Adopted Into God's Fam - Paul Illouz

Paul Illouz joins us on this episode. We talk about renaming different books of the Bible and what it's like to be top 10 in the world at Candy Crush! 
Then, we talk about adoption, addiction, people hurt, and trusting in Jesus—you don't want to miss this!

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:15

Hello and welcome to the Testimony Tag TV Podcast. I'm Charlie, your host, and I'm here with my beautiful wife and tag team partner, Valerie.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Thank you, and hello everyone. Despite the name, this podcast is not about professional wrestling.

SPEAKER_06 0:28

That's correct. It's a podcast of four fine gods to stories from the lives it's followed.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

We're here for real stories, conversations, and a few laughs. So let's share a metaphorical cup of coffee or any other enjoyable beverage as we tag in our next guest. Before we introduce today's guests, we want to invite all of our listeners to share their testimonies. This podcast depends on y'all sharing your stories.

SPEAKER_07 1:01

That's right. If we run out of testimonies to share, I will be forced to bring my 15-year-old son on to lead us in a DD campaign.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

And then I will have to introduce my half-elf bard known as Spicy Overalls to the audience.

SPEAKER_07 1:12

Yeah, we that'd be tough to listen to, I think. All right. So today's guest, and Paul, correct me on your the last the pronunciation of your last name. Is it Paul Eleuse? All right, okay. Very good at this game. Paul, welcome. We thank you. Thanks for coming in. No, thank you for having me. All right, great. Yeah. So we're we're excited to have Paul in today. And so the first thing on the dock is as we all know, we need to step up to the mythical wheel.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

You're admitting it's mythical now.

SPEAKER_07 1:46

Well, I mean, it's legendary. Uh the uh tag your it wheel. And here we go. We're gonna go ahead and spin the wheel. All right. If you could rename one Bible book with a modern title, what would it be?

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Wow. Yeah. Rename one Bible book with a modern title.

SPEAKER_07 2:12

I don't know if I'm creative enough for this one.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Wow. The uh the a couple of quick uh thoughts came into my mind, but yeah, that and so you want me to give you what I would rename it to, obviously.

SPEAKER_07 2:25

So yeah, we could kind of go around the room and think of something. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 2:29

You know, I I Leviticus came to mind with like, hey, the the boring owner's manual type of thing, right? And and I I do a I do a daily thing with some friends of mine through a Bible app, and we're in Leviticus right now. And all of us when we started it, we were like, oh gross is tough. And so, you know, it's a slog through that one. That that's one. And you know, Revelation, like, you know, that one is one of those, like, oh man, I better be good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:57

The end is near. Yeah, maybe rename uh the revelation to like the matrix or something. There you go. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Or the epic battle. The epic battle. I like the battle. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I don't know. We've been talking about Job lately, and I'm like, like, what can we rename Job to? The torture chamber? Yeah. Ooh, the torture incubator. Oh, I like that better. Okay, there you go. I like that.

SPEAKER_07 3:21

Yeah, Job's that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I like that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 3:24

Yeah, I don't know. Let's see if I got I said the revelation one. I don't count that one. Oh, that's a cheating. That's cheating. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Give us a new one.

SPEAKER_07 3:32

Okay, let's see.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Um, Genesis could be C we've been reading Exodus with the kids, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yeah, we've been reading Exodus too. Well, we've been between Exodus, Matthew, and Psalms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:52

Uh call it let my people go, fam. Bam. Yeah, there you go. Okay. The kids will be proud of that one. That's modern. Sure, yeah. I'm up with that. I can't believe you said that. All right. So now we all and that's how we'll think of all those books when we get to them.

unknown 4:18

Oh my.

SPEAKER_07 4:20

All right. So hey, Paul, so why don't you uh tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, where'd you grow up and you know what you're up to now? So this kind of gives a little bit of a backstory.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

Yeah. So I grew up in in Western Mass, born and raised. I was adopted at nine months old. And, you know, my my parents were older, both from overseas, and you know, kind of did all the, you know, this is the 70s, so they were doing whatever fertility treatments were available and trying to have a baby, and they were told that they couldn't. So they ended up adopting me. The story of my biological family is is it's more for a Jerry Springer episode than a church podcast. But uh, but yeah, so they adopted me. I was nine months old, and a month later, my mom was pregnant with my brother. And then a year and a half later, they had my sister. Yeah. So she had she had called me Miracle Baby. I didn't learn that until I was older because it was at that time, it was you don't tell them they're adopted. You kind of like the the the idea of how to treat that sort of changed in the 90s, but she had she had told me that right from the beginning that she called me the miracle baby because they tried so hard, and then you know, they adopt me, and then a month later they they are pregnant with my brother. And so, yeah, so I grew up, you know, both of them Orthodox Jewish. Um wow, okay. My mom was born in Paris in 1939 and lost her father in a concentration camp in 1942. So kind of grew up with that too. And and, you know, my dad was from Morocco, he was the oldest of 13 kids, and joined the US military at at 18 as a civilian. And so yeah, both my parents had these kind of, you know, these experiences, these larger-than-life experiences. And and I'm growing up in this upper middle class town called Long Meadow outside of Springfield Mass and just very picturesque, had had no idea that like this isn't really like the world, right? I thought everybody, you know, we would go to France every week every summer. And you know, doesn't every kid go to France every summer? And you know, it was just it was one of those things that my dad he worked hard, he he got sponsored to be a citizen to the United States, started as a mater D in a country club, and then ended up building a banquet house. And so by the time I was born, his first banquet house was very successful. And so yeah, I just you know, grew up, I didn't want for anything. Both my parents were just awesome people. There was never any type of real drama in my family, no violence, no drinking, no drugs, no nothing. Right. You know, we never had the lights turned off or anything like that. And so yeah, really, you know, grew up there and then, you know, ended up unfortunately in in my life, you know, ended up battling and and really what brought me to God was battling some addiction things, some some drugs and alcohol. And you know, I I I don't have that story that says, Oh, I had this off awful childhood that that's why you know this happened type of thing. But yeah, so that's you know, kind of the condensed version.

SPEAKER_07 7:11

And then uh where where do you live now?

SPEAKER_04 7:14

So oh yeah, so I I moved to Florida to Winter Haven about a year ago. Okay. So I was in Massachusetts Massachusetts, got married, raised my kids. I actually have four grandkids now, and two of them, my oldest son and two of my grandkids and his fiance all came down and live with us right now, and we're trying to get the we're trying to get the rest of the clan to come down.

SPEAKER_07 7:33

So I live in Winter Haven. Okay, very cool, very cool. What what what brought you to Florida? Are you are you retired? Are you still working?

SPEAKER_04 7:40

No, no, I I I wish. I you know, there's my wife and I have talked about this. So my wife's twin sister moved to Florida in 2009, and so it started becoming she lives in just north of Naples in Estero. And so Florida started becoming the place that we would go every year for Christmas. But even I remember even as a kid, you know, we do like the Disney vacation, and there was something about it that just, I don't know what it is, right? And it's like, oh, it's of course it's Florida. Like everyone loves Florida, it's palm trees and it's sunny. And but there was always this part of me. And then my wife and I, you know, we would talk about it, we would pray about it, and then 2021, Massachusetts was very interesting during COVID. And we were down here in October of 2021, and it was just different. It was just a different experience for us, and and as believers too, it was, you know, there was this draw to come here, and we started the process and wasn't quite God's timing yet. We we tried to buy a condo north of Fort Myers, and long story short, ended up not working out, and we realized now that it just wasn't God's timing. At the time, we were pretty upset. And the the condo complex that they were building ended up getting basically destroyed in I forget what the name of the hurricane was in 2022. Oh. But yeah, so we were kind of like a ledge. Maybe we weren't supposed to be here.

SPEAKER_07 9:04

Wow, didn't understand it at the moment. No. Wow, that's that's incredible.

SPEAKER_04 9:08

Yeah. So and we we love it. We've just always felt like it was it was where we were gonna end up. And there's a whole God story to even our house and and how we ended up where we are, but but yeah, and it and it has felt it's funny. We you know, we've been here 13 months, and we were talking about it the other day. At least for us, because God brought us here, it felt like home right away. And it's just it's still, I'm like, I can't believe we've only been here 13 months, right? It just feels like we've been here forever. And so yeah, Florida is definitely home. We love it.

SPEAKER_07 9:41

Very cool. And what do you do for a living?

SPEAKER_04 9:42

So I work in digital marketing. I and that was part of what allowed us to come here is that you know, in COVID, everything went remote. And so there were still clients I had to meet with in person, but even you know, it just became remote. And so it was just one of those things where I eventually got to the place of when we were praying about this in fall of 2024, and my wife's like, I feel like now's the time. And then my oldest came to us and said, Hey, if you're thinking about going to Florida, my company can transfer me and I can go with you guys. And and they were living with us at the time, and so I was like, huh. So a week before I talked to my company, uh, someone else had asked if he could move to Tampa. And and they were like, No, you can't. We we need you to work remote. We you can't work remote. So I told my wife and I said, Listen, I just someone literally is moving to Tampa, and he asked if he could work remote and he can't. And she said, Well, let's see. Well, it's you know, just ask. So I did, and and sure enough, they they were like, Okay, yeah, we can make this work. And it was just one of those like God things where it's like, okay, I guess I'm supposed to stay with this company. So I've been with them about six and a half years and you know, still with them. So yeah, I get to work from home. That's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Okay. Well, for those of you who have not joined us on our podcast in person to be a guest, you wouldn't know this, but we'll give you a little behind the scenes. If you choose to join us on the podcast, we send out a little questionnaire so that we can kind of help prepare a little bit better for this podcast, not stage it, but we want to make sure that we're prepared when we walk in to question things. And you know, a question we put in there is just, you know, to tell us a little bit about yourself. And Paul, you put something unique on yours that I don't think we know how to bring up, but uh, we're gonna bring it up because we gotta know. You said you are one of the top 10 candy crushers.

SPEAKER_04 11:40

Oh my God, I knew that's what you're gonna bring up.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

We definitely zeroed in on that quick. I was like, what is this?

SPEAKER_04 11:46

That's very cool. It's literally on my LinkedIn page, it's on my resume when I send it out. It's such a it's such a dorky thing. And that's why when I was listening to your to your testimony, Charlie, I was like, oh my God, I'll probably love them because I love board games. And I remember, you know, 2017, 2018, the candy crust crazed. Yeah, yeah. And and I have, I am very much one of those, you know, the addictive personality, whatever it is. If I do something, I do it obsessively, and I and I'm competitive. And so I need to be better than everybody. So my daughter was playing and and and my sister was very into it. And then I I was I took this job helping my sister's company, and it was they were selling this huge facility in Connecticut, this Bristol Myers Squib facility. It was empty, and I was basically just there to like sit around all day. So I'm like, oh my god, I bring books. And I'm like, all right. So I was like, I kept telling myself, don't download Candy Crush. You're gonna get download Camlo Crush, you know. And so I did, and I started playing, and then it was just like one of those things where I just kept going. And then my daughter got stuck on a on a level and she paid $399 to get these things to help her out. And I was like, no, no, no, I am never spending money. That is gonna be like, you know, my prideful arrogance, and I'm never gonna spend a dollar. So I just kept playing, and you know, I have not spent a dollar. Wow, but I have wasted, I mean, you get free stuff by watching ads, and I'm in advertising, so I get that. And I my wife's like, you could have like learned five languages, but you're in cancer. You know, it's like the the the stuff I've done, the time I've wasted on Candy Crush. But yeah, so one day, like maybe a year and a half ago, we were joking around at work and somebody's like, What level are you on? I'm like, level 20,941 or something at that time. Wow. So she had looked it up and she's like, Do you know that you're one of the top 10 players in the world and you're you're number two in the United States? I was like, What? So they they you know, they they tease me about it. They're like, Yeah, because the rest of us got a life. And we we all played for a while and we stopped, but you just kept going. And then once, you know, and I kept telling myself, I should just do something else, right? And you know, I and I I do love to read. And so I was like, all right, I'll just read more books. And then, but once you told me that, and I was like, Oh, that's it. Like, I have to maintain it. I gotta climb, I gotta climb the ladder. But it's like the other nine people in the world, they have plenty of time, clearly, and and they keep climbing too. So, like, we just keep climbing. And now my friends are like, Oh, what's your position? I'm like, Oh, I'm still ninth place. I can't, you know, there's this guy in Vietnam, and every time I try to, I try to play more levels and pass him, I can't. So now, yeah, it's just yeah, it's become it's like this thing that took on a life of its own, and and now people are just like, all right. But this answered my question, though, because I I've heard it from people looking at my resume, and I'm like, should I just put it on there? It's kind of funny, quirky, right? Are people gonna notice? And apparently, apparently, I mean, all the things I put on there, that's the first one you asked me. It's just like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_07 14:52

We thought we thought it it was good to the introduction, it's a good idea. It is something unique. I mean, that's that's that's awesome. I I I'm impressed that Candy Crush has that many levels. I'm I'm amazed by that.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

Yeah, no, it's right now it's 21,897 as of this point. Yeah, so sad. It's like one of the coolest quirks about my life, but it's also one of the most pathetic stories of my life as well.

SPEAKER_07 15:13

So yeah, you know, you race the dorky. That's that's okay. That's it. And now you got something to say about it. You can put it on your room. I think that's I think it's really cool. Very cool, very cool. All right, and now for our final question of this introductory segment. Oh, how addicted to coffee are you? Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

As I as I drink my coffee, yeah, you had to go there.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

I uh so I love coffee. A few years ago, I had to switch to decaf in the afternoon, but like, and I I'm so addicted to coffee. So we have a pot at home, timer goes, you know, we said it the night before. I wake up early in the morning and four o'clock, and so I have two big cups of coffee every morning. Then in the later in the morning, I'll have another cup of coffee. Then in the afternoon, I'll have two big cups of decaf. And I'm so addicted to coffee that it's like it's not like we don't do the pods or K cups or any like nice coffee. We get the big, you know, great value, nasty dirt coffee. And then the decaf is Nescafe instant, which just is gross. But that's so that's how addicted to coffee I am is that I drink I drink Nescafe. So you can afford it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, if I if I was doing Dunkin' or Starbucks every time I had coffee, I'd be I'd be homeless. Yeah, I really would.

unknown 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 16:28

Well, we we can relate. I mean, we we drink quite a lot of coffee too, and we don't we don't buy the nice stuff for home.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

We we occasionally we occasionally get a nice bag from Hayden.

SPEAKER_07 16:37

Yeah, there you go. We will occasionally splurge a little bit, but uh, but yeah, we're we're in the same boat. So and I think uh Pa think you're the I think you're the most addictive. Oh great, but but everybody so far has been addictive, so you're in good company.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Well they're just helping us feel better about ourselves. I'd like a trophy, please.

SPEAKER_05 16:57

All right, cool. Oh my all right.

SPEAKER_07 17:00

Well, you mentioned it a little bit already, you kind of brought up, you know, when we talked about where you're from, but but the adoption, you mentioned your your parents, they were told that they couldn't have kids, and and then so they adopted you and then had you know they had another kid after afterwards. So that means I mean that's a that's a miracle sounds like. Um and but what was uh what was it like? So you kind of mentioned a little bit, when did you find out? I guess first. So when did you find out that you were adopted?

SPEAKER_04 17:26

Yeah, so I mean, as a kid, the town I grew up in was very small. And so I'm the first time I heard it, I think I was like five or six. It was just one of like some kid that said something about it, like, well, you're adopted. And I remember coming home and asking, I'm always like, what does adopted mean? And you know, my parents were like, ah, you know, and and then you know, I would hear it here and there, and then I just was like, oh, whatever. Like this is my this is my family, right? And and honestly, like, you know, my my dad's from Morocco, my mom's from uh from France, you know, I always tell I'm a French Moroccan Jew, right? And so it kind of became part of my identity. So it was like, all right, cool. I have a huge family, a lot of them live in Montreal, and I was very close to a lot of my cousins, and so it became kind of woven into the fabric of who I am. And then uh my freshman year of college, my girlfriend at the time, we were out to dinner, and my brother, who's a year and a half younger than me, he had sprouted up. He was like six one all of a sudden, and I'm I'm five seven with midgets length legs, and uh so we're we're talking. We went out to dinner, and my friends were home. It was freshman year, spring break. My friends are home. One of my parents, my friend's parents were away, so we we were gonna do a party at his house, type of thing. But I went out to dinner with my girlfriend first. So I'm just talking and I'm like, oh my God, Joely got, you know, he's so tall. I'm so jealous. Maybe he has the I didn't even know what the chromosomes were, but I'm like, maybe he has the XX gene and I have the XY gene. And obviously now I know it's male and female, but I didn't, right? And she's like, all of a sudden she starts crying, and I'm like, what the heck? So I drive her to her to her house, and her mom, we'd been dating for three years at that point, and her mom and I had become pretty close. So we walk into the house, and my my girlfriend, Beth, she's like, Mom, we gotta tell them. I'm like, Yeah, tell me what. So they sit me down, like all serious, and her mom's like, Paul, you're adopted. And because I bet Beth had told her what I said in the car. I'm like, ah, I've been hearing that since I was a kid. So I leave, I go to my friend's house, and and now this is my friends that I grew up with since kindergarten. Like these are my these are my boys, my brothers, and my best friends. So we're we get in and we're, you know, it wasn't a huge thing, but kind of a get together, and we're all talking. And then at one point we're in in his finished basement, and there's this big couch, and my friends are all there, and they're like, Oh, how's Beth doing? You know, my girlfriend. I'm like, Oh, you won't believe this one that she pulled on me tonight. Oh, so I told them what happened, and then all of like you go around, I still remember it in my mind. You I just went around the room and looked at all my friends, their eyes, and I'm like, oh my God, somebody talk, right? Like, because it wasn't like, oh my God, what a you know, what a nutcase. It was like like just like that. And then one by one, they just started telling me that when they found out, and a couple of them, when we were in first grade, their parents like sat them down and explained what adoption was because of me, because I come to their house to play. Like each of them is like telling me this different thing, and I was like, and and it was hard because I felt betrayed. I felt betrayed by my family, I felt betrayed by my my cousins that I was very close to. I felt betrayed by my friends, and that was that's like everybody knew but you. That's exactly exactly how it felt. And and so yeah, it was I've made tremendous peace with it now, but I did not have God in my life at that time, right? And and the more I've learned about my biological family, I now realize like God was protecting me from from some crazy stuff, but I didn't see it that way, right? It just, you know, even the whole my parents were told they couldn't have kids, because if they had had my brother before, they probably wouldn't have adopted me, right? And so God even delayed that so I could be part of this family. And but I didn't see any of that for I mean, took 20 years after that for me to even begin to see that. But but yeah, so that was that was the experience. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

That was a shock.

SPEAKER_07 21:16

Yeah, yeah. I can only imagine how that must have felt, like just that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

But you're right though, in that time it was very popular to just not say. Yeah. Which, but it's crazy though, because it's like everybody else knew.

SPEAKER_07 21:28

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you mentioned a little bit about your biological family. So is that that you've you found out more about your biological family after you discovered it? So is that something you sought out or was that available to you easily?

SPEAKER_04 21:42

I didn't really seek it out in the in the nineties I didn't. And you know, through college it was just kind of like whatever. And then I started numbing, you know, just I you know, I I did the whole college experimentation thing. I started drinking and numbing with all sorts of, you know, t substances and so I didn't really care. And then 2001, my youngest was born. So my wife and I are, I was, I've never been married before, but I had my son out of wedlock. He was a big surprise. And then my wife has been married. So my two oldest are my my stepkids, although we don't really use that word in in our family. But so my son was born at that time. He's my only son, and he had all sorts of health issues. And one of them in particular, I'll never forget this word, hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. What? That's exactly because we were in the hospital every week. It's his the flap to his esophagus was too big for the esophagus. And so he would we would feed him and it would go into his mouth and he could barely swallow because the esophagus wasn't opening properly. And he was just like projectile vomiting, spitting it off. It was scary. Yeah. It was scary. So we kept going and they're like, well, tell us a little bit about your, you know, your biological history, your medical history, and all this stuff. And so his mom eventually got frustrated that I didn't have answers. And she's panicking about what's going on with our son. And and so she ended up finding out somebody she got, I forget exactly how. I think she had reached out to my mom and then also to somehow she got some information about my biological family. Excuse me. And she discovered somebody that was living in the area. And then, long story short, there was this retired University of Wisconsin professor who was trying to do a documentary genealogy on my biological mom's side of her family. He reached out to me and was basically trying to get me to go to the state of New Hampshire and the state of Maine to get documentation because he couldn't get it. But because I'm a it was weird. Again, it was just very, like I said, you know, Jerry Springer episode. Oh, wow, yeah. And then I found my biological father was uh a criminal. And I I I've since found out he was killed as a result of decisions that he made and the lifestyle he was living in 1985. And my biological mom, I still don't know, to be honest with you. I just, this guy was the professor was trying to get me to find information. And the more I found out, the more I was, and I was not in a place in my life to just handle this stuff. I did not handle it well. And I finally I told my my son's biological mother, and I said, listen, I can't do this. Like it was about a year of this process of finding out more information and this guy trying to, I don't want to say use, but he kind of was, you know, he was using me to do this project of his and and kind of making these promises, like, oh, I'll find your mom for you, type of thing. Yeah. And and then we left it. It was like either my mom was still alive living in Florida, ironically, and was like the CEO, or she died of a heroin overdose in Arizona in 1978, or my biological father murdered her. So it was like, oh, those are my three choices. And it was kind of like that. And so I just was like, I'm done. And and then honestly, by then, the the drugs and the alcohol had kind of taken their hold on me. And and you know, for a while, that was great fuel for a lot of self-pity, a lot of just like, yeah, whatever. I'm gonna, you know, um, see, look at my life as terrible. These these people adopted me and they didn't really want to adopt me. The only reason they adopted me is because they were told they couldn't have their own kids. And then look at the biological family that I had, these two were a hot mess and they didn't want me. So it was just all this self-pity and and you know, zero value and zero worth floating around in my head for a long time. But my son was born, and I just was like, I did not want him to suffer because of the things that I was going through. And eventually it just came to the place where I was like, all right, I can't, I just can't deal with this. Like, I'm trying so hard to be a dad, and this is just not something I can take on right now. So yeah.

SPEAKER_07 25:57

Just let it let it go and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:59

And and that's really honestly, that's where I've let it go. I I really haven't. Every now and then my wife will ask me and she's like, Do you want to find out? I'm like, honestly, I I just don't. It's nothing really since I accepted Christ, to be honest with you, and and realize that I am, you know, my father is my father in heaven, my family is the church, and and my family, God's given me this beautiful family, my wife, my three children, my grandchildren. And so it's not a piece of me that's missing. If it's meant to happen and I find out some additional information, great. But and I and I really truly mean that. That's the beautiful thing, right? Like God has truly done that for me, where it's not a piece of me that's missing anymore, where for a long time it was. And so, yeah, we'll see. But it's like I said, it would make an interesting Jerry Springer story.

SPEAKER_07 26:46

Yeah. And I think I think sometimes God doesn't reveal things to you for for a reason, you know, and and maybe it's you know something you'll never find out, maybe you'll never be able to know, but you know, maybe through you know his providence you might. Yeah. So I mean, I I I I think you know, we've all had to kind of make peace with things at times that we just you know, we we can't know and we won't know, and maybe on maybe on the other side of heaven, you know. But amen. But so that's that's very very interesting. And I'm you know very curious more about you know, you know, the adoption stuff. But I I want to kind of move on to a different topic. Um so you mentioned that your parents are were were Orthodox Jewish. Yeah. Okay, so what was that like growing up? Were they practicing? Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:30

So I mean, we already we were going to an Orthodox synagogue, which is one of those where there's no music, the men and women sit separate. Okay, and it's like it's oh it's boring, and it's like a four-hour service every Saturday, and you have to learn Hebrew. I went to Hebrew school and wow, and yeah, I mean, it's it's very cool, especially now walking with Christ, like just having that experience and and bringing that into a relationship with Jesus is pretty awesome. And there's times that I I think that God did that on purpose for me to experience that for whatever reason, right? But yeah, we kept kosher. So, like when we would go to McDonald's, we could only get the filet of fish for the grilled cheese.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Like, yeah, I didn't never even thought about that.

SPEAKER_04 28:09

Yeah, oh my, I didn't have my first cheeseburger until I was 15. Wow. And I still don't like pork. My wife makes fun of me all the time. Still not a big shellfish guy, because those are the things that I grew up you know not eating any of those things. And I'm like, it's not even the religious part of it, it's just I just didn't eat those things for so long.

SPEAKER_07 28:27

And there's no yeah, yeah, I gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

So there's no like love for them. But yeah, I was bar mitzvah, and you know, it, and so I had to read out of the Torah, and and like old school Hebrew doesn't like Hebrew sometimes when you read it has all these vowels, but when you read it out of the old scripts, there's no vowels, so it's just like I basically had to memorize it. And so it's this whole big, like year-long training to do this bar mitzvah thing, and you get a bunch of savings bonds, and you dance and and and everyone goes home. But but yeah, so I it it's still to this day, and people try to, you know, people want to know like what's your faith? What what religion are you, right? What denomination are you? And and I'm like, I guess if you want a title, like I'm just a follower of Jesus Christ, right? And and if you want a title, I guess you could say I'm a messianic Jew because I grew up Jewish and I I got bar mitzvah, or I, you know, whatever it is that you wanna wanna say. But the the old testament, I'm grateful for it because as I've as I've walked with Christ and and grown friendships in Jesus, a lot of my friends grew up in you know, CCD or churches where the Old Testament was kind of like, yeah, Jesus is in there somewhere, and and let's but let's focus on here, right? Yeah, and you know, I I now have just realized like from literally from the beginning that Jesus was there in the beginning. Oh man, yeah. It's awesome. And I I get I've talked to my family, they still uh me accepting Christ was not easy for my family.

SPEAKER_07 29:58

I was that's what I was that was I was curious about.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

So my you know, what when God will use things in our lives, it was my addiction and my alcoholism. And it was just you know, I met my wife in 2009. We actually were both involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and and I've done celebrate recovery as well. And so everyone called her Jesus Jen. She was just, you know, she just didn't care if you were uncomfortable, she was gonna talk about Jesus. And so when I first met her, I liked her and like we became friendly, and I would bring my son to the meeting and she would bring her kids, and so we became friendly that way, but I was like, ah, this Jesus Jen character, like she just won't stop talking about Jesus. You know, and and and so we we ended up we dated, and then I kept trying to get sober and I just couldn't. And it was just one of those things. And then one day in 2012, she just came to me and you know, there was a part of me that knew I was supposed to marry her, but I was in no condition to be a husband at all. I could barely be a father. And she was going to this new church and she kept telling me about it. Please come. And every now and then I would go with her to church, but just to appease her, right? And and but I liked it when I went. And then one day in October of 2012, she was just like, Listen, I love you, but I can't keep doing this with you. And I finally picked up the number to this pastor and and I called him. He had never talked to me before, he'd heard about me from my wife, or she was my girlfriend at the time. He picked up the phone, he ended up on the phone with me for two hours and I was crying, and it was like this random Tuesday morning. My life was falling apart. I couldn't stay sober, you know, and I just barfed on him like everything for two hours. And at the end, he said, Listen, I have Bible study tomorrow night. He said, I gave you're in sales, I gave you two hours today. Come tomorrow night, give me two hours. If you hate it, I will never bother you. You don't ever have to come back. And he said, just for what it's worth, we're in the book of Genesis. So, you know, kind of throwing the whole, like, I know you're Jewish, you know, just and you know, the way he put it, like, how could I say no to this guy just spent two hours just talking me off a ledge, basically? And so I went. And there was something, it took a few months, but God got me that night, you know, and it was, you know, we talk one of my favorite lines, I forgot, I think it's Billy Graham, but he said, Preach the gospel daily, use words when necessary, right? I love that because this guy did that, right? Like, yes, he did the Bible study, it was cool, but he walked, he preached Jesus to me the day before by being on the phone with me, by loving me through that. And that's what caught my attention. And then I got to the Bible study and just God deposited something in me. And then it was like, all right, I'm gonna keep going. And then we were in the book of Luke, and then I started like just researching and you know, the the genealogy, and then I was reading all these things. Is Jesus this Messiah I've been hearing about? And then asking God, begging God every day, like, please, God, I am so broken. If this is true, please just tell me. And then one day it was just one of those like like Holy Spirit deposits in your heart, Jesus is my son. He was there in the beginning, and this is the Messiah you've been hearing about your whole life. And ever since then, it was just like, you know, when truth just hits you and you can't undo that truth, right? And so that was hard for my family because it was, and I did not handle it well. I will tell you that. I did not handle it well. I was all of a sudden, you know, hey, God bless you, and just you know, being real, obnoxious with it, obnoxious with it, a lot of zeal without wisdom. And and you know, now I've learned that okay, I can't beat everybody over the head with it. But I was so excited, right? I really was, and it was just like this all this stuff that we were studying forever, and and this is like he is the son of God, this is the Messiah. He already came, he's coming back. Look what he did to my life. And and my life was absolutely transformed. It just was. And to the point where so many awesome things happened in the first two years of my walk with Christ. Like, I got sober, I got full custody of my youngest son, I ended up getting married, I bought my first house. I was like, man, this Christian thing is great, you're right. Like all these stories, all these all these great things. The prosperity gospel's real. And then the first challenges hit, and it's like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, pick up my cross and follow not pick up my checkbook and follow, you know. And uh, so I I I've had to grow in wisdom a little bit, but there was there was a lot of zeal from the beginning. And and so it was hard for my family. I didn't handle it well, and there was still there's still been tension with my family, to be honest with you. But I just heard the other day, so my brother married an Israeli woman. She had come here, and my dad sponsored her citizenship in in the restaurant, and my they met my brother and her and they've been together for a long time. They've been married, they have four kids. She, you know, speaks Hebrew, all of her family's from Israel. And I guess she reached out to a good friend of my wife's a couple weeks ago and asked if she could go to the church. So my my dad sold his business in 2006, a church, it's now a church.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

The irony.

SPEAKER_04 35:18

So my family, exactly. My family got a front row seat to the to like the God-conquering, you know, kingdom, so to speak. And um, and she had asked her, she said, can we go to the church that used the restaurant was called La Renaissance? And she apparently asked her and said, I want to go to church with you. I'm curious, can we go to the one that used to be La Renaissance? And you know, maybe just because the comfort of she knows that building, whatever, I don't know. But so yeah, I I've made a million mistakes as a follower of Christ. I just have. Like it's just one of those I beg God every day. Because you know, you read the stories and you'll hear other people's testimonies, and man, that's love and faith in action. And I want that. Yeah. And then someone will attack my wife or do something to my kids, and I'm like, you know, I I respond in not the way that I know my Lord and Savior wants me to respond, at least initially sometimes. I'm getting better, but but I've made some mistakes. And my family was one of the, you know, I definitely made some mistakes with them in terms of when I came to Christ. But the story's not written yet, like it's not over yet. So we'll we'll see what happens. Yeah. Sorry, I keep you guys asked me a simple question, I ramble. No, no, no. So doing great. We appreciate it. This is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

I guess like one other thing, maybe kind of circling back to the adoption. Like, I don't know. I guess maybe we're coming a little full circle now because everything's kind of yeah, weaving together.

SPEAKER_07 36:38

Yeah, you're it's weaving really well. I mean, yeah. It's very cool the way the conversations have been going.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Well, I think like the the adoption part of your story kind of like struck a chord with me because I'm not adopted or anything, but I find adoption very interesting, so much so that I became adoption competent trained as a therapist. And I work, worked and still kind of work in the foster care system and and things like that. So I just find adoption very interesting in the reactions. And just like some of these kids have not similar stories to you, but they in the sense of like they didn't know and then they found out, or they know and they struggle with that identity. That's what I really see as like the identity piece of it. So whenever I saw this, I was like, oh, this is interesting. But one thing that I I was like, oh, I was like, I want to ask this question. You're a Christian now. And I know maybe you weren't during the process of finding out, but you are now in the in the Bible, you know, God talks about how we're adopted into his kingdom, like we're we're his adopted children. Have you found any sort of like connection to that because you're adopted in this life? That's a great question.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

I not that I've ever really thought of it that way necessarily. I it more is just it's made it in a way easier for me to just accept that whole God is my father. And I guess in a way, like I'm adopted into the kingdom, right? Because I don't necessarily have this biological link to really anybody on the planet other than my youngest son. And and I joke with him all the time. I'm like, you better take care of yourself because you know, you're the only one that can give me DNA or a kidney or you know, anything. I'm like, yeah, and and and we joke about it. But ultimately, I suppose it does. Not that I've ever really thought about it, but it it sort of it helps me a lot too, with you know, there's you know, when Jesus says to them, hey, who is my mother and my brother and my sister? This is my mother and my brother and my sister, those that do the will of God. And for me, it's easier because I don't necessarily have that blood tie that sort of molecularly connects me to anybody. So it's just like, yeah, this is my family. And so when people say, you know, even the way that my family was put together, you know, my son's biological mother struggled with addiction, she was out of the picture for years. My other two kids, their biological father struggled, struggled with addiction for years. He was out of the picture. So we kind of did this weird Brady Bunch thing, right? But they're my children as much as my youngest son is. And to my to my wife, my our youngest is her son. It's not stepson, you know, my four grandkids are each the two from the two oldest. They're not my step-grandkids, right? Like, you know, that they don't call me steppepe. I'm just Pepe, right? And they have no idea, right? They're just like this goofy guy that we love. And so I suppose in a way it has helped. Just, you know, the the fact that I'm adopted has made it easier for me to form a church family, a kingdom family, and an earthly family without having to, oh, it's it's not blood, so it's not real, right? Because if if it's if the only thing that's real is blood, then I'm in big trouble. I'm I got one person, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah, very interesting. So yeah, that's a you can perspective on it. Huh. I just I think something else that you were kind of touching on too is just I I don't I don't know if I can make this gloss statement, but here I go. I'm gonna do it anyway. Whether it's like people struggling with finding out that they're adopted or it's addiction, or you know, pick pick whichever hill we're climbing in this life. I just I don't know. One thing I keep coming back to is like we tend to ground our our identity and who we are into the things of the world.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

And you're kind of here sharing, like, well, I kind of realized like I don't have much in this world. And so it was really easy for me to to accept, like, okay, yeah, like this is my family through God. But so many of us kind of tie our identities into these, these things of this world, and we really struggle and we tug a war with it. Yeah. So I just I just think that's interesting that that's your story.

SPEAKER_07 40:40

Yeah, I I agree. I think that that really kind of resonates with me, the idea that, you know, I think we we tie a lot to biological attachment, you know, with family, and and I think those are important too. But I I just I think it's really kind of I don't know, inspiring or moving that, you know, you were able to find connections outside of a blood blood relationship. And I don't know, it's very I don't know, I I don't know if I don't know if you would agree, but it's it seems to me like I would very much appreciate those relationships that weren't by blood because you know that's that's not been your foundation, I guess. You know, and so it I it seems to me like that that would uh if if I was in those shoes, I think that would be I'd be very appreciative of those kind of relationships where you know the blood tie was not you know necessarily a factor, but it still still didn't hinder your relationship with with your kids. Yeah, that's really great. So I'm gonna kind of transition a little bit. This is something you mentioned in again the questionnaire that Valerie brought up earlier. It hasn't come up naturally, but I just kind of kind of wanted to touch on it. You you mentioned in in the questionnaire that uh you had been molested as a kid. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we haven't even gone there yet. Yeah, yeah. So I uh you know, I just wanted to kind of pull pull up that topic and just kind of like examine that without getting graphic or anything, but you know, I don't know how much background you want to do on that, like what exactly happened. But again, like I said, you know, keeping the details is you know vague for the audience, you know.

SPEAKER_04 42:10

But no, and it it's part of my my testimony to to Jesus too, because it was, you know, I I've heard, you know, I have a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he'd said a lot of us, and my pastor, the one that discipled me, had told me this too. He said, a lot of us have a big hurt in our lives, right? And he said, You have two, right? I have the you know, the adoption and not being told and all that, that all that that encompassed. And then I have, you know, a neighbor who I trusted who was our babysitter, and I didn't know this for years, but it turns out, and it was a woman, just you know, and and sometimes it's funny, I don't share that sometimes because I think people will minimize that, right? Like, oh, it was a woman, like it was a 15-year-old woman, like, dude, I was five, right? Like you were a child. Yeah, I was a child, and and you know, we we learned later on that she did it to my brother and she did it to my sister too as a baby. Oh my word. So I yeah, I won't get graphic, but it was just one of those, and the biggest thing of that was for a long time, you know, it all came out. There was one day that I I finally like not flipped, but it had been going on for a little while. And then one day I finally just was like, and I don't remember it. You know, there's there's this part of it that I remember, and it was in the act of she was trying to do something, and I remember running out of my parents' room, and I don't remember anything else after that. But apparently I called my father at work and he called the police, and the police came. Like all of this. That's a good dad. It's a oh great dad, right? And and and I don't remember any of that. Apparently, I talked to the police, it's just one of those weird things where it's like I remember the act of being molested. I don't remember anything from that moment on. It's just very odd that that was the piece that God pulled from me for whatever reason. But so yeah, so there was this whole thing and She ended up getting sent away. And I remember years later, maybe like four or five years later, we had we didn't see her for four or five years. And I I found out later she went to like a special program and school. And like they basically just got her away. And her family was, you know, they lived two houses down from us. So it was like this whole neighborhood scandal and all this stuff. And I remember we saw her walking and I kind of like panicked. And I was walking with my mom and my mom said hi to her. And then she just kept walking by. There was a part of me for a long time that was resentful of my parents because they, you know, you're right, great father. I call him, he calls the police, right? But as a kid, there was this part of me that was like, why didn't they do more? Right. Like, why didn't they, why do I ever have to see this person ever again? Yeah. And and I carried that for a little while, uh, you know, it just as a little resentment against my parents. And I realize now that they just, you know, what an awful situation to put parents into, right? Like it's it, it's terrible for the kids, but being a parent now, as awful as it would have been for my kids to go through something like that, I know that it was probably equally and in some ways worse as a parent, right? Not minimizing what happens, but I know for me, I would blame myself. How did I miss this? How do I react? What do I do? Jesus wants me to forgive this person. Are you kidding me? Yeah, no way. Like I am gonna do something outrageous, and my kids will never have to deal with this person again. And that's why my parents they didn't have Christ, but they were just trying to just all right, let's try to forgive. Right. Are we gonna invite this person into our home? Of course not. But I'm not gonna attack her in the middle of the street, you know. But some part of me as a kid wanted that, right? Like, yeah, why aren't you yo stop her or do something to her, do something terrible to her? She did something terrible to us. And so yeah, that that formed a little bit of lack of trust in relationships, honestly, and and even in relationships with girlfriends, it it it definitely that was something God had to heal too. It definitely did some weird things to me. I don't want to say weird, that's the wrong word, but it it just affected me. It affected me negatively in terms of relationships, in terms of trust, in terms of a lot of things where for a long time, because I liked, you know, I like this neighbor. She was awesome. And and so I didn't trust people. It was very much like I would let you in certain of you know to a point, to a point, but you are not getting that close because yours is gonna hurt me, right? My parents have lied to me my whole life. Uh my neighbor molested me. Like everyone that gets in close ends up hurting me. So I'm just not gonna give you the chance to get that far in. And this way, if I don't, if I'm not invested in you and you're not too far in, you can't hurt me, right? Right? But that's a lie. I mean, you know, that's a terrible lie. Then you're just lonely, it never works, and everything hurts you. Exactly. It never works. Like such the beautiful relationships I have in my life are with the people that I've let fully in, right? Including my relationship with Jesus. And so, but that that's how I live my life for a long time because of that.

SPEAKER_07 46:57

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm I would that's really I can imagine how much, you know, that would make it so hard to trust people. I know I've had, you know, things happen to me that's made it hard to trust people, but but I don't know. For me, you know, those moments came and you know, it was I I'd say it was hard to trust people, but I at some point I just I you can't you can't predict what's gonna happen. You to love someone is to to put yourself at risk. Yeah. To let someone in is is is to give them the the power over you to break your heart.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

And so you know it goes circling back to the idea of control and how much we don't have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 47:35

So trust trust is a form of letting go of control, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Oh no.

SPEAKER_07 47:42

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's very interesting. Very I I can imagine how so how did um you know, obviously you you've come to faith, and I'm I'm sure I wonder how did uh that that in a that difficulty in trusting people, how did that impact you in that that time of transition into faith? I don't know if that question is making sense.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

Yeah, no, it does. It totally does. It you know, it was by the time you know 2012 had rolled around, I mean, the the the addiction, the alcoholism had really, you know, I'd been in jail and hurt my my son, my mom, my dad, like I'd hurt so many people. And it just became to it came to a place of just I was desperate enough. It really started with Jesus, honestly. In 2012, I was just desperate enough to just try. And like I, you know, share the the story with my pastor, and and then when God deposited that truth, and from there, even though I'd been with my girlfriend, you know, she's my wife now, I had never let her fully in either, right? And and that was part of why she was just like, I can't do this with you anymore, right? And so starting there, it was it was that. And then, you know, in church, in recovery, you know, it just got to this place where I was like, I gotta let somebody in. Like, right? Like I didn't want to lose control. But like you said, that's some of the sometimes that's the most beautiful part about a relationship. You you have to, if you're gonna really let them love you, you have to let them love you. And and so it really, I guess, in in some ways, if I look at it, it's really started with coming to Christ and realizing He loves me unconditionally. And I'm probably not gonna get that level of love from anybody else, the what I'm gonna get from God. But if God, who knows every dirty dark secret, every dirty dark thought, if he can love me and forgive me, then maybe I can start trusting that there would be other people in this world that that can do the same. And uh and yeah, I mean, there there are a few men in my life that they're all believers, and it, you know, it's not that I don't want to be friends with non-believers. I have some friends that are non-believers, but I think it's just it's hard to be truly close with somebody because you guys know it's just when Jesus, when you follow Jesus and your relationship with God, your everything on your outlook completely is different. So you can't really relate. I can't really relate. Yes, I have a job, I have a mortgage, I have car payments, I I I watch football, I go to the movie, like, but none of those things matter as much to me as they do to other people, right? Your career, your education. It's just it's a whole different outlook. So I've developed these relationships with these men, and I was talking to my wife the other day. We got some news about my mom, and she's like, you know, I'm worried, I don't want you to stuff this. We we just found out my mom, she's 87, she has mesothelioma. We just found out Thursday night, and and there's still been the a strain on our relationship with my brother, my sister, and my mom. My my dad died in 2015. And so we're navigating all of that, right? And they're in Western Mass, so we're far away now. And my wife's like, I I worry, I don't want you to stuff this, right? Because she's like, my wife is one of those, like I used to find it annoying in the beginning. She wants to talk about everything.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

They're a good woman.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

Yeah, really, right? In the beginning, though, when you're not used to that, I grew up, everything shoved under the rug, right? Like, we don't talk about my adoption, we never talked about the molestation, we never like everything is just in Italian, they call a bella figura. Like, you want to put out the good, the good picture, right? You don't want people to see your garbage, nobody sees your junk. We're gonna put out this nice, pretty picture for the world to see. So we didn't talk about anything. My wife grew up completely opposite. Like they fought, they argued, everything was on the table. And so we come together, and this is just like overwhelming to me. But I'm grateful because she she chipped away at me over the years, but she just we do not stuff. We like, and my kids hate it sometimes too, because sometimes you just don't feel like talking about it, right? Yeah, and my wife is she's had to learn to rein it in a little. But Thursday night, she's like, I do not want you to stuff this. You're not gonna stuff this. I'm like, honey, I'm not, I don't stuff anymore. You know this. And I'm like, I remember, and I, you know, Dave and and and Steve and Sam. And I I realize that, you know, long way of answering your question of letting people in. There's and there's a couple others too, but these three men I have let in, like they know everything, right? I have called them crying, screaming. I have called them when I wanted to hurt somebody because they hurt my family. You know, it's like those are those guys that have seen the messy, snotty, snivelling mess and and and what the dirty side, right? Like for lack of a better word, of what I can be sometimes. And and it's beautiful. It's so wonderful to have men like that in my life that I can just I know that it doesn't matter. I, you know, sometimes men, we don't want to talk about, hey, I'm really afraid, right? Like I can call them and be like, hey, I'm really afraid of this, you know, or I'm really angry at this. Can you help me see through whatever it is? And so that process of letting people in, uh, I've at least come to the place of, yeah, that's a beautiful thing, man. Like, there's no relationship like that. My wife and I are like that too, and I can honestly say that where it's you know, couples say that, oh, you know, my wife's my best friend, my husband's my best friend. Like, we really are like we talk about everything, we love hanging out with each other, and and so that's beautiful too, because I've you know, there's a lot of couples that just don't have that, unfortunately, you know, and and we do, and so it was hard. Jesus helped me do it, but now that I've done it and seen the beauty of like having those types of relationships, there's nothing like it, really. There's nothing like it. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_06 53:32

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Yeah, that's cool to hear how you like worked through and ended up in what I think I'm gonna. This is my Valerieism, I guess. Like connection is, in my opinion, one of the most important things. I think we were created for connection. And so to hear you, someone who was could choose to be super bitter about the connections that were in your life. You could have, and maybe you sat in that for a little while. I did, but you made a choice to lean on God, ground yourself in Him, and go, okay, I'm gonna open up and then it's really enriched your life. That's just awesome to hear. That is, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 54:07

It's a really, really incredible story.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Yeah, this isn't cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 54:12

Paul, I think we're coming up on, you know, I think we could talk to you for a lot longer, but we're gonna um yeah. But uh, I think we're gonna go ahead and get to our tag out segment. And so this is our tag out segment, and this is where we each give Valerie and I each give one sentence takeaway from the conversation, and then you, Paul, you can give give our our audience one uh more final thought of encouragement.

unknown 54:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 54:37

So I think my tag out just came in this last this last conversation, this last bit, you know, kind of struck me as you were saying, like, you know, Jesus is kind of what helped you to be able to trust is kind of where you're getting. So it kind of sounded to me like when you were able to put your trust in God or your trust in Jesus, you know, to me, you know, if you truly trust in Jesus, then whatever happens outside in life, we can trust him with it, right? And so that includes trusting other people, trusting the people in our lives. And so it sounds to me like, you know, first trusting in Jesus led to the ability to trust those closest to you, which leads to deeper relationships. I guess that's my thought is you know, trust trust in Jesus first, and that will lead to trust in others.

SPEAKER_03 55:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Yeah. I just I think you've given us a really good example today of of what it looks like to I'm gonna keep saying it, ground yourself in Jesus and really lean on him, whether it's for connections, it's for identity, it's for handling issues with family or wanting to beat the crap out of someone because they were mean to your family. Like whatever the thing is, you keep coming back to like, I'm gonna lean on Jesus and I and really trust him. I mean, that's that's what it keeps coming back to. I'm kind of circling around that whole like identity and and grounding, I don't know, grounding yourself in God is where I keep coming back to. That's what I heard today as you were talking. Just kind of a challenging example for me where I'm like, well, I need to brush up on that a little bit more, I think.

SPEAKER_07 56:08

Yeah, I think we all we all gotta gotta make sure we're trusting. You know, we all want to get that control back at times and and not trust in him, but I think that's that's part of the process. So all right. So, Paul, if there's anything else you want to say to our audience, you know, just you know, how if you want to sum up your if there's any encouragement or truth you want to share with them, just uh now's your time.

SPEAKER_04 56:27

No, I I love this. Thank you. It was really great talking with you both. Yeah, I mean, this is you know, we talked about some of the childhood stuff, but this has transformed my life in, you know, trust Jesus, right? Like you just said, it's it's which job should I have? Hey, how come sales are slow? What house should we buy? When you know, all of these different things, all of the things that I talked about today have gotten me to the place where it's not just the big things, it's the little things. And it takes, like you said, it takes all this pressure off of me. It really does. And then just, you know, from Romans A, all things work for good for those who love God. And and I've just gotten to experience that. There's still things I hang on tight, like nails dug in, like, no, I don't want to give up this. But I've at least gotten to experience that that whole truth of like just trust him, let go, and and he will work this for good, even if you can't see it yet with your eyes. And so yeah, it was really great being here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

We really appreciate you coming on today. This has been a really awesome story. And I just I appreciate you being open because we got into some some deep stuff today. And I I just appreciate you being brave and willing to share this with us and with our listeners and just kind of talking it out with us.

SPEAKER_07 57:35

Yeah, thanks, Paul. Thank you. So, to our audience, if today's episode is encouraged you, share it with someone who might need it. You know, if you're interested in sharing your testimony, you can email us at testimony tag team at gmail.com. This has been Testimony Tag Team.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

And we're tagging out.