My Story: Part 5

This week’s episode is one of the most personal chapters of my story that I have ever shared. It is the part of my life where everything truly began to change. After years of chaos, broken relationships, trauma, and survival, I met the man who would become my husband. What followed was not some perfect fairy tale. It was something deeper, more complicated, and far more meaningful. It was the beginning of a real love story that would be shaped through faith, struggle, healing, and the slow work of transformation.

In this episode, I share the beginning of my life with Sean. From the very first moment we met, there was something undeniable between us. It was one of those rare moments in life where your intuition speaks so clearly that you cannot ignore it. I knew almost instantly that he would be the man I would marry. But what unfolded after that was not easy. Two people carrying deep wounds from their pasts suddenly found themselves building a life together, and those wounds did not disappear overnight. Instead, they collided, forcing us to confront our own pain, our own patterns, and the ways we had learned to survive.

I talk about the early years of our marriage and how difficult they were as we tried to navigate our relationship while both of us were still healing. I share the moment where I had to confront my own need for control and the powerful experience where God made it clear that I needed to step out of the way and let Him do the work I was trying so hard to force. It was a turning point that shifted how I approached my marriage, my faith, and my own healing.

You will also hear about the seasons where our lives were stretched in ways we never expected. At one point, our home grew into a household of eleven people as we stepped in to help family members who needed support. Those years were intense, exhausting, and often overwhelming, but they also became the place where Sean and I learned what it truly meant to stand united together. Instead of breaking us apart, the pressure began to reshape our relationship.

My hope in sharing this part of my story is that it reminds you that change is possible. No matter what your past looks like, no matter how messy or complicated your story may feel, redemption and transformation are always within reach. Freedom is not something reserved for a few lucky people. It is something that is available to all of us.

This chapter of the story continues next week, so if you want to hear what happens next, come back and join me for the next episode.

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Transcript

New Season Vision: Real Freedom

Heather 0:02

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Free Advantage. I'm your host, Heather Davis, and I want to invite you into a new season of Real Stories, Real Recovery, and Real Freedom. This show has always been about self-discovery, authenticity, and recovering a life of freedom. And this year, we are taking that journey together in a deeper way. You're gonna hear raw, honest conversations with people walking this path in real time. Stories of growth, healing, purpose, and becoming whole. You'll also hear from me as I reflect on these themes that rise from the stories, answer your questions, and offer small, meaningful takeaways that you can carry back into your week. This is not just a podcast you listen to, it's a place you belong where you are part of the conversation. Welcome back. I have been super excited to tell this part of my story. And if you have been joining in, listening to me over the past few weeks, share my story. Thank you. I'm so grateful that you're here. I'm so grateful that you've been joining me and listening to all of the things that I have shared. The wild, the crazy, the the raw, the vulnerable parts. Um but if you haven't and you're just now joining in, I highly recommend going back and starting at the beginning and listening so you can catch up to where we are now. But this next part is it is this it is the it's the pinnacle of my life at this up to this point where I'm at right now. It is it is truly for me, like I been, I know, I've been thinking these past few days, like how do I, how do I tell this? How do I share and explain and express the truth of one of the greatest love stories that's ever lived in my life? And I could list off all of the things in the order in which they've all happened and give you the timeline and the rundown, kind of like I've been doing, but it would be such a disservice to what has truly occurred in my life since meeting my husband, Sean. I know uh last week I left off where I met him and when he came over for the first date, and the hug that we shared that uh made me immediately in know that this was gonna be the the man that I was gonna marry and that this was gonna be the love of my life, um to today. And that's where we're gonna pick up. That's where I'm going to start sharing. But I want to give more in depth of the things that were not just that were we were doing, but the things that were really happening uh internally spiritually and and uh not just me but but with him and in our whole entire family dynamic. Um you know, when Sean walked into our lives, I was not expecting it. I was not expecting to find another man that I was wanting to get married to. I was not in a place where I wanted to be married at all. I am just coming off of another divorce. That would be number four. I'm definitely not looking to get right back into another relationship. But but when he walked uh uh into my home that night, he sat down, he met my mom. It's four o'clock in the morning. None of us have slept yet. Such an odd experience already. And he sat down and he just poured his heart out to us. He poured his heart out to us, he shared his life story, he shared the things that he's been through, things he's experienced, he shared stuff about trauma and abuse and his life as a Marine. He shared stuff about his family and where he was at now. And I had never had an experience like that with another man before in my life. And Sean was truly truly a unique human in every aspect of the word. He truly was a unique human. And I was from the second I saw him, I was, I mean, honestly, from the second that I had even been writing him and talking to him on the phone, I was finding myself in complete awe of him. I was just not even just physically, I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually overtaken by him. And I had never felt that way before about anybody. And there was something within me immediately just checked in my spirit, was like, yep. Like my intuition was like, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have arrived. He's it. Like, don't, don't let him run away. Don't let him get away from you. And it was over the course of a couple of days, like Sean walked in my home that night, and he never left. He never left. Like he was just he walked into our lives and he's been a part of it ever since. It was it was like he had always been there, he had always been apart from the very beginning, and it's just like he went on a sabbatical and he finally had come home and we're just like, we've missed you, you've been gone for so long. That is how it felt when we met h met each other. And over the course of a couple of days, I started to understand with him sharing with me that he also felt that same way about me. And through those c couple of days, like he got to meet Austin and watching the dynamic between the two of them was it was so incredible. Austin really never connects with other men in that way, especially in like a father figure situation. You know, he's he's been abandoned, and of course, I have been in and out of so many relationships that it was something his own, you know, his own um his own way of protecting himself, the way that he guards himself. And, you know, he always kind of like has this this layer of wall that he keeps up that, you know, you he there's no real need because he didn't know how long they were going to be in the picture. And when Sean came in and he met him for the first time, there was there was an immediate connection. Austin immediately fell in love with Sean. Um, he hugged him the very first time he saw him, and they were just really fast friends. They were really fast friends. And I remember one night, so Sean, it was this was such a weird experience. It was for all of us. Like Sean was like, What is happening? And I'm like, I I I can't even tell you what's going on. This is new for me, too. Sean has blue eyes, but he wore these bright blue contacts on top of his blue eyes. So they were just like, when you saw him, like you saw his eyes coming a mile away. And we knew that he wore contacts, obviously, but one day we were sitting on the couch playing, and this probably was in the first week of us meeting Sean. We were all playing video games, and Austin had come over just randomly. He'd come over and said to him, Now, mind you, Austin was 13 at the time, so he's not really little. He's definitely a w aware enough. He's he's a teenager now. Um, but he looked at Sean and he said, You know, the eyes are the window to the soul. He goes, but I can't see yours. And Sean just kind of looked at me, and I looked at him, and I looked at Austin, and he was like, Okay, bud, well, what do you want me to do? And he was like, Well, I'm gonna need to see your eyes. And Sean was kind of really weird about it. He was weird, not with Austin, but he was weird about his contacts. He's like, Well, I don't really, you know, I don't really show anybody my eye color, you know, I don't know. He just kind of had a weird thing about it. So I hadn't even seen Sean's real eye color yet up to that point. And because Sean like never took these contacts out, like never. I to this day, I don't know how his eyes are even healthy. But he um he said, okay, so he took Austin in the bathroom and then he took his eye eyes, his contacts out and let Austin see his eyes, and then he put them back in and he came back out, and Austin was like, Okay. And he was just like, he didn't ever say Austin never say anything, but it was just like after that point, he was like, All right, that's good. You know, I'm good now. And ever since then, it was just there was there was no more reservation, even a little hint of a reservation. They'd already had this great connection, but it was just like it was just kind of solidified after that point, and you know, we had a lot of a lot of little experiences like that in our relationship in the very beginning. And you know, Sean came in uh to my life on November 13th is when we first started emailing and writing each other back and forth, and then he showed up on November 14th um at you know four o'clock in the morning, and we were married in within like 45 days, something like that. Um, we got married on New Year's Eve at midnight. My grandparents um were so gracious in marrying us. We um, you know, after all the times that I've been married, I've never been married by a pastor, I've always been married by a justice of the peace. Um, I, you know, my granddad is the one in our family. He's been a pastor my whole life, his most of his whole life. And we know we always say he marries and buries them. So, but I never had the opportunity, um, because of my own situations for him to be able to marry me. So when Sean and I uh decided to get married, which was very quickly, very quickly and right away, you know, I know there were people in my family who were looking at me like I was crazy. Um, you know, they've heard the same old thing. This time it's different. You know, I feel different, it's different, he's different. You know, they've heard all the proverbial phrases from me, you know, over the years, and yeah, you know, I know, I understand, I get it, but you've said that before, but truly this time it was different. And I remember calling and having the conversation with my grandfather, and he agreed if we would come and spend some time with him and he could get to know Sean a little bit, and we did. And then my grandfather agreed to marry us, and so we got married in his home. It was just, it was just the four of us. It was just me and Sean and my uh granddad and grandma. And it was a really beautiful night, and we got married at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, welcoming in the new year. And that was a really special thing that we have. So we always celebrate our anniversary on New Year's Eve when we share our New Year's Eve kiss. We're sharing our anniversary kiss. So it was it's a little unique, fun thing about us. I think we like to do things differently. We like to be unique. Um, we're both weirdos and we're both like, you know, big kids in in big bodies. And uh, you know, I don't think I ever could have come across another human more suited for me in my life than I than I have with Sean. It's kind of funny because when people see us together, people do kind of be like, hmm, really? Um I think that sometimes how people think I am or how they think they know me is quite different than I actually am sometimes when it especially when it comes to like my family. You know, they they grow up with you, they know you, they see you, so they have all these they have the ideations about you. Um, but as you grow up and you change and you shift, you know, there are things that I for sure never felt fully on, especially back then being full into my authentic self and expressing who I truly was. I kept a lot of those things hidden. But when I'm at Sean, it was like when I was with him, I mean, still when I am with him, I there is it's like he opens up a portal in me. He opens up this portal in me where I can just walk through it and be completely who I am. Completely who I am, and it is not something I have ever experienced. Now, in the first years of our marriage, it was very difficult. Very difficult, you know. We got married not knowing hardly anything about one another. Um, you know, I think we both felt like God brought us together, even though at the time when we first got married, Sean was like, I'm an agnostic. You know, he had grown up in church, but he had really gotten to a place because of some things that had happened in his life where he was like, I'm an agnostic, like I believe that something's out there, but I don't really know what that is. And here I am on the complete opposite spectrum of that. And I really, you know, when I met Sean, God had really shown me things about him and about his future that I knew were going to be true. And when I shared those with him, Sean was just like, there's no way, that's not me. I will never do those things. You know, watching now, having seen those things come true has been quite satisfying. Um, you know, and watching him, you know, navigate his own spirituality with me has been an interesting thing as well. But I don't think there was a question. I think even though he said that he was agnostic, there was definitely that thing inside him that knew that something brought us together. And the beginning years, like I said, were were tough. They were tough, you know, getting to know one another, um, me dealing with my own baggage and trauma, like I'm coming off of four you've heard it. You've heard all the stories, right? And the common theme, not only about those stories of all the things that I've done and created all this baggage I'm carrying around, it's all the trauma that's left behind, right? It's all the pain and it's all of the unhealed parts of me that I'm still carrying around that aren't healed, they're not well, that he also is carrying around. And some of his are really deep-seated things that he's dealing with, and some like some that I didn't even know until years later, right? I knew things, I knew some things right away, but some things it took a long time to get those things out of him and for him to feel comfortable and safe enough in order for him to even express them to himself, let alone to somebody else. So when that happens, when you take two people who are just not well, you're trauma-filled, you're not healed, you're, you're, you're just trying to survive, you're both in survival mode. When you start putting those people together, like your trauma collides. It collides and it creates like all these little mini traumas throughout your relationship that, you know, it's just like trauma begets trauma. You know, hurt people, hurt people, and and him not even knowing how to be in a relationship, how to manage and navigate a family that he now is into a full family when he was just like the single bachelor guy and now he has a full-blown family that he hasn't had to grow up in, you know, navigating financial responsibilities. You know, I'm living in a life I'm very very comfortable doing. I'm very comfortable being a mom and being a wife and doing all the things. But, you know, when our traumas did really collide, it it was it was years of of combating, like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And a lot of that was coming from me. I mean, I want to be clear about that. Sean was never a person ever that like pointed out anything wrong with me, ever. And let's be clear there are things wrong with me. There are things that people don't like. I can be very condescending, I can be very abrasive, I can be very demanding, and especially then. I mean, back then I was in full force, and I have all of these unhealed things in me that are creating this other stuff. That's I'm angry, I have a lot of hostility about stuff, you know. And sometimes when you get in relationships, you know, there will be things that people will do that look the same as stuff you've experienced. And I know I even mentioned this last week about our life now. Like our life kind of mimics the way it did when I was younger. Sometimes, like I'm living in somebody else's home, you know, we had lost our job, we had lost our home, and I'd I it makes me feel like I did when I was 20. But even though things are mimicking that doesn't mean that they are the same. And so there would be things that Sean would do or he would say that would make me like, oh, I I it would remind me of a position I had been in with somebody else, and then I would get really mad and I would be hurt, and then I would start questioning what I was doing, questioning who I was with. And was this the right thing? And should I be with him? You know, because your emotions take over. And I I it's it's all part of it. It's all part of it, right? And then learning in my mind, I'm like, well, he just needs to change, right? And I wasn't focusing on me. I wasn't focusing on the things that I needed to work through, on the things that I needed to change. You know, it's easy to focus on somebody else all day long. And Sean was just really focused on work. Like, that's what he did. It was his true escape. It's he's been working since he was eight years old, and he wasn't stopping now, right? He was just going, going, going. And we we hardly saw him a lot of the times, and that was a source of contention with us. So in the beginning, it was it was tough. It was tough. I remember having a really come to Jesus moment where I was gonna come to Jesus and I was gonna tell him all about it, right? I'm like, I remember it was late, it was in the middle of the night. I went into a room and I lit a candle and I was praying and I was just telling God all about the things I was very unhappy about. I'm like, He needs to do this and he needs to do that. And why, why would you bring me somebody if this is the way it was and he doesn't even believe in you and all of these things? I had so many opinions about Sean and what I thought our life should be and what I thought it should look like, and and I remember it was it was first time this has ever happened to me, but it was like a very audible experience where I literally it's not like I heard it in the room, but like I heard it. It like came over me, and it was like I can't do anything because you're in my way. Like God was telling me, just like get out of my way so I can do what I need to do. I'm like, if if I and I was like, oh, okay. Wow, nobody really wants to be reprimanded, and they certainly don't want to be reprimanded by God. And I really found myself in that space where God was like, okay, you're trying to do everything, you're trying to change him, you're trying to fix this. And guess what? That's what I've always done. And it has not worked out well for me. And so I kind of came to this point where I'm like, okay, are we gonna be like we've always been? Or are we were we really dedicated to not living the life we've lived before? And I really had to sit with myself and be like, okay, okay, God. That was not easy. Stepping back and kind of let God move in. Um you're right, because control, right? You want to control the situation, you want to figure it out and make things be what you want them to be. But guess what I've learned? No matter, I mean, it's been we've been together 15 years, and between Sean and myself and our children and other people that we have worked with, you cannot make anyone do anything. Right. And I know that I've talked about this before in other episodes, but you cannot, no matter how bad you want, you cannot make people do anything that they're not willing to do. And you know, Sean's no different. I was no different. I had to be willing to do it, and I had to be willing to step back and be like, okay. And that actually happened in 2012, and let's see, 13, 14, 15, 16. So 30, 14, 15, 16. So four years later, I think it took four years later before I really saw Sean stepping into a whole new version of himself. And that's him. But for me, like I focusing on myself, taking the focus off of somebody else and then putting foc putting the focus back on myself was that was not something I enjoyed doing at all. Like, that means I have to face my own demons. I have to face my own problems, my own traumas. I don't You know, that's not fun because it brings up a lot of pain and a lot of hurt. And over the course of the first few years of our marriage, we had moved several times into different homes. We had ended up living with some family members because of job changes. We moved across the country to Georgia, you know, and that meant leaving Andrew and having to navigate what that looked like. You know, we made the decision to move because we wanted to be closer to my brother and to his children. And we wanted to be able to create a world where our children could grow up together because at the rate that we were going so far apart, them and Georgia and us in Texas, we didn't have the money to travel back and forth. We didn't have the time to do those things. So that wasn't happening. And I'm like, and our children are going to grow up estranged, and none of us wanted that. You know, we put Austin into a better school when we moved to Georgia. So there was a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of things we had to navigate because of that. And with me, that created also more doubt in myself. It created more regret around my children and around Andrew, because now instead of getting him every other weekend, I'm only getting him during the summer and on major holidays. So that changed a lot of things between us and and there created a lot a little bit of animosity, even though it was a joint decision. There were still things that we had to navigate that were very difficult. You know, you don't just come out of this life that I've lived and walk into something new and walk into something good and think that it's all just going to change. You know, if you have listened back when I had Anna on in the beginning of January, you know, she talks about how when you walk in, when you've lived in such a toxic situation and then you walk into a good situation that's a clean one, it's a it's the right one for you, you don't know how to be healthy. You don't know how to live healthy. And you have to retrain not only your body, but your mind, your spirit, and your heart on how to react, how to think, how to behave. And that's what I spent the majority of my time doing in those four years. Um, and one of the greatest ways that that happened, so God helped me along the way, um, was that we ended up moving Sean's family in. He had a sister who had three children, and we ended up moving her into our home and taking care of them. She has three beautiful children, but they were very young at the time. She has two who struggle with um mental disabilities and learning disabilities. You know, we had been dealing with abuse situations. Um, there was a lot going on in that situation that I was solely unprepared to be dealing with, but I learned very quickly on how. You know, they they came and stayed with us and they were with us for three years. Um, we dedicated our lives to them. We dedicated our money to them, our time to them, our home to them for three years. And it was one of those things when I told Sean, I'm like, I really think that we need to help them and bring them in. She had been calling and asking for help. And I was like, okay, well, we need to, we need to bring them here to help them. And Sean was very against this idea in the beginning. He was like, no way. Like he's like, you don't know my sister like I know my sister. He's like, you don't understand how things really are. And it and he was just certain that if we brought them into our lives and into our home, that that him and I would not make it. He was like, Is this going to be too much? She goes, and and we will not make it. And we had already been struggling with each other. So, you know, I you know, his concerns were were grant, they were granted. Like, of course, of course he would have been feeling that way. But I was so certain I really felt like God was moving me to to bring them there. And and we did, you know, he eventually said, okay, you know, if you really feel like this is what God is telling you to do, then then that's what we'll do. And, you know, Sean, over the course of those years, you know, watching me grow in my own faith, watching me spend time um in the Word and doing what I'm doing and and in my own spirituality and from my upbringing and the things that I believe, you know, he started being very curious and asking a lot of questions and seeking out answers on his own. And I could really watch him moving more into that direction and having a lot of questions about God, and then coming to some understanding with himself that he he did really believe in God and that he did have those those kinds of experiences when he was little. It's just that some things had pushed him away so far from it that he just didn't want any part of it. And so watching him slowly get back to that um was was interesting, right? When you kind of watch somebody finding their own way and their own walk with their spirituality, is it's an interesting and beautiful thing. And with the few years that his sister was living with us, we endured so much. There were so many things that happened, um, just wild and crazy things. You know, we dealt with car accidents, our, you know, child setting our house on fire, a lot of mental disability with her family and her or with her children, and dealing with learning how to navigate, psychiatrists, psychologists, medications, school boards. I ended up homeschooling one of her children. I mean, it was all consuming. For me, it was all consuming. I was running a full household. Eventually, through those years, we became a household of 11 people that Sean and I were managing all by ourselves. He's financially doing it, and I'm doing everything else. Like I'm the operations manager of our life, and he is the financial um, you know, stability and order, like that's holding us all up. It was, it was crazy. And I look back and I'm like, I don't know how we did it. And and he's right, during that time, it it would have broken us apart. It would have destroyed our relationship. But there was definitely something about it that when it all started happening, and when we were just in the throes of it all, that we started really just uniting together and coming together. Because at this point, we were like, we are all we have. Like, there's too much, there's too many balls to be dropped. If if we do this, like we have to be united. We have to be united. And if you had listened back in in January to Anna's story, this during this time is when Anna also entered our life. So we're we took on not only his sister and her children, we took on Anna as well. And she came into our lives. And so our family was slowly growing. And, you know, Andrew was kind of in and out and during the holidays and stuff, but there was something about when he was always there, the the time that we spent with him, teaching him, um, being able to help him emotionally because he was struggling in his dad's home with their dynamic and the way things were going with them, and they ended up moving. That's such a crazy thing because I remember the guilt that I felt and the regret that I felt so much about moving to Georgia. And then, and that actually happened when we left and was in 2011, and then in 2012, his dad and their family ended up moving to Arizona. So I know that I had felt so much regret about all of those things and about that splitting that time, but in the end, it was going to happen to me anyway. It was going to happen to me anyway, and it would have been something that somebody else had control over that I had zero control over. Because then they would have moved to Arizona, and then I would have been left in Texas, and I wouldn't have seen Andrew either way. So it it was it was almost that kind of confirmation that I made the right decision, that when we decided to move to Georgia, the things that we had decided to do were the right ones. But, you know, moving back to this where the story is, is like, you know, that's the way it was. Andrew was coming and though him dealing with his own family dynamic there and then coming to this one, you know, he's now was getting into a place where he was old enough that he could come and live with us. And I would be just lying if I said I did not pray every single day that he was going to make that decision. I remember when he turned 12 and we sat down and we had that conversation with him, and when he just looked at me and he told me no that he he he did not want to come there. And it wasn't that he did not want to live with us, you know. He he said, I wanted to so bad, it's all he ever wanted was to be with us. But he had this thing where he he felt this guilt. He himself felt guilt about leaving his dad. Now his dad isn't alone, his dad was remarried, they have three other children in their home, and you know, I did not realize till Andrew started till Andrew came to live with us um just a couple of years back for a little while. I did not realize the things that he suffered in his own home with his father and the emotional um abandonment that he had, the even just the physical abandonment, just left to his own devices, left alone all the time to just deal and handle whatever comes his way. Ever since he was very little, he wasn't allowed to express his hurt and his pain and his his feelings when he would miss me. And his dad was not trying to be a co-parent with me ever. He never did. And so it was really his dad always wanted him to have like, this is our family, right? That's just your mom. She's just some lady over there, and yet you see occasionally, so it made it very difficult for Andrew. And but he still, because of the way that his father treated him and the way his relationship was, he was made to feel that guilt and regret. So he did not make the decision to come live with us at that time. And you know, I want to say that every year he he came home for for the summer, we would have the same conversation every year. And I was always praying every year that this is the year. You know, I used to be so upset as time started passing and time started moving on. Like, God, when is it going to be my turn? When is it gonna be my turn? I, you know, I've turned my life around. I I'm doing better, I'm doing all the right things. You know, obviously Sean and I are making it, you know, at this point we had been married like five, six years. Like, when is it gonna be my turn? You know, and you know, the story, you know, spoiler alert in the future is that it never it never was my turn. That I never got that opportunity. Andrew never did, he never did come home and stay with us, and it broke my heart because of so much time that I lost, and there was no going back and changing it. But nonetheless, our home was full, we were full of people, and this is when we were working so hard with his sister and her children, and then she eventually met a man, and I can't even tell you all the dynamics of how that all went down and how he ended up living with us too for a while, but in um 2016, we finally were in a place where we were like, okay, well, we were had been renting homes, we had been, we had moved several times, and we were like, okay, well, we need to get our own home. And so we had been searching around a lot to buy a house, and um we ended up finding a place. It was on a couple of acres of land, it was a big home, it was fenced, it was clean, it was cleared, like it was cleaned of like trees, it was a cleared property, had a pool, and it had a basement, and it would fit all of us. But the ultimate goal at that time was eventually that we would move and so it would be temporary for his sister and her family because they were finally getting into a place where they needed to like sh we had put her through school, she had had her her cer certification, she was working a job, but she was not helping any at the house, she was not paying for anything, she was not taking care of her children really in any way. So we were like, okay, so we're trying to get her set up and her boyfriend and her now family into a place of their own. And so when we finally moved into the house, it um the dynamic just shifted. Like everything that way we had been doing, everything just completely shifted. Um, you know, that we they had been living in the basement is where her entire family, we gave them the whole basement to live. And when they were there, it they kind of started segregating themselves from us in a lot of ways, where they were doing things, they were not telling us about them, they had money, and then they weren't, they didn't want to pay for anything, and then it got to a place where eventually we were like, you're gonna have to move out. And so we told them that they were gonna have to start preparing to move out, and we gave them a date, you know, and so they were working towards that. And during this time, Sean had been working um at a company where he he spent a lot of time like with a bunch of his co-workers having a lot of conversations and stuff, and one of his co-workers had been talking a lot about a mission trip he had been on, and Sean had come home one day and was expressing his need, his immediate need to go on a mission trip. Now, this was wild to me. This was big news to me. I'm like, what do you mean? And he was like, No, I think I really need to go on a mission trip. This is something that I need to do for myself. And I was like, okay. So um, so happens to be at a church I was actually going to. Like, Sean was not going with me. Occasionally he would go, but he wasn't like regularly attending like I was. But the church that I was actually at going to was fixing a leave on a mission trip to go to Nicaragua. And I had told Sean about it and he was like, Yes, I want to go. So he ended up getting involved in that and ended up going on this mission trip to Nicaragua, and he was gone for like, I don't know, seven, eight days. It was the first time that him and I had been alone or away from one another this long in our relationship. And so I'm left there with all the stuff to deal with, all of the family, all of the dynamics of what's going on in this home while he goes off on this mission trip, which I was very excited about. Don't get me wrong. I but I missed him so much. It was very difficult for me to be away from him. And I remember like I it was a it was a time where I couldn't talk to him. Like the phones, there was no phones, like it just that stuff didn't work from where they were at because they were in this really remote location and they were there helping build a church and um visiting a bunch of places there. And so I I think on like the third or fourth day he was gone, I remember I had all of the kids, it was, you know, it was in the summer, so I had Andrew and Austin and my niece and nephew, and I had taken to go get snow cones, and we were in the snow cone place eating, and I had gotten a text message, and I guess he had gotten into a place where he could get service, and he had somebody take a picture of him and send it to me. And when I opened it up, I immediately started crying. Here I am with all the kids. I'm eating a snow cone in this snow cone place, and I'm just weeping. When I saw this picture of him, whatever transformation that took place while he was there, it was all over him. Though he looked like himself, he looked like a completely different person. It's like his entire being had just I don't know, he was just glowing. Everything about him and the the countenance on his face, the way he looked, the way everything about him I knew was different just from this picture. And I just wept and I didn't have the ability to talk to him. So it was hard because I'm like, now I'm having to deal with all these emotions on my own and waiting for him to get home. And and when he finally did, he came home at the end of that week. It was just he got on that plane somebody, and he got off that plane somebody else. God had miraculously, miraculously transformed Sean's life in that week. He went as somebody who was seeking and searching for answers. He was seeking to find out if God was truly even real, if he really believed. I know that he had told me he put these parameters on God, like, hey, look, if this is if this is real, if you are real, then like I I'm here and I'm I'm here to find you. Right? He's like, I know I came to help these people build this church. He's like, but I'm here because I need to see if you're really real. And God showed up. God showed up for Sean and He He touched him. And when Sean came home, everything was different after that. Everything was different. Um the the way that he did things, the way that he spoke, the way that he treated everybody. And it wasn't like he treated everybody bad. It was just there was so much more compassion, there was so much more empathy, there was now this motivation and this drive to work like together in growing and in and developing ourselves as a couple and not just as individuals. There, there was definitely more unification between the two of us during that time. And by that was in the that was in the summer of 2016 and in 2017 um is when we had given his sister in that February, his sister hit her time to get out, and so we had helped them find their place and helped them move on and get into their known home. And everything went really well with that. We're watching them come to this place now after his like transformation where he's he's maneuvering and working through all of these things in a much different way. It was something that I had a hard time understanding, but then thinking back about me praying in that room and God telling me to get out of the way. Here I'm finding myself now, almost four years later, the fruition of God doing that work and seeing what happens, what God can do versus what I could do. Right? And and our life at that point took it took a big turn after that, in a in a much different way. Um his sister moved out, but he ended up changing jobs, um, and he was where he started working for a company out of Florida, and we started visiting Florida a lot. And this leads us into a whole other section of our marriage and a whole other section of our relationship and the things that started happening in our life that were leading and paving the pathway for what was to come. For what was to come. It is really the story that shows God's grace in my life and in his life, and and the gift that God has given us, and what all that we both have walked through, to the place that God has brought us, and why our stories are so important, why they matter, why I'm even sharing all of this information with you. It's it is it is one of my favorite things to do is to talk about what God has done in our life and what is possible. Not just for me, but what is possible for you. And I hope that you listening to our story, listening to my story, listening to the stories of others that we do share on here, that it shows you what is possible. That no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've experienced, no matter where you've come from, no matter how bad you think it has been, that freedom is the advantage you already own. It is on the other side that you can have it and that you can find it. I'm gonna bring this part of the story to a close. Um, and I'm gonna get ready for part six for next week. Please come back and join me if you're interested in seeing what happens. Um, I hope you guys are having a great week. Stay safe out there, and I'll see you next time.