When Life Breaks You Open: Finding Faith, Healing, and Purpose Through Pain | Lemon Seeds

In this powerful episode of The Belief Effect, Nadine introduces her book Lemon Seeds: When Life Squeezes You, Faith Grows You and shares the deeper story behind the message of faith, resilience, healing, and transformation through Jesus Christ.

What began as a way to process grief, trauma, heartbreak, divorce, financial hardship, and loss evolved into a faith-rooted guide to finding purpose through life’s most painful moments. Nadine shares her personal testimony of losing her daughter, rebuilding her life after divorce, overcoming financial struggle, and discovering how God uses our hardest seasons to shape who we are becoming.

Through biblical reflections on Job, forgiveness, resilience, and the story of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, this episode explores how faith can help us move from brokenness to wholeness.

If you are feeling stuck, overwhelmed, grieving, or searching for meaning, this episode will remind you that your story is not over. Even in seasons of uncertainty, God is working behind the scenes to grow something beautiful from what feels broken.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• how to trust God during difficult seasons
• how to build faith when life doesn’t make sense
• how to heal from grief, trauma, and heartbreak
• how forgiveness creates emotional and spiritual freedom
• how challenges can lead you closer to your purpose
• how resilience is built through surrender and belief

Lemon Seeds is more than a book — it is an invitation to grow through what you go through and discover the strength God placed inside of you from the beginning.

You are not alone in your journey. Even when life feels heavy, something is taking root.

📖 Lemon Seeds is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Nadine’s website.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, beautiful. You're listening to the space where faith meets real life, where the breaking becomes the becoming, and where we talk about the woman you're growing into through Jesus Christ. I'm Nadine Maldonado, your host, and today we're planning a new seed of belief together. Welcome to the Belief Effect. I'm excited because this is the first time that I'm featuring my book Lemon Seed on the podcast, or even really publicly. I've done a lot of marketing on this book of sharing like it's coming. But I haven't really talked about what the book is about, what it all entails. So Lemon Seeds is my testimony. And when I first wrote this book, it was all about all the things I had gone through. And I think this is like the different stages a writer goes through that I didn't really know of because I'm naturally not a writer. Started to evolve more in my journey just with myself, the things I was dealing with, the things that I was facing, and how I felt about them and what I learned about them. So as I was growing and changing, the words that I was writing continue to evolve. So it started as a trauma dump, ended up becoming what I is a guide to what women and men can use through their journeys of grief and trauma and loss and heartbreak and financial struggles and starting from rock bottom. And when I was doing the marketing piece with my publisher, she's okay, we need something that kind of stands a little bit more out. And she had given me some names and she's like, What about lemon seeds? I can't take ownership for coming up with this name. And I said, Lemon seeds, what? And my marketing brain, right? By profession, I do marketing. And so I could see all the things that surrounded lemons and the seeds and the planting and the bloom and all of that. I am so excited to share this with the world. So it's lemon seeds when life squeezes you, faith grows you, because that is the epitome of my journey and my growth, is believing that when life seems really hard, we have to know that there is purpose for me all. Originally, I didn't have any kind of biblical scriptures or anything like that. Um, one of the last edits that I made that made me feel like, okay, the book is now complete was I went through and I wove scripture all throughout the book because there is nothing that we face or that we go through in our lives that has not already been written about or has somebody has gone through and that God's word doesn't walk us through. I find comfort in that most of the time because, or all the time really, because when I'm facing something, I know that I'm not the only person that has faced this. And it's one of the reasons why I also wrote Lemon Seed. So I can find that comfort in going to the Bible now, right? At 36 years old. But when I was facing these things as a young girl, as a teenager, as a 20-year-old, as in my 30s, I started to learn that yes, I can go to the Bible, but I didn't connect with the Bible in the beginning. I didn't, right? I for me, I would open it and it was just a bunch of gibberish. And so it's stories like these are women and men who are brave to share their stories, to share their testimony, and how they've gotten through, that it poured belief inside of me. There's many books that I have read throughout the years that have made me feel less alone, that have made me feel more understanding, made me feel more hopeful. And ultimately the Bible is what gives me that now. But I knew that was a piece that I needed to add into my book was scripture because scripture has all of the answers for us. So one of the chapters that I'm actually gonna go over today, I told myself every Monday I'm gonna record and I'm going to come onto here with my videos. And it's just a discipline thing right now that I'm working on that I'm not putting to the back. No matter what the day holds, no matter what the schedule, um, I'm gonna make room for it. So I opened up my book and I said, Lord, whatever message it is that you want me to share, I will share. Just show me what it is. And it was in my book and it was chapter four. So chapter four is called buried strength. And I'm just gonna read a little excerpt out of it. And it says, Resilience isn't something you're born with, it's something you build moment by moment, decision by decision, through the fire and the fire. While resilience is cultivated, your capacity for it has been in you since the beginning. Spiritually, birth isn't just a physical event, it's the sacred entry point of your soul into this world, a divine appointment that signals the start of your unique journey. It's not random, it's not accidental. From the moment you took your first breath, there was intention written over your life. In many spiritual traditions, birth is seen as the crossing of a threshold where your soul agrees to walk through this life with a purpose, a path, and an inner compass that will always try to guide you back to yourself and to God. You came here with something already inside of you, a divine imprint, a knowing, a strength that was placed in you before you ever had to prove it. As mentioned in the first chapter, from a Christian viewpoint, birth is not random. It's part of God's plan. Scripture teaches, before I formed you in your in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. Jeremiah 1.5. You are not an accident. Your life has meaning, even if you fully don't understand it yet. Life is seen as a sacred gift from God, a time to grow spiritually, love, serve, and ultimately return to Him. The challenges and joys we face are part of a greater story, shaping us into who we are meant to be. While God has a plan, he also gives us the ability to make choices that shape our journey. Both light and darkness exist, and our decisions influence how we grow, what we learn, and the impact we leave on others. So in my book, I also talk about Job. And I've had conversations with other believers and women that have said, Job's story really angers me. And it angers me because how did God let that all happen? For a long time, I couldn't really understand Job's story in the Bible. It confused me because I too thought, how is God letting all this happen? And how does Job still believe that God is for him? And then there's all these people that are coming into the story of Job, telling him that basically he's must have done bad and God's punishing him and all this stuff. But really, if we look inside of that story, the enemy is trying to tell God that I can steal him from you. I can make him believe that you're not good and I will do all these bad things and whatnot. And so all of these horrible things happen to Job. His kids die, he loses his home, he gets warts and these wounds all over his body. He is just in complete desperation and he's crying out to God, he's asking God for help and he doesn't see the blessings break through. He doesn't see God answer. But his confidence at times, yes, shaken, his faith is not gone. And so I bring this back to us as human beings that live life every single day, and even to my own personal story where there were so many times in my life where things were just so bad, right? I can think about when I was a 20-year-old girl who lost my daughter in a car accident. I look at that time of my life and I was so young. I was 20 years old and I had no faith. I had no belief. I just thought life happened. And even though I don't think at that point in my life I was really clinging on to anything bigger, I would actually deny the fact when people would talk about God to me because it was like, God's so great. How did this happen? Why would God let this happen when I felt like God had forsaken me, but the Bible says, I'm not forsaking you. Didn't realize that till many years later. And then if I go on to more in my journey, when I got divorced and literally had nothing, living in my parents' house, that's where my my my faith story started. Because that's where I found faith. When I had absolutely nothing, just like Job, I lost my family, I had no home, I had no business, I literally had nothing. I remember that is where I found God to do his best work. That is where God really started to form me and mold me. And just like Job's story, and I used to say this without even understanding that book in the of the Bible, is I felt in my core, in my soul, that God wasn't taking all of this from me to leave me there. I felt that God was simply clearing out what didn't need to be, and what he was going to do was like an arrow. He was gonna pull me all the way backwards to catapult me to exactly where I was meant to go and where he saw me become. And it sounded great in theory, and I just had to have a lot of faith. That's exactly what was happening. But I was desperate. I was fearful, I was depressed. I felt all of the things about myself that made me feel unworthy. I had put all of these labels and things that had been said to me, and I started to believe them because of also the circumstances in my life. I was called a failure and a loser. And if you would have looked at my life, that's exactly what it looked like. I had failed and I lost everything. And so all of these things that the world had said to me felt so real. They felt, and in those times, I would cry to God and I would ask him, like, God, I don't know what you're doing. And I'm trying the heaviest of tears. And I just said, I don't know what it is that you're doing, God. But I feel like you're doing something and there's a purpose to all of this. And I trust you, I just need to know you're near me. I need to know that you're here. I need to feel you. I need to hear you. I need to know that I'm not in this alone. And that gave me so much comfort because when you don't know what's about to happen in your life, when you don't know what's coming next, when you have literally lost everything, and maybe it's not everything, maybe you've lost a friendship, a job, a relationship, finances, whatever that is, and you don't know what's to come next. That is the most perfect space where you can open up your faith to our Almighty God and you say the loudest of prayers and you lament in every way that you can because that is where God is going to answer you. God does his best work in our desperation when we are clinging to him. Like I was watching The Chosen and I love this. That it's like you can read the Bible and now it's alive for you on screen and you can really see it be lived out. But it's like the woman who was dealing with the issue of blood, right? She for 12 years was bleeding, right? And all she wanted to do, she had this faith that if I can just get close enough to him, if I could get close enough to Jesus, and he doesn't even have to put his hands on me. If I can just touch his garment, I will be healed. That was her faith, right? And she did not care what anybody said, she just pushed through that crowd and just touched the hem of his garment to where it made Jesus feel like that power was almost taken out of him. And he looked around and he said, Who just touched my garment? And she looking at herself, making like realizing she's not bleeding anymore, and she had to speak up in a crowd of people that it was me. I touched the hem of your garment. I just I knew that if I could just touch the hem of your garment, that I would be healed. And he stopped and he looked at her and he said, I am like, he's not mad. He wasn't upset that she just took all this power out of him or that she touched him without him knowing. Or no, he looked at her and he said, My daughter, because of your faith, you are healed. And it has nothing to do with the hem of my garment. So I share this story with you, my friends, not to just reiterate the Bible, but to let you know that if you just have the faith, what God can do in your life is unimaginable. I had faith that God was gonna put me somewhere. And yeah, I'll bring you back through my story. I was living in my parents' house with my two kids in a queen size bed. I had no money, I knew I was closing my business, didn't know exactly how that was all gonna work, right? I had previously just finished filing bankruptcy early on that year. So I knew that I couldn't just let this business go to crap and that be a negative remark on my credit, right? So I said, God, you have to have a plane. I can't, if I'm just gonna let go of this business and walk away with nothing, at least get me to the end, get me to the end of my lease. And I had been back and forth with my landlord for my cafe that I had. I was like, I'm gonna sign, I'm not gonna resign. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing this, maybe not. I was so, but he probably couldn't stand me. And I told him, I was like, you know what, just put it on the market. I'm staying here. I'm not canceling my lease, but put it on the market. Let's see if we can get anybody that gets interested. Somebody walked into my store. I was super busy that day. And when the guy walks in, he goes, Oh, I want to speak to the owner here. And I was like, Oh, that's me. He goes, Oh, do you have a minute to talk? And he sits me down, he's I want the space. And I said, Oh, I don't know that I'm leaving. And I didn't tell him much of my circumstances or situation. He's oh, I saw it online. I want the space, so what can I do to get you out? And he's what how much money do you need for me to get you out? And guys, at that time of my life, $5,000 was a lot. Like I just needed something to let me breathe a little bit because I was just going through so much turmoil. I was dealing with a divorce, I was dealing with not having a home to call my own. I think my parents, I had a home, right? But I didn't have my own space. I looked at him and I said, Let me get back to you. And then he called me that later on that evening and he gave me a number that was far more than what I was even gonna ask for, right? And that's how I know that God does great work because that number didn't even seem reasonable to me. It didn't seem justified to, but God said so, right? And the whole time I was doubting that this was ever even gonna go through. I'm like, this makes no sense. There's no way that this is actually gonna happen. And I was actually getting to the end of my lease. So technically I could have just ended the lease, walked away, nothing could have on my credit or credit report. I had satisfied my lease term. I would have been good to just remove myself. At the end of my lease, I met the guy at the leasing place. He signed me a check. My lease ended. I walked away with a nice sum of money that allowed me to start new, that allowed me and my kids a home, that allowed me to have money in the bank afterwards, that allowed me to furnish my home, even though I'm a big thrifting, but allowed me to refurnish my home because I left my old house with nothing other than my couches. That was the only thing I took. And allowed me to start over. And when I asked the guy who I made this deal with, I said, I don't understand. How did this happen? And he goes, consider it a gift from the sky. Like what? So many people will look at me and say, Oh, you're so resilient. Yes, a lot of my life I operated out of my own power and my own resilience. Now I operate out of the blessings that God has for me. I don't operate out of my own power or my own will. I operate out of what I hear God tell me to do. It's just like in Job, Job knew that God would redeem him. He knew that couldn't be the end. He knew that God couldn't have just left him in this space of desperation and hurt and pain and what felt like brutality to him. He knew that God couldn't leave him there. I knew that God was not gonna leave me where I was. Even in my fear and my uncertainty, I knew. And when the blessings start to show up, it's our job not to take, oh, I did this, I had the conversation, I made this deal happen, I strategized, I leveraged. No, that had nothing to do with me. I received that check and I was sitting in my car, and all I kept saying was, thank you, Jesus, thank you. And I was giving him all the glory. To this day, I share this story to shed God's glory on what he does. And I have so many more stories after this that just show how great God really is. In that chapter, I said that God knows that he knows. Hold on, what did I say? Okay, birth symbolize our entrance into the world of free will. While God has a plan, he also gives us the ability to make choices that shape our journey. Both light and darkness exist, and our decisions influence how we grow, what we learn, and how we impact others. Some believe that our trials and challenges are not punishment, but opportunities, moments that refine us and bring us closer to God's purpose. The Bible teaches that each person is born with unique gifts, talents, and meant to serve others and glorify God. In Romans 12:6, we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. Your birth was intentional, and so were the qualities placed inside you, the things that make you, your personalities, your talents, your passions are not accidents. They are tools meant to fulfill your calling and impact on the world. While birth is a divine beginning, life is about becoming. Spiritually, we grow through love, faith, and sometimes suffering. Many believe both joyful and difficult experiences are a part of the process of becoming who we are meant to be. So out of my divorce, that was like my first big breath of air with selling that business. Not knowing I've never sold a business before. I knew nothing about selling a business. None of it even made sense. And like I always say, what comes from God? If it makes no sense, it's coming from God. And so we have to know that we cannot just depend on ourselves. We have to know that there is just a greater purpose, a greater story, a greater doing and becoming that is following whatever desperate moment that we're in. We have to know that in our moments of desperation, that it's leading us to something bigger. That is not the end. If it was the end, you'd be there. That it's not the end. It's just calling us to something higher. And so sometimes we have to shed parts of our lives, parts of our identity, parts of what we think our life is supposed to be. And we have to believe that something greater and bigger is coming. And when we don't know, we have to call on to God and we have to ask, God, what is it that you're doing in this season? I need you, I need to hear from you. Think about David in the Bible. David had confidence beyond belief about God. The story of David and Goliath, great example, right? But when Saul in the army of Saul was coming after David and trying to kill him, and David was going through all these trials and tribulations, he asked God, where are you? Where are you in this? He didn't turn away from God. He's asking God, come, I want to see your face. And in my life, I want to see God's face in every single aspect. I want to know that God is in it with me. And it can be the simplest thing. I stub my toe. God make this show better. I'm having an issue with my kids. God help me. Help me on how to raise these kids, manage my words, right? Because of the mom, sometimes I just want to go crazy on them, but I want to make sure I'm also not killing their spirit. So God help me, right? In every need, God has a solution. We get all messed up and tripped up because we're not looking to God for the solution. We're looking to ourselves, we're looking to our friends, we're looking to therapists who have no biblical background and no understanding of how God creates us to be. We need to make sure that we're going the way maker, okay? Our Father, the Spirit, the holy of holy that has all of the answers. We need to make sure that we are depending on the one who is worthy of being depended on. God will not forsake us, He will not leave us in the desert to die as long as we are looking to Him for the answers and the solution. I remember there were so many times in my journey where people would say, just look to God. God's got the answer, all things, God's got a plan. And I'd look at them and I'm like, what are you talking about? How did God have a plan in this? And I kept spiraling in these hard situations and these hard moments because I wasn't looking to God. God knew that I wasn't looking to him. He's okay, keep spiraling out of control. Keep dealing with all of your sin. Keep dealing with all of your problems. Keep spiraling. I'm gonna leave you there. I'm not far, I'm not far from you, but I'm gonna leave you there until you decide to look to me to help you. And if I feel like or if I sound like I'm preaching right now, I maybe I because I lived it, I've seen it, I've done life without God and I've done life with God. And I will tell you, life with God is so much better than the life that I was living without him. Because the life without him was chaos, anxiety, confusion, depression, badness, uncertainty. But with God, I know that there is a happy ending at this. I know that I am taken care of, I know that I'm thought about. I know that there is answers at the end of the tunnel. I know that even in the hard times, they're just simple preparations for getting me to where I'm going. They're building that resilience, not resilience in the ego of look at what Nadine can do, but it's building resilience and knowing that my story is being created. Like even me sitting here, I've always loved to talk. I've always loved to and write. I found this box of letters that I wrote when I was 14 years old. I'm 36 now. Thank God for the blessings of God and being able to repent and save ourselves. But there is no accident that I'm sitting here. I could be talking about a million and one things, but no, God said no, there's work to be done here. And he just took me like clay and molded me and allowed me now to be 36 years old, sitting in a space where I can speak like this. He knew what he was doing with that fucking girl, that 14-year-old girl that was lost. He knew what he was doing with the version of me that was living in sin and sexual impurities and all of these things. Like he knew what he was gonna do with that. He said, Okay, have your fun, but you're not gonna stay there. And while working through me and patching me all together, he knew that this more wholesome version of me would come that who would not be scared to speak about it, who is going to have the boldness to speak about my journey. I have no shame in the things that I have gone through. Why? Because number one, I'm forgiven for all things. But number two, there are people out there just like me. There are people out there who have been in relationships they shouldn't have been in. There are people out there that have sinned. There are people out there that have done things against God's will, have done things out of their own ego and their own glamour and just to make them see themselves seem higher and brighter. There's people out there that have been lost like me, depressed like me, shamed like me. I can show you and I can help you, not to say, do it my way. I'm not telling you to do it my way. That's why the book felt incomplete. Because originally I was telling you to do it my way. And I'm like, hold on, my way is not my way, it's God's way, and he deserves the glory. The way, let's we've scriptured through this and let's do it God's way. And I will tell you, pick up your Bible. If you're not sure, I don't chat GPT. What why am why what does God say about this situation that I'm going on in my life? Where can I read in the Bible? Go there and learn and listen and ask God to help you inside of it. Ask God to get you through. That's how you build resiliency. It's asking God to guide you through the moments in your life that make no sense and allow him to let your story unfold and ask him, do what you will with God. You knew me before you formed me. You knew exactly what it was that you wanted me to become and what you wanted me to do. So, God, do what you do. And I will just be the faithful servant that does what you asked me to do. And I will speak on things that I feel like I have no business speaking on. I will do things that I feel like I have no business doing. The world, my my college degree says I'm good at business and I'm good at marketing. God says I'm good at speaking his word. I'm good at using my testimony from my trials and tribulations that I dealt with to speak to the people and to connect with them and to tag on their hearts and say, Hey, I hear you're not alone. Come with me. Let's do this together. Let's do this life together. Let's find understanding together. Let's find healing together. Let's support each other. And I'm super excited for all of the things that can come from this because I didn't have all the answers, but God did. And when I turned to him, he revealed his face to me and showed me what the answers were. If it was all up to me, I would still be upset over all the things I was upset about. I would still be hurt about all the things I was hurt about. I would still be in this rat race in my brain of all the things that I wish I could do, I wish I could be, I wish I could say, I wish I would have done differently. But no, God clears all that and he gives you a balanced mind so you can make balance and Sound decision you can create from a place of I get to do this, I get to live this path. It's beautiful. There's another part in this chapter where I say resilience isn't about avoiding pain or struggle. It's about choosing to move forward despite it. It's about trusting that even in the toughest moments, God's hand is guiding you, shaping you, and preparing you for the greater purpose He has of your life. From outside, my life looked like it was progressing. I had overcome a lot, was achieving amazing milestones. I had a beautiful family, healthy kiss. I was pursuing goals while becoming a version of myself I never thought was possible. But inside that life, there was pain, unhealed trauma, and darkness I couldn't escape. I relied heavily on my newfound faith. It was more than a belief, it became a lifeline. I remember a quiet, wary moment when my then husband looked at me frustrated and asked, Why are we always being tested? Why can't it just be easy? It was a fair question, one I had asked myself in silence many times. Without hesitation, I responded, I believe God is testing us to see if we are worthy of his next task in life. And he knows we are strong enough to endure the path he has had for us. So when you feel like you are being tested all the time, it's simply because God is preparing you. But also, I think it's God also seeing, have you learned a lesson? Are you gonna continue? Like it's like the definition of insanity. You get an issue, you respond to it one way, doesn't fix it. You get the issue again, you respond to it the same way, doesn't fix. It comes again, you respond again, doesn't fix. You're just doing it all over and over again until you say, Hold on, maybe there's a better way to fix this problem. And you look to God and you say, God, I need your help, I need your mercy, I need your grace and your understanding, and I need compassion. How do I handle this? And God says, do it this way, and you do it that way, and you just unlock a new level of your life. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the things that we go through are simply meant to just unlock different versions of us? That sometimes we have to go through the desperation. Like I said to somebody the other day, I had to go through losing my daughter. And that's such a big statement to make because who wants to lose their child, right? But 15 years after my daughter passed away, I came to understand that I had to bury Jalen. I had to lose my daughter because if not, God would have never been able to do the work that He's done inside of me. It would have never opened me up to for bigger and deeper understanding. It would have never given me this space of wanting to have a servant heart. I would have wanted to speak and help people, but from my own way, right? But losing Jalen opened up my heart in a different way. It opened up my purpose in a different way. It even reminds me of when Jalen passed away. Every year on a death date, I would message one of the family members. It started out with, and I know this sounds kind of psycho, but it started out with me messaging the man's wife. And I think I was just trying to find some closure. He also passed away in the car accident. And when I had messaged her, I did not receive any kind of closure. It was actually a cold message that I received back, or at least that's how I took it. And so each year I would try on the death date, I would try to reach out to someone just to get more understanding of who he was. Like what did the family feel? Did they have any remorse, condolences? Because I've never really received anything from them. What I come to find out is what I was searching for was a reason to forgive him. But then I have to really go back into who God is, right? Because I was so mad at this man. Anytime I would explain him or talk about the car accident, I would always explain to him as the man who killed my daughter. I needed to learn to forgive him, right? In order for me to truly heal, I had to forgive him. If I go back to the Bible, I think about what God says. God gives us forgiveness that we are not even deserving, right? If I think about me and my past and the things I've done or the way that I've hurt people or I've said things or did things, like I wasn't even worthy of the forgiveness that God has given to. So if I want God to forgive me for the things that I do, I need to be willing to have a heart like God and to forgive others. So now I'm at a space of life where if I talk to him, the man that was in the car accident, I can actually speak his name and not feel like this gut-wrenching feeling in myself. I can talk about him and not have this anger towards him. And that in itself was so healing for me. Because at the end of the day, I don't believe that this set out that evening to go and to kill a little girl or to cause an accident or to kill himself. I don't think that was what his intention was. Unfortunately, it was a horrible accident based off of really bad judgment and things that we hope that people don't do, but I don't think his intention was to ever cause that type of pain to another family. So I have to believe that there is good in his heart. And I have to be able to find that and find that forgiveness. And through forgiving and loving God has taught us to in his word, it has given me freedom. It has given me the ability to be able to move forward and not be in this place of regret and resentment and anger and bitterness towards him. And essentially, it allowed me to be free to the things that were holding me in bondage and captive of all of these emotions that I felt. Like you have to think about what is the state of how you are in life when you are living with such anger, resentment, and bitterness inside your heart. Nine out of 10, we're not being friendly to our neighbor. We're not being helping. And if we are, then when we help, we're like, okay, God, what are you gonna do? I did something good. Did you see that? Did you see? Like we're almost mocking it. Like we have to be real with ourselves. Who are we in the dark? What are our thoughts? And these were things that I had to unravel in myself and allow myself to give space. The only reason I was in such grief and remorse after my daughter died, of course, it's all the thoughts of who she could have been and all the things I potentially missed out on. But truth is, I had her for the exact amount of time that I was meant to have her. And that in itself is a blessing. But I was too caught up into my pain, too caught up in my emotions that I couldn't value that for its full capacity. And when we know that God's plan is the mighty plan, is the way, then we don't look at the things that happen and think that I missed out. We know that there is a plan for it all. And that is the beautiful thing about it. And I hope that this message, like you listening to it, you're listening to a point that you're yearning for that freedom in yourself because that's what I was yearning for. I didn't want to be angry. I didn't want to feel all these negative things all the time. I didn't want to lay in my bed and circle through all of these racing thoughts through all night. I wanted to be free of that. And one of the things that my pastor says, and he says it all the time, and it's really clicked with me, is that when you read the Bible and it says you are that means so when you read the Bible, you can read it from a place of this is talking about me. This is giving me my authority, my power. And that should allow you to stand in a completely different way and want to open up heart into different ways because what is out there is limitless. What you can achieve and who you can become is limitless. You just have to be willing to step inside of it, guys. I hope that when you read Lemon Seeds, this is not just a book that you read. It's literally a journey that I want to take you on. And through when I share my testimonies and I share my stories, I want you to be able to place yourself in that. Maybe you haven't lost a child, but maybe you lost a loved one. Maybe you faced divorce. Maybe you have lost something that was very near and dear to you, whether that be a job, like whatever it may be. And you can place that loss in place of me losing my daughter. And then you can understand that journey that you have to go through and the letting go. And it doesn't happen overnight. It's time, but more than anything, it's willingness. You have to be willing to step inside of it. Like I said, I was so over the pain that I was feeling that I became willing to go into my healing. I became willing to do the work. I became willing to be obedient and to listen and to pray. I had to become willing in those things in order for true transformation to happen. And when that transformation happened, it wasn't just something that came on the outside of me. It was inside. It was the way I felt about people, about things, about my situation. When I was coming out of this financial struggle after divorce, right? I had to believe that I am worthy of a new life, that I am worthy of better things, that I am worthy of creation, that I didn't I need the husband in order to create all the things, right? That I wasn't outcasted or outnumbered or forgotten because I wasn't previously planted anymore where I was. No, God took me and planted me a new root, stronger than ever. So I had to find thankfulness in all of that. And so I hope when you read Lemon Seed, it brings you through that thought process. In each chapter, there are assignments that are called take root. And these are action steps that you can do that bring you along, whether it's grief, forgiveness, limiting beliefs, self-talk, self-belief, like all of the things that actually help you to move the needle forward. And then they get you rooted, not just in yourself or these worldly things, but it gets rooted in what Christ calls you to. So if you are ready to embark on this journey, Lemon Seeds is out for sale. It is available on Amazon, barnsandnoble.com. It's also available on my website, autograph to your home from me with a special note inside if you order from my website. And I just look forward to seeing people grow, outgrow the things that are keeping us stuck. Something that I've been hearing a lot is the remnant are rising. And these are the people that feel like they have been left behind, forgotten. They've been in like this state of rest of just like weariness and tiredness. But God is rising us up right now. And it is time for us to step into that full authority. And if you are ready, I am ready to go hand in hand with you on this. I am just so thankful for this space, for this time in my life, and to be bold and brave enough to be here, speaking the way that I not from a broken state, but from a God, I see who it is. I see your faith. I see who you are. And now I want the world to know that. This is the belief effect where healing meets becoming and faith meets transformation.