Unwasted Pain
Join us on a thought-provoking journey as we delve into the depths of human experience and explore the intricacies of unwasted pain. In our podcast, "Unwasted Pain," we tackle the universal yet often misunderstood topic of pain and provide insights, support, and guidance for those seeking to navigate the challenges it presents.
Unwasted Pain
The Road Less Traveled
In the darkest of times, we found hope in God's provision. From meeting our children's college tuition needs in miraculous ways to prophetic words coming true – we've witnessed the power of divine provision. Celebrating this restoration journey, we share a special song written by a friend about the number 40, symbolizing completion. We also delve into the importance of honoring individual grieving and healing processes within a family, particularly as we navigate the close of one chapter and the beginning of another. Our hope is that this episode not only uplifts you but also equips you to turn any crisis into a source of strength. Remember, the wilderness is not your final destination; the best is yet to come!
Hello and welcome to the Unwasted Pain podcast. I am here with Chris Conley and we really should introduce our guests not appearing on camera, but every podcast. We have Moe Conley, our dog, here, and I'm Karen, and it is so great to be with you. Thank you for joining us for this podcast. We have a great I don't know. I like this part of the story. So if you've been following along with us on this podcast, really our heart's desire is no matter where you are at, we all have peaks and valleys in our lives. We all go through pain. We know that we're supposed to count it all joy when we encounter various trials, but that's hard, and so when we're going through challenging times, we want that pain to be unwaisted, and so Well, real quick.
Speaker 2:It just makes me smile to say I like this part of the story. The podcast is called Unwaisted Pain. I know, You're like get me to the peace, get me to the promises, yeah this is the better part of the story.
Speaker 1:So, hopefully, as we've hit different parts of the story, all of our circumstances look different. Your journey and our journey is obviously going to be very unique to each of us, but there are these common truths that we find woven through Scripture and these choices that we have. We can choose to believe and think on what is true and pure and noble, or we can just find ourselves in a valley and spiral, and all of us have been in both places. But our hope is that this particular podcast will give you seeds of hope in your valleys and also tools to help other people, because the people around you if you're not in a valley right now, yay, praise God but the people within your circle of influence need you to be cognizant of where they are on their journey, and sometimes in our journey, there were people all along the way that helped us get to the good part of the story. And so, if you are in a great place, that doesn't mean there's nothing in this podcast for you. It doesn't mean there is, but it does mean that you have an opportunity to hold up arms of people that you love and people that, whether they know the Lord or not, how you can speak truth and hope to them in their valleys.
Speaker 1:And so, just by way of a very quick recap over our past episodes we have talked about, we had an incredibly fruitful time in our season 18 years, as we started in Lead High Point Church and then, in 2018, in the midst of just a very challenging season probably the most challenging season either of us have ever faced, and you've faced plenty so we ended up leaving Memphis for a season. We just needed to get away and be somewhere where we could hear from the Lord, kind of get out of the noise and the clutter and just know and be still before the Lord, and so that took us to Atlanta, where we were in Atlanta for 15 months and from Atlanta, as God did provide and if you've listened to the podcast, you've heard a lot of that story saw His faithfulness there, saw the man of there, but then there came this moment when all the man looked like it was running out in Atlanta and the Lord opened a door in Cleveland Ohio, and though we only ended up spending eight months in Cleveland Ohio, despite the fact that we bought a house and thought we were going to be there for much longer. We look back now and realize, oh, it was such a strategic part of the journey. And so, eight months into it, lo and behold, in the middle of COVID and all that stuff, the Lord says, okay, through Exodus 4, 19, and 20, all the people who wanted you killed have died. Take your wife and children and the staff of God back to Egypt.
Speaker 1:And for us, we knew definitively that meant going back to the place that God had called us to continue the work that he had called us to. And so we ended up back in Memphis in, I guess, the end of July 2020. In the middle of COVID, deciding to plant a church, which is obviously, by man's logic, not a really great idea. But from that point forward, chris, maybe you can give us just the quick summary of 2020, 2021, and 2022, and that'll bring us up to this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So moving back to Memphis was a mixture of emotions. We never wanted to leave in the beginning. It is our home. We believe that God's given us a vision for it. But also it was coming back to a place that we left in some pain, and again, the earlier podcast detailed that whole story. But when we came back, it's all those. First, the times that you're going to drive by the old church and feel those emotions. And not only did we drive by the old church, that when we moved back to Memphis we moved into a friend's guest house that literally was 250 yards behind our church. I mean, we would walk our dog around the church, and so there was just some ways that God maybe I don't know, in a sense of a humor or just the wink of the eye of like I'm going to make you.
Speaker 2:Face this, yes, face this work, through this forgive, take the band-aid off again and again and again. But there were all those first that you're going to bump into somebody and oh, you're back in town and what are you doing, and all that kind of stuff. And so when we came back and like you said I mean you said the middle of COVID, in many ways probably more toward the beginning of COVID than the middle of COVID it's like how crazy that the vast majority of churches were shut down and were trying to start a church.
Speaker 1:Let me just also just interrupt you because, again, just wanting to help make application to where people are. No matter what type of valley you've been through, you probably have those firsts. If it's a divorce, it's the first time you see some friends, it's going back home, maybe for the first time, those kind of things, and I think honestly there's more anxiousness in advance of them than just walking through it. Sure.
Speaker 2:And I mean for us. The vast majority of people were grateful to see us back, believe in us, want to see us continue to do God's work in this city. And then for some of those that there were strained relationships, then honestly we would just be the first to go shake their hand, say I forgive you, love you, want nothing but the best for you. But it still creates that nervous energy and it still has you kind of walking around, you know, more aware of your surroundings than you never thought of that stuff before and I would just say that it's a new beginning. But just because it's a new beginning it doesn't mean it's an easy beginning and most new beginnings honestly have a little bit of you know it's a hill to climb in the beginning and Unfortunately, all the sowing and reaping that we had done the previous 18 years, that doesn't necessarily carry over. You know you have to kind of plow new soil and you have to begin that reaping process all over again. So you know it's it's one of those things that it just required new faith. We couldn't come back and just did To do what we had done before. You know it was like one of those things that Just because you've done this before. God didn't bring us back to do the same thing, and so it required just All the things that we had learned from the valley you know, these new ways that God had built our faith and in many ways, tested our faith and then come back and say, okay, god, Do we believe that you can restore? And and I think one of the things that we've learned in this is that our God is not a God of partial restoration, he's a God of complete restoration, and I think for anyone that's been through their own crisis, their own season of adversity, you really need to believe that statement. He is not a God of partial restoration. We don't write songs about partial restoration. We write songs about the God that's not only complete or full restoration, but a God of double restoration. And we've even dared to believe double restoration.
Speaker 2:But when we came back, that first year was Really still a COVID year.
Speaker 2:We missed like 20 Sundays in the first year, so it was kind of start-stop, start-stop.
Speaker 2:And then the second year was in many ways kind of like our first year and and yet God had led us to this place of knowing that we needed to find a permanent home, but yet we were incredibly small I mean, we were probably less than 75 people on a Sunday and Yet, when we did all the research, we're probably gonna need, you know, four million dollars minimum to either Renovate something, lease something, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:And so we began what we call a building, one city, and in that, just began to say that we kind of felt like God gave us this principle that, because we didn't know where we were supposed to go yet, you know, just start the engine of the car and then trust him to drive it, trust him to show us where, and it was toward the end of that year that God Made us aware of an old Jewish synagogue that was just perfectly located in the center of the city, and so it really everything about it just felt like, wow, this is God's provision. And so we began that process and and that kind of took us, you know, into a place that I think it was March 17th, you know, 2022 that we actually closed on the loan yeah you're right, may 17th that we closed on that loan and, again, a whole set of stories.
Speaker 2:We gave some of those stories of just God's provision, but In all of this, each one of these things has kind of represented Like a mile marker through the wilderness. You know, and when you think about the wilderness, you know, when you go back to the children of Israel, if my memory is correct, it's it's like only like a 11-day journey, but it's an 11-day journey that took them 40 years. So, depending on how you respond to the wilderness, you can have a 11-day journey or you can have a 40 year journey. It's incredibly difficult to actually shorten the amount of time you spend in the wilderness, but it's easy to lengthen the amount of time you spend in the wilderness. And and what we were trying to do through this journey is just say, okay, how can we learn what we're supposed to learn? How can we grow through this? How can we discover more of who God is? And then, how do we get to the other side and how do we cross over?
Speaker 1:Chris, before you hit 2023, as you're just saying these, as I'm just reflecting on our journey, I do think, when you've been through a valley, that the the human response Is. Sometimes you're almost paralyzed. You're just like fear sets in. You know, you, you maybe are hesitant to take a step forward and maybe you've never been before, but just the, the jarring nature of a valley can kind of leave you at a place that you're. You maybe hesitate to make decisions or you're afraid something else bad is going to happen, and I would just encourage you in that way. One of the things and we've probably said it in this podcast before but God's not gonna let you walk off a cliff thinking that you're obeying him. And so there is this tension, like, as I hear you, you know, talk about we, you know 75 people and a four million dollar loan.
Speaker 1:Like don't do that unless you know that you've heard from God, like that is not the Application, like go, you know, go out there and risk all your finances Unless you've heard from the Lord. But just in that place of of knowing, sometimes you have to take that first step for God to show you what's next. And so it's that it. I would just encourage you, if you're at a place of rebuilding, of starting over because you've been in a valley, that that there's this place of you're right. You can't, you know, don't despise the day of small beginnings. And there is you, you.
Speaker 1:There are things that we took from our first journey that do help accelerate this part of the journey, but there are parts of it that it's it's just new ground and it there's not that transfer that maybe you would think. But either way of just saying Don't fear that because something has happened in your past that maybe you couldn't control, or maybe you could control and made some poor decisions. Whatever the case may be, that doesn't mean that that's your future and so, yes, be, go before the Lord. Make sure, through wise counsel and prayer and the word and circumstances, that, to the best of your ability, you are moving forward. But then, at the end of the day I think that's where we have been able to step forward is to go okay, god is for us, he is a God of restoration and we don't have to live in fear and we are not going to let the enemy Steal our future, as much as he attacked something in our past.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the most natural thing to do is, when you have lost things is to have the insecurity that comes from instability, and With that you know instability and some of the insecurity that you might battle. Then it's easy to have fear instead of faith. And what we're trying to do is to say, actually, at times when you're at your lowest place, you use the term the valley Jesus is still the lily of the valley, he is still present with you and he doesn't want to leave you in the valley. And so you know, there are these Steps of faith that you must take, and and I really would view the steps of faith almost like a set of dominoes you have to say, okay, what's the first step of faith? That that I can think big but act small. Okay, so I'm thinking big according to what God has promised. God has promised restoration, he's promised complete restoration. So I'm gonna think big, I'm gonna act small, and when I act small, I take one step of faith. He's not asking me to jump over the Grand Canyon, okay, and when I take that one step of faith, then that's going to.
Speaker 2:You know, it's kind of like that, that illustration of if you have a flashlight in your hand and that flashlight has a beam of 20 feet and Therefore you can see 20 feet in front of you when you're in the darkness.
Speaker 2:But if you take that one step now, that beam has just penetrated the next two, three feet, and so now you can see a little bit further and you can take the next step.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's a lamp unto my feet, and so in that way, I just would say there are big promises by God, but break down the big promise into individual steps of faith in all of a sudden again, instead of a 40 year journey through the wilderness, it can be 11 day journey. You know, for us it's really honestly about a five year process and in a unique set of circumstances, I actually told you, like when this happened hey, I hope this isn't true, but this is probably at least a five year journey to see restoration occur in our life, and June 24th of 2023 was five years, and the way I would describe it at this particular moment is you know, we have stepped into the Jordan River, we have seen the waters part, but we're currently walking through that river. We're not all the way through yet, and so, you know, in baseball terminology, we're rounding third base and we're trying to come home, but we're not there yet. But think big, act small.
Speaker 1:Let me give a maybe a practical example of that. And again, these things, taken out of context, can lead you, you know, with misinformation. So there's always context to this. But in the example you had on our notes here, r for R, so in 2019, in the middle of our wilderness and we've given this story, so I'm not going to elaborate on it but really the Lord gave you a picture of a race for reconciliation.
Speaker 1:So that is big and that feels like seriously, like how can we ever just do anything about that? But we had enough faith to say let's get a logo, let's get this, let's get. We have to have something tangible to be able to share with people. And so the first step was contacting a graphic designer and having him design that. And lo and behold, the next step was through a connection of his and some mutual friends, and he happened to be a graphic designer that was a believer that had done graphic design for Nike, who knew other people at Nike.
Speaker 1:And the next step of step of faith and this is crazy is we actually were invited to go out to Portland and share the vision of something that did not exist. That was literally through a sleepless night, but that was the next step and, honestly, even in that example, that wasn't like, oh, nike is going to pick us up and here comes R for R, but it required us another step of preparation. We had to have enough of our act together to go out there and say, what would this look like? And so so again, it's just, we're now three years into that and literally, it is okay, I'm going to knock on the doors, lord, and you're going to have to open them, and each way he has continued to do that and we're seeing something that's a really big thing, but the only thing I can do is eat the elephant and bite sized pieces, and again, only spending energy on that, because we felt like, through prayer, through circumstances, through Wines Council and through the Word, this was something that was not our idea, but it was God's idea.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think what's important in this, wherever you are in your own individual journey of whether you're coming out of a crisis, walking through a crisis unfortunately, sometimes you're about to enter a crisis, whether we know it or not, you know. Wherever you are in that journey, it's important to have some mile markers along the way. You need to know that some level of progress is being made. You need to know there is a rear view mirror and you're not stuck and that you can look back and go. We are making some level of progress. And then you need to have a sense of, okay, what does the new look like and how do we? You know like.
Speaker 2:For us, just it was an educated guess, we didn't know anything, but just to know that, hey, this is probably going to be five years, and so you know.
Speaker 2:And then the way our restoration has played out, you know it's followed that timeline closely, and so I think what's important is for other people in your family to have a sense of progress, to have a sense that this will end one day, to know that we can close a chapter and officially close that chapter so that we can write a new chapter, and that's important. You know, in a marriage, it's important with your kids, regardless of their age. We have, you know, adult sons and daughters, not kids. And then you know, when you're in leadership, it's important for the people who follow you. So you know, why don't you just introduce kind of what we did, you know, for Mark and Annika as we were approaching this, you know five-year anniversary and, instead of that anniversary being something that could be potentially negative or still have some level of hurt associated with it, how we really wanted to redefine what that five-year anniversary was about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I would say, as you were just saying, just mile markers along the way. There were points along the journey that the first mile marker might be okay. It's 30 days later.
Speaker 2:Check your pulse.
Speaker 1:We're alive, you alive, I'm alive, man. We made it Like it is only going to get easier from here, Like that was the epicenter of the earthquake, and you may not feel like you're emotionally, you know, healed or anywhere close to it. You're still just feeling all the pain of a valley. So some of those first mile markers you might not feel like I'm not doing, okay, no, but you are still kicking and breathing and God still is putting breath in your lungs.
Speaker 1:So there were days that it was that. Then there were days that we started saying, okay, we're doing this thing, Like I don't even know what this thing is. And then again, as God showed those different steps along the way, we kept taking steps and so, as we came upon, looking towards I think it was honestly maybe around three and a half years somewhere in there we just said, okay, we want to plan a trip that marks the end of this season, that closes the chapter of the wilderness and marks all the ways that God has been faithful through the wilderness that you know. We didn't go without food or water, or shoes did not wear out, we don't even know how.
Speaker 2:And in that way, it's important to change how you remember the past. You know, one of the things that we talk about is that forgiveness doesn't change the past. It's definitely not forgive and forget, but forgiveness changes how you remember the past. And do you remember the past from a place of healing or from a place of hurt? And so what we wanted to do for one another and what we wanted to do for our family is really go back and recount all of God's faithfulness to us in the wilderness, in all the different ways that we have been healed, and remember the past from a place of healing.
Speaker 1:So we did.
Speaker 1:We said, okay, we're going to put a date on the calendar and we're going to coordinate with our adult son and daughter and the four of us go away and have a fun trip, something that would have been a part of our previous life, pre-crisis, pre-wilderness, something that would have been that type of caliber of trip which honestly took some faith, because we're not at this place financially where we were, and that was a much bigger commitment in totality to where maybe we would have been before the crisis.
Speaker 1:But we just decided we wanted to do something fun, we wanted to make some memories and then, in the spiritual marker kind of way you know the entire trip was. But also, I think what sometimes we forget is that there needs to be moments, that there's a moment where you're actually in present, tense, eye to eye, talking about the past, the present and the future. And so we had fun. We went up to New York, we did a little Broadway, we went to a PGA event, we kinda you know, Not to a PGA event we went to the PGA championship, sorry, sorry, one of the four majors.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I'm not building it up.
Speaker 2:We're gonna talk sports. We gotta really, you know, give it the right context here.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so the Connelly, the four of us don't have a lot of things that we all enjoy equally, but somehow or another, all of us really enjoy watching golf. So one of our bucket lists is to do the four majors and the Ryder Cup, and so we said, all right, we're gonna go for it and we're gonna go to the PGA championship.
Speaker 2:We've got the open championship. Now we have the PGA championship. Mark and I have been to the Masters, the girls haven't been to the Masters yet I have done a US Open. We need to get the whole family to the US Open. And we're paying for the Ryder Cup and we're hoping to do the Ryder Cup in 2027, I think it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're gonna have to figure out a way to get those tickets but yeah, so anyway.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I did not mean to undersell the blessing that we experienced, but we did go up into the PGA championship, but there was a specific night that we were intentional to create an environment and be in a space where there could be just a dialogue. And so I feel like, just from again, from an application standpoint, especially as a parent or a spouse, it's important to have those moments because there's just something to closure and there's something to sometimes, when something challenging happens, you almost talk around it and then, if you're a couple years into it, you don't wanna always talk about it. But we wanted to look at it in reflection and see God's faithfulness.
Speaker 2:Well, and because Mark and Anika were in college through most of this, we would just see them in short windows of time. And then you give them a part of the story. You try to take different parts of the things that God is doing and the healing that is occurring and the prophetic words that are being spoken and the provision that occurs, but they get kind of sound bites. And then there's, just like you said, when you're present, you're wanting to try to just enjoy being with them and not necessarily have serious conversations all the time, and then the phone is just kind of inadequate for some of these things. And so what we did is we said, okay, let's go and let's make sure the vast majority of this trip is just simply celebrating that, hey, we did it. Not only did we do it, more importantly, god did it. He has carried us through this wilderness. We are officially ending the chapter, we are writing a new chapter, but we really felt like there was one night that we wanted to dedicate to, after dinner that night, that we would just kind of tell the story from start to finish, but not the story of what went wrong, the story of what went right, the story of what God did. And so we actually began, in many ways, the story, which is how God provided for their college tuition and just how we tried to do everything possible for none of this to inconvenience their college experience and to show that how God cared for them through this process. And then, as we have tried to be a good steward of prophetic words and have voice memo those words and transcribe those words, then we pulled a few selective words out just to show them the wow factor of God used someone to say this who knew nothing about us, and that this has come true and now we're living in the reality of this. But in addition to all of that, then we were able to show them all the remarkable ways that God has provided for the new church, provided for our, for our, and just while these new visions are coming to life.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we have said is that we believe that God is in the process of restoring us. We feel like we have been healed. We feel like we're healthy physically, spiritually. We feel like the visions that hopefully, mentally, hopefully, the visions that God has given us we see progress in. But someone once said you're only as happy as your unhappiest child, and one of the things that we have said is we don't feel fully restored until we see our children restored, and so we wanted this kind of storytelling time of restoration to really be opportunity for them to see what God has done, but also to see how much God cares about them.
Speaker 2:And so, in that process, I had asked a friend and this song will be used for many purposes but I kind of gave her the concept that the number 40, scripturally, represents kind of completion, and in that there's the number 40 is used in so many strategic ways throughout the pages of scripture, but you never see year 41., you never see day 41. And so, sometimes though, we feel like we're stuck in year 39. And so I asked her to kind of write a song about this concept, and the name of the song is the end of it. You know the end of the wilderness, the end of the adversity, you know that we are gonna complete this journey, and so there was a moment where and it's a remarkable song and it's a moment where-.
Speaker 1:As soon as we get it copyrighted we'll share it with you.
Speaker 2:That's right that we, just before we went into the place where we were staying, we just sat in the car and listened to that and just there's just something that music, just you know, communicates in a unique way. It just touches your soul in a unique way, it opens your emotions and it just gives you the ability to reflect and just set the tone for amazing conversation.
Speaker 1:And I'm sitting here thinking like how much does God love us that we even had a song to say share with our children. And you might be thinking well, lucky you. There are actually online services that will write specific songs, if you need an all if you need a song to get out of your valley and to celebrate, you go online. There's a way to do that.
Speaker 2:Are you talking like AI? Are you talking other sir?
Speaker 1:No, there's I saw something online that it's like a great birthday gift and you can like have them write a song about your spouse. I don't know the website, but I was just sitting there thinking how amazing is that that the Lord Orchestrated for for Becca to be in our life? Who's so amazing and gave her this song? That just was anyway, I'm just saying it. It's not just us, you could do that too. Yeah, and it was a powerful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And so then you know, as we Recounted, all that God had done, we also got to a place where I had asked you know, somewhere in the neighborhood, five, six, seven friends From not only around the country, some from around the world if they would give a prophetic word for Mark and Anika. And I just told him, I said All the only thing I want you to know is, you know, at that time Mark was 24 years of age, anika would just turn 23 years of age and and just said ask God what he wants to say. And it was amazing the level of accuracy that these words had, uniquely for each of them, and and and our two kids are radically different and and yet you could just see how they're. They tuned in a little bit more of like okay, it's one thing for God to speak to mom and dad, but it's it grabs your attention when God speaks directly to you from someone you've never met, but someone that is speaking things that are accurate, and those things actually Build you up. You know they they call you closer or higher to God. You know they increase, join your life, and then they speak into the future in such a way that there's a promise of a better day.
Speaker 2:And so Then that time together, you know it resulted in Us them sharing. We, you know I tried my best not to do the dad talk and just dominate all the time and not have them, you know, engage or interact. So we just said you do well, tell us about your jury, you know. Tell us where you are, tell us where you are in the healing process. And then there was just some beautiful interaction between Mark and Anika as brother and sister, and just you and I. We just felt like it was a holy moment.
Speaker 1:And I would just say just in that, again, some of these things. You know that if we hadn't have had those moments, we wouldn't have Maybe the ability to speak into this, but I would just say one of the things that the word was gracious to show us and I think applies to Anybody who's who's gone through a challenging season is everybody in your family is gonna grieve differently. They're gonna perceive things differently by age, by just personality, and so we we, while we were Celebrating the close of a chapter, we wanted to also just acknowledge and and live, leave room that we are not saying, okay, you better get over it. You, you know that's the end of this. You, we're fine, you should be fine too, um, but by just bringing this and having and showing God's faithfulness, I think there was, you know, more closure, that happened all the way across. But it's just important not to Project or assume your path of grieving and healing is the, is it the only way or the right way?
Speaker 2:And just to give people room that just, even when the death of a loved one, people respond differently and and just you've got to just, I think, be, be okay with that and know that God sees each person when they are and that, in these moments, just to be careful not to yeah, there's not a you know when, when you do something like this, it's you have some expectations, you have some hopes and prayers for desired outcomes, but it's really just about honoring the moment and In saying we're going to talk through this for the purpose of trying to bring closure, to have a new beginning. So I couldn't agree more that I think they're. You know, there is that Individuality where each person, you know, travels through their journey at their own pace. But what we have seen is a lot of times it's kind of like the recovery world and you know we've done a lot of work with celebrate recovery, when, when someone has a hurt habit or hang up and and they need to go through recovery, there's a sense that that's an individual process, that that individual has to go through that. But recovery is never just an individual issue, it's always a family issue and so in many ways the family has to go through the recovery process as well. And so in this we were trying to kind of whether we knew that or not, or said it that way or not Just trying to say let's create a moment that we will remember forever, that gives us permission to say that chapter is closed, gives us permission to view that chapter from the lens of healing and then gives us permission to write the new chapter, to focus on the future and to all just say you know what God was good. He got us through it. Honestly, we stayed together as a family, we United together, we they did a great job through their college experience.
Speaker 2:You know it's easy that when something goes wrong, it's easy for it to go even worse. It's easy for one bad decision to turn into multiple bad decisions, and so it just felt like a healthy moment and, honestly, we just wanted to share this with you, just to create the idea of spiritual markers into Journey along the way, so that there's a sense of progress, so that then there can be closure, so that there can be a new beginning and and and I think maybe you know for us just to close with this, we, we said earlier that Right now we have stepped into the Jordan River, the waters have parted, we're walking through, and for us, I think one of the things that we've learned in this process Is that you kind of go through this season of from surviving To stable, to strong, and, um, we're still, in many ways, trying to get out of the surviving category Into the stable category and then, as we have started, a new church, you know, one of the keys to that it's just to have your home. It's just like a young married couple that we've been through have your home. It's just like a young married couple that wants to maybe go from apartment or from renting to have their own home, and and so we have purchased this old synagogue, we're in the process of renovating that and hopefully by the end of this year We'll move in.
Speaker 2:And what I really anticipate Is that first Sunday for us, we'll be a crossing over moment. It will be that official moment of okay, the waters are going to close behind us. Um, we haven't forgotten the past, but we remember the past differently. We remember it through healing. We're actually stronger because of the past and that we are now Living in a new promise land. And hey, there's still giants to fight in that land, unfortunately. Uh, but I'd much rather fight new giants than old giants. And um, what we're gonna do is we're gonna be ready for the fight and we're gonna fight the good fight.
Speaker 2:But I really Pray and believe that for you and I, you know, as a couple, um, for mark and onica to experience that day, honestly, for our church to experience that day, the people who have come and been part of this new I will never, never, never be able to think enough. The people who have walked with this through the wilderness, held our arms up, believed in us, I will never, ever, ever be able to think enough. I mean, these are stories of faithfulness, that that I will tell forever. These are crowns in heaven that people will lay at the feet of Jesus for the way that they um believed and continued to come alongside and fight the battle with us. And so All of us need a crossover moment, and I think you need to put a crossover moment in front of you, to dream toward that moment, work toward that moment, believe in that moment and then watch god Bring it into fulfillment.
Speaker 1:I was just sitting here trying to find on my phone the words to breathtakingly beautiful um. We have another spiritual marker in our home and I, I, uh, it felt really weird just staring at my phone instead of looking at you, uh, so I didn't find it, but just those things that, instead of remembering hard things from that place of pain, the spiritual markers allow you to remember those seasons from a place of faith, um, and help you, protect you from getting stuck. I think that's my biggest heart's desire for people who go through hard seasons, which is all of us, um, and and hopefully this gives you a really um, tangible way to Protect yourself and the people you love from getting stuck. That's what the enemy wants is to get us stuck in our pain. But instead of being stuck, it can be unwaisted. Instead of looking at things, um From a place of tragedy or crisis, being able to see that every season comes to an end and you will not be in your wilderness forever, and I hope that our story um, and Up next, we have some uh, you were just telling me about an amazing guest that's going to be on for some of our future podcasts.
Speaker 1:Um, that will really also give some additional tools of how to walk through wilderness seasons. Um, but the best is ahead, not just for the conleys but for you. Yeah. So thank you so much for joining us at Unwaisted Pain, and we can't wait to see you next time.