Bridge Building with Joyce Dorian (Part 1)

Join Christy Dragotta and Joyce Dorian as they explore the Jewish roots of Christianity, the importance of understanding and unity between Jews and Christians, and how faith can transform lives. This conversation offers deep insights into biblical history, anti-Semitism, and the call to build bridges of reconciliation.

To reach Joyce - you can find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1SVcoAVXNk/?mibextid=wwXIfr

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@joycedorianatthebridge?feature=shared

and you can find her podcast anywhere you love to stream them! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, I'm so glad you're with me today. I am very excited to introduce to you Joyce Dorian, and she's with the Bridge Ministries, and I am just really excited for you to know her and to know what is on her heart to share with you guys. So, Joyce, will you share a little bit about what you do and what your ministry is about and who you are?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Thank you, Christy, for having me here. And I'm so excited to talk about the bridge and what my mission is and what's on my heart. I'm actually new to finding the Lord. I found the Lord about five years ago, and it's transformed my life in ways I could have never dreamed of, could have never expected. And he laid on my heart recently to really work to try to connect the dots between Jews and Christians because it weighs heavy on my heart. How many Jews have so many scales on their eyes, have so many walls up, have so many misconceptions, have just no idea, and how many Christians also are really confused? The antisemitism today, the concepts of replacement theology, the unawareness of the Jewish Jesus, the unawareness even of the importance of the context of the Bible. This weighs so heavy on my heart, and the Lord just put it on my heart to be one more voice calling out the one more voice blasting the trumpet because I don't think I'm doing anything unique. I think there's a whole lot of people doing this already, and hallelujah, that there's Jews and Christians doing this already, but I think we all need to be blowing that trumpet. I think we all need to be raising our voice, and I I think that's the most important thing to be doing while we're waiting for Jesus to come.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, very good. Tell me a little bit about how you were raised and where, because you are Jewish, and so tell me a little bit about that. Tell me about your heritage, how you're raised.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

So I like to say I'm a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, which any Jewish person will be familiar with that kind of um sentiment and line, uh, because it's kind of a joke, and it's amazing that Brooklyn has almost the largest amount of Jews in the world. You know, I'm just gonna throw this out now. I thought I would say it later, but there's so much blaming and negativity toward Jews, and we're less than 1% of the world's entire population, and yet people are thinking that the Jews run the world. There's not that many Jews, we're not that powerful that we could do that. Um, so so thanks for thinking we're all that.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

But I think that's because of the assignment. I mean, as literally God's chosen people, right? The Jewish people were the people he chose. You know, that's where he created his temple, was among the Jews. That is who he called out. And so I think the reason the spotlight gets there so often, and especially as it turns negative in this age, it's there's always been, I mean, we can look back clearly at history and see. I mean, Pharaoh was trying to kill all the Jewish baby boys, and Hitler, I mean, we know the Holocaust and what it did. I can't believe just even the dialogue that's around that for a little while. It kind of has dissipated, I think, now, but like the Holocaust didn't happen, like just trying to say these things in history were were not happening, and I think it's because Satan he hates all mankind because we were made in the image of God, right? The Imago Dei. We were all created in the image of God, but the Jewish people were his special chosen people, and so I feel like the target, even though you're less than one percent of the population, is directly on you because Satan's desire from the very beginning was to annihilate, wipe out God's chosen people. And so I I think it it doesn't make any sense when you look at it logically with a logical mind, you go, This doesn't even make any sense. Like the way that even like even even now I'm seeing the Hanta virus, right? And I don't know which way people are trying to go with this, but people are like, Do you know what Hanta means in Hebrew? It means basically fake, um, a scam. And it's like a scam virus. I'm like, are they trying to say like I can't figure it out? Like, I'm like, are these I don't because I don't click on it because I'm like, I don't if it's anti-Semitism, I just don't want it. But are they trying to say, like, the Jews created this virus? Why are the Jews in Hebrew being brought into this newest virus? You know, I it doesn't even make any sense to me. But I'm just like, gosh, the only thing that makes sense is that the enemy has his target just fixated on the Jewish people because they are the beloved of God. And now, as I believe, right, as a Christian believer, as a Gentile, but a Christian um who has followed the way, has followed the Christ as my Messiah, and accept the Jewish Jesus, right? That's where my roots are, because he is from Israel. And so that's I mean, he's my Jesus, right? So because of that, I now believe I am also part of the chosen people. Yes. But we haven't replaced you. It isn't like he chose us and it's the well, forget about y'all. Like if you just read in Romans and Hebrews and so many places, you can't come to that conclusion because he says, I will never leave or forsake you. So then those that are saying that he has forsaken or left, are they saying then that God is a liar? And if they are, then isn't that a kind of a bigger issue? What God do you serve then? That is a lying God that would go back on his word.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Right. So right, they're not serving the same God that we're serving if they're doing that. If they're taking the Bible and getting something different, because the very earliest covenants, you have God saying, eternal, as long as the sun and the moon remain, that my covenant with you is eternal. And the covenant was never based on Israel's obedience. Now, punishments were based on Israel's obedience or lack of obedience, but not the covenant. And you know, the the grafting in, it's sort of like when parents adopt children, they don't suddenly not love their natural-born children. No, they embrace them and they all become one family, and we're supposed to be one family. But you are correct, Satan always knew that the Jews were part of his redemptive plan. So that we saw Pharaoh, we saw Nebuchadnezzar, we saw Haman, we, you know, and then we saw Herod um wanting to kill the babies, thinking that he was gonna take out Jesus. So, you know, that's been all throughout history, and there's just such a misunderstanding about that. But perhaps a lot of the misunderstandings were for the time of the fullness of the Gentiles, and I do believe that we are coming very close because we can we can see the signs of the time. But let me go back to some of my stories. So, um, nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, brought up going to kind of a conservative type of synagogue, Sunday school. I learned dances, prayers, recipes, cooking, um, holidays, and so forth. Never read the Bible, never even realized that that was something that some children do at home. Now, in synagogue for the adults, they do teach what's called the parsha of the week, the Torah reading of the week. So in Jesus' time, they took three years to read through the Torah. So interestingly, Jesus' ministry was three years. Now the Pharisees read all the books. So they were reading the Psalms, they were reading Ecclesiastes, they were reading all the prophets. The Sadducees only read the first five books. And in many synagogues today, they really only read the first five books. They only read the Pentateuch, the Tanakh, they only read the first five books and really don't pay much attention to the others. So, you know, so you know, like for me growing up, I never knew that about the prophets. I, you know, now granted, I never read the Torah, but I heard things about it, like, you know, learn the Ten Commandments and so forth, but um never learned about the other books. Now I did learn about the story of Esther from Perm and so forth, but again, it just didn't make sense. Now I did grow up hearing fear of God, fear of God, fear of God, and that for me was a major stumbling block because why do I want to worship a God that I have to fear? Right? So my parents divorced when I was 12, and it was really my father's influence that was keeping us in synagogue. And so when my parents divorced, dad left the house and the bacon came in the house. But something as a cultural Jew that was sort of non-verbally communicated to me was as long as you maintain your Jewish identity, hold on to some traditions, do it however you want, eat all the bacon you want, but as long as you don't accept Jesus, you got your Jewish card, you're good. So that thought of Jesus has caused so much pain for the Jewish people as a whole, we were supposed to not accept him. And that was one of the things that I never questioned. I just sort of accepted life as it was.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And was that after even after your father was no longer in your home, too, even your mom still continued in that?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah, so that was very much, you know, something within like almost Jewish DNA, is there's a certain fear of Christians. And now I will say also, like I'm 65 now, I live in Georgia. I've been living in Georgia for about 20 years. I probably didn't hear the word Christian until I moved to Georgia. In New York and Florida, uh, I heard Catholic. Uh in New York, you were Catholic or Protestant, and what I heard from Catholics is um we don't like Jews because you killed Jesus. So I grew up hearing that, and I grew up hearing from my friends because most of my friends were Catholic, was well, you're a good Jew, so we like you. You're different than the other Jews, so we like you. And I sort of just accepted that and buried that because I didn't really know what to do with it. I and I didn't necessarily feel negative about them toward it because I didn't even understand what it meant. Yeah. You know, that would be like somebody saying to me, Well, you know, I don't like that color shirt you're wearing. I'd be like, Okay, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So it didn't even, you know, while it was negative and I knew there was a negative to it, I didn't give it a lot of weight. And it wasn't till years later that I started to understand it. And I went through my own spiritual journey when I was around 18. Um, some very deep emotional things had happened in my life, and I somehow connected with some religious Jews and thought, oh, maybe this is the answer. Maybe I need to be religious because to me that meant God. Well, I end up in Israel, living in Jerusalem, going to study at Yeshiva, and this is now my second time going to Israel. I went there for the summer when I was 16.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

And was that your kind of your birthright trip? Am I getting that right? Was that working?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Neither was a birthright trip, actually. I didn't even know about birthright at that time.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Oh wow, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

So um, yeah, my mother sent me on a teen tour uh when I was 16. She gave me the choice of either a sweet 16 party or a trip to Israel. And I was like, wow, the trip to Israel is way cooler. So um, and that was amazing. You know, the Sinai was still part of Israel then. I got to go to Mount Sinai. Um it was kind of like really cool. The Sinai Desert is just amazing.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

So now I'm in living in Jerusalem in an apartment with seven other girls with the idea of going to Yeshiva, and I spent a day there and I realized this is so not for me. This is not the experience I thought it was coming for. Because I was in New York following a group that was very influenced by uh Shlomo Karlbach, who is a sort of a uh a hippie Orthodox Hasidic rabbi.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

I did get to go to his mo shop, which was a really cool place, but the the place I went to, the yeshiva was not hippie, was not cool, was very, you know, like you have no free will, this is how you do things, and it wasn't about God, it was about rules and structure and how to be Jewish, and I was like, this is not for me. But I stayed for about four months and uh got to have some really wonderful experiences. It's such an amazing country, yeah. And then I came home and really found myself in the new age world. I found myself also in um the anonymous world. Um, I went to Codependence Anonymous, which was life-changing for me. This was the 80s Melody Beattie stuff had just come out, and that led me into a Course in Miracles, and that is a self-psychology reflection of Jesus, and supposedly they channeled Jesus, and Christianity got it wrong, but they got it right, and I will say I learned a lot from it, and it gave me much more peace in my life than I had had, but I was still searching, and I was still I still had that hole in my soul kind of thing, and I was still not a piece and not happy. I was just doing better. Yes, so years go by, I have my family, and I'm trying lots of different things and so forth. I was went to universalist Unitarianism for a while, and that's you know, you could come in with whatever religion you are, it's more of like a moral compass and we're gonna worship together type thing, and it was lovely, but again, it wasn't the answer. And then in 2020, a friend, the end of 2020, um, so now I'm 60 years old. A friend of mine says, Hey, I'm doing this year-long chronological Bible study. It's an online thing, takes maybe 10 minutes a day. There's a bunch of us doing it and want to join us, and I thought, oh, I've looked at everything else, I actually never read the Bible, never looked at it. Sure, why not? And um, that changed my life forever. Wow. So now that friend that I sat with who invited me to that, we sat together for years, we were good friends, and I was always trying to convert her to my new age thinking. And here she is a Christian, and she's just loving on me, just being patient, you know, praying for me, I'm sure, but not judging me, not saying I'm right or I'm wrong. And so I think that really kept the door open for me that when she invited me, I knew I wasn't gonna be judged if I had different opinions than her. But when I started doing that Bible study, everything in my life changed. I had all of these millions of questions, and she didn't really have answers, and she's like, Well, we're gonna figure these out together. So which was awesome. But Jesus kept jumping out to me all over the Old Testament. I saw him way before Isaiah, I saw him way before the New Testament, and I just kept this is Jesus, this is Jesus, this is Jesus, and and meanwhile, I've never read the New Testament, I knew nothing about Jesus, so it's not like I had a framework for saying this is.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Well, and in fact, your past was as long as you stay away from that Jesus guy, right? You're good, right? You're good, right? So it even carried a negative connotation, except for that you were like, hang on, I'm I'm reading this. And I would say this one thing just because it you said this, and I really want it to stand out to people. You said she didn't have a lot of answers. All she had was a willing heart to open up the scriptures with you, and that's all Jesus needed to get in. And so I want to encourage anyone that's listening, watching this today, like you don't have to be a priest or a pastor. You just have to have the word of God and the willingness to open it with somebody and and the heart that says, We'll do it together, right? Like we'll figure this out, we'll dive in, and I'm with you in it. And isn't that how God does things with us? Right? Like He says, I'm with you always. There's never a time, nothing can separate us from the love of God. And so I just wanted to highlight that because I thought that's actually such a beautiful piece of your testimony. She didn't have to know and be able to reveal to you all the scriptures, the Lord will do it himself, and he did.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Okay, so continue on. Something interesting that we both shared is I had the assumption that she knew everything about the Bible because she's Christian. So in my mind, everybody Christian knows everything about the Bible. Okay, and in her mind, she thought I knew everything about the Torah because I was Jewish, because in her mind she thought everybody Jewish knows everything about the Torah. But in reality, so many of us know very little.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I that's fascinating to me too, because when you were sharing that earlier, I was like, oh gosh, Jewish girls do not have to learn the Torah. Like I that that in synagogue, you went to synagogue and you didn't learn, like that really did surprise me even today. So I'm just sitting here learning things right now from you, going, gosh, I would have had that same misconception that of course now, and my and the question it brought up was do Jewish boys that go to synagogue all learn the Torah?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

No. Okay, so all Jewish boys that have a bar mitzvah have to learn for their bar mitzvah a piece, a Torah portion that they will read at their bar mitzvah.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Okay. But it's not the same as like having to memorize the first five, the Tanakh. It's not that.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It's not that at all. So, like my children had a Benae mitzvah. My daughter and son did it together because they're a year apart. My daughter did it at 12, my son did it at 13, which that's legal. Um and so they learned their part, they learned to read Hebrew, and they were able to read their part in Hebrew. Did they understand it? No. Um, they understood it by reading the English, not by reading the Hebrew. So we read it in in Hebrew, we read it in English, and then that's part of the ceremony, but they really didn't go through like the whole learning. Okay, that's a whole different process.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, that's fascinating. So, this is how you grew up, and you can share any more that you want to about that as well, and you're and coming to the faith, but lead us into the mission. So, so you go, you're with this friend, y'all start the Bible study. Jesus is revealing himself to you in this Bible study from the whole Old Testament forward. That reminds me of the walk to Emmaus. It's kind of like, you know, as he's walking with those fellas on the Emmaus road, he went into the scriptures and revealed himself from the beginning. And I just feel like that's what he did with you too. He just revealed himself, and you could see him everywhere, even though at that point you hadn't even known him yet.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

But he was saying, Come here, Joyce, I want to show you who I am. Yes, yes, it's beautiful. Goosebumps, it's beautiful, yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

So then 2021 ends, and she says to me, Um, we're gonna do it again. Do you want to join us? And I'm thinking in my mind, I accepted Jesus, I accept him as my Lord and Savior, I'm saved. We just read it. Why would I read it again? I I totally had no ghost. I was like, no, I'm good. And I'm thinking, Why would she do that? So at that point in my life I had a lot going on and I was moving and I was transitioning. So now I'm moving, I'm living somewhere else, made some new friends, and one of my new friends says to me, Do you want to come to church with me? And I said, Well, I'm Jewish, I can't go to church. And she just laughed at me, you know, and um so I started going to church with her, but I was afraid to tell anybody that I was Jewish.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And yeah, and then I heard the pastor at that church say, Everybody needs a home church, everybody needs to be in the word every day, everybody needs a small group. And those words really, really stuck with me, and that's so foundational, and I'm so glad I heard that so clearly and and really been obedient to that. So this friend was leaving a small group, so I felt safe going there. And after a couple of weeks, I told everybody my story, and to my great surprise, I was fully embraced. They just loved on me. They didn't, you know, I was expecting somebody's gonna go get the sword. And you know, or horrible things, or that I wouldn't be able to go back. But no, they've just fully embraced me. And then so I started being able to talk about it at church and just really dove into their equipping classes and uh made some more changes in my life. So now um October 7th happened, and I'm living about two hours from my children, and the Lord just laid on my heart, you need to go to them and you need to be the one to help to bring them to me. I was involved in real estate up there. I sold everything, and I moved right by my son and my grandchildren, and where I'm living now, and it's just been the most wonderful thing. I found a wonderful church home with a pastor who leaves everybody more convicted than when you walked in. It's a beautiful church family. Deep diving into learning and growing. I'm probably a Bible study junkie. I kind of, you know, the love, the learning is just so exciting for me. But the Lord laid on my heart a few months ago, you need to be part of connecting the dots. You need to build a bridge to help those who are confused, to help those who don't see. So I'm not doing anything different or unique, but the Lord said, get out there and put the message out there because we all need to be blowing the trumpet. We all need to be spreading the word as much as possible. We all need to be doing as much as we can to be getting ready for my return.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yes. I think it's a beautiful invitation. He invited you to just share truth and to build unity. And and that's the thing. I think it's in 2 Peter, he talks about living in such a way that we speed his coming. Yeah, so in 2 Peter, and it's verse, I mean chapter 3, verse 10. So 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 10, it says, But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. And so I I look at that, I hear what you're saying about the Lord has invited you to share this message. And maybe you're not saying anything different than other people. Maybe you are, right? But he has invited you into this because when he created you, your unique spirit, your unique giftings, he's invited you to partner with him in speeding his coming. You know, we long for him to come get us, but he also longs to come back because his love for us is more than our love ever could be for him. And so the longing that we feel to be with him is even just a shadow of the longing that he feels to be with us. And so, what a beautiful invitation that he's given you to say, come spread this word, be a part of building a bridge between two groups, because that's going to be a message that the world receives as gosh, if these two groups of people can can come together in agreement on something that has to be a work of the Lord, right? Because it's like you said, in our world is more divided now than it ever has been. And that's Christian between Christian and I mean, it's like it's all all of it out there. There's a it's such a mess because you know, the division that has been sewn into the fabric of our society, and so I just think it's it's a beautiful thing that he's invited you into. And so that's where the name the bridge came from, was just he's called you to be a bridge. Yes, yes, a bridge builder.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

And you know, there's many religious Jews out there that know God, that really are believing God, and for some reason some people don't realize that we're worshiping the same God, right? Uh maybe we're not worshiping the same God and the same complete understanding of God, but religious Jews believe in a Messiah, and religious Jews believe in the plurality of God too, and religious Jews believe in the supernatural world too. But there's so many lost Jews, so many Jews that are not worshiping God, are not believing in God, that that are atheists or agnostic or have turned to something else, and those are the ones that weigh heaviest on my heart because they don't have a relationship with God, and that makes me really very sad. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

God sharing his heart with you. That's he's sharing his broken heart for his people, and so it's a gift he's inviting you in to feel his pain for his people, so that you can go and therefore be a minister, right? A minister of reconciliation.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Oh, I love that. I'm gonna use that. I haven't used that before. A minister ministry of reconciliation. I love that. That's beautiful, that really is. And you know, for so many years in my life, I felt like I would have trouble crying, that I couldn't cry, that I couldn't release feelings and just held held so many things in. And now I cry so easily. Now I tear so easily. Talking about God, talking about God's power, God's beauty, God's love for us, God's redemptive story. That just, you know, just listening to you, I've been tearing, you know. Um I I I tear so easily now because and my love for God just keeps on growing. The awe just keeps on growing. And and gosh, if somebody had told me years ago at the early part of my life that fear of God means be in awe of God.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Wow. So different. It's so different. The connotation, everything, because we have things we fear, and it it's always negative, it's not good. But that in all, we were literally created to be in awe, to be fascinated. That's why when when we just need to be at peace, sometimes we could just go stand outside and look up at the stars. Or when we go to the ocean and we just look out at the vastness of the ocean. We are in awe of something that is much bigger than we are. Yes, we were created to be in awe, and the thing that we should be the most in awe of is our God and what he's done. That's why you are tearing so easily, right? Because he's giving you a soft heart, he's replaced the heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and he's softened your heart to hear his voice and to know the truth about him, which is not that he's this harsh, judging God that you should be afraid of, but that he is a loving God, altogether holy and set apart, that is for sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

To be revered and in awe of, but through a lens of love, and that's causes us to want to live godly lives. It's what causes us to want to live differently than other people, not so we can say, look, I am so much better, right? But because we know it pleases the very heart of the one that we love the most. And so it's just such a different thing than do this so that you aren't in trouble with God.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yes, yes, yes, and you know, we are still supposed to have works, but we're not, but the attitude is different. We don't do works to earn God's love, we do works because we're so in love with God. Of course we want to do wonderful things.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

It's sort of like if you knew your husband's favorite dish was chicken parmesan, wouldn't you want to make that for him often?

SPEAKER_01 30:04

That's right. Yeah, absolutely. I think we can be guilty of not looking at it like a real relationship, right? Like you would with your best friend or with your husband, or you know, we kind of just treat him sometimes like a magic genie in the sky, or uh, you know, like if we if we live in the right way, we'll get his blessing and then we'll be able to do kind of what we want, but just with his wink of approval. But that's not it. Like it's that's not it. And so I think taking it back to that your real relationships, how do they work? It's a back and forth. He's always speaking to us, and he longs to hear us speaking to him. Yes, and there's nothing that we can talk to him about that he's like, Well, I'm kind of bored of this conversation. Can we? You know, like he just delights in us. It's just like a mama with her two-year-old kid that's just learned how to talk, and that that child is saying different things, and that mom is just listening and enthralled because that baby is saying things that they've never said before, and you're just teaching them, and they're repeating, and he's like, he delights in that, and it's just such a beautiful, it's a beautiful relationship, and that's what it's about. It's not about religion, it's all about the relationship, and it was those relationships that you know you had with people in community that brought you to the feet of Jesus, and and they didn't have to bang on something or argue with you about points, it they just invited you, yes, yes, he does the right.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

The Holy Spirit does the work, Jesus does the work, the Lord does the work, yes, yes. I remembered what I wanted to to touch on.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

So you said something about Holocaust deniers, but I want to look at for a moment when Jesus was resurrected, there were many, many, there were hundreds of people, eyewitnesses, who saw him. So we have that factual information, we have it in um canonical information, and we have it in non-canonical information as well. And yet there are deniers of that. There are those who say, no, that didn't happen, that never happened. So it's horrible that there's actual Holocaust deniers, people saying that it didn't happen when we still have so many people who have lived experiences of it. And that is sort of just crazy, but that is really how Satan works. And for anybody who's ever been in a bad relationship to be with someone, a partner who is trying to make you feel like, no, that wasn't that big of a deal. No, that didn't really happen. No, right and invalidating and lying, yeah, that's the oldest game in the book.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Right. Yeah. And to to fall into that deception, it's just it's just an interesting thing. I feel like as I look at our world right now, there is so much propaganda and how easily people are falling into the propaganda. And it's just like, are we not reading the same Bible? Are we not looking at the same scriptures? Are we not? I know that our news is being done differently. I've just quit watching all American news, to be honest. I don't watch any of our American news channels because it's just it's it's constantly propaganda, and it doesn't matter really which side, we don't need to argue. Can we just go back to what used to be journalism, which is somebody's there, they're standing on the ground and they're reporting what they're seeing with their eyes? And we even know, like I know from just different things that the Lord has taken me through. I was in a car accident and I would have sworn. I mean, like, if you would have had me hooked up to a lie detector test, I was like, it's her fault. She was driving like a maniac, you know, like this is crazy. But there was video. When I watched the video, I realized I was driving crazy, it was my fault 100%. But I would have sworn. So even what we see with our own eyes, our perspective can be wrong. And so it's so interesting to me to think, you know, if we lived better in community, and if we weren't so set on being right, if we could just listen to people sharing their experiences, I feel like we would have so many commonalities in our experiences. I mean, even just as some of the things that you've shared today, it resonates with me and my story. Like, I don't know if you knew this, but I also I have my real estate license. I was also in real estate. So when you said that about being, you know, doing in real estate, I was like, that's interesting. And then you've talked about relationships, and I also have come out of a few abusive relationships that are it's just hard. And so when we when we share our stories, when we share our heart, we're not just trying to be right about something, we can make these connections because at the end of the day, we're all we all have emotions, we've all suffered some big T traumas and some little T traumas, right? Like we've suffered in different ways. We've had you know, in your story, you've had divorce, I have as well. You know, we've had loss, we've just had different things, and it's those things that will bring us together, and then all the little things we argue about just won't seem as important. You know, they just won't seem as important. So if we would quit blowing up all these things and just start living life with people and loving people, I mean that's what God says you love me, then you love other people as you love yourself. And if we lived that way, if everyone lived that way, it would be such a different world.