How Childhood Shapes the Way You See Yourself

Some of the things we call “personality” may have actually started as survival.

In this episode, Kim reflects on how childhood environments shape identity long before we have language for what’s happening emotionally. From flying alone between two very different family systems after her parents’ divorce to learning how to read rooms, avoid conflict, and stay emotionally adaptable, this conversation explores the quiet ways children learn survival patterns that often follow them into adulthood.

This episode is not about blame. It’s about understanding. About recognizing how emotional environments shape nervous systems, belonging, voice, and self-perception — and how healing slowly begins when we start looking at ourselves with compassion instead of shame.

If you’ve ever:

• over-explained yourself 
• feared disappointing people 
• felt responsible for everyone’s emotions 
• struggled with conflict or boundaries 
• learned to shrink yourself to keep the peace 

…this conversation may help you feel a little less alone.

Expanded Show Notes

In Episode 24 of The Healer & Hope Giver Podcast, Kim shares a deeply personal and reflective conversation about how childhood emotional environments shape the way we see ourselves as adults.

Rather than approaching the topic through blame or clinical language, this episode gently explores:

• emotional adaptation 
• hypervigilance 
• conflict avoidance 
• conditional belonging 
• nervous system responses 
• identity formation 
• survival patterns that become normalized over time 

Through grounded storytelling and honest reflection, Kim revisits her experience growing up between two very different emotional systems after her parents’ divorce, including flying alone between states as a child and learning early how to emotionally prepare for different environments.

This episode also explores:

• why criticism can feel disproportionately heavy 
• how children internalize emotional tension 
• the difference between compassion and shame 
• how survival responses can quietly shape adult relationships 
• what it means to become safer inside your own life 

If you’ve ever felt like:

• peace depended on staying emotionally manageable 
• belonging felt fragile 
• honesty felt risky 
• conflict felt unsafe 
• your nervous system reacts before logic catches up 

…this episode was made for you.

For more resources and to stay connected - visit the Healer & Hope Giver website

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hey friends, I've been thinking a lot lately about how much of adulthood is really just slowly realizing where certain parts of us come from. Not in a blame-filled way and not in a let's psychoanalyze every person we've ever met kind of way. Just honest reflection. Because sometimes we reach adulthood and we realize we have reactions that feel bigger than the moment in front of us. We feel panic over things that seem small to other people. We brace ourselves before conversations that haven't even gone badly yet. We overexplain. We monitor the room. We rehearse our responses before anyone has actually responded. And if you're anything like me, sometimes you eventually stop and think, why does this feel so big inside of me? I think a lot of us spend years believing our reactions are personality traits. And before we realize some of them were actually adaptations. And honestly, I think that realization can both feel freeing and disorienting at the same time. Because if certain parts of you were shaped by survival, then who are you underneath all of that? That's kind of where we're sitting today. Not in a hopeless way, and not in a everything is trauma kind of way, and not even in a my childhood ruined me way. That's not this conversation. This is more about understanding how environments shape identity long before we have language for what's happening. And I think children are constantly learning things emotionally that they do not yet know how to explain intellectually. Children become experts at reading rooms before they become experts at reading themselves. And sometimes what we call being mature for your age was really just learning very early how to emotionally adapt. I think for most of my life, I thought everyone experienced childhood in the same way. I thought everyone learned how to quietly assess emotional environments before speaking. I thought everyone learned that there were certain versions of themselves that fit in certain rooms better than others. I thought everyone mentally prepared themselves before walking into conversations. I didn't realize until much later that some of those things are not just quirks. Some of them were survival responses that became incredibly normal to me. And honestly, I don't even say that dramatically, because here's the thing. There was love, there were good memories, there were people who cared deeply about me. There was laughter and family and traditions and moments that mattered. But there was also tension, contradiction, emotional unpredictability, different environments asking different things from me emotionally. And I think somewhere along the way, I learned very young that different rooms require different versions of me, not fake versions, adaptive versions. And I think I didn't fully understand how deeply that shaped me until adulthood. So today I want to talk about that a little, about how childhood shapes the way we see ourselves, about how environments influence identity, and how emotional survival patterns can follow us much longer than we realize. And maybe if this is part of your story too, this episode can help you feel a little less alone in it. One of the strongest images that keeps coming back to me when I think about childhood is airports, which probably sounds oddly specific at first, but my parents divorced when I was young. And because my dad lived out of state for years, first Arizona and then later in California, my experience wasn't the typical back and forth between two houses arrangement where you had, you know, every Tuesday night at dinner with dad or anything like that. So people often picture that people people often often picture that back and forth when they talk about divorce and divorced parents. Instead, I flew alone. And this was the late 80s, pre-9-11, when families could walk all the way to the gate with you. So I would have one of those little unaccompanied minor tags hanging around my neck while adults coordinated where I was supposed to go next and who was responsible for me once the plane landed. Flight attendants would check me on throughout check on me throughout the flight. And then when we landed, they would physically verify my dad's ID before handing me over to him at the airport. At the time, it didn't feel unusual to me because it was simply just my normal. I wasn't sitting there as a little girl thinking, this feels emotionally formative. I was just trying to navigate what my life looked like. But I when I think about it now as an adult, I realized what was actually there was actually a tremendous amount of transition and emotional adjustment for a young child to carry. Because I wasn't just traveling between states, I was emotionally preparing for entirely different environments. And honestly, I think that distinction matters a lot when I look back on those years now. It would actually be much easier to tell this story if one side of my childhood felt entirely good and the other felt entirely bad. But that's not really the truth. What shaped me most was not growing up inside one healthy environment and one terrible one. It was growing up between two completely different emotional systems that each carry their own rhythms, tensions, explanations, and ways of handling pain. My dad's side of the family generally felt calmer and more emotionally stable to me. There was more structure, less emotional reactivity. I remember feeling more like a child there, which is an interesting thing to realize as an adult because I don't think I would have had that language for it at the time. It just felt easier to exhale a little bit. And one thing I appreciate more now than I probably could have understood back then is that they did not spend their time trying to make me emotionally responsible for adult conflicts. They allowed me to love people without constantly forcing me to carry negative narratives about the other side of my family. On the other side, though, there was a lot more emotional tension woven into everyday life. And I say that now with compassion because adulthood has given me perspective I simply did not have as a child. My mom's side of the family had experienced profound grief and upheaval before I was even old enough to fully understand what happened. My grandfather, who was deeply, deeply loved, passed away suddenly on New Year's Day. And then about a year later, my parents divorced. Looking back now, I can see how much unresolved pain was probably still moving through the entire family system during those years. I think sometimes we underestimate how deeply grief reshapes people when it's never fully processed. Sadness does not always stay sadness. Sometimes it turns into anger, sometimes it becomes control, sometimes it shows up as emotional unpredictability or projection or criticism that has very little to do with the person receiving it. And children absorb all of that long before they understand any of it intellectually. That environment could feel emotionally complicated for me because criticism and love often existed side by side in ways that became difficult to untangle emotionally as a child. I could hear things like, you'd be so pretty if you lost weight, while also being loved, cared for, fed, included, and comforted. Even now I think one of the hardest things to explain is how confusing it can feel when affection and criticism become intertwined in early life. You start learning that love can feel both warm and unsafe at the same time. And because children have are incredibly adaptive, they begin adjusting long before we realize that they are adjusting at all. I learned very early that information mattered, tone mattered, timing mattered. I learned where things you said openly and things there were things that you said openly and things you kept to yourself. I remember hearing things like, don't tell people where I'm going. And at the time I didn't process that emotional image management or secrecy about adult complexity. I processed it as there are things I need to monitor, there are things I need to protect, and there are things I probably should not say out loud. Eventually, nobody even has to explain those dynamics to you anymore because you become skilled at reading them yourself. And honestly, when I think about it now, I think by second grade I under already understood that different rooms required different versions of me, not fake versions, adaptive versions. I knew what topics felt emotionally safe, I knew what reactions to avoid, I knew when silence would create less tension and honesty, and I knew or less tension than honesty, and I knew when peacemaking mattered more than being understood. The strange thing is that adults often praise children for this kind of adaptation. They call them mature, easygoing, helpful, good kids, low maintenance, but sometimes what they really are is being hyper-vigilant. They are seeing a childhood become highly skilled at reading emotional weather patterns before they even fully learned how to understand themselves. And I think one of the most emotionally difficult parts of all of this is that I genuinely loved people on both sides deeply. That's what makes these stories so nuanced and hard to explain. Children do not want divided loyalties. They do not want emotional contradictions, they want stability and coherence and the freedom to love people without carrying the weight of adult pain. But I can still remember lying awake before trips to my dad's house feeling anxious because I didn't really want to leave what was familiar, only later to lie awake at my dad's house, dreading the transition back home just the same. It wasn't about not loving people, it was about never fully emotionally settling in anywhere. There was always some level of adjustment happening internally, and eventually that adjustment became so normal to me that I stopped recognizing it as adjustment at all. I think one of the things adulthood has forced me to reckon with is how early children start assigning meaning to themselves based on the emotional environments around them. Not just because, not just based on what is directly said to them, although words absolutely matter, but based on tone, tension, reactions, body language, unpredictability, silence, criticism, disappointment, and approval. All things children are constantly absorbing while trying to figure out where they are in the world. And the hard part is that children almost always internalize emotionally before they contextual contextualize intellectually. They do not think, usually, an adult around me is hurting. They think something must be wrong with me. I don't think I understood for a very long time how much of my internal world had been shaped by that dynamic. Because when you grow up learning to read rooms, you also tend to grow up believing your job is to manage the emotional temperature inside of them. You start anticipating reactions before they happen. You start softening yourself before anyone asks you to. Even now, disappointment can feel disproportionately heavy for me sometimes. If someone says I'm disappointed, there's still a part of me that does not naturally hear this specific situation disappointed me. What I hear emotionally, almost instantly, is you are a disappointment. And that's a very different emotional weight to carry. And I think that distinction explains so much about the way I move through relationships for the large part of my life. When you grow up feeling like belonging is fragile, disagreement can start to feel dangerous. Conflict can feel catastrophic, boundaries can feel selfish, emotional dependence can feel risky because somewhere deep inside you learn that acceptance might disappear if you become too inconvenient, too difficult, too honest, too different from what people expect you to be. So you adapt, you overexplain so people don't misunderstand your intentions, you rehearse conversations ahead of time, you soften the truth to make it easier for other people to receive. You monitor reactions while you're speaking, you become very skilled at staying emotionally agreeable, you learn how to anticipate needs before people voice them. You become useful, helpful, easy to manage. And the complicated thing is that some of those traits can look incredibly positive from the outside. People often praise the very survival responses that quietly exhaust us. They praise the peacemaker, the caretaker, the emotionally mature child, the person who always keeps things running smoothly, the person who makes everyone else feel comfortable. But eventually you reach adulthood and realize you are not entirely sure where adaptation ends and identity actually begins. And honestly, I think that's been one of the strangest parts of this season of my life. Realizing how many things I once thought were simply my personality may have actually started as emotional survival strategies. Not all of them. I don't want to over-correct in the other direction and act like every part of who I am was formed through pain, because that's not entirely true either. There are absolutely parts of my personality that are genuine, life-giving, healthy, and deeply rooted in who God created me to be. But I think some of my hyper-awareness developed because unpredictability taught me to stay alert. Some of my conflict avoidance developed because people once felt tied to emotional safety. Peace once felt tied to emotional safety. Some of my tendency to shrink developed because being emotionally low maintenance felt safer than risking disapproval. And one of the hardest things about these patterns is that they can follow you long after the original environment changes. Because eventually you can find yourself surrounded by safe people while still reacting like you're responsible for preventing emotional disaster at all costs. I've seen that show up in my marriage before in ways that honestly took me years to realize clearly. My husband can be frustrated with one specific situation, and somewhere inside of me, I can still feel this instinctive urge to overexplain, to fix, to soften, to manage, or emotionally stabilize the moment before it grows into something bigger. Not because he's unsafe, not because our marriage is unstable, but because my nervous system learned very early that emotional tension needs to be managed quickly. And thankfully, one of the healthiest things in my adult life has been experiencing relationships where disagreement does not automatically threaten belonging. That has been deeply, deeply healing for me because I do not think I realized how much of my younger life taught me, directly and indirectly, that love could become fragile when conflict entered the room. And honestly, I reject that belief now. At this point in my life, I think one of my deepest convictions is this if love can be withdrawn the moment someone becomes inconvenient, difficult, honest, or even different, then that's not really love in its healthiest form. That is control and fear disguising itself as connection. Real love makes room for truth. Real love survives disagreement. Real love does not require constant emotional performance to maintain access to belonging. And I think part of healing has been slowly learning that I do not have to become a smaller version of myself to remain lovable. That has taken me years to even begin believing emotionally, not just intellectually. I think one of the reasons this entire conversation matters so much to me is because for a long time I honestly thought these patterns were just who I was. I thought being hyper-aware was wisdom. I thought anticipating reactions was maturity. I thought staying emotionally agreeable was kindness. I thought over explaining was good communication. And I thought shrinking myself was humility. And to be fair, some of those traits do contain genuinely beautiful qualities when they exist in healthy ways. I do think I'm naturally nurturing. I do think I genuinely care deeply about people. And I do think empathy and emotional awareness can be incredible strengths. But healing has forced me to start separating what is truly rooted in love from what was rooted in fear. Because those are not the same thing. And honestly, I think that that distinction is one of the biggest shif shifts happening in me right now as a person. For most of my life, I think part of me quietly believed that peace was something I had to earn by staying manageable, not by being by being not being too difficult, by not disappointing people, by staying emotionally useful, by adapting quickly enough to avoid tension before it fully surfaced. But eventually, that kind of living becomes exhausting because you carry, you start carrying responsibility for emotional outcomes that were never actually yours to control. You begin believing your job is to keep everyone comfortable, to prevent disappointment, to soften truth enough that nobody reacts strongly, to emotionally prepare for every possible response ahead of time. And the hard part is that when you live that way long enough, your body starts treating emotional tension like danger, even when the actual situation is relatively safe. That realization has honestly explained so much of my adulthood to me. It explains why criticism can feel disproportionately heavy, why conflict sometimes felt catastrophic internally even when it was relatively small externally, why boundaries could trigger guilt so quickly, why disagreement could make me feel emotionally unsettled for hours or even days afterward. Because somewhere deep inside, my nervous system learned very early that relational stability could shift unexpectedly. And again, I want to say this carefully because I think nuance matters here. I do not believe the adults in my life woke up each morning intentionally trying to create emotional confusion for a child. Most people are simply passing down what they said they themselves never fully healed from. That realization has actually softened me a lot as a child, an adult, sorry. Because when I look back now, I can see people carrying grief, betrayal, disappointment, insecurity, fear, unresolved wounds, and emotional pain that they probably did not fully know how to process themselves. Hurt people often create environments that unintentionally teach survival before safety. That does not erase the impact, but it does create compassion. And honestly, I think one of the healthiest shifts for me has been learning that understanding where a pattern comes from does not require me to stay trapped inside of it forever. Awareness is not blame. Awareness is permission to heal differently. I think for years I unconsciously moved through life, believing my role was to emotionally stabilize every environment around me, to absorb the tension, to keep things smooth, to make myself easier to carry. And the older I get, the more I realize how much pressure that placed on a little girl who was simply trying to feel safe and loved. Sometimes I look at the children now, especially my own children, and I realize how young children really are emotionally. That sounds obvious, but I do not think that it fully registered for me until adulthood, because when children become emotionally mature too early, adults often forget that they are still children. They sound, they may sound mature, they behave may behave maturely, and they may seem self-sufficient, but emotionally they are still developing their understanding of safety, belonging, identity, and love. And I think one of the things that hits me the hardest now as a mom is realizing how much effort my husband and I have intentionally put into creating a different emotional atmosphere for our kids. Not a perfect one. We are absolutely imperfect parents, but a steadier one nonetheless. Our boys have watched conflict happen without the foundation of the world collapsing afterward. They have watched the repair happen. They have watched disagreements remain disagreements instead of becoming emotional warfare. They have watched two parents stay on the same team even when frustrated with each other. And honestly, I do not say that self-righteously at all. I say it with gratitude because I know firsthand how deeply emotional environments shape children. One of the phrases that keeps coming to mind for me lately is this I have tried to let the muddy water stop with me. If you remember the um videos that I talked about in a previous episode where, you know, you see all the healing videos with the muddy water and the water tap keeps pouring in and eventually it gets cleaner. Well, I'm trying to let that muddy water stop with me. Not perfectly, not flawlessly, but intentionally. Because I think every generation has an opportunity to either pass forward unresolved pain or begin healing it differently. And I think some of the deepest healing work happens in the quiet moments nobody applauds, in the conversations where you choose honesty over avoidance, in the moments where you let children have emotions without making them responsible for yours, in learning how to apologize, in allowing disagreement without threatening connection, in realizing that your worth is not dependent on how emotionally convenient you are for everyone else around you. Honestly, even saying that out loud still feels a little uncomfortable for me sometimes. Because if you spent years learning to adapt yourself around other people's expectations, there can be a strange grief that comes with finally allowing yourself to take up space honestly, not performatively, and not aggressively, just truthfully. And I think that that may be part of what this season of life has been for me. Not becoming someone entirely new, but slowly uncovering who I was underneath all of the adaptation. And maybe that's why I wanted to have this conversation today, because I honestly do not think this is rare. I think there are a lot of people walking around carrying nervous system responses that they still think are personality traits. People who believe they are just anxious, when in reality they learned very early that staying alert helped them emotionally survive unpredictable environments. People who believe they are just people pleasers, when maybe somewhere along the way they learned that approval felt tied to safety or belonging. People who think they are too sensitive when they actually became highly attuned to emotional shifts because they had to monitor environments carefully growing up. People who overexplain because misunderstanding once felt costly. People who apologize constantly because conflict once felt dangerous. People who prepare for conversations like they are entering an emotional battlefield instead of a simple communication. People who still feel their stomach drop when they disappoint someone. People who become emotionally exhausted trying to manage reactions that were never theirs to carry their in the first place. I think one of the most healing things we can begin doing is learning to look at ourselves with compassion instead of shame. Because honestly, shame tends to ask us, what's wrong with me? And compassion asks, what happened to me that made this feel necessary? That does not mean we stay stuck forever. It does not mean we excuse unhealthy behavior. It does not mean every coping strategy should remain untouched. But I do think healing becomes much harder when we approach ourselves like problems to solve instead of people to understand. And if I'm being honest, I think faith changed this for me in ways that I didn't fully expect. Not overnight, not magically, not in one dramatic moment where everything suddenly made sense. Actually, some of the deepest healing in my life has happened incredibly slowly, quietly even, almost gently, because for much of my earlier life, love and acceptance often once felt connected to emotional performance in some way. Staying manageable, staying agreeable, to not creating too much tension, to adapting correctly. But grace feels different than that. Grace does not constantly demand performance before belonging. Grace does not disappear every time you struggle. Grace does not require you to earn your place through emotional exhaustion. And honestly, I think part of my relationship with God has been slowly learning that I was fully known long before I understood myself. Not tolerated, not conditionally accepted, not loved only when useful, known. And I think that realization has slowly been reshaping the way I relate to myself too. Because when you begin to understand that your worth is not dependent on staying emotionally small, something starts to shift internally. You begin recognizing that disagreement does not automatically equal rejection. Boundaries are not cruelty, and that honesty is not selfish, that your presence in a relationship should not depend entirely on how comfortable you make everyone else feel. And I know some people listening to this probably recognize themselves here immediately because you also became the easy one, the strong one, the helpful one, the peacemaker, the emotionally mature child. Maybe you learned to read a room before you learn to read yourself. Maybe you became highly skilled at staying emotionally useful because usefulness felt safer than honesty. Maybe you still rehearse conversations in your head before you have them. Maybe your body still reacts to tension like something terrible is about to happen, even when part of you logically knows that you're safe. And if that's you, I want to just sentless. I want to gently say this. Your nervous system is not stupid. Your reactions are not random, and your younger self was probably doing the very best they could with the emotional tools that they had at the time. Sometimes survival responses become so familiar that we mistake them for identity. But awareness creates space for change, slowly, gently, over time, not through self-hatred, not through shaming yourself into healing faster, but through learning safety and new ways little by little. And honestly, I can I think one of the most beautiful parts of healing is realizing you no longer have to carry responsible responsibilities that were never meant to belong to you in the first place. You are not responsible for managing everyone else's emotions. You are not responsible for preventing every disappointment. You are not responsible for making yourself smaller so other people can remain comfortable. You are allowed to exist honestly. You're allowed to have needs. You're allowed to disagree without losing your worth. You are allowed to tell the truth without emotionally collapsing afterwards. You are allowed to own your history honestly, not weaponize it, not stay stuck in it, and not to blame everyone forever. But because healing requires truth before it creates freedom. And maybe some of us, for some of us, that's what healing looks like right now. Not becoming louder, not becoming harder, not becoming emotionally shut down, just becoming safer inside our own lives. I think if I could go back now and sit beside that little girl in the airport with the laminated tag around her neck, I would probably see things very differently than I did then. I would think I would notice how much emotional responsibility she was quietly carrying before she was old enough to understand what any of that meant. I would notice how carefully she was already learning to read people, how quickly she learned to adapt, how aware she already was of tone shifts and tension and emotional expectations, how much energy she spent trying to anticipate what version of herself fit best depending on where the plane was landing. And honestly, I think I would feel tenderness towards her more than anything else. Not pity, not shame, not even anger, just compassion. Because children become incredibly skilled at surviving environments that they do not have language for. And I think sometimes adulthood is the slow process of realizing what younger versions of us carried quietly for years. Not so that we can stay trapped there, not so that we can blame everyone else around us and endlessly, not so we can build identities around pain, but because the truth matters. And because healing usually begins the moment we stop forcing ourselves to pretend something did not affect affect us when it actually did. I think for a long time, I believed healing meant becoming entirely different, less sensitive, less aware, less affected, less emotional. But now I think healing may actually look more like becoming safer, safer inside your own body, safer inside your relationships, safer inside inside honesty, safer in conflict, and safe inside your own voice. Not because life suddenly becomes perfect, and not because every wound disappears overnight, but because your nervous system slowly begins learning that love does not always disappear when tension enters the room. And honestly, I think that's been one of the deepest gifts of this season for me. Learning that disagreement is survivable, that boundaries are not cruelty, that honesty does not automatically destroy connection, and learning that I do not have to constantly shrink myself to remain lovable. That kind of healing is slow, and sometimes it's painfully slow. But I also think that it's sacred because every time we choose awareness over denial, every time we choose honesty over performance, every time we stop handle handing unresolved pain forward to the next generation, something changes. Maybe not all at once, maybe not dramatically, but genuinely. And I think that's what I hope people hear in this episode more than anything else. You are not weak because your environment shaped you. Every human being is being shaped by the environments that they survive. The question is not whether your story impacted you. Of course it did. The question is whether you are willing to look at yourself with enough compassion to heal intentionally instead of automatically repeating what shaped you. And honestly, I think the fact that you are even asking those questions probably says something beautiful about the kind of person you're becoming. So if this episode stirred something in you today, I want you to know that you're not alone in that. There's so many of us slowly learning how to separate who we truly are from who survival required us to become. And that process can feel messy sometimes, tender sometimes, disorienting sometimes, but it can be incredibly freeing too. You're allowed to own your history honestly, not weaponize it, not to stay stuck in it, and not to blame everyone forever. But because healing requires truth before it creates freedom. And maybe freedom does not always arrive as some giant life-changing moment. Maybe sometimes it looks quieter than that. Maybe sometimes freedom looks like finally realizing you no longer have to spend your entire life preparing for emotional environments that no longer exist. Hey friends, thank you for sitting with me on this one today. If this resonated, you might want to sit with episode 20, Why You Don't Trust Your Voice in the Moment, or maybe Episode 22, Is It Really Peace If It Costs You Yourself? They hold these same themes in a different way. And if you're someone who processes best by writing things down and moving through them slowly, there's also a companion guide for this episode available alongside the other resources and reflections at the HealerandHopegiver.com. As always, those are simply there to support you, never to pressure you. And if this episode spoke to you today, I'd genuinely love to hear about it. I read every message, every comment, and every email, and some of the most meaningful moments of this journey have been hearing how these conversations are helping people feel less alone in their own healing. And if you know someone who carries some of these same patterns quietly, someone who struggles with people pleasing, shrinking themselves, conflict avoidance, hypervigilance, or feeling like they always have to emotionally manage the room, I hope you'll share this episode with them and invite them into this space too. Because I really do believe hope grows best in safe places where honesty is allowed. And if this podcast has been meaningful to you, one of the kindest ways you can support it right now is simply by following the show wherever you listen. Whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or iHeartRadio, or even another app, following and interacting with the episodes really does help more people find these conversations. And honestly, I'm incredibly grateful that you're here. This little community keeps growing because people keep sharing these episodes with friends who needed them. And that still humbles me every single week. I'll meet you back here on Thursday for the devotional episode, where we're going to sit more quietly with the idea of being fully known by God, even while we are still learning ourselves. Until next time, keep becoming safer inside your own life.