Past Mistakes Don’t Define Your Future with Michael and Rachel Lopez

Today I had the chance to interview two amazing health coaches who are absolute inspirations: Rachel and Michael Lopez! 

They are CEOs, entrepreneurs, and godly parents. With so much success, it’s tempting to think life was always easy for them. It wasn’t! 

The Lopez family has faced hardship after hardship. More than once it looked like their lives were ruined. But what at first seemed to doom their lives, became the very things God has used to bloom it!

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Buy the book on Amazon: www.amazon.com/When-Words-Dont-Come-Easy/dp/1955362084
Listen to the first chapter: soundcloud.com/andy-howard-788712319
Learn more at AndyHoward.com!

Transcript

Speaker 1:
Welcome to When Words Don't Come Easy, a podcast for anyone who wants real hope in a busted up world. Each week your host, Andy Howard, will deliver hope, breakthrough, and practical tools to help you move forward in every area of your life. Now here's Andy with this week's episode.

Andy Howard:
Hey, hey, welcome everybody to another edition of the When Words Don't Come Easy Podcast. I am so excited that you're back. In fact, tonight is going to be so cool. I got two of the best people on the planet joining me and I'm happy to call them good friends. And I am just so honored that they would take time to join me tonight. So without further ado, I do want to welcome independent OPTAVIA coaches, Rachel and Michael Lopez. What's up you guys?

Rachel:
Well we are so excited to be here with you tonight and just feel honored that you invited us on. Thank you.

Michael:
Yeah, just I've been waiting for this day ever since we talked about it because there's so much in everybody's story that needs to be heard. And I look forward to tonight being a blessing for a ton of people.

Andy Howard:
Dude, well thank you so much, Michael. Man, this dude right here. Before we go any further, I'm going to dive into it, it's in my notes. But he has a servant's heart, loves people. In fact, a few weeks ago, just being real honest, I had to go to the studio to record the book and I was scared to death because Tiffany couldn't come with me. So what did I do? I reached out to my boy, reached out to Michael, said, "Hey, will you fly all the way across the world?" They live in Thomaston, Georgia and he came all the way out to Phoenix to help me with that and I just needed someone there.

Andy Howard:
And Michael, he's like, "Sure, sure, I'll come." Thank you so much for doing that and thanks for being on here guys. So excited to have you. I do want to start off right away, just go back a little bit and we talked a little bit before we started the podcast. But just to let people who may not know you as well or they look at you, because both of you have a phenomenal business. You're amazing CEOs, you lead people well. But I always feel like it's cool to see where you came from. So I want to take it back a little bit. We'll start with you first, Rachel, tell me what your childhood was like.

Rachel:
Okay, so I grew up in Texas and kind of went back and forth between my grandmother and my mom. I have one sister, she's five years younger than me. I was that big sister bully. I've asked for forgiveness a lot of times, I picked on her quite a bit. But I grew up in a Christian home, involved in church and I've always had a love for people, a love for community, and feeling that sense of belonging. My mom was an off and on single mom, which did make my childhood, honestly, a little difficult. There were some hurts there and just things that through my adulthood now, had to revisit and heal and grow through.

Rachel:
But overall I would say, I mean, I think now and all the people that I've been so blessed to be able to work with in our coaching business, I realize we all have things. And so yes, there were hard things in my childhood and things that were painful and difficult. But what I can say today is that those things, those hardships, those struggles are part of what has made me who I am today and the story that I have today. And having kind of a difficult childhood, grew up without a dad and definitely had some holes there. But so thankful to sit here today knowing my worth and who I am and being redeemed and forgiven of much and being able to love others because I am fully loved by God and I know that.

Andy Howard:
I love that, Rachel. And you know what? We're going to talk about that in a minute. I actually have it in my notes. So I hate getting off my notes because then it's hard to get back on, but I can't help it because you started it. So I feel like and Switchfoot, I still listen to Switchfoot. I know they're like 72 years old. I'm kidding, guys. If y'all listening to this, please come on the show. I would love to have you. But they just released a brand new album and I've been listening to it a lot lately.

Andy Howard:
And one of the lines in there, he says that you put the brightest star in the darkest nights. And then I also know that jewelry's salesman, when they're going to show off their best diamonds and things, they will use a black cloth behind it to really show the contrast. And so I really see that, like what you're talking about. Sometimes it takes the hard times to see the really, really good times to how faithful God is. Same for you Michael, will you share a little bit about your childhood and what it was like for you growing up?

Michael:
Mine was, always in the past, I've always been, it's always been a struggle for me to talk about it because I look at kind of, not shameful, but kind of embarrassed about the situation. That's the way I looked at it in the past. But now I look at it completely different. I look at the grace of God was really on my family, not just grace but His forgiveness. My dad was in and out of our lives as a kid, when I was very young. He was battling some issues. My dad was in our lives in and out at different times and my mom raised pretty much five kids off and on by herself. And it was tough times. I mean, five kids, four boys and a girl is like, I mean, I couldn't imagine.

Michael:
We got three and I'm like, "Oh please, hurry up and grow up." But she had four and I mean, my oldest brother was born in '77 and my youngest was '84. So five kids within seven years of each other is like wow. And we grew up going to church. I remember my dad, when he was there, he was taking us to church because my dad loved the Lord. And he just was battling some stuff and he was like I said in and out. And I just remember growing up, maturing a lot younger in my life than most people do. And I always wonder, I guess that's just life is as kids, 12 years old, sometimes even younger than that, we have to become adults.

Michael:
I realize as I got older, that that's not the way it's meant to be. And I'm forever grateful for my parents through the hard times still... I always pick on people, I always pick on myself because I said, "Man, my parents were strict on me, my brothers and them, they've done whatever. But my parents were strict on me and I am forever grateful for that." Even though there in the time I was like, "Well, why do I have to be home at 10:00 and my brother that's four years younger than me, he gets stay out till 12:00? That don't even make sense." But then now as a parent, I'm just very grateful that they were a little bit harsher on me I guess I could say now. But yeah, that's pretty much my childhood.

Andy Howard:
Yeah. Well, thank you guys, both of you. And I am going to press in a little bit here because I believe in vulnerability and I'm not just one, I cry watching Gilligan's Island. I'll tell you, It's easy for me to start getting emotional and I'm not just one for tears. But I do want everybody to see the hard trials. So you both mention there were some hard times. Would you be willing to dive in a little deeper on those and tell me some of the hard times. And then we will get to some of the good times. But tell me some of the hard trials maybe you faced, Rachel.

Rachel:
Yeah, a couple of things that, I guess, defined my character as a kid and just who I was and how I felt about myself was, and I talked about this actually recently, I felt rejected pretty young. I thought that I knew who my dad was and at eight years old, I'll never forget sitting on the front porch, waiting for me and my sister to get picked up to go to our daddy's because my mom and her dad were divorced. And my mom told me at seven years old that he was not my dad. And I did not know that because they had been together since I was three, and that he no longer wanted me to come for the visits. And so I've done a lot of soul searching and I believe that's when I felt unworthy and kind of tossed away and when the enemy began to speak lies over me.

Rachel:
And I'm thankful for a praying grandmother, she had such a strong faith and was really the matriarch of our family as far as a person that lived for God and truly, truly lived out her faith. And in this time, after that divorce from my sister's dad, my mom also really felt rejected and kind of tossed away. And my mother began to try to take care of two little girls on her own as a single mother. And over the course of the next, I would say six years, she was married three more times. All of which those men in some form or way, abused me. And so this solidified more just unworthiness, shame, guilt. I will say, and I'm thankful, I'm a fighter and I guess God put it in me. I think I was born with it and I refused to sit down and be a victim, even as a kid I did not. Every time something happened, I told, I spoke up.

Rachel:
And I was always safe with my grandparents and that's really where I spent most of my time. My mom also battled with some issues and is walking clean and recovered today and has been for many years, but through my childhood there was substance abuse on and off. And it made me, like Michael just talked about, have to grow up really quick. And formulated a responsibility in me to be a young adult when I was a kid. I think some of those things are good. I think it's why I'm responsible. I think it's why I'm empathetic to people because of my story, why I'm not judgemental, because of the things I went through. I'm very compassionate. But it also made me hard. And so those are things that I've had to overcome in adulthood is being untrusting, honestly I developed a hate for men because of the things that I endured as a kid.

Rachel:
And God really brought me through healing at the age of 19 in that area of really revealing to me who I was in Him and that I was enough, because I'm also half Spanish. And so if you're listening to this podcast and I sound super country, just know that I'm really ethnic looking, okay? So here's the thing. I also battled my identity because I was raised by the Caucasian side of my family, which is why I have the accent I do, yet I have the brown hair and the brown eyes and the brown skin and I felt so different. And so different was not really cool when you're eight, nine, 10 years old and you go to school with a lot of white kids. So I can say now I know that I'm unique and I embrace those things about myself. But in my childhood, I was confused and it was hard.

Andy Howard:
Hey, I love that. Thank you for being willing to open up and hey, you are safe with your, what do you call it? Your accent, you are safe here on this show. Okay, I do want to ask you kind of the same, Michael. Would you be willing to expand on some of your, I guess, some of the struggles that you faced, even as a child or maybe as an adult?

Michael:
Yeah, just pretty much a lot like Rachel, except my dad had a substance abuse. He was then... And it's just funny looking back, not funny, but looking back, what I thought about God's grace and forgiveness and stuff. If you were to meet my dad today, you would actually call me a liar for the stories that we talk about. And I guess not really laugh about now, but we can look back on and be like wow, I mean, the Lord does forgive us and the Lord we'll use our stories to help somebody out. So my dad was in and out of our lives because he had a drinking problem and I just remember the abuse.

Michael:
It wasn't a ton of physical abuse, but it was still there and a lot of verbal abuse that just went on. And my dad was, he loved us, but I think we all have issues. If we don't turn to the Lord, the devil, he fights us. And if we don't have the Lord in our corner, I don't believe there's any way we can win. Just battling in and out from that was pretty much, that's what my childhood was, just him in and out. I was thankfully never abused or anything like that, but just seeing it, a lot of times that we repeat past that we have if we don't grow up or if we don't mature or whatever, we fall into the same habit sometimes that we see growing up.

Michael:
And like I said, my dad when he finally decided enough was enough, I think I was about 13 years old and he came back in our lives and he's been there, the best father that I could ever have imagined. It's hard for me to even remember any of the situations that happened when I was a kid. I guess sometimes I block out because there's no point of remembering all the negative that happened because there's so much more positive out of it now. Just this past week, I've been able to spend much of my time with my dad because we're remodeling a house we got right now. And just having him with me today, I'm just forever grateful that the Lord saw that he needed to be here longer and that none of the addictions that he had, the crazy mistakes, the DUIs he had took him out to where he wouldn't be in our lives anymore. So I'm just forever grateful, like I said.

Andy Howard:
Man, thank you for sharing. And gosh, see yeah, I've known you guys for a long time. I didn't even know this and so thank you, Michael. And you're exactly right, there's so many people and I'm not sure, it was either you or Rachel that just said that so many people have a story similar to both of you. So it relates to them, it's striking a chord with them right now as they're hearing this, that very successful business owners, and I don't just say that because it's not always about money, but sometimes people think, wow, they had it so easy, look at them. And you guys are far, far from easy. In fact, I know you well, I feel like I know you very well, so I do want to ask you a question, Rachel, as well.

Andy Howard:
And I hope I have permission, but I know as an early teen or I don't know, mid-teen, you can help me, but you became pregnant. And your oldest, actually, this is ironic today as we are filming this this morning, he left off for, God had a calling on his life, which is awesome. I mean, let's pause there. In today's society, there's this war going on. And I don't want to get too controversial here about if you should have a baby, if you should not have a baby, if you should have the right, all that stuff about abortion, let's just be honest about it. And now John Michael, seeing him where he's at and he's got the call of God on his life. He's headed to a Master's Commission several states away. So I know that's hard on mama, today you said it was an emotional day. But can you take me back to when you first found out you were having a baby? And I know this story will help so many young girls who might be in the same situation as you are.

Rachel:
Yes. So I will say if I back up just a little bit because of the things I shared with you about my childhood, there was a deep desire to be loved, right? And so I want to say this too, and anyone that's listening, I think we all can fall into being sometimes judgemental of people. I mean, we're not perfect, we're all human. But this experience forever changed me to really work hard and be aware to not be that way because I was a pretty good girl, okay? And I did, I loved the Lord. I grew up in church, I lived pretty wholesome. But when I turned 15, boys were definitely an interest because just those raging hormones and desire to have a boyfriend and be loved and all the things. And so I will say I was given a lot of freedom because I was trusted. My grandmother trusted me, my mom trusted me. And listen, I don't care how great your kids are, you don't give them that much freedom. I will say that.

Rachel:
And I just was put in some compromising situations and had a long term boyfriend who I ended up getting pregnant by. And I hid my pregnancy for the very thing that you just mentioned. I did not want to have an abortion. I didn't want to be asked to have an abortion and I didn't want to be forced to have an abortion. But I knew I was 16 and pregnant and this was not a good situation. And so I hid it for about four months and I told my mom, that was the first person that I told. And we were driving down the road, I'll never forget it in Kaufman, she pulled over, she was crying, I was crying. And she looked at me and she said, "Rachel, you have two choices." Now I was very scared, I didn't know what she was about to say. She said, "You can keep your baby and we can do this together or you can give him to a family who can't have their own baby. Which do you choose?"

Rachel:
And I was so grateful in that moment and felt like a weight had lifted off of me that I wasn't asked to do the other. And I chose to keep John Michael and I thought I had ruined my life. That's the truth, I did. 16 years old, pretty good kid, smart, made good grades, been through a lot in my childhood. I thought, man, I've really done it. I've messed everything up. And it was a very lonely time. It was very lonely for me. A lot of my friends' parents did not want their kids, their girls hanging out with me anymore. The church was not very happy with what had happened to me. I remember my dentist wouldn't even see me anymore. I had braces. He would not see me. He told my mom, I don't want to see her anymore. And the sad thing is this again, spoke those lies into me like unworthiness and shame and guilt. But I would pray every day, I walked two miles when I was pregnant every morning and every night. And I just remember the Lord saying there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

Rachel:
And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "If you'll give him back to me, he's not a mistake, Rachel. He's not a mistake. If you'll give him back to me and raise him up to love me, I will use him for my glory and to impact people." And I've held onto that. And you have to understand, like Andy said, today, right now as we're doing this podcast, we sent our son off at 11:30 today to Master's Commission, which is a discipleship program for people to learn how to lead and serve and pour into other people. And so I've held onto this promise, I prayed over this boy for 21 years and I'm so proud because I'm going to tell you, you can break chains and you can do things differently.

Rachel:
And Michael and I have both decided that we will be the chain breakers to the future generations in our family tree. And I'm so proud of John Michael. He loves the Lord. He's not perfect, Lord knows he's ADD and he forgets a lot of things. But he does love Jesus. He loves people. He made a commitment to stay pure. This was so important to me because at 16, I wasn't, I fell into sin. And my son has stayed pure and that's really rare in this day and age. And I know that he's going to be a blessing to many. And so the things that I thought were the mistakes that were going to define my future and I have ruined my life, God has used as a platform to help other people. And I'm just so incredibly thankful that He can really take our mess, our what's ugly and embarrassing and shameful mess and make it something beautiful.

Andy Howard:
I love that, Rachel. Thank you. Gosh that little clippet there, that clip snippet. I made up a new word, clippet, it may have been the best part of this whole podcast. Thank you. And who knows what's to come? Don't tune out, there's more. Michael, and you're going to have to help me here because apparently me and you met a lot earlier. You always tell me when we first met and I'm like, "Dude." And that's when we had just had Peyton.

Andy Howard:
So there's a good chance I wasn't sleeping at the time. So I'm going to make that as my excuse of why I do not remember the first time we met. But I would like for you to dive in on when was it now that you and Rachel met, or at least when you got married. Because we're going to start shifting, still some more trials, still some more things you went through. But I want to get to some of the good, otherwise people are going to stay depressed on this thing. So we do want to give them some hope here. But about what time did you guys meet and tell us a little bit about the early years of marriage.

Michael:
Okay, do you want to know the truth or the Bible study version?

Andy Howard:
Give me whatever you're willing to share here.

Michael:
Okay, so-

Andy Howard:
I just-

Michael:
... I'll let Rachel explain that later if she wants to. But I'm not [inaudible 00:23:25]. And to be all honesty, I was just out of my first marriage probably six months or so, six to eight months off of my first marriage. And I was in a chat room and I don't even, Rachel's name popped up and we just started talking.

Rachel:
Let me say this, we were both married before and both have been divorced. And I was here in Georgia, going through a really bad divorce. I was super lonely, I did not know anybody. It was just me and my four-year-old son here. And I was in a Georgia chat room, just to meet people. So I was talking to women that were in the area, that could go work out or go walking with me. I was trying to develop community and relationships. And I don't know what made us click on each other, but honestly, almost the rest is history from there because he loved the Lord and we had that in common and we both had children that we loved and it was almost fireworks-

Michael:
Yeah-

Rachel:
... immediately.

Michael:
The first day we'd met, we actually would like every day, every day I'd get off work, we would see each other, we'd go eat, whatever throughout the thing. So I mean, we pretty much became married on our first date because we were inseparable-

Rachel:
Inseparable, yeah.

Michael:
... inseparable. So, but yeah-

Andy Howard:
We make words all the time here on this podcast, so that's new, it's all [inaudible 00:24:56].

Michael:
I've been there quite often lately. That sounds good, that sounds good. I'm going with that.

Andy Howard:
Hey, if you say it with enough confidence, people would just start repeating it with yeah, so you're all good. Well, I love that. And I can tell you what it was that clicked. It was God, that's what you're like, "I don't know what it was, it just clicked." Because you guys were meant for each other. I admire you both so much, seeing where you're at today. Obviously there's bumps along the road and nobody's perfect, right? Every marriage, you have to fight for. Michael, I guess I'll go back with you, maybe both because you probably have two different viewpoints. But I would love to hear, because I've heard it, I know you as business partners. We've talked, but I want to hear some of the early stories of marriage. Like everybody, you get married, there's some hard times and money's hard to come by. Let's just be real. So there's people struggling out there today, even from COVID, who lost everything, lost their jobs, maybe they lost loved ones. Tell me a little bit about how it was for you guys early on, financially and just as being newlyweds.

Rachel:
Well, I think I'll let Michael take us through married life and I'm going to give you 60 seconds of before married life, so people understand that we are sitting here a redemption story from a lot of mess. So if you heard our story, if you just looked at it, you would probably think, what a mess. Again, more mess, because we were two broken people from broken relationships before coming together with a void. Both good people. Michael's an incredible man, but let me tell you something, I didn't know what it was to be loved right. I had been loved wrong my whole life by men. And Michael came in and wanted to love me right and I felt rejected because he didn't want to use me.

Rachel:
And that's all I ever knew. And so we got together, fireworks immediately, fell in love with each other, but we weren't married. We had a daughter and we both knew that living together, not being married was not part of our values, yet we were doing it. And so it was honestly not great. It was not great. And I prayed every night. God help me, forgive me, help me to move into obedience. And I very clearly heard God speak to me when Graceland was six months old, that's our daughter, "You have to leave." And it was very hard, Andy, it was very hard. And Michael didn't want to marry at that time. He wasn't in agreement for marriage, obviously he had come out of a bad-

Michael:
Well, and we had a lot of issues. I mean, that needed to be worked and I really don't think marriage at that point would've been the greatest thing for us because we needed to work on ourselves. And it's hard to work on yourself when you're not aligned together, but you're living together.

Rachel:
Absolutely.

Michael:
So it was like-

Rachel:
We kept trying, but it just was volatile and I didn't feel the blessing of God on our relationship. And so my mom came and got me and Graceland and John Michael and we moved back to Texas for an entire year. I went on food stamps, WIC, I enrolled in Trinity Valley Community College. I started the cosmetology program and was a single mom, just like my mom. But I loved Michael and I prayed for him and I prayed that if it was meant to be that God would restore us back together the right way.

Rachel:
That we would come back together and be married and not that being married fixes at all. We all know marriage is hard. It's worth it, but hard. But I wanted to do it the right way. So I just share that little bit so people know, honestly, there was a lot of hard before we moved into the blessing. And even when Michael came and got me in Texas, when we decided he was going to pick me in the kids up, come back and his dad was going to marry us, a couple of hours from arriving back to home, you had something that you had to tell me.

Michael:
Yeah, so that's where financial situations hit. And don't get me wrong, before she left, we didn't have money. We survived, but we didn't have money. But it was 2008, 2009 roughly. Everybody knows, I mean, the economy pretty much tanked during that time, housing market was horrible. We had bought a house that we were going to flip and sell, but that didn't happen. We had to move into it because we all started losing money on the house pretty quick. At that point in time, I told her, I said, "I don't know if we're going home to having power on the house, electricity is either scheduled to be cut off today or by the time we get home." We drove through the night, so it was like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock in the morning. And luckily, when we got home, and I mean, I don't know if it's the Lord or if it's just coincidence, I always believe it's the Lord because the Lord's greater than coincidence to me. But our power was still on because if the power was cut off, we would've had to pay a disconnection fee and all that stuff.

Michael:
So our power was still on. So I don't remember how we got the money. Oh, your mom gave us that money to buy the kids a pool because it was summertime here. And we wound up using that money to pay the light bill. And I promised Rachel that I would do everything I could to make that money back to be able to buy that pool. So financial times hit hard. I'll let Rachel tell a little deeper story in a minute. But what I want to say to the guys that are listening and some women, the single moms or whatever, don't try to do this alone. Don't try to fight whatever you're going through alone. Because I was ashamed as a man, not being able to afford to pay the bills for the family. When Rachel finally got back, I would come home for work and I would sit out in my work van for hours and Rachel was thought I was just out there on the phone because I pretended to be because I was trying to hide it.

Michael:
But I was out there on the phone and I've never contemplated doing any harm to myself or anything like that, it never got that bad. But always was like, why can't I get this figured out? As a man, I'm supposed to be the one that figures out how to pay the bills, how to do all this stuff. And it just was not happening. I could not figure it out. There was no way, I could never see a light of the end of the tunnel. It was always just beating me down. And I think that was a lot to do with my insecurities on marriage and not wanting a family because I, deep down inside, didn't know a way that I was going to be able to take care of them. And that was, as my ego and as I realized it was, again, coaching and stuff, I realized it was just my ego that was holding me back.

Rachel:
Yeah, and another thing Michael told me on the drive home was that we did not have any gas, which provided the hot water for our home. Now, when I came back, we came back in I think June or July, so it really wasn't a big deal, okay? But we could not afford to turn that gas on for six to nine months. So we went through winter without any hot water and I would stick four big pots on the stove to bathe my kids every night. And I had to do it three times over. And let me just tell you, me and Michael were overweight, so we weren't boiling no hot water for us, we just took cold showers because it would have been a whole lot of pans that have to boil the hot water for us.

Andy Howard:
That cracks me up. It does put a little light note on a serious subject. But wow, I admire you guys so much. And I know that Michael man, dude, I talk about that in the book. There was a part where Tiffany lost her mom's vehicle. It was added onto to our bills that we could not afford, it was only a matter of time. But yet, that was her last connection to her mom. That's where she felt close to her mom after she had lost her mom. She had lost everybody by the age of 25, in her blood family. And so I remember that night so vividly when they came to repossess the car. And as a man, it's just we're wired that way. We're supposed to take care of our family, that's what we feel. So we feel helpless. And then for you guys, boiling water for your kids to have warm baths. And I'm sure at that age they may not even remember or know or feel weird or anything about that because they're just so young and they don't know it's any different. But as parents, it's hard. I do want to-

Michael:
Let me interrupt you. We did have two boys, so they were egotistical too. So they're like, "Oh we'll do the cold showers too." And it didn't last very long.

Andy Howard:
Yeah, one cold shower is enough. Oh wow, wow. Well, I do want to jump into some brighter days. So I don't know how far along, I do know I just have heard stories. I've heard Rachel share them on some of the Zooms. But Michael used to go out and do whatever he could to support, whether that's hooking up somebody's PlayStation for them or helping them with their TVs or just a bunch of odd jobs besides his regular job, he worked a full-time job. You guys, we already talked about the water. You guys came from a very humble background. Tell me how you stumbled upon OPTAVIA and you became an independent OPTAVIA coach. And then how is life different, I guess, now? And you don't have to go into figures or anything. But how is life different now compared to what we just described?

Rachel:
Yeah, so it was actually me scrolling on social media, seeing your beautiful bride, who was my childhood best friend. So Tiffany and I had lost touch, I would say in our adult years. We would see each other if I went back to Texas, so-

Michael:
That one time at church where we met Andy for Mexican, [inaudible 00:35:38] church and-

Rachel:
You don't want to remember that time. But Tiffany and I would-

Andy Howard:
I believe that was made up. I vaguely remember someone telling me that that happened, but I don't know, sorry.

Rachel:
But we did, we would see each other about once a year when I would come to see my grandma. I would see Tiffany and Tiffany and I have a joke because we would wonder if each other was going to be real big or just a little bit big. We were both big, but were we going to be real big or a little bit big? Because we were always trying to do some kind of diet or pill or whatever. And so I began to really see Tiffany transform and I was her biggest cheerleader without her ever knowing. I can remember right now going to our son's baseball games and without ever telling Tiffany, "Great job, I'm so proud of you." I would pull her pictures up and show everybody like, "Look at her, look at her, look at..."

Rachel:
And my grandma was on Facebook, she was one of those cool grandmas. And she followed Tiffany too and was just so proud of Tiffany. And so that's how I found out about OPTAVIA. Reached out to Tiffany, talked to her, took a little while to commit, committed. Actually lost my grandmother unexpectedly after two weeks of being on the program, working on myself. Quit the program, quit on myself, went into immense depression for seven months in which Tiffany continued to love on me, just love on me. And there's so much power in just loving people and meeting them where they are. And seven months later, I started back on plan. Actually, my order processed by accident.

Rachel:
And I'll never forget, I was like, "Michael's going to kill me, so let me go ahead and beg for forgiveness now." And it's really funny because I text Tiffany and unless you're in the business, you don't get this. And I wasn't in the business. I text Tiffany, "What can you do? My order processed, help me, please." And when she text back, call 1-888-OPTAVIA. And I was like, "This is what... I'm a friend man, come on." Which I say all that to say that's the right thing to do. But you don't know if you're not on the business side. And so I called Michael crying and I'll never forget, he said, "You know what Rachel? It's time, it's time." And I started the program and made a decision-

Michael:
Well it was time for you, it was time for you-

Rachel:
Yeah, for me.

Michael:
... not me. It was time for you.

Rachel:
Yeah, he took a little bit, he took a little bit. But I was ready. I was super unhappy, just depressed, miserable, unhealthy. I had been overweight my whole life, but the biggest that I had ever been. And OPTAVIA was a bright light in such a dark time in my life with losing my grandmother. And just starting to gain those little wins of confidence and feeling good and having energy and having the support of my coach. I fell in love with the program, I did. I fell in love with the community. I was an all in type of girl, I gave it everything. I did it all right. And of course people were inspired by that and I had to figure out what to do with that.

Andy Howard:
Hey, I love it. And gosh, so you go from boiling water on a stove, whatever you had to do on your side jobs, Michael, to raise extra money. And I know you're just a hard worker. There's never been a doubt in my mind on that part of it. Then you guys are like powerhouse CEOs now, if people knew, and this is for anyone watching this, this isn't just a secret OPTAVIA club. This is for any entrepreneur out there, any businessman out there, any just stay-at-home mom or whoever you are. Rachel, I've heard stories, you can correct me. You had like 78 friends on Facebook when you started coaching, right? Somewhere around there.

Rachel:
I did and I thought that was good until I was told it wasn't.

Andy Howard:
Oh, and how many do you have today? Just curious. Or do you even know?

Rachel:
Yeah, it's almost at 4,000 and I was super introverted. So God can, He will qualify you. If you deem yourself unqualified, He can stamp the approval on you real quick and-

Andy Howard:
I love that.

Rachel:
... you just have to be willing to walk through the door.

Andy Howard:
But you have to do something about it, right? I mean, does God find all those frames for you or did you?

Rachel:
No. So what I say is you pray for opportunity, I did. Michael and I prayed, "God help us out of this situation. We want to take better care of ourselves, our family. We want to have a brighter future." And I prayed that for years. I was very dedicated to that prayer. And sometimes I'll say this, you may be seeking and praying for opportunity, yet you expect the door to look a certain way and it may look very different from what you've been envisioning in your prayer life.

Rachel:
And I stepped through that door to become an independent OPTAVIA coach with not a lot of influence. I would like to say that when y'all got a hold of me, y'all probably rolled your eyes and said a prayer too and put your hands over your head. But I was determined that I wouldn't fail. If I failed it wouldn't be because I didn't try. I was going to do every single thing that my mentors told me to do and I was going to do it uncomfortable, scared, afraid, feeling silly, stupid, you name it, I was going to do it anyway. And it only led me to having these baby wins that grew us to where we are today.

Andy Howard:
I absolutely love that. And we are about to wrap it up here, we're getting towards the end. But I can't go to the end without going here. So please forgive me in advance. But gosh, it was so fun, so fun reconnecting with you after, I had met you, now I do remember you, Rachel. I don't know what that means about Michael. Well, I remember, now this was pre-Michael, so I remember, so I guess around 16, 15, 16-ish. But anyways, it was fun reconnecting with you through the business some many years later. And obviously I had met Michael and I just, I'm going to tell you, I wasn't sleeping at that time, so that's my excuse, I'm sticking to it. But then reconnecting and getting to grow this business with you guys has been so fun. And now we have literally, we've traveled the world together. It's like anytime we're ready to go somewhere, first thing we do is wonder what Michael and Rachel are doing.

Andy Howard:
So it's so fun. With that said though, it doesn't mean everything is just rolling. So you find OPTAVIA and you work your tails off and we will throw the disclaimer up here again, and you work your butt off and you're doing very well. And I'd say you haven't had to warm up any water off your stove in a while. Things are doing quite well. And then Michael, a bomb comes out of left field, your brother gets diagnosed with cancer. Tell me, if you can, in your words, what this time was like. You guys had everything going well, I remember it well actually. I remember when you got the call, at least the results, I guess, of the call. We were having lunch together. But share what this time period was like for you and in the business. Actually, it took a setback during this season. So if there are people in this, going through this right now, I just want you to take the next five minutes or so to share this story and then where you're at today on the other side.

Michael:
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, my brother was, he was my best friend. I mean we were together every day, side by side for 12 years. So I was with him more than most of my family, I mean, more than anybody in my family besides the ones that lived in my household. And he called about nine months before he was diagnosed and just couldn't get over his sickness, couldn't shake his sickness. And we couldn't figure out what it was. They told him it was this, they gave medicine for this and he'd call and say, "Look, I'm still not getting better." So to say the least, he was very stubborn. I don't know if it's a Lopez thing or what.

Rachel:
Yeah, it is.

Michael:
But he was very, very stubborn, to the point where he'd tell you no and that's it. You don't ask him again. But finally we were able to, yeah, my oldest brother was able to get him to go to the ER. Well, they were able to get him to go get a endoscopy, where they go through the mouth on that one, through the throat and they didn't see nothing. So they couldn't figure out what it was. They still didn't know what it was. But after doing that, it caused bleeding in some other situations. So he went to the ER and that's when he found out that he had a mass. This was in November, early November. No, it was October. It was October when he did this. And right then my sister-in-law called me and told me, "Look, we're at the hospital now, you have to come up here." I remember I was headed to Noonan to pick up a part for a dryer for your mom.

Michael:
And I was like, "I can't go. I got to go to the hospital. I just, I don't feel right, I got to go to the hospital." So they found the mass, they decided to keep him in for about a week. I remember staying there with him. He was in good spirits during that time. But I don't know how, because I was tore up on the inside. I was just praying and believing and it was just tough during those times. But OPTAVIA gave me a little bit of, and I know the [inaudible 00:45:34] let you say this, but this ain't the training, so I'm going to say it, gave me a little bit of time freedom to be able to be there when he needed me. So if he needed me to take him to any of his chemo appointments or whatever it was, I was always there. It gave me time with him.

Michael:
That I'll always cherish, just sit on the couch with him and just not say nothing to each other for two hours. Those are some of the greatest times I have. He fought for almost two years with it. Doctors in the beginning told us that we can't guarantee that he'd be here for six months. But he was here for almost two years because the mass was so big. But the last, what? Last October, so a year and a half, almost two years actually. Atlanta Braves, he was a big Braves fan, Atlanta Braves won the World Series. Like wow, I mean that's just amazing. We took family pictures. He went around and made sure he took a picture with everybody there individually, just the memories, because he knew, he knew what his body was telling him.

Michael:
And just around, I guess, January his body started to decline pretty good. But another memory, Georgia Bulldogs, our football team, won a national title. So it was just like these small things, we were able to make memories together, moreso. And I remember sitting there and I told the story on [inaudible 00:47:15] a couple of weeks ago. And I've done a lot of self-development and I've done a lot of growth and I became a strong individual. My spiritual, just everything, all around, my mindset is different. And I remember sitting on the couch with him and he knew he only had a couple of weeks left, if that. And I was like, I need to talk to him. I need to let him know I'm at peace. So don't fight if you don't have it in you. And I just sat there and I couldn't do it. Sat there for two hours. We just sat there, watched TV and he was off and on asleep because that's what he did during the daytime, he couldn't stay awake.

Rachel:
he was heavily medicated.

Michael:
Yeah, and I remember I had tears, just like I have now, I had tears rolling down my eyes and at this time he was probably, I mean, he was probably about 105 pounds, if that, nothing but bones. And I remember the firmest hand reached over and placed it on my arm, he pretty much grabbed my arm and he said, "I'm going to be okay." He looked me in my eyes and said, "I'm going to be okay." And he said, "But I want to tell you, keep doing what you're doing. There's so much potential in what you're doing and what you become that a lot of people need what you're doing." And I said, "Yes." I mean, it was the hardest thing I ever heard in my life.

Michael:
But it gave me so much peace because I know he's better off now than he is fighting that disease. And I say it all the time, but I'm grateful that I was able to spend those two years that I was able to spend with him without a distraction of having to go to work because I wouldn't have been able to do that any other way. And I think God puts things in our lives for reasons. And He puts them in our life for reasons, but it still takes us actions. He can can put everything in front of our face, he can put the door right there, but we still have to choose to walk through that door. And when you do, when you decide that enough's enough and you decide and you make that decision to walk through that door and you're going to put everything in it, there's no stopping you.

Rachel:
And you never know what's coming. So we are five years in to entrepreneurism and running our own business. And we worked really hard from the beginning. And we didn't know that Junior was going to have a diagnosis of cancer, we didn't know that. But we just have put our head down and worked hard and we've done things imperfectly and messy and made mistakes. But we just keep going and if we fail, we get back up and we try again. And we've been hard workers and love people fiercely and partnering together to pick up the pieces when the other has been in a tough time. And we're thankful for the hard work that we've done and the commitment that we made to the business and to our dreams and our goals because it has allowed us to have that time with Junior and to be able to bless other people. Because it's great not to boil water anymore. I'll say that, right? I mean, I'll never forget every time my hands have warm water, I'm thankful. But we will not quit because there's still somebody boiling water.

Michael:
And I just want to say this and I talked about it earlier, but do not do this alone. Find you a tribe, find you some people that you trust, that can pour into you. When you find the right people that's supposed to be in your life, you don't have to explain the situation, they know. They don't know exactly what you're going through, but they have a feeling, they have an intuition. When you bond with the right people, they come off with knowing what you need. And most of the time it's just a lending ear. But when you can be just that ear for somebody and don't always have the answer, then that's where shift happens and change happens.

Michael:
And you will understand that you can win a battle of depression, anxiety, whatever it is. But if you try to fight it in your corner all by yourself, more times than none, you're going to lose that battle and you're going to stay in that situation. So I just want to thank Andy and there's a few other guys that have been there for me through my tough times. I mean, they always say, I know I don't have the right words to say. But when they say that, that's all I need because that lets me know they're in my corner, fighting for me.

Andy Howard:
Thank you man. I feel the exact same way about you and Rachel as well. You guys are family. We say that all the time, at least during our team time, we always call our partners family. And it's because you guys are quality, quality people. And that's why I mean, more than anything else, I hope people take away tonight what people may call mistakes, right? I love what you said earlier, Rachel, that God doesn't make mistakes. But you have a child who was abused, you have a teenage pregnancy, which is very hard to go through.

Andy Howard:
You have early on, I don't know what you'd call it, if you'd call it marriage troubles, but just finding your zone, both of you coming off divorces. Finding your connection, even having to take a step back. You come back together. You have trials from losing your grandmother, losing your brother and yet you're still going, you're still shining. And my hat's off to you guys because you are two of the finest people I know. So I love you dearly. With that said, we are going to wrap it up. Again, for the When Words Don't Come Easy Podcast, I pray that you can find beauty in the broken and that you will go for more because you deserve it. We love you guys and we will talk to you next time.

Andy Howard:
Thanks so much for tuning in. If this episode helped you in any way, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review and share it with somebody else. Thanks so much. I'll catch you next time.