And maybe if he'd been in the church all his life he would have had a different view of it, because he would have grown up with a whole different culture. But he didn't. He just he was straight in there on fire for God, and so I guess it looked like to me through the eyes of Christ and didn't see that as an issue or anything at all. So after that I was like that was my kind of you know, moving forward flag from God, because in my mind I'm like, well, first of all I got to offload all this and probably that will be the end of it anyway, and then I'll carry on doing my midwifery thing and that will be that. And so when, when it didn't go down that way, I was like, oh, ok, god, I guess you're telling me that I don't have to live this single life After all. That I saw, that I did. Now I didn't go further in that and think maybe I've had a messed up view of God. That's not where I went with that, of course now I see that, but I didn't see that. Then I just moved forward in Wow, praise the Lord. So Went out to Africa. You know I had never flown before I was 25. Had we're engaged, but I was very committed to this and I never, never, stepped foot in an airplane before. So now to go on Zambia Airlines. And the joke was that we were. We'd seen the number of this airline and we're like, oh, as we came up to the airport, oh, I wonder if that's the one I'm going to be on, where there only was one. Zambia didn't have more, didn't know that, but anyway. So going out there was a real eye opener. But when I say I had a really strong faith, though I didn't understand the character of God as I do now, but what I did understand, I had a strong faith in his love and his watch care, because crazy things went down and could have, could have. You know, I could have lost my life multiple times out there and God watched over me. But for sure, once I got there I realized I'm a crazy girl. Why am I leaving this cute guy behind? Who's brand new Adventist, who plenty of other girls are going to see his new one, the block, and now I would have left him for two years. That was like, oh, that was crazy to do, but anyway, I got real sick out there. After a couple of months I started getting malaria the type that is, the fatal type. There were people dying all around me of malaria. They would come in from the bush and they would be on anything you could do for them when they would get into the hospital. And I started getting it and I would have blood tests and it was the Falsi Power and type malaria which is the real nasty one and none of the other missionaries had had it. And they couldn't understand why I did. And I was taking all the stuff you're supposed to take to not get it. And finally the doctor came up with you know your love sick. That's why you're getting so sick, so why don't you go home and marry him and bring him back? And I remember making this phone call that the Adventist Hospital was really poor, a very you could Adventist Hospital. You can Google it, it's where in the bush and it's a really. I want a real missionary, not some big city now in the midwife. I wanted real, you know the real deal. No power half the time, no phone most of the time. So I had to go to the Catholic Mission a few miles away to use their phone to call my fiance and hope of getting a line through to tell him I'm so sick. They want me to come and we get married. What do you think? So anyway, of course he was really sad. I was so sick, but over the moon that I was coming back. We were going to get married early, so he and his mom basically organized the whole wedding. I didn't really have anything to do with it. By the time I got back, trying to get out of the country, it was two weeks before the wedding. So anyway, we got married, it was wonderful and. But then we were back out there two weeks later and I had seen a doctor in London at the Tropical Diseases place and he's like you need to take this stuff and now you won't get malaria again.
Speaker 1:Was he right.
Speaker 2:No, no, he wasn't. He wasn't, he was very wrong. So after three more months I'd had malaria like seven times. My spleen was twice the size it should be. Your spleen shouldn't be palpable when it was Homeversely, it was all the broken down blood cells that get destroyed by the malaria. It was, the spleen couldn't handle it, and so you know you got to get out of there. Yeah, the experience out there was absolutely everything of my life dream and being able to do and to be so close to God, because there was nothing else. Often there was no doctor and you were in an emergency situation bringing your baby into the world and all there was was prayer and you just prayed like crazy and God came through and it was just an amazing, exhilarating experience to feel like you were really doing something and even though I didn't understand the gospel and I didn't really understand the character of God, I felt like all that trash from years before was so swept away by I know it sounds terrible all the good I was now doing you made up for it.
Speaker 1:I was making up for it Like God. You see me out here getting my spleen. Can I be forgiven? Now, dad go.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, my hubby, he definitely saved my life in this situation because he had seen me, this bubbly, voluptuous girl that he'd fallen in love with, and now I was barely functioning, still trying to do my job there, but very, very functioning, and he finally said this is not okay. And he ran it. This is a miracle. He got a phone line out from our hospital to London to that doctor and managed to get ahold of him. He was a Christian guy, this doctor, and he said we're going to go pray about this over this weekend and we'll tell you what to do on Monday and we're thinking we might never get another fine phone line out in the next six months. You know we might not achieve that. Anyway, he did and he called and he said no, she's got to get out of there as soon as possible, this is going to kill her if she stays there. And so that was what we had to do. We, literally, within a few days, packed up everything, put it in the banana boat and head in out to Lusaka, because we were way, way way out in the bush. And that was my dream, kind of broken, because you know, it was my life dream as a child. But later God showed me that. You know, I didn't tell you how long you would go there, for you did get your dream, but I think I've been paying for it ever since, with health, unfortunately. But I don't hold that against God. That's just part of the journey, but sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, God is not putting that on you.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Sin is in the world, you know no that's right.
Speaker 2:So I was disappointed. We came back and there were like, ok, we're newly married, we've been married for oh, about eight, nine months I guess. And like now, what do we do? We've both of us been always been very go for it in our own ways, and so, you know, the go for it was the all out be a missionary type go for it. Now it was like we're back here, so what do we do now? And so we started reading different books, like Ministry of Healing, to try and get my health back, and we said, ok, everything we read in this book that we're not doing, we're going to start doing from this day forward. So we just started getting to the doing stage of life in reforms.
Speaker 1:Was there a mixture of we're doing this to be healthy and also we're doing this for spiritual growth?
Speaker 2:I think at first it was to be healthy and then somehow it shifted into spiritual growth. I think it was like oh well, we don't know what to do now. We're not missionaries, but we can do something here. So we'll do this, we'll clean our life, but we'll whatever we can do. And right in the midst of all of that, somebody introduced us to independent Adventism and Adventist ministries that were coming over from the US to the UK, and so we were kind of primed, ready to go, because here we were, we just had to let go of our mission, if you will, as missionaries. And now it's like we're ready for a new mission, and so that became our mission just living that life, adopting all of those reforms. So we went through. We went to eating twice a day, don't make sure fruit and veg, no oil, no chocolate, of course you know got rid of my pants, that I was wearing only skirts.
Speaker 1:My hubby- Get rid of those pants.
Speaker 2:Get rid of those pants?
Speaker 1:Why were you getting rid of the pants?
Speaker 2:Oh, because the speaker came over and he was talking about I think it's Deuteronomy 225 or 522, where it talks about men wearing women's clothing, wearing women's abomination, and then he preached that and at the time, just understanding our hearts, we didn't understand it, as I'm going to do all these things to get my way to heaven. It was just a whole. We didn't know there was a whole lot more to our Christian experience than what we thought. And as we looked around us, you know there weren't many other people committed to go out and be missionaries. Most people were just doing the run of the mill thing go to church once a week, and that was about their lot. And we wanted more than that and we hadn't seen anything that was more than that. And now here were all these preachers coming with oh there's this, you could be doing this and doing that and move to the country. And you know, my hubby stopped wearing a belt on his jeans and wear suspenders and all of this stuff. So we did it all, and some on top of that, because in our minds, if a little bit is good, a whole lot more has got to be even holier. Right, and somewhere at that point we began to equate it with not that we ever said this, but in our minds it began to equate with huh well, if I'm doing this and this, I am one step closer, and then, before you know where you go, you start looking down at others that aren't doing that and you judge yourself is one step above. And that's kind of where we were in that whole independent conservative thing.
Speaker 1:And yeah, holiness is not a level. You're not more set apart for God. You are either set apart for God or you are not set apart for God, and you are set apart for God because of Jesus Christ Right. Like. Jesus Christ is your holiness. If you live in him and he lives in you, you are set apart. Now, because you're set apart, you do not do the things that the pagans do the way you used to live. This is what Paul says. But it's because you are set apart that you don't do those things, not so that you're more set apart. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, definitely, and I think you know it's part of the culture I grew up in. I mean, when I went to nursing school, just to go back real quickly, when I went to nursing school there was a little Christian Bible study group of nurses there and I was blown away that I was the only Adventist. But I grew up thinking there were no other Christians, that anybody else that was an Adventist wasn't Christian. And so I had a close girlfriend. We still even I was 18, I'm 16 now and she lives in Canada and we still keep in touch from time to time. And after all those years and she was I don't know what denomination she was, but anyway she was Christian and at first I was pretty, pretty nervous about being around her because I might get, you know, messed up somehow.
Speaker 1:I thought people that weren't Seventh Day Adventists were going. They weren't going to make it. Oh no, most definitely not, Definitely not.
Speaker 2:So then, going forward not having understood even at that point, really not really digesting that that wasn't how it was. Now going into this new realm of Adventism for us, we threw ourselves into it 100%, you know, and you end up end up having no friends because well, they don't eat this way, so I don't want to go around their house to eat, and you know they don't dress that way, so that's kind of awkward, so I won't hang out with them. And you end up just the two of you, and that's where we were at. And it's like whoa, this is, this is hard. But you kind of think, well, I'm doing the holy things, so I guess hard is what I have to have, you know, absolutely At some point in that I think you know, at some point in that era, when we were in our first couple of years of marriage, got back from Africa first couple of years, somebody gave me the book Cold Forge and Ministry and at that time I had come back from Africa, gone back to school to do the next kind of thing that you would do after being a midwife, kind of in public shelves, and was too sick to do it, so I had to quit. So now I'm sitting at home not sure what I'm going to do next, and somebody gives me this little book and I start reading it and I'm like, oh so, if you understand the mindset, we just want to be doing for God, somehow, some way, whatever. Now I'm reading Cold Forge and Ministry. So of course I came to the conclusion I need to get out there as a Cold Forge, and so that's what I did. And I called Paul up at work one day and I said guess what I just did? And he's like what did you do? I said I just sold a great car. Where I see he's like, oh, you did, there'd been none of the two by two or any of that. They hadn't read that. So I'm going solo and after a few weeks of this he's like I don't want to miss out. And so, basically, long story short, he gave up his job and we both went full-time Cold Quarters, which in England, is you're going to be broke forever more because Christianity is not as prevalent as it is over here and so nobody is as interested as they are over here. And you might think it's rough here, but it's really rough there. And we were not selling the big, expensive books that would get us a big income. We were selling that steps to Christ for a dollar. Oh, you can't afford a dollar, we'll have it anyway. That was kind of how we were doing it. So we were super, super broke yeah, amazingly broke Didn't even know sometimes how we would get home in the vehicle because we had no money for gas to put in the vehicle. But we were doing for God. So we were doing all our reforms. We're now living a travel trailer and lived in it for six years whilst we were doing cold ordering. And then it got into all these people who wanted Bible studies and we were living in a little town called Lutterworths John Wickliffe, you might remember where it connects Lutterworth to. That's where we lived and the people that lived there wanted Bible studies, and so we ended up with like 13 Bible studies and these just weren't. You know, I come and drop off the list and I pick it up next week. This is in the house doing the study for three or four hours with each of these people and eventually, when they got to the Sabbath, all these different families are like, well, we want to worship on Sabbath. And we're thinking, well, we'll take you 30 minutes away to the nearest town where there's a church. And they're like no, no, no, we want to worship here in this town. And we're like whoa. So anyway, long story short, we ended up becoming church planters in that little town, out of which a couple of people were baptized, and we're doing all of this stuff, doing, doing, doing. I'm feeling pretty good about ourselves. I have to be honest, you know. I know that other people felt pretty good about us, so I'm sure God did yeah, right. And it was around that time that another ministry came over and they took a different shift. It wasn't just don't eat these things, don't wear those things, don't think these things, don't watch that stuff, whatever it was, it was another spin on it and that was bringing it into the practical godliness in the home and how that affects your marriage and how you're going to raise your kids and you know homeschooling and all the rest. And we didn't have kids at the time when we first met this ministry but we were like again we're looking for the next thing because we just want to do to. You know, work our way to heaven, I guess. Yeah, do to be. So we adopted all of this and we started, you know, looking at how to move to the country and you know, just just, yeah, we haven't got kids yet, but when we do, this is how we're going to raise them. They'll be on a schedule and all these wonderful things that we'll do, that we'll do. You understand that word being in there. So we're now we've now kind of shifted, I guess, a step holier from that original group to now adopting these things. And right in the thick of all of this, my dad got lung cancer and as a child I've said to you I always had a fear that I would lose him somehow, I think. And I used to think it was because, well, maybe, god, you know I'm too close to him and I'm depending upon him, so you're going to take him out of my life. And when he got lung cancer, I, you know, I was nearly 30 when he got lung cancer and I had moved on from that crippling fear as a child, something might happen to him. But of course it was still a horrible thought that we might lose him. And you know, I was particularly close. There were difficult relationships in my life at that time. Paul was trying to process those and wasn't really able to help me. But I could take it to my dad and I knew he wouldn't look down on anybody, but he would give me perspective and help me to understand what I was up against and the fact that as a people please, it seemed like I just could never do enough to please in certain relationships. And he really helped me to process that. And so after 18 months he died of lung cancer. He was 61. I was 30. And it was a huge loss in multiple ways in my life. I wasn't mad at God. Some people thought I would be mad at God. I was. I knew deep down that God had him, that he had me. I didn't know why he allowed it, but I knew that he didn't play games with us. I knew enough about his character in that way that he wasn't just, you know, missing me around. He there was a purpose. I didn't understand that he was why he allowed this and but it was. Yeah, it was a deep, another dark kind of moment for me as a child, as a young person. Right around that point, and I think it was either just before he died or just after, and Paul and I we kind of put on hold our ministry. Paul was actually working some as a contractor as well, just to financially keep us above and at that point all the contract work died down. I said we just had the ministry work we were doing and so we would cram all the Bible studies into the weekend and then we would go two hours to my parents to help take care of my dad and that was kind of what we did back and forth for six months basically toward the end of his life until he passed and somewhere in right in that end of his life. What if my dad's favorite books were Steps to Christ and he'd given me a leather band copy? He and my mom are given given poor I leather band copy of Steps to Christ and I find myself reading there in there again, and I was reading about David and Psalm 51. And I don't really know what happened. But both Paul and I had this new revelation of the gospel that we hadn't seen before and it was like creating me a clean heart and we felt like that. We prayed the prayer and God had done the deed and honestly I don't know what washed that away. I think it was the busyness of life and all that came after. But we lost that and I would ever know. And then he looked back and think we had something and I believe now it was just a glimmer of the gospel because we've been doing all the stuff we've been doing before, even being a missionary. You know the surgeon out there. He was going off into the bush to give Bible studies to people and I remember thinking why would he do that? But why would he be doing that? He's a surgeon, he's here to do surgeries. I was the midwife. I'm here to deliver babies. Never even crossed my mind. I was there to share the gospel, which is kind of wild. But I think we just had little glimpses here and there had no clue really that we were living pretty much devoid of the gospel, didn't even know that the gospel was more what the happy clappy Sunday churches did and we've moved on from that, you know.
Speaker 1:I think that we think that the gospel is all of it. Like when someone says do you know the gospel? We're like well, what do you mean? Do we mean like the Sabbath is the seventh day? Or do you mean like the good news that we can live healthy, or like we don't know that the gospel is actually, that he has brought us from death to life in Christ and we are now free from sin? We don't think about it. We think that it's all of it. And so if it's all of it, then it's kind of none of it. It's not like a one particular thing. Because if I asked you back then, do you know the gospel? I think of course you would say of course.
Speaker 2:I would say oh, you're right, there was that. And then I would get into what I'm doing now and it's almost like well, yeah, I mean gospel was yeah, Jesus died for my sins, right, okay, now let's move on to making sure I don't mix my fruit and my veg.
Speaker 1:And that's half of the gospel. The other half is that you died with him, and that's the part that we don't really go into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure. What were you going to?
Speaker 1:say, you said I think you're talking about their fruits and veg.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It's it's, it's, it's, it'll come back. Yeah, if it's meant to, it'll come back. But one thing is I know for sure to that point we had a deep faith, and when you go through any kind of a trial, it strengthens your faith, and losing my dad was a big, big trial, and for both Paul and I. He was very close to my dad too, and so it was a big trial and I think when you go through that kind of a saying, your faith is strengthened. But I can honestly say I was no more certain of would I see my dad again. Not because I lacked faith that he would be there. I wasn't sure if I would, and so I think in my mind I wanted to do even more good, right things so that one day, hopefully, I would see him again and I would make it. But it wasn't like I never see him. Because, it was like, as long as I'm faithful and there was always that kind of question mark over would I be doing enough They'll be viewed as faithful. So that was just kind of where that was at. We, as a result of this new practical understanding of the gospel, if you will, that we were now gaining in terms of what you're doing in your life, we were seeking to find a country home. Couldn't find one in England. We were stony broke. Houses in England are very expensive, and even more so now. But we ended up, through a number of providential leadings, moving to the Republic of Ireland, which is the little island straight across, and bought this little cow shed on two acres. It was a little cottage, a hundred-year-old cottage, but the cows had lived in it and it was about 18 inches thick with dried cow poop. And by the time we actually purchased it, went and looked, found it. By the time we purchased it I was 20 weeks pregnant with Hannah. That was not on the plan. We were going to move there. My health was still recovering from Africa. Get our little hirings with the roses around the door and then we would probably have our kids. Well, two surprises later now we have two kids. Wish we praised the Lord for, because I think if you had them, you know anyway yeah, these things haven't changed we probably would never have come to the conclusion. We were holy enough to raise children. We'd read child guidance, this like wow, how are you going to do this stuff? We obviously aren't good enough for that yet, and so I don't think we ever would have come to that conclusion. So I think God kind of overrode what had been working well for eight years, so that actually we ended up Seems like he's overriding a lot of stuff in your life.
Speaker 1:You're like never going to get married, never going to have kids, or he's just like or he's never any time soon. Yeah, and he's like nah, I got you.
Speaker 2:And you know I love God for that it's like, okay, I get it over now and then you're going to override, unless that's all good with me. So we moved to Ireland to this little cottage. People thought we were absolutely crazy. There were a lot of people that didn't know what to do with us back there in the UK and when we moved and we didn't show many people the pictures because they were awful of this little house inside, most people thought we were nuts. But the amazing thing was I struggled with my health ever since Africa and you know this is like six years later or so, eight years later actually and my health absolutely boomed. I've never felt so well and I know pregnancy can do that to ladies, but I think it was a lot of. It was the stress. There was no stress. I mean there was the stress of not knowing a single person, having no power, no water, no phone, no, no anything on this, two acres but a cow shed and for 20 weeks pregnant and getting there and having to go down the village and find somebody with a hose that we can actually get water until we had a well drilled, and knowing only one Irish farmer whose language was. Every other word was an F word. But you know, he was a godly man and if it wasn't for him I don't know how we would have survived those first few months, because if we needed something, he knew somebody and next minute they were there. They were coming to help us with all kinds of stuff and then, of course, 98% Catholic there. So it was. Everybody was in mass on Sunday and all the tractors were lined up outside church. That's awesome, but it was. It was an amazing experience and during that time, as I said, we had our two babies, who got this beautifully restored cottage. My hubby started a computer business and then the ministry that we had gotten to know, that was sharing a lot of the practical stuff, reached out and asked if we would like to come to America and for Paul to be their general manager. And then at the time, initially I was not impressed because I thought this was my dream home till Jesus came. And I'm living the dream in this beautiful little cottage, this all been restored and I've got two precious little children and we've got a great little life going on. I never thought that God was going to ask us to leave it, but something I don't know if I've even put this anywhere, but something that I've experienced over the years then and several times since, is that when your heart is one way and you aren't wanting to move forward in a way that God's asking, if you ask him, he will change it, and I've experienced that miracle multiple times over and it was there and then in that situation I'm like God. I don't want to leave this. This is my dream, I don't want to go there, but he changed my heart and by the time we got to leaving, my hubby was like huh, we're doing the right thing. And I'm like I am full bore, I'm like a complete miraculous turnaround in my heart and I've seen it multiple times since then. So I know that he he's well able to do that and he did that in that situation. And so, you know, we moved in the year 2000, the beginning of the year, february time, in the year 2000,. We moved over here to Montana and it was a huge privilege, I mean a wonderful place to live, great place to raise your children and, you know, great opportunity being involved in ministry. We were so sure that this is where God had put us. I'm sure he did lead us here in that way. You know, as you become involved in ministry, of course there's even more do's and don'ts and that was part of our life now and our life was in. We described it as the Goldfish Bowl. So here you are in family ministry. At first it was just Paul, I was back home raising the children and doing some of the behind the scenes, you know, putting CD cases together and you know all that kind of stuff that they would take out on the road when the other families would go. And you know, several families came and went and I'm saying that so that there's a lot of people who know I'm not naming names. I have no intentions of doing anything to hurt anyone. But saying families came and went means people don't have to nail any particular family in their minds. But anyway, eventually, around about 2003 or 2004, we were asked to speak and travel with the ministry, and I'm a very introverted person so that was very much not my normal thing to do. Right. But God had put it on my heart that we were going to get asked that question months before it happened. And I remember saying to God I don't want to do that. And he said but I'm going to be asking you to do that. And I said, ok, then if I'm going to do that, I need to share something that nobody else is sharing, because why would I come out and say all the same stuff as everybody else? What would be the point of duplicating it all? And so here we were in a story member sitting there when we were asked by some of the ministry families would we share our testimony? And I instantly had this how am I from God? It's like well, nobody else can share your testimony, only you can do that. And I said to God, only if it's something that nobody else is going to be sharing. And I'm like, ok, I got it. So that was how it started. And then it kind of carried on from there. By the time our kids were four and six, they were one and three. Well, we're done here. But time they were four and six, they were coming along and speaking in the pulpit in certain messages with us, which they did all the way until they both left home when they were in their late teens. So they had a real experience and of course, it's quite an experience for the four and six year old in the pulpit. You do not know what they're going to say.
Speaker 1:Quite quite. My parents are great. You're sitting there like oh my God.
Speaker 2:Then they were turned. When it's like now, whatever you do, don't say this, and one of them would be like oh, I thought you said, whatever I do, make sure I say this, it's all good, very humbling. But in so, the ministry life was a lot of travel, but also trying to live the country life. And you know, when you're looking way out in the country because the further out you are, the holier it gets and you live way out you put in your own word you got your wood stove, you've, you know you're kelling all your fruits and your veggies. Of course you got your garden, your homeschooling and traveling. All these times in ministry it was an awful lot and I didn't realize how much it was taking out of me. But it was, and because of my people, cleanser, conflict avoider personality, or whether that was my personality or whether that's just what I adopted through all of those years of shame and just trying to cope with it. But what would end up happening is inevitably there would be misunderstandings and I would smooth it over and say no, no, no, no, this and that, and I would just, you know, and then everybody'd be happy and we'd go along. But I was carrying that weight. I didn't realize how much it was pressing down on my shoulders. Not that God put it there, but it was what I was picking up and thinking I had to carry that so a lot of that season these kind of things were going on and a lot, of, a lot of the shame if we didn't perform right. That I felt I was deflecting onto the children. And so you know I would say to them well, you know, everybody's looking to see whether our family is really living what we preach and so the way they're going to look, they're not looking at me, they're looking at you. So if you make these different choices, then you're letting the ministry down and I am so sorry that I did that and I apologize multiple times to the children, but I was feeling under so much pressure. That's the pressure I was just putting on down the line, so to speak, on the kids.
Speaker 1:And of course, I used to raise my kids for me and not raise my kids for them, like and I always tell the story, like if they're messing up, like it's the children's story and John John's up front and he's a rascal, and so he's like he pushes somebody. I would discipline him because I was embarrassed that he did that, rather discipline him for that. He needs to learn that he can't do that. Now it might look the same from the outside, but the motive is completely different, and one of it is like you've taken it personally and so then your kids end up becoming your idols in some weird way, or they're the judge, they're the determination on who you are and your family.
Speaker 2:Well, and for us, we put the pressure on our children because you know we're up here saying you know, this is how you're supposed to live as a family, and if that doesn't reflect in their behavior, then it looks like what we're saying isn't legit and it can't be done. And so you know you've got to live a certain way and make sure you do a certain thing, and we were just putting that on them. I know that was a lot of pressure, and it was pressure because I was feeling pressured that our family needed to be looking a certain way, so that it was, you know, not shaming the ministry. And so, yeah, shame was just a word that was all around the place, not that I ever knew it until about six months ago, God really taught me. So it's kind of an interesting thing. And in that season as well, I just wanted to add that there were times when people would come to us in ministry because you know, I mean we're now, we're a big deal. Now we're traveling 15 times a year, you know, multiple retreats and church meetings, seminars, and into Europe as well, back to the homeland. We're doing a lot of travel. So you kind of you can't help it. You're going to end up feeling pretty good about yourself. And every so often somebody would say to us something along the lines of have you ever thought about preaching the cross? Or why don't you preach Jesus and him crucified? And I used to be like what? I mean, what's the heaven to help us? What's that gonna do with it?
Speaker 1:I said I gotta do this.
Speaker 2:I know that is so awful, but it's like in my mind I thought well, we all know about that. We're talking about how to get your kids on a schedule and what to do when they don't do their homeschool. You know, we're talking about the knitting grids of how you get them to do their chores and the things they're supposed to do. So, yeah, I mean, other people can preach about the cross, but we're doing this not realizing that if we could have taken a step back and realized there's a whole nother dimension that we are missing entirely. And you know there may be those that will hear this or that will think back to those days and disagree with that, and that's fine. But I can tell you, in our experience at the time, we were like the gospel. What's that gonna do with it? So you know I don't wanna paint it like it was all bad. I mean, there was a lot of really good times back then and you know we did a lot of things as a ministry personal things as well as ministry things and I definitely even though I'm an introvert and the pulpit isn't where I feel the most comfortable yet when I've got a burden on my heart, I could be up there and share and feel complete freedom in the Lord to share, which is not who I am. I mean, when it comes to a children's story at church I don't do those, I'm too stressful but I could stand up and share something that was real burden on my heart, that I had, and so you know there was definitely a sense of fulfillment in being able to do that. And then a lot of the time was spent, for me at least, in what we would call counseling or coaching. Moms would come with a difficult child or some kind of issue and they would want to just pour their hearts out. And of course I had still young children. So I found the only way for me to do that at the events when we were at retreats and things was to do it later in the evening when my children were in bed and I was because I was, you know, and there were. There's a lot of things we would change in how we raised our children, but some of the things we wouldn't would be how closely we guarded their hearts during this time, because when you've been in ministry that long, you see so many wrecked situations where children got involved in the wrong associations and paid very heavily for that in their lives, and so we were determined that would not happen for our children. So I wasn't going to be off counseling with somebody here and my children just let to run. You know who knows what with who knows who. So you know we would put them to bed and then I would go out in the night, basically to these moms who'd put their children to bed, and maybe up until you know midnight, whatever. And then for in the morning I was getting up because I needed to get up in time to whatever presentation I was part of for that day, go over those notes I always did for every presentation as if I was giving it in my mind, and then, once I'd done that, get the children out. Maybe they had to go over their presentations, and so I was burning the candle at both ends big time and then being really physically drained during the day because I don't know if you're aware, but when you're an introvert and you are repeatedly put into an extrovert environment, you either shrivel up because you just can't handle it and you just kind of sink, or you become what I would call pseudo extroverted. It's just your way to survive it. So you kind of become this lively, extroverted talk to everybody in person. It's not really who you are, but maybe that's just what I did because of my personality with people pleasing. It's just what I did, and so. But people would be like you know, when we would talk about personality types, they'd be like you're never an introvert and I'll like you don't know me. If you knew me, you would know that I am very much. We did the test. I was 100% on the introvert scale at that time, but I could, for the sake of the people and for God, who I thought was my best way to serve him, I would adopt this way of being when I was with the people because it was more comfortable to them, and read being this kind of awkward, kind of don't know if I really want you to talk to me person. I would take a deep breath and like here we go and I was saying but I would suffer for it afterwards. My health would really get hammered as a result of it and I would come back to it and be totally wiped out and just about get back again on track, ready to the next. And we just did this for you know. So by this point around about 2010, my health started to re-collapse and we didn't know what was going on. We talked to different doctors. I assumed it was the stress I was under Around that time. Also, we did a 26 series on 3ABN as a family and that was very intense and again my health would just crash. After stuff like that, it was like I could do it in the moment, but I was drawing off of what we would call vital force. Basically, something from within was being drained out, whereas for my healthy who's extroverted he was coming back charged. And that's kind of how it is for the extrovert they get charged by it, we get depleted by it. But if you do that year after year after year, eventually you're gonna pay for that. And you know, I started to feel that. And so somewhere around 2010, 2011, somewhere in there, we realized we were gonna have to make some changes. But in our minds we had left our homeland or Europe, you know, emigrated here for the purpose of this ministry and we loved it. This was really who we were. If you asked me who I was, my identity, I would say I'm a speaker for this ministry and that's what I do, and not really understanding that identity had a very different meaning at that time and so we didn't see what else we could do. This is what we were here for. We loved it, everybody loved us, et cetera. So we just carried on and then eventually it got to a point where I really wasn't able to function well, still homeschooling, still doing all the country in the middle of nowhere at night, and we realized we were gonna have to start cutting back on show. Well, maybe if we cut out three or four events in a year, maybe that would give me enough bounce back time. I would be okay by the end of that year of cutting out several events and not attending. I said to my her, but it'll be less stressful for me to go to all of them because of the internal stressors that were going on were worse than what it was doing to my physical body being there. The emotional stressors the personal stressors, and so that was the decision that we made and, as I said earlier, I would smooth things over when there are misunderstandings. Now, some of this, what it was about me, was hard for me to smooth over because I needed this downtime. But anyway, that was kind of what I did. But things started. I don't really know, I can't really put a year on it, but around, I would say, around 2014, something like that. 13, 14,. The stress starts to get really intense and our children were old enough that they could pick it up and they kept saying to us, especially Hannah mommy, you have got to get out of this, this is killing you, you can't do this. My health had really suffered, I was getting a lot of pneumonia and just a lot of infections, and they kept saying, mommy and daddy, but Hannah would say to me mommy, you've got to get out of this, you can't keep doing this. And I would say but what do we do? We came here for this. This is our purpose for being here in this country and this is our life now. So what else can we do? And we love it, apart from the fact of what it does to my health. We love the people and that was our focus, not the internal struggles that were going on. Our focus was the people, and that kept us going. But we kind of got to a breaking point. Breaking point I don't remember which year it was, I was trying to remember earlier, maybe it was 18, I'm not sure but we had internal meetings within the ministry were getting more and more intense and more and more misunderstandings, and I think trust was being lost, and once you start doing that, it's over really. To be honest, not that we understood that at the time, but I was on high alert, miss, smooth it all over and get everybody happy mode, and so that's what I was doing, over and over, and it was getting a really intense point. We had this one meeting where there were some very difficult interactions, and I didn't sleep at all that night because I was so stressed by it, and one of the things I would do whether I would write something or say something sometimes I would send a card that just said this is not what was meant. This is what was meant, and then everybody would be happy and we'd all carry on our marriage life. And so on this particular occasion, it was the most intense that it had ever been, and so I didn't sleep all night at a terrible headache. We lived a 25 mile round trip from the post office and I drove on the interstate to the post office to get a card so that I could write out and cover all the misunderstandings that had gone down the day before and give it to those that needed it. And I don't think I really told my family so bad, I said physically, but I was driving there and just before I got to the little town you come off the interstate, go over the flyover. And as I was driving over the flyover, one moment I was looking out of the window and I saw a few ducks. I was tuning into birds so I noticed these ducks on this log and a little bit of water. And the next minute I didn't realize I had blacked out completely at the wheel. But the next minute I come to find myself on the opposite lane with a semi coming straight at me.
Speaker 1:Mercy.
Speaker 2:And I just I don't know how I got out of his way I can only assume it was an angel, because I was frozen. Just I didn't know what had just happened, I didn't know how long I had been blacked out, but I was distressed, obviously, and I got so intense that I just lost it there. And so I was very shook, shaken up, as you can imagine, went into town, walked the car, drove all the way home, didn't tell anybody. And then lunchtime, when it came to lunchtime and we were about to have a great over lunch, I said to the family oh, and there's a thanks we need to have. And when I told them they about lost it, they were horrified and they were like oh, my family, you could have been killed. And I hadn't really realized. You know how I do sometimes when you're in it you don't realize, but I did realize then at that point, and so my hubby said that's it, okay. And my kids said you're not driving anymore, no more driving. So then somebody else would drive me to town and my hubby said that's it, we are gonna have to seriously cut back now what we do. And this was the beginning. It was right up before GYC. We were. Literally we had the meeting the next day, we were packing and the day after we were driving out to GYC and I gave the card to those that had been in the meeting there and just before we left and on the way to GYC, we started talking about what were we gonna do to change what was happening. For me and an example of my adrenal glands were so burned out and frazzled just from all the stress and other health issues we didn't know about at the time. But as we were driving on the interstate and we would pass a semi and our semi would come alongside us, I would go like this I would just and I couldn't help it, and my pocket saying what is wrong with you, and my hands would kind of go up into my chest and it was like a fear reaction and I'm like I don't know, I'm not doing it, I can't stop it. And we realized that my stress level had gotten to a point where I just couldn't the slightest thing that would have a little bit of stress. I just couldn't take it anymore. And so by the time we got back from that visit and you know how GYC is get your cold we were all super sick, but we had decided that there were several events we wouldn't be going to and we would send our kids without us, and they were, by this point, I don't know, maybe 14 or 16, 15 or 17, somewhere like that. And so they did. They went to the UK to a retreat, without us. They went to New York. Hannah rented a car for the first time, when she was a very 20, I think and they didn't even let her do it. I'm amazed because they went to these places, because Paul stayed home with me because my health really declined. I well, in all of this, we found out that part of the issue had been Lyme disease and we never knew it. And I had a DNA test that showed it had been there for 20 plus years and we didn't know that's what my body had been up against Along with. We just thought it was the strength of life and my late naturopath said no, no, she said there is something else under all of this that's making you so sick. And she then did. The tests found out that's what it was. But in this situation the stress had gotten so bad that we didn't understand how this works. But apparently Lyme disease can take your hearing out and I started to lose my hearing, didn't know it, we didn't know what was wrong. I had surgeries to try and find out what was wrong and eventually the ENC department said you've got permanent damage to your hearing. It's gonna get worse and the only way to survive it will be hearing aids. And so I started wearing hearing aids and this was now the last year of our time in the ministry. We were now treating the Lyme disease. I was in a pretty bad way, actually, health wise Again. I wasn't doing much travel and I didn't see those we worked with for months and months. I kept asking my hubby when he would go to the retreats and I didn't shower. How's everybody Me and say, oh, everybody's fine, and I wasn't so sure. And so the last time I ever actually seen those we worked with, as soon as I the walk through the door I'm like, oh no, we're in trouble. I knew I've seen the count, you've got to work with somebody for that long and not read the count. And I knew that we were in trouble. And it wasn't long after that. Hannah left home and I know that Paul is shared, and I'm not going to go into the detail of the story, of some of the challenges we had in parenting. But at the time we thought it was particularly our daughter and I know she and her daddy have some pretty rough time there and it was rough on me in the middle of that trying to be the people pleaser, trying to smooth everything over and help everybody to understand what was happening. And finally I said I can't do this either. Super, super stressful. So the day that Hannah left home once and for all it was just a few hours later that we started getting emails that just we realized there's probably no recovering from this, and they were stressful. There was a lot of stress. I tried not to carry it. Eventually my hubby said no, you don't, I don't want you even reading these emails anymore. It was more than I could handle. And so he kind of took that over and long story better left in the past. But to say that we got to a point where, even though we loved what we did, we felt like we were going to have to leave and so I wrote out my resignation and he was going to hand that in and then later write out his resignation. But there was a meeting in which, before you had time to give that, we were told that we were being let go and it was pretty unfortunate and very saddling to us and after all these years of being here for that purpose and working in that way, to have it in that way was pretty rough.
Speaker 1:We didn't feel Did it feel like your identity was stolen? Then Did it feel like, in some ways, like if you're a speaker for an independent ministry and then you're no longer a speaker for an independent ministry?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, it, definitely did. I mean in the immediate time it was. There was a lot of talk going around within those circles and you tend to think when you're in a circle that this is the whole world and you find out that this is just a drop in the bucket of the universe. So, whilst it can seem like everybody is aware of this situation really was just a few people in the big picture of those you know the global picture. But there was a lot of talk, a lot of misinformation that was being shared, things that were like, wow, I wouldn't even have known how to conjure up doing that, let alone have actually done that. But there was a lot of that and we just felt really a burden that was God's issue to deal with. The Lord shall fight for us and we will hold our peace, and so we did. Only if people came to us individually, personally with specific questions did we then share what went down, as far as we could see how it went down. But beyond that, we just left it alone and just before we went our separate ways it had been agreed that we would, because I couldn't travel so much, you know, I was obviously not gonna get my usual salary from that point on. That was perfectly as it should be, but also that we would get more involved in doing some YouTube, a YouTube branch, if you will, of the ministry. And so when we were let go and we're like what do we do now, we both felt like, okay, that was a call, we thought, on our hearts, from God to break out into meeting more people across the globe with this understanding of you know, I was gonna say the gospel. It wasn't the gospel gospel, but it was the gospel according to you know. To this, we felt like we should just move forward with that. So we started up a little ministry called the home place and we started putting out videos. At first it was several times a week. We were putting out videos, not about anything that had gone down, but just continuing on as we would have done, sharing the kinds of things we had, all kinds of. You know, you can go on, Larry, it's on YouTube. There's a website, home place, and that's kind of where we put our focus and we carried on doing that. Of course, eventually it got to a point where it wasn't and we did a couple of seminars as well, retreats, whatever, but it got to a point that we needed more than that to survive financially and it wasn't gonna make it. So my hubby got work she's now just full time and so then we were doing this alongside his work. And then I started working as his assistant, and so now we were doing it it wasn't quite as frequent because we couldn't there's not as much time in the day and then COVID hit, and that was interesting on a couple of levels, because when COVID hit, everybody's ministry went YouTube and we're like, wow, I guess we kind of got a head start on this because we've been going for a while by then. But then, unfortunately, we of course ended up getting COVID. I got it several times over and it really walloped my health to a point where, at this point, I don't remember the last time maybe it was a year ago that we actually did the last video that we did, but we haven't done any in quite a while and we're just kind of. It's just kind of on hold right now. I don't know what the Lord's plan is, but we know for sure traveling at this time is not on the menu. It's like a lot of healing from the past has got to happen. Physically, the mental and emotional part is, I think, dealt with. We have no malice in our hearts toward anyone. I'm sure if we had our time over we would have handled some of all of that differently and even what led up to that probably would have listened to our children and a couple other people saying you can't carry on with this, you've got to get out. Probably would have done that, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:The secret is that you don't know it until you know it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:So, as you asked, what did that do to our identity? It was rough because we both felt like I mean, for my hobby, it was the combination of your identity, but also your identity as a provider. Yeah. And then I'm just 50-something and no work and done the same thing for practically 20 years 18 years and never worked anything else but that in this country. So now what do we do? And it wasn't really a temptation, well, we just have to flee the country and go back to England, because our kids, they don't know anything else. They were one in three when they got brought to this country, so all of their friends, now their spouses, they're all from here. So in our minds it was like whatever happens will happen here and we will continue our life here and so, but yeah, it was rough because our kids flowed the nest. So now my mom rolled, it changed, and that's a big deal for any ladies listening. Well, your kids fly the nest you first. You're like, am I still a parent? Well, yeah, you were a parent and you just do it in a different way. So the kids both flew the nest around that time and now the ministry work is gone, I'm not homeschooling anymore and I honestly came to a pretty dark time of I felt useless. Yeah, who are you? You? know, I didn't feel like I had any kind of identity of anything, I was just kind of nothing. And then it was added to by not necessarily by those that we were working with, but those responses from, by that point, many thousands of people around the world, and the responses to us as a result were pretty sad, and probably there were about five families that actually kept in touch with us and believed there's something had not gone right in all of that.
Speaker 1:And who was God at this point?
Speaker 2:It felt like he was just very quiet. It felt like he was there and I knew he was there. But when I would cry out to him with what do I do now? Who am I now? It felt like he wasn't saying anything and I wasn't angry at him for that. I was just confused, didn't know what my purpose was, trying to figure out what do I do now, which is partly anyway. When you're as parents, when you get an empty nest, you feel a bit like what is my purpose now. So that was natural enough, but it was kind of added to by the fact that the whole other purpose was gone. I think I threw myself into our own little ministry and of course I'm still doing lots of phone counseling, email counseling, whatsapp counseling, all kinds of you know, I call it counseling coaching really is what it was, but a lot of that was still happening. So I think probably I transferred my identity over to that. But there was a big question mark in both of our minds and that was if that's Christianity, what in the world, if what we were part of and how that rolled out and how the knock-on effect of being in church with people that we were part of in that time, who treated it like nothing had ever happened, and we were just like, where is Jesus in this? And that was just our question. And we didn't ask anybody that question, it was just our question personally and we would talk. You know, our relationship was had been fine with our son, but you know there were some bumps with our daughter and that things were restoring nicely with our daughters and our daughter. And you know we would ask her and she said one day, mami, you need to watch the chosen. And I'm like I do. I'm like, well, I've watched stories about Jesus' life before and I think they're okay, they're not amazing, but they're all right. And so I don't know that I did straight away. But finally and I don't know when this was finally I started watching the chosen and I just cried and cried because I saw Jesus that I'd never seen before, and not just because he was being acted out by this guy, and not because every last thing that came out of his mouth was straight out of scripture, but because I saw the person, the love of God, in a way I'd never seen it before, ever. And, as you can understand, I saw all of those years, the shaming, the doubts, everything else. It didn't being let go from that life didn't make us feel less ready to see her maker, and it wasn't. We already knew that. We weren't sure if we were going, so it didn't make that worse. It was just that was just always there in the background, still got to try and make sure I'm doing all the right stuff and hopefully I'll be able to make it. But this somehow, watching the chosen, had an effect that was really deep, and I don't know if I started watching it on my own I think I probably did and then I got full involved in watching it and, of course, as it goes on and on, there were just way more deep emotional responses. As we saw how Jesus dealt with Nicodemus and his compassion is like wow, we hadn't, we hadn't realized that was real. It was just words on a page and it never jumped out to our hearts in a real way before. And so there we were, not knowing who we are even anymore, and I was scared that we might fall away completely from God, because I know people that that has happened to and that you know that would be a really, really sad thing. So and something just to put it's just a little bit back, but in the, in the, at the time when we had left that ministry, we were now part of doing our own thing. People are always seen us in the pulpit, so they'd always seen us in pulpit clones. Now we weren't in the pulpit, we're at home doing the YouTube or walking down the street, and now people got to see that there had been a shift in our standards, if you want to call it that. I wasn't wearing just skirts anymore and that upset a number of people and I got some pretty hateful communications from people who felt like I would be taking ladies to hell with me. Oh, mercy, by being that influence.
Speaker 1:Were you wearing pants?
Speaker 2:I wish I hadn't done all those years. Now I'm just being very vulnerable. Why? Because I'd gained weight and you start wearing skirts. You look like a tent walking down the street and I just did not, couldn't face myself that way, and so I started wearing pants. And now I'm not in the pulpit and still wouldn't, but people were seeing me in a way they never thought I was and we realized that that whole all of those reforms, the diet, the dress they're not wearing, you know, a wedding band or the rest of it it's kind of like it can be taken to become salivational and when it gets to that point you're in big trouble. And there were obviously people that viewed those things as if you aren't doing those, then you're not going to make it to heaven. And if you're a leader or were, and you're seen not doing those things, you have a huge influence on all these other people that you're going to take down with you. So that was kind of sad. Yeah, it didn't make me angry, it just made me sad and I think, as we were kind of moving away from what had happened, we just felt sadder about what had transpired and sadder that we'd had anything to do with influencing people to view God in that way, even though we didn't really know how we viewed God. We just knew that way was not where it was at. That conservative, performance-based adventism was something we did not want to be a part of anymore, and so we were coming out of that but didn't really know where we were going to be honest with you, and didn't know anybody else at that point.
Speaker 1:But you were open.
Speaker 2:But we were open and that's when the chosen came in and instead of it it wasn't. Now we're just into TV and all the rest of it it was. We were going to the Word and realizing it's been saying this all along that this is the God we serve, this is the Jesus, this is the love that he has for us that we had never seen because it was always about what we did. Love wasn't really relevant. Love was what the happy-clappy church has did and, as my brother put it, we were part of the frozen chosen.
Speaker 1:You're not a happy-clappy, you're a frozen chosen. Fix it chief.
Speaker 2:I don't know where that came from, but it was a true of my brother coin and I thought it was really good. It's like yeah, that about sums it up. You know, during that time of identity crisis and all of that, it was very humbling. Sure. And because you're no longer the thing that everybody's coming to hear. You're nobody. In fact, you're worse than nobody, because we went from feeling like we were the thing to we were absolutely tragic Mercy Basically. But then we come to the chosen and then we start falling in love with Jesus all over again, because how can you not? You know when you start and your heart starts to be open to that, and it was August of last year, so we started watching the chosen before that, but I just don't remember when, but it was August of last year my mother was turning 90. She lives in England, so I flew out solo to be with her for a week over her 90th birthday and whilst there, my husband, my brother and I had a lot of very interesting conversations. And I'll just say it I know my brother's going to listen to this and I'll just say it straight up he is streets ahead of us in our spiritual walk. We were the ones thinking we were the holy ones and he really needs to get his act together because he was all into the gospel.
Speaker 1:Weirdo.
Speaker 2:Weirdo, and so we started having some beautiful conversations about the gospel. Not that I could have told you that's what it was. I didn't know what it was. All I knew was all I could say to him is I know what we're leaving behind, I just don't know where we're going, and so he and I will talk to let on that trip about the journey that he'd been on in his life and the journey that Paul and I were now embracing, and it was extremely helpful. And after that, what's?
Speaker 1:his name, ian. Praise the Lord for Ian. You know, shout out to Ian. Yeah, man Shout out to Ian.
Speaker 2:So as I flew home that week after that week, I had a really deep emotional few hours where I cried a lot. Now when I cried I don't make a bunch of noise, it just silently trickles down. And that was pretty much the whole flight of realizing that there was something, I was missing, something big. And I started to take notes on my phone of what I was experiencing and just all these bullet point notes, and right now, every now and then, I'll show them to my hubby. We are so blown away by what God was revealing when I had Can you tell me? one of them. You don't have to.
Speaker 1:No, I can I can sign it for you.
Speaker 2:It's right here. See which one I can pick out for you. There was a number. I mean, the overall sentiment was that God loves unconditionally. And I could. The very first thing, real love, is unconditional. I had seen a demonstration. There's a dimension of my story I'm not getting into. Sure. I don't feel it would be right but, I saw unconditional love flowing out of the hearts of my mother's sisters who were present at her 90th birthday, and it was something I hadn't seen for a very long time and it broke my heart that they were so caring and that was one of the things I wrote down. You know, this unconditional love that I saw coming out of ants, who I hadn't seen in maybe 30 years, long time, long time, but just to and it reminded me of my childhood. That's where they had been, because there was some emotional dysfunction in some family members in my childhood that left me void of feeling nurtured. But to feel that nurture from them was incredible, and so I was writing that down. And this might sound crazy, but I wrote down there that we have two little dogs merit. Once at that time we had one, and I just wrote down that Lucy, my little dog, seems to be able to show me God's love in a way that a lot of humans can't. She doesn't care whether I have a bad hair today, she doesn't care that I've gained weight, she doesn't care, she just loves me anyway and will literally love me till the death, so to speak. And I know that those creatures are given to us of God to reveal to us part of who he is, and so this was just what I was writing down. I wrote down frozen shows and not unconditional love, more. If you do it the way I think you should.
Speaker 1:If you listen to Jonathan's episode, his first episode, it comes up to this moment where he's just like God loves me, and that idea changes his life. And it's one thing for me to say God loves you, but it's a completely other thing for you to be loved by God for you to receive that love, and it's just like God loves me. And that changes the game.
Speaker 2:And I think at that point I was half-digesting God loves me and half-grieving that I hadn't felt that. That love to me always seemed like it came with conditions, not from my husband I don't want to ever give that, he's been the greatest gift to my life of all time but from others, some others. It felt like love was it came with a price tag, and as long as I fit and could pay the bill, I was loved. But if I couldn't, I wasn't. And so I was coming to realize God loves me like that. But I was also grieving. Oh, that's why I haven't seen it, because I haven't felt it, because I haven't experienced it, and so that's why I was just writing all these things down, finding a new view of God. His love is not based on my performance. That was just another of the things I wrote. Again, really, this was way ahead because we hadn't really ever talked about that, the two of us. But this was just what was kind of gushing out of my heart. Anyway, I can leave it there now with that that was, and there's a few other things too, but the basic sentiment was that so we came back, I came back that was August we actually moved house and then at the end of the year around this time it's just before Christmas we went to Arizona. We have a little fifth wheel. We did had a fifth wheel down there and we were going to snowbird it down in Arizona and by that point there were so many things kind of buzzing around our heads and Hannah was telling us little bits of this and little bits of that, and we've been washing with chosen and we decided you know, we're going to not go to church while we're there, however many weeks, months it is, we're there, we're just going to stay home and figure out where do we fit in this grand picture of everything? Because we're not ready to throw the towel in on God, that's clear. So we're not going anywhere. But we need to know where is God and who is God and where do I fit into everything? So we did, we went to Arizona. We were earnestly seeking.
Speaker 1:God didn't call that going to Arabia.
Speaker 2:That is what we call it, paul. And I said Paul went to Arabia, I went with him. So we're coming to the beginning of the year now and I'm like, okay, because of that love revelation, if you will. As I flew home, I said, okay, god, I'm going to get a new Bible. And because my other one had been marked up with all the things that I needed to do and I think these people have said this to you before, but we did understand it we started to see that we had put ourself in the center of the Bible and it was all about I, what I'm going to do here and I'm going to do there, and we became the center of every story and it's like wow. But when you start seeing Jesus and you realize that he is the genuine center of every story, you realize where you fit into, that it definitely isn't in the center. And so my Bible had been always marked up with all the things I was supposed to do, blue being obedience. It was full of blue and I decided I'm going to get a new Bible and I'm going to mark it up with two things Every place that God's love is demonstrated, from Genesis through, and every place where I get to respond to that love. And I started doing that and I was blown away by God's love in Genesis. It's like wow in creation. I just have never seen it before because I'd never read the Bible like that before. So I'm getting really excited and I'm sharing with Paul and he's getting into listening to this guy I don't even remember his name Some guy on the book of Romans, and we're comparing notes and sharing back and forth and don't really know where this is going. But we're just going somewhere, it seems. And right around that time it was Passion Conference in Atlanta and Hannah was going to Passion Conference. She was going to go with a friend, but then they didn't work out. So now she's this little girl it was five foot nothing is going to Passion Conference solo and usually she would. You know if she was driving somewhere, she would put her vehicle in the back of the Walmart parking lot and that's where she would sleep. And we're like, oh no. So we saw her daddy say sweetheart, here's the money, get yourself in hotel so that you've got somewhere to sleep. And but we want to hear all about Passion. So she would, she would FaceTime with us while she was there and we were watching all of us all the presentations of Passion and we had, we had appreciated Louis Giglio from years and years ago when indescribable was, and we just appreciated. Somehow he touched a chord and so, you know, I'd listened to him on and off over the years. But now we watched all the Passion Conference stuff that was aired on on TV there and we're having lots of conversations with Hannah about it all, and this is where it kind of gets crazy. You know, I had always had this view that contemporary Christian music was of the devil and back in the day when Evie and Sandy Patty was the thing, I had shredded my cassette tape so that nobody else would be influenced by such heresy.
Speaker 1:That Sandy Patty was heresy. Oh, my goodness, what about Steve Green? Was he the Mark of the Beast? Oh, that was before his time.
Speaker 2:Like Sandy Patty. So that was the conservative date. I mean the super duper, when we were doing everything, everything.
Speaker 1:It's Del Delker or nothing else, nothing else.
Speaker 2:So you know it was the him straight up or nothing else basically.
Speaker 1:Wait, hold on, not even Del Delker. No, oh, my goodness. Rest in peace, Del Delker. You have a song for a voice.
Speaker 2:So I always had that. I mean, I would hear the occasional Christian song around because how do I like to listen to it. So when she would visit, she would play some of her stuff and I'd be like kind of looking at it out of the corner of my eye, thinking I don't know about that, anyway. So so now we're listening to Passion Conference and of course you're going to get the worship as well Because I'm listening to these words and I'm like Wow, those words are really deep. I'd never listened to the words before. The song that was last year's big hit from Passion was. I witnessed it and I'm like I really like that song and I'm forgetting what I think might be the bad stuff about the music. I'm just zoning in on the words and I'm like, wow, these words line up with what we're learning. I will share this with how. Then she would kind of laugh and she say, see, I told you it wasn't terrible. I'm like, yeah, but I didn't understand it because I never listened to the words and now I'm listening to the words and so so you have the song, so Will I.
Speaker 1:By Hillsong United.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I have, I don't remember all of them.
Speaker 1:These songs. The first time I heard that song and actually listened to the lyrics, I was like these dudes know God. Like, how do they know them? How can they do that? Like, how did they write this? If they don't know them, they have to know him.
Speaker 2:Where are the only people that know God? Right, like, who told them yeah, well, that was how I felt and so it was right at that point. So we're talking early January. Now she gets back from Passion. She had been somewhere in Berry and when you guys said somebody had come out, and so she'd mentioned little bits here and there, but nothing really that big. And anyway, one day she said, mommy, I'm on these Bible studies and I think you'd really like it. Well, we've now gone through a season where there was a rough patch with our daughter, and now this is several years later and we are really connected. Yeah, we'll do it.
Speaker 1:And in my heart.
Speaker 2:Basically, with both of my kids our son as well I always felt like, whatever they're doing, if I can, in good conscience, be a part of that, I will because, I want to be a part of their life. So I don't know anything about what this is all about, but I'm just like I'm reading my Bible about love and you put on my phone the thing on my phone, if you can see, that says love. And Hannah said she got her word for the year and it was believed. And I'm like mine is love, because that's what I was searching for is I want to see God's love. I'm just going to forget the rest and let's just see where God's love is for the time being. And so I get on these love reality Bible studies and we see more discussions and, of course, sheila texting back and forth. So I'm like, whoa, that was interesting. What do you think about this and that? And it was a good one.
Speaker 1:Which ones were you going to? I don't know, who knows. Whatever one.
Speaker 2:There was one at first. It was a Monday, a Monday sometime. I think. There was one that was yours and I don't know if you did the Monday one. Maybe that was yours.
Speaker 1:That is my month, okay.
Speaker 2:And we're in a fifth wheel, so there's no real way for it just to be me. So I would have it on speaker and Paul would be hearing as he was working, and then he would really say anything. He wasn't, he didn't like it, he was just you know. That's just what I'm doing with him. And he got back and so then Hannah and I would chat back and forth, jarring it, and then ask the word, and now I'm starting to share with her man I didn't there was so much of the love of God and Genesis and I'm sharing with her different things and she's you know. Then she starts sending podcasts to me and then I'm like wait a minute, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:What podcast did she send?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was yours. I remember we were at the trailer park. There's a laundromat there and I would put in my earbuds, because I'm an introvert I don't want to talk to people in the laundromat In my AirPods, and I was listening to you and whoever was talking with you about your story of the school you were at and then happened to leave.
Speaker 1:Oh, that.
Speaker 2:Okay, whatever that was, that's what I was listening to.
Speaker 1:That's my second episode on season two of the Deathlight Park.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that's what I was listening to and I remember thinking that's pretty interesting. Oh yeah, he went through some similar stuff that we did. That's interesting. And then there would be these true acknowledges. That I'd be like what.
Speaker 1:Woo Woo. What was the main ones that you were tripping you up?
Speaker 2:Oh, it would be things like when so and so got freedom and I'm like that's, that's, that's not great Right there Somebody getting freedom? Or when did you get saved? Just like what, who? So that kind of those kind of words were a little paralyzing to me. I wasn't throwing it out, I was just like huh. So I went from now I'm pretty much on every Bible study, okay, so whenever there's a Bible study I get all the Nathanas on there, I'll stay on there and then we'll chat some more and you know. And then things started to happen and this was January and there had been some significant relationships that I had been very challenged by, very hurt by and really didn't know how to function through. And Hanna knew about this and she understood and she, she shared there's there's narcissism in this and there's different things going on and I didn't understand that. I started researching that I'm like, oh my word, I see that. But I was praying, obviously, as I've been doing for a long time, but it's not really experiencing any change in my heart. I knew it wasn't about the person or the people I could pray for them, but it was here that needed to change how I responded to that. And the more I was reading about God's love, the more I felt love and compassion for those people. And Hala said to me one day mommy, you're free from that, and I'm like you know, I think it doesn't bother me anymore. It should be bothering me. You can see X, y and Z, and she could see. And she's like I know, is that, does that not bother you? I said no, it doesn't, I don't. It's as if that's not, it's not relevant anymore. It's God's bickers and all of that, and I don't identify as lacking in all of that. And she said, mommy, that is so amazing. That is the gospel working in your life. And from that point on I began to see more and more things happening in my heart that I had never experienced before. And it wasn't because I was trying really, really hard to do it, it was just. It seemed like the more I read about the love of Jesus, the more I experienced it in my heart, and that had never happened to me before. And so now another big one was coming to understand that I didn't need to believe in God. And there was coming to understand that I didn't need to believe lies. Now I'm sure a lot of these things were just snatches here and there on Bible studies. So now pretty much I was on every Bible study. I was working my day around it, my work around it, so that I would be there whenever I could and just kind of grabbing bits here and there. And now Paul is listening to some of the Bible studies and we're talking about all these different things and just Did you hear Hannah's testimony when she testified at Andrew's yeah? So I can literally tell you. I was at the sink, had my iPad with my AirPods in because my hubby was on work call and I'm doing dishes and I'm watching her testimony.
Speaker 1:I was at my house with my AirPods in with my phone, watching her testimony. We were at the same place. Oh, that's weird.
Speaker 2:But so now, as we're reading more and realizing more, we're coming to experience that we have been living under a lot of lies. Yeah, so the lies of this relationship situation that I was feeling hurt by were that I wasn't good enough, that I wouldn't be loved enough, that I would be put on the back burner, I would be sidestepped as a result of somebody else's actions. And nothing has changed. But I realized I didn't have to let that define me anymore. I could say, god, I'm not going to let that happen. God is in your hands, but you love me. I'm your child and that's what I'm going with.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to take a real quick break from this episode and I'm going to bring up my brother from Orlando, will Murphy. What's up, will? What's up Mayor? What's going on? The mayor, Will man, how long have you been rocking with the gospel as it is preached in the Bible?
Speaker 4:Yeah, man 2019, since November 2019, is where the Lord found me in my bedroom and changed my entire life, where I heard his voice so clear in my head that I couldn't turn back. So yeah, since 2019.
Speaker 1:Man and I'd imagine the gospel, has changed your life so much that you have not one but two episodes on the Dead to Light podcast. Is that true?
Speaker 4:I'm assuming. So I've listened to both of them back recently, because my wife and I just had our anniversary back in October. But yeah, man, it was just a testimony of what God's goodness in his life has been for us. So yeah, man, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You still like those episodes, they still hit. They hit, they hit, they hit. Absolutely. So you believe in this so much that you have donated finances, time. Why is it so important to you that you would donate of your hard-earned scrella to keep this movement going?
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure man, my wife and I, we've been thoroughly blessed by the gospel. It's changed our lives fundamentally how we see each other, how we see others, how the gospel, just how God sees us. And so for us, it is important that we give, because we want the gospel to go forth, we want people to hear the freedom from sin, we want them to hear the good news of what Jesus Christ has done, and so we believe. One of the ways to do that is by donating, by giving some of our finances to help further the gospel. So, yeah, that's a short answer, but that's what we fundamentally believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're listening and you want to partner with us so that we can keep this thing going in 2024, you can go to loverealityorg slash give Partner with us. We're dedicated to preaching this message everywhere we go and you, partnering with us, I will help us do that and continue to do that in 2020. So that's loverealityorg slash give. Thanks. We'll appreciate you, doc. Absolutely, mayor. Yes, sir, let's get back to the podcast episode.
Speaker 2:To be honest, in your mind as a super conservative, or your life Adventist, there was a lot of wrestling going on in my mind. It's like, well, if you do these things or you don't do those things, remember you always knew that you would be lost if you didn't comply with certain things, or if you you know I don't know how to be specific about it, because I'm just not thinking of a specific example, but just the doing of things, the performance of things, that if you aren't doing those, then are you really even a Christian? And the judgments that I had put upon other people over all those years not even necessarily knowingly doing, but just subconsciously, what I'm doing this and you're not. So I guess I'm better, you're worse. Those judgments now started coming back into my own mind of people from that group. If you were putting on to me now and I could see myself where I saw other people before, and so it was a real battle with yeah, but you know there was a lot of fear of this choice might mean I'll be lost, and then I would come back around to the gospel. Jesus learned he's done it all already. I just need to have faith to believe that. And so there was definitely a time of wrestling when one voice was stronger, but I would honestly say that that voice is pretty quiet and His voice is the stronger in my life today.
Speaker 1:But I don't know. You still struggle with something like if I do this, I'll be lost.
Speaker 2:Not Occasionally, that thought will come through.
Speaker 1:Because he says He'll never cast you out.
Speaker 2:Right, right, but when you've been in that culture all your life, sure, and it's just what you've believed about how the end things are all going to go down and where you're going to have to be and positioned to all of that, where you position yourself, it's like whoa, but somehow that doesn't seem like the God that I'm now learning about right now. And so I think I say that because I think other people that are going to come to the gospel from where we have been are going to end up with that same struggle, to a greater or lesser degree, of what the devil and it's the lies of the devil, and that's really what I was getting to is listening to those lies that it's about what you're doing, how many hours you spend in your quiet time, and what you choose to do, what you choose to wear, what you choose to eat, and it's all about those things. And if you do any of those things in your lesser van, you're not going to make it, and that's those lies that he tells. And once you realize their lies and for me it was realizing temptations, really, when you boil a temptation all the way down, it's a lie. And for Eve it was eat this and you'll become something, and all the way through, as you look through the Bible, it's lies that make you feel like I have to do this, maybe you don't have to do this, and so realizing that that is what he wants to speak over you instead of allowing God's voice to speak to your heart has been a huge revelation to both of us.
Speaker 1:From the outside in, does it look like your life looks different or less holy? If I was just watching you in a vacuum and seeing how you move around, are you doing things now that you didn't used to do, or would you say that it looks pretty similar?
Speaker 2:No, I would say that full pool. It looks pretty similar but for a girl dressed in adornment makeup, the whole nine yards is viewed as a simple thing, or can be, and I freed from that bondage of that view. I was actually before all of this. When we were first married I had an engaged ring. Rather, when we got engaged had a wedding ring. When we came back from Africa and got into that super conservative mindset I got rid of those and wore them a little bit in Ireland because people didn't think we were married and that was like great witness we're going to be having in our neighborhoods. They think we're just kind of, you know, checking up, checking up. Then we moved to Montana and took that off, never wore it again until two years ago and we were coming out of that mindset, not understanding where we were going, but coming out of there. And I just said to Paul one day you know there's a lot of things that went down back then when we first became super conservative in our first year of marriage that I feel like standing back now. We were kind of cheated out of some of the joys of life that you wouldn't normally have and one of which was to feel proud to wear your husband's wedding and engagement ring on your finger. And that was a big deal in the culture in England, you know, pretty much everybody that's married wears that. And I said to him I feel kind of cheated somehow out of that by that culture. And he said, well, we can change that. And so he bought me an eternity ring and then we kind of added to that and but I know that there are some people today who I know from my past walk who would think that is extremely sinful. Or that I wear some makeup or that I had highlights and we're here for our daughter's wedding. That would be viewed as sinful for some, by some people, and so probably I viewed it that way myself back then and so sometimes those thoughts come in. But honestly I think that's a very good thing. I think the solution is not trying to look to. I'm just going to grit my teeth and not let that affect me. The more you look at the beautiful Jesus, that stuff just fades into insignificance, doesn't mean anything anymore, and so I would say less and less that stuff touches on my life, but they definitely. At the beginning it was harder.
Speaker 1:So you're watching all this stuff, you're hearing, you're going to the Bible studies. Then you guys were on wave one. I remember seeing you there this summer. Was that the summer? How did that hit you? Was that like the first time going through it?
Speaker 2:Or had you watched a lot of stuff, like actually watching wave one online, or my hubby was watching some of the YouTubes with Jonathan and I would say we went to Arizona in late December, just before Christmas. We came back the end of February, so we were there a couple of months and somewhere in that time my hubby was watching some of that stuff and I couldn't really wrap my mind around it. I was more in the word, just trying to say, okay, god, just reveal yourself to my heart, and he was doing it in multiple ways. I said freedom from all different sorts of things, identities that I had carried, that I didn't feel were mine anymore, and not feeling the same lack that I felt for so long in my heart. Something that is this kind of funny now. But at the time when I was watching passion, they would talk about worship and they were having the worship songs. I honestly did not understand that meant they were singing those songs in worship. I thought it was just like you know, you can go to church, you sing songs, but because I'd never really seen him sang in a deep, deep heart, moving, worshipful way, I did not connect the two. And then one day I had this moment where I'm like you mean, they worship and then they have the message and then they worship. And I just thought they were just doing a few songs before and after. You know, I thought that was it and Hara was laughing because she's like, well, you didn't get, that's what they called worship songs. I'm like, no, didn't get that. What? That's funny.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. It's crazy. You know the people that wrote those hymns. They were also on one Like. If you read the lyrics and you are, you're just like these are crazy and they're beautiful, but you were just like, oh, I like this melody and I like this melody and praise God for whom I'm the, praise God for whom I'm the.
Speaker 2:I thought it with the hymns a little bit. Sometimes there were times in life where the words meant more than others, but never like you just went there and like, okay, now these are. This is going to be this really meaningful, deep heart stirring moment. So then I started listening to Chris Tullin and all these different, you know, artists are listening to their words, and I just started to cry an awful lot, and I still do, because those words were coming right into my heart and soul and ministering to my heart in a way that I had never experienced before, and even yesterday I was. I went into my hubby's office and where's the? Just see if I can see the song. It was a Christmas Carol be born in me. They're singing the big be born in me, the very last line of that song, and I just started to cry, realizing that's what this is all about. And we're celebrating his birth right now. But the real celebration is the birth in our hearts, and I'd never seen that before at least if I had, it never touched me like it did. And so these worship songs have been a huge part, and as I've listened more and then, you know, come to, because I know that it's not all about now. Everything is rosy. You'll never have a temptation, you'll never trip up, you'll never struggle. You're going to have trials and difficulties, but now these songs have been ministering to my heart and things like I belong to Jesus. Fear doesn't have it over me anymore. I belong to Jesus. And it's like, wow, and you changed my name. Now I'm not less than I'm not living in shame. I'm not this person who is constantly failing to please, but I'm chosen child of God. And it makes me cry because I've never experienced that before. In all of those years and all of those years of ministry and missionary and everything else combined, it's like there was this, this kind of I put it this way, I'm not using people, you're sorry that this light. We started out in missionaries, being missionaries, and that was our mission with God. And then we got into reforms, and that was our mission with God. And then we got into practical religion, and that was our mission with God. And on top of all of that afterwards came the gospel, which, if we'd have had through all of those other years, could have made an incredible difference to how we ministered at that time. It's just we didn't know it and I don't feel upset or angry by that. It's more praise God that I get to 60. I finally learned about who he is and what he wants to do in my life, and I don't know what future holds for us, but it really doesn't matter. It's not about I'm learning this to share with someone, cause you know how that is in ministry. It's like I don't know this from my own heart. Really, it's because so and so could really use this and I don't feel that way at all anymore. It's like no, this is for me and if this is all I ever do from here until Jesus comes at 60, that's not going to be 15 more years worth for my life. If this is all I ever did, then I would be thankful to God that in and I feel like this kind of spiritual baby. It's like we were proud back then and now it's like I feel like I'm brand new, like I've never heard of the gospel before and everything you know, the worship songs in church I don't. I don't raise my hands and all that kind of stuff because it doesn't feel natural to me. But what is happening, without me even trying to start it or to stop it, is just the tears are constantly rolling down my face and I think the pastor must be wondering what in the world is wrong with this girl, because through it and he preaches a lot about grace and his sermons praise God for that and it's just like I'm hearing also through his time ever and it's amazing.
Speaker 1:I want to read you some lyrics. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing. Joy to the earth, the savior reigns. Let all their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding joy. He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nation prove the glories of his righteousness. It's good tidings of great joy that Jesus has come and what he did. They'll call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sin, and so he has in fact freed us from our sin, like we are free from and dead to sin in Christ Jesus the first time, the first Christmas after freedom and this is one of those weird things that we say after freedom and what we mean that's just code for when we receive the gospel, when we're like, oh, this is what the gospel is these Christmas songs, these Christmas carols were blowing me away and I was just like, and I was like it's like what you were talking about, like this is worship For the first time. I was like Jesus coming to earth as a little boy was for the purpose of me being free from sin, for me being filled with the spirit, for me having new life now. And so I couldn't think of those Christmas carols without thinking about the resurrection. I was like wow, and I was like these people had to have understood it, these people writing these carols. They had to have understood what has actually taken place and I was real, I hadn't understood it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is very, very much where we feel we're at. Is that? And for me especially, knowing these songs, these hymns all my life, memorizing many of them but not really grasping the depths in the heart level and I think it's partly British and partly the conservative culture where emotion will be careful about that because that might be the dark side. So you don't want to stir up emotion because that's the happy, clopy emotion and we mustn't go there. So I think it's so you end up being this sterile thing because you're not going to let it get to your heart on an emotional level. And so I think now what it is, it's all coming alive. And, as you say, we were discussing the other day how Christmas will be very different this year because it's going to mean so much more. Like yesterday, I was in tears because I had some Christmas songs playing on YouTube and there was Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. Well, you look that up and you start reading the words, and the words were on the screen and I'm like, oh, I wouldn't go up, poor. I got my old hymn lock because it's not in the advent hymn lock over here but it is in the British hymn lock and I wouldn't go up my dad's old hymn lock, which is really precious to me, and I found the hymn in there and I went to poor and I started to read the words and it's like, come to say, people pray and oh, my word, that's what we're hearing right now. That's what we're experiencing and, yeah, it's a very exciting feeling. And there's one thing I want to mention that I didn't, and I think it would be worth mentioning, is that, along with I wasn't going to go listen to all the podcasts, because I wanted to find this out for myself was okay, so I'm hearing all this stuff and I need to see how does that fit with what I understand already. So I figured, okay, probably the most universal, basic LNG white book would be Steps to Christ. So I started reading it and I was absolutely blown off my chair because you put on a different lens instead of the I must do X, y and Z, and you put on the I've done this for you believe it? Lens and it's like it's all there. So then Paul's like okay, well, then let's read it together. So we then started reading it together and page after page after page, and it was as if in my brain or a visual person. I had this like picture frame, but it was empty, no glance, or, back to it, just the outside edge, and it was as if here's love, reality and I've got to put it. Or the gospel, and I'm going to put it over what I understood and see if anything sticks out the side. Or is it complete? Does it? Does it fit that mold? And I wasn't sure if it would, to be honest. But I'm like you know what I'm just going to read, lord, you just you instruct, and we start to read Steps to Christ and we were both blown away. And so then we're just pretty close to the end of reading man of Blessings and it's amazing if you've not read those books in light of the gospel Anytime recently. You need to read them because if you've had your vision, like mine was only seeing it in that this is what I've got to do and hopefully I'll do a nurse of that to make it but you start reading it through the eyes of what he has given and what he has done, this free, I just need to believe that it's completely different. So now I'm listening to podcasts because I feel like, okay, I know where I'm going with this, I can trust in listening to that now.
Speaker 1:I was just talking to somebody today who first started to listen to Wave One like Love Reality Tour at PVC, but they were doing it to fault, find they were doing it to find out where Jonathan was wrong. And then, a year later, they've received this thing and they're like I feel like I should listen to that again because it probably is going to sound different. Well, this is how I wrap them all up and I want to go back. Where are we going back to? We're not going back to. We're going back to Birmingham. Where's before? Birmingham, where you were growing up?
Speaker 2:Oh, the town was strowed, a little country town in the country, in England.
Speaker 1:But I want you to go back and talk to 19 or 20 year old Carolyn, who's living with guilt, condemnation and shame and has made all of these promises to God. That's one of the things that we do when we live in guilt, condemnation and shame is we make promises to God where he never asks us to do that. He just asks us to believe his promises to him. If you get to go talk to her and pull her aside, what would you minister to this young lady?
Speaker 2:I would tell her that what she's done didn't matter, that, just like Mary, he held her and he said I don't condemn you, go, don't do it anymore, because I was determined not to do certain things anymore. And then I would get dragged into staff, not physically, but dragged into staff because I wanted to please people. And so I would end up pleasing people over pleasing my savior, because I wasn't in love with him, because I didn't know his love for me, and somehow this whole you just need to love Jesus. It doesn't work that way. When Jesus, when you see how much he loves you, you can't help it. You can't help but love him back. It's not something you've got to try to do, it's just something your heart will naturally do. I think that's what I would be telling my 19-year-old self. It's go sit at his feet. You're not condemned, you are his child and he loves you. And I'm thankful that after all these years now I've come to understand that, and I hope that this excitement in the gospel that we have found doesn't fade away. Does it fade away?
Speaker 1:You know what the thing is this? It's going to say the same thing in there tomorrow. Right, if my life starts getting weird, it isn't because of the gospel, it's because I've let the cares of the world or something get in the way of what he's actually done. And so now I'm just fixing my mind to it. And so now, if I'm calm, it's so that I you know, you're describing this feeling that literally everybody who gets this thing, it changes their life. And then they start to walk into CERN, and so they're not, you know, just like a fire hydrant to their neighbors, and you know. So the excitement doesn't change. Right. We've just been able to be calm so that we can communicate it as clearly as we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and a beautiful thing. That is always like a byproduct that we weren't expecting that. Both Paul and I feel this is complete and utter freedom from condemnation of anybody else and anything anybody else may be doing in their life. It's like because before it was like pretty much condemnation about everything in your heart, even if you didn't ever voice it and I think I was probably worse at that or better at that, either way you looked at it, than Paul. But the realization that you know if one of my children is doing something, it's like maybe it's not what I would be doing, but am I better than them? Do I know God better than they do, to be questioning what they're doing? Or do I say, god, I know you love them, they love you and I'm going to trust that this will work out whichever way you want it to, and I don't have to have an opinion about that, or church member or anybody else. And I tell you that is so freeing because I did not know how bound down by that bondage we were, but it was, yeah, it was dark being bound by that.
Speaker 1:Well, I love the story and I love that this is just the beginning of the story, and when Hannah was messaging me about you guys, I was just like what they get it? I was very excited. And you now, I'm going to, I'm going to spoil, I'm going to do something maybe you don't want me to do. When I was talking to Paul about it, he told me that at first you were like I don't want to be on the podcast, and then a week later, you're like I got to be on the podcast and guess what? You're on the podcast. You just did it, and so your testimony is a blessing to me, and just seeing how much you've been loved just makes me want to go and tell more people, and so I think I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2:Praise God. Well, this could be helpful to someone else, especially that dark journey of where we come from. Then I just prayed that God can use it for something.
Speaker 1:And he will do that in Jesus' name. As I listened to Carolyn's story about pleasing people, about trying to make sure you're doing it right and the stress that that puts on someone. If you're hearing that and you're resonating with that, then I want to pray for you, father. I've struggled in pleasing others because I have found that that's where my comfort comes from, that if people are okay with me, then I can be okay with myself. But I believe that you have made me a good tree and that you are producing fruit in my life and I am just burying it. And so, while it's hard to change your mindset, I'm asking you to change it for me so that I can see the truth and walk in it. I believe you will, because I'm praying this in Jesus' name. Amen. I love you guys. I want you guys to kick it with us on the Bible studies. One that I'm going to talk about right now is the Good, good Gospel Bible Study that is hosted by Justin Koo on Sunday mornings. Justin Koo does a great job. It is such a blessing. Check that out Text Bible Studies to Love Reality number and join us there. Thanks so much, love y'all. Have a great day.