From Chaos To Christ

Chaos can feel so normal that you don’t realize you’re drowning until something finally pulls you into the light. Today I’m recording my first solo podcast, and I’m telling the real story behind how I fell in love with Jesus not as a highlight reel, but as a testimony shaped by trauma, grief, and a long stretch of survival mode. If you’ve ever wondered how someone goes from instability to faith, or if God can meet you in the mess, you’ll hear the answer in plain language and lived experience.

If this resonates, listen, share it with someone who needs hope, and subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next. After you listen, will you leave a review and tell me what part of the story you connected with most?

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Transcript

Solo Start And A Hopeful Lens

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hey everybody, welcome back to Walking It Out. As you can see, things look a little different today. I tried to do my normal chair, my normal setup, but it just looked awkward with one chair. Um, so obviously today I don't have anybody else with me. So you just get me. It'll be interesting. All right. So it's my first solo podcast. Um, but I had a couple people say that they wanted to know how we got here. How did I fall in love with Jesus? What happened? Um, and I think to understand how that happened, you have to understand what happened before that happened, right? Like, how did I get to a place where I was even seeking God? Um, so we're gonna get into it today. And before we get into it, I just want you as the listener, when you're hearing me talk about this, I don't want you to hear doom and gloom and sadness and pity. I want you to listen with a hopeful expectancy. Because though I'm gonna talk about some pretty hard things and some some traumatic things, there's such a beautiful hope on the other side of it. Um such a beautiful story that is being written and continuing to be continuing to be written. And so as you listen, um I want you to listen with hopeful expectancy because um God was not done and is not done with my story. So um, yeah.

Childhood Chaos And Abuse

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So I grew up in a chaotic household, very chaotic. Um, my mom and dad split up when I was two. I learned later that they they did not get divorced until way later. Um, but they split up when I was two. I remember the pickups and drop-offs, right? Um, if you have divorced parents, you probably have experienced the the pickups and the drop-offs. Ours happened at a shell station in Ohio. Um and I remember just screaming and fighting police uh presence at some points. I remember my sister and I, who you met on the last podcast, um, just being in the back seat and looking at each other and just I don't know, sharing this look that was like, is this real? Like, is this really our lives? Is this what what's going on? And I was I was little itty bitty. Um, but I remember those those back and forth things, and that was kind of my first memories of true chaos. I don't remember a lot of my childhood because a lot of it was pretty traumatic, and so I know that my brain has done a lot to um protect me, but I do remember that those those drop-offs and pickups, and so that was kind of the the first route of of chaos, and then from there my mom moved us around so much. So my mom um really sought after men's approval, and so my mom would find a boyfriend or um I don't know, a fling. Um, and she would uproot everything and move to that person. Um, and so that was our lives. It was just moving constantly. We were never settled. Um, there were times I'd go to several different schools in one school year. Um, and then she met what would be my stepdad, and that kind of changed it, changed the trajectory of my life, and that and I didn't even know that it would when they got married. Um, but he was very abusive, very angry. Um, he was an alcoholic, and we lived in this um tiny little apartment, and they would just go at each other and fight and fight and get physical, and he would get physical with us, and it was chaotic, right? Um, so we kind of moved all over. We were in Ohio, we lived actually here in Marion at the Chapel Ridge apartments for a little while when they first opened. Um, and it was just messy. We we had other siblings living with us and things, but for the most part, it was just my mom and then my stepdad, myself, my sister Danielle, until later on down the road when my mom and my stepdad um they got pregnant and we were gonna have a little sister, and so we did end up having a little sister. Um, and we were living in Ohio at the time, and my mom and stepdad had gotten to a place where there was no like good moments anymore. So my mom was definitely had mental health issues, and she would she would do things like lock herself in her bedroom and um you know threaten to do things that would end her life. Um, and I remember being what six or seven years old and climbing on the counter and trying to get to the top of the fridge to get a screwdriver to unlock her door so I could save my mom, right? Um, and then my stepdad would um just do really erratic, crazy things. He would, I remember one time just being in a being in a car with him and him just like flipping a switch, getting angry, and um threatening to like drive into a building with all of us in it. And that same glance that I talked about earlier between me and my sister, we had that same glance in that moment of like, oh my goodness, you know, is this is this really our life? And and thankfully God intervened and he didn't run into a building um because I'm not sure we would we would have we would be here, but um that I I say these things to give a general picture into that was like my daily life, like that was probably a trip to Aldi, like you know, um, and so it was just wild.

Mom’s Final Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Um, and so one morning my mom was um in college to be a I think she was to be an EMT. And um she was older, she was in her 40s, but she went back to school. And my stepdad and her had been going at it all morning. I mean, it was crazy, so crazy that my sister, my older sister, took us into a room, turned up the music so that we couldn't hear the fighting, just trying to protect us. And um eventually things got quiet. We came out and my mom was leaving. She was she was gonna go to classes that day. We had just had an ice storm the night before, so things were really slick. I mean, I remember going out to taking our dog outside and slipping on grass, like it was so icy out there. Um, but we we said goodbye to her, um, and she picked us up, which she never did, and just gave us the biggest hugs I think she's ever given us. Um and she made sure we knew that she loved us, and she told us that we were in her head, in her heart, and she went out the door, and that was the last time I ever saw my mom. Um, she and my stepdad got into a fight on the interstate, and my stepdad put the car in front of a semi, and um, she was ejected from the vehicle and um passed away immediately. And he was in the hospital with a few broken bones, but he did survive. Um, and so just like that, at eight years old, my entire life as I knew it, as chaotic as it was, right? Like it was my normal though. So my whole life just completely changed in an instant. Um, and that was really hard, obviously, as a child. Um, but we were living in Ohio at the time, like I said, and my biological dad was in Iowa, living in Solon. And so we only saw him a few times a year. Not necessarily his fault. Um, my mom and him had really just not great relationship, and so we didn't just didn't see him often. Um, but he drove and came and got us, and so we totally uprooted our lives, our schools, our everything again, and moved to Solon. And yeah, it was it was a big change. It was shocking.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

It was, I just remember as an eight-year-old girl feeling so um just kind of in a daze. I remember going to bed and being like, this can't be real. Like, I'm gonna wake up in the morning and my mom is gonna be here. And I woke up, and obviously she wasn't, and I just was devastated over and over again every morning.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I woke up and she wasn't there, and my mom was not stable mentally, but she was my mom, you know, and so that's been part of my grief journey is like both missing her, of course, but also there's this weird tension where it was a very toxic relationship where I was constantly trying to save her life. Um, so it's just a weird tension, but before she passed away, she did start going to church and she did get saved. Um so I thank God for that because I know that I'll see her in heaven and she will be the healed version of herself, and how exciting! I just look forward to that day. So, anyways, yeah, we moved to Solon, myself and my sister, Danielle, and we are starting a new life. And

Moving States And Getting Bullied

SPEAKER_01 11:17

honestly, at my old school in Ohio, I just kind of flew under the radar. I don't remember bullying, I don't remember any of that. I just I just remember being a normal school experience. But then I moved to Solon, and I had just lost my mom, and my dad was old, like I was eight, and he was in his 60s. He just didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to dress us, he didn't know how to do my hair. I had really curly big hair, and he brushed it every day, so you can imagine like going with this giant afro, and I was bullied horribly. I mean, from the first day that I started school until probably the end, I was bullied so terribly. Yeah, and I just remember being like dreading going to school, but I was bullied so much that I had to learn how to put, you know, a guard up, how to be tough, how to just kind of give it back, and then I became a bully. Um, so it was I was definitely not super great to be around. Um but I just remember wishing that if these people that I went to school with, if they would have known the things that I had endured up until that point, that maybe that they would see, you know, why I'm a little weird or why I'm a little awkward, or you know, why my hair is the size of a room. They would they would understand. Um, but they didn't. And and I obviously forgive them now, and I hope that they forgive me for the things that I did. Um, but that was just another another layer, right? So went to school, did the things, my home life was still pretty chaotic. Um, and eventually my dad started um looking for someone to be with. So we ended up moving to Prairie, like Cedar Rapids area, and then my dad decided he was moving us out of state. So he moved us to Kentucky, and then we were only there for a few months, and then he moved us back to Ohio. So it was kind of that same sort of instability as far as like different schools, um, different houses, just not really knowing where we were gonna end up. Um, and so we ended up moving to Ohio, and I would have been in eighth grade at this time, living there for a while. The

Teen Spiral And Survival Mode

SPEAKER_01 14:05

school I went to was unlike any school I'd ever been to before, it was wild and crazy. And I kind of that's where I started kind of getting into some bad habits. So I started dabbling in certain drugs and skipping school and fighting and just becoming a person that I look back now and I'm like, who was she? Don't know, but she was wild. Um, and for those of you who knew me when I lived in Ohio, Chilcoffi, I was I am not at all who I was then, but I yeah, I was quick to mouth off to a teacher, quick to mouth off to someone else. I just was wacky. So I lived there for a while. I ended up moving out when I was 13, um, living with a family, moved out when I was 17 to live on my own. And that's when things kind of started to spiral. So I'm on my own. Um, I had met my now husband at that point. We were dating off and on because I would do this like, I hate you, don't leave me thing. So we would be together, we break up, we'd be together, break up, blah, blah, blah. It was this process um cycle that we would that we would do, right? And um, I was in my own apartment and just wild in, okay. Just wilding. And I'm not gonna go into all of the extracurriculars that I was involved in. Um, but it got to a point one time Josh and I had broken up, and I was like, I know what I could do, I'll just move, right? Because that was what I knew. If things are bad, just pack up your things and go. Find a new home. You don't need to live here. What's keeping you here? So I moved back to Ohio. I don't know why. Um, and then that didn't work out. So I came back to Iowa. I was here, things were good for a little bit, moved to Kentucky, came back, things were good a little bit, then they got bad again, and then I moved out to um California. I lived in Los Angeles for like two or three months, and beautiful. It really is a beautiful place, besides like the obvious like Hollywood area and stuff, but just the beaches and the mountains, gorgeous, super expensive, obviously. And while I was there, I was still living the same same lifestyle. Drugs, drinking, men, that was like the nature of my entire life was drugs, drinking, and men is pretty much what I was always pursuing. And I was on Tinder and had met someone and went to meet with him, and he ended up sexually assaulting me. And that obviously changed a lot again in my life. Like I was already on a downward spiral, and that just kind of really sent me even further downward. Um, and so I moved back to Iowa, I drove back and was here for a while, and um just trying to heal, heal, um, but just self-medicating, right? Filling that gap with sex and alcohol and whatever else I could get my hands on, to just trying to make it go away, make the pain go away, just shove it down, it'll be fine. It was not fine. Um, so I was here for a little bit, and then Josh and I were together during that time, and then about June of 2018, that's where we're at in the story, we broke up again. And it was the night before Father's Day. I was at a festival in Iowa City. I was up all night, and my dad had asked that for Father's Day I would come to church with him. And I was like, okay, like I can do that, I can go to church with my dad. But the night before was this festival, and we were, I mean, up all night drinking and partying and whatever. And I don't think I went to bed until like 4 or 5 a.m. And somehow, I didn't obviously did not set an alarm, but somehow I woke up just in time to drive from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids at the church he was going to at that time, and made it to church. Was not

A Worship Encounter That Breaks Her

SPEAKER_01 19:07

completely sober, but I made it to church. And when I got to church, I walked into the sanctuary and the worship music started. And the craziest thing is this church was modern, and my dad, like if you knew my dad, that that was not his thing. He did not like instruments, he didn't, he didn't like all that. So we would go to like very traditional churches. So when he invited me to this church, I was like, okay, and I walked in and like it's modern, and I was like, okay, dad. So I sat down. No, I didn't. I didn't sit down. Worship started, okay. And I cannot explain to you in words what happened to me. But the word the music was playing, and there was fire inside of me, like burning in my chest, and I was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. I don't even remember what the message was about, but I just remember I had an encounter, but I didn't know that that's what it was. I didn't know what to call it. I just know something happened to me in that church, and I was not the same after it. So I had this weird encounter, what I thought was weird at the time, and went up to they had an altar call for some reason. I st I don't remember. I think it was just prayer. I went up, the sweet man prayed for me, and then kind of like shuffled me over to this group of women. And I smiled so big because these women are like my ride or dies now, like they are they're my people, but I didn't know at the time. So um they bring me over to Dawn and some girls, and was like, hey, well, she has a Bible study tonight, like come and and get connected. And so I did. I ended up going to the Bible study that night and getting starting to get connected, starting to learn what what is religion, like what is who is Jesus, and really was really starting to like dive into it. I had not changed anything of my life yet, but I was just like, what is this all about? We're gonna dabble here. But like everything else in my life, I'm probably like, give it a week, I'm gonna be gone. And I was so I I was doing it for a while, and then I got a text or like a Facebook message from from somebody from my past, and we started talking, and I came back to the group and I was like, hey guys, like this is crazy. This just happened to me. This guy just reached out, like, this is from Jesus. I know that it is, and they were like, No girl. Um, and I was like, No, it is though, and so they were like, just don't like just focus on Jesus. This right now, don't do anything else. Did I listen to them? Immediately, no, because they told me it was like a challenge, you know. I was like, no, I'm gonna prove them wrong that this is good. Um, and so him and I talked for a while, and then I ended up moving in with him, and so and so I moved in with him, and we I would say that we would both agree that we were both in maybe the lowest part of our lives when we moved in with each other. We were both really struggling with mental health, we were both just not well, and um and because of that, we had a really tumultuous time together, and for the privacy of him, but also the privacy of my daughter. I'm not gonna get into all the things that happened during that time, but just know um that both of us were very toxic for each other, and um however, towards the end of our time together, I woke up one morning, got in the shower, got out of the shower, and just felt this heavy, like take a pregnancy test. And

Pregnancy And Choosing A New Life

SPEAKER_01 23:17

so I did take a pregnancy test and immediately positive. Like it didn't even have time to think. It just boom, two lines, and I was like, wait, like a baby, like like a human being, like I'm gonna be responsible for a life, and I would say initially there was excitement, and then there was fear, and then eventually within the coming days, I had a realization that I was continuing a cycle, this cycle of instability, the cycle of I'm just gonna follow whatever I want, and I'm dragging anybody along with me, and I did not want to do that to my child, and so I made the decision to move back to Iowa. I was about five weeks, six weeks pregnant when I decided to move back to Iowa, and it was a really hard decision. I spent most of my pregnancy struggling, very just lots of emotions, right? Um, what does this mean? What does this look like? How does this look when she's here? What there were so many moving parts, and again, I'm I'm trying to be careful about the way that I speak about this, but it was very difficult. Yet the excitement of bringing my daughter into this world was unlike anything. So I moved back to Iowa. The day that I came back, my sister Danielle reached out and was like, hey, there's a women's conference, like, don't even worry, don't worry about the money, don't worry about the whatever, just show up, just come. And so I showed up, and I walked into that place, and that same burning feeling that happened before happened again, and I was like, what is this? Like, what is going on? Am I having a heart attack? Is it heartburn? What's happening? Um, and I just was like laid out the whole night. I mean, just sobbing, crying, overwhelmed with emotion of like, how did I get here? How did I go from I don't even know how did I how did I get to a place where I don't even recognize myself, my life, my morals, my choices, where when I dreamed of my life, being a single mom was not what I dreamed, right? Rebuilding my life, or I guess building it for the first time, unlearning trauma, like all these things that I just never imagined for my life. Like, how did I get here? And I gave my life to Christ that night, and I don't remember if I said this special prayer or what, or you know, like the confession and the things. I don't I don't even remember. I just know that that was the day that I decided I wasn't going to do this anymore because God pulled me out of the pit, and I knew that He had already begun to provide for me and already had protected me from so many things, and so I did. I gave my life to Christ, and my life slowly, very slowly, began to look different, and the way that I thought about things began to look different, and the way that I just moved in life, the way that I saw other people began to be different, and and it not everything was immediately, oh my gosh, I'm completely different. No, it was it was a process, okay. Um, there were some things that were pretty immediate, but most of my walk um has been just God coming and weeding, weeding things out. So, anyways, gave my life to Christ, began to just um live. I worked two jobs, 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. every single day while I'm pregnant, grind, grind, grind, make money so I could get my own place for my daughter who was coming soon. And um, man, I just worked. That was pretty much all I did, and tried to read the word and just understand what I just did. Um, how did I, what it does it mean to give your life to Christ? And so um, probably about throughout that entire time, Josh would text me, my my husband now. Um, hey, um, do you need anything? How can I help you? What do you need? And I'm like, dude, no, I this is not never gonna happen, okay? Because when we tried this about 86,000 times ago, we can't stay together for longer than three months without irritating each other so much that we're just out, right? Also, I'm a Christian now, and you're not, and I am not gonna be in a relationship with someone who doesn't share the same views that I share, and so we had that conversation many times. I was like, I'm good, okay, thanks so much. Bye. Um, and then about month six or seven, I think, I don't remember the exact month, I really felt peace about allowing him in, letting him know what was going on in my life, and I just really felt, yeah, just peace about it. And so um that was the beginning of our journey, and so he started going to church with us and he ended up giving his life to Christ. Um, and then he just was he was in it, and he was there when my daughter was born, and he ended up um adopting her legally down the road, so so he is he is legally her father.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Um but in that, right? Like, I saw God's love for me in such a profound way.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Like, I want you guys to really think about this. I straight up trashed my life, I mean, really set fire to it, like it was burning. Yet, God, yet God brings me my husband to love this child as his own, to love me well, and it like that is not a normal thing, like that is not a normal story, but God redeems and restores everything, and so I just get so overwhelmed when I when I think about that, how I straight up just made a mess of everything, and this is where God, where I see his goodness, and why I am so in love with him, because I want you to think about everything I just told you, and I left out so many things of my entire life. Chaos and chaos and chaos and brokenness and trauma and more trauma and survival and um you know, like no stability. And my husband and I obviously are married now. We have four babies, we live in a beautiful home. My husband has a great job, I have a job, I get to be in ministry full-time.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

The odds of my life looking the way that it looks right now are pretty much zero. When you grow up the way that I grew up, and you endure what I have endured and suffer how I have suffered, all I can say is, but God.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

My life does not look like this because of some magical thing that I did. Um, it's not because of the therapy sessions that I obviously attended, it's not because I I don't know, because I know what I'm doing, because I don't. All I know is I had an encounter with Jesus and he changed me. If you knew me in high school, if you knew me even in middle school, if you knew me as a young adult, and you know who I was then, that person is dead. And obviously, I have my moments of things, right? Moments of anxiety and stress and fear and um old habits, not um, not in the way of like smoking or drinking or anything like that, but just in like old survival instincts that I have to catch myself because the Lord has been so faithful to me to show me that I do not have to be in survival mode anymore. That that time of my life is over. This part of my life and and for and going forward is the time to thrive, to to live in the abundant life because I don't have to survive anymore. God pulled me out, and he can pull you out too, and he can redeem and restore the years that the locusts have eaten from your life, just the way that he did mine. Does that mean there's not consequences for our sin? No, there's consequences for our sin, natural consequences, right? But God can still redeem and restore, even with the consequences. I mean, I look at my life and um just in just in my children, the way the joy that they feel, um that anytime that somebody interacts with them and then comes to me and says, Your kids are so happy. Like, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no. Because, see, it's it's not what I'm doing, it's what the Holy Spirit is doing in them and in our household. Um, because yeah, I I'm a yeller, okay? I'm working on it, but I I am not this like picture perfect mom. I love my children so much, and I am doing all the things that that the Bible tells us to do to be to be good parents. I am trying to do that, but I'm not perfect, okay. I am the first to say I am a hot mess. However, God can work with that. He actually, if you look in the Bible, the people that he usually uses are not who you think that he would use, right? He doesn't use the um he uses the broken, he uses the people who have seen some things, okay? And he uses all kinds of people. What I'm saying is what you have been through and what I have been through and what we have endured do not disqualify us from the call of God in our life. They do not disqualify us from receiving fully his love, even if it feels hard, even if it feels like how do I receive love from a father I can't even see? How do I receive love from a father when my own biological family they they didn't love me like that? You can receive it, and it is a process. I am still I'm eight years in, and I am still fully trying to fully grasp what it means to be loved by a father in heaven, but he is good and he is patient and he is kind, and I think that the biggest thing that I have um one of the biggest things, there's lots of big things, but one of the biggest things that I have received from the Lord is obviously healing, in ways I can't even begin to like say with my mouth.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

But it's this overwhelming closeness. I

Nearness Healing And No One Too Far

SPEAKER_00 37:01

don't know if that is even a word that makes sense, but nearness.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

There we go. Nearness. I like closeness too, but it's this nearness of him that even like even when I look back, okay. So I I told you guys the story of being in that car when my stepdad was gonna just ram it at a wall. When God took me back into that memory, because obviously I had to do some really deep healing here. When he took me back to that memory, and I know some of you are gonna be like, oh, she's crazy, but that's okay, I don't care. I the Lord showed me how he had angel armies around us, like around the car, around us. He took me back into these certain memories and showed me he was always near.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

He was always in it with me. He was always he was always right there.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Even in the nights when I would cry myself to sleep, even in the times when I was fully rejecting him, living a wild lifestyle, he was near.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Not for me. But he was near. And um when my dad died a few years ago, I saw this unlike any time I've ever seen it in my life.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

I mean, down to just the details of the his death. God was so near to me and my sister. He was so near in the in that brokenness. He's been so near in every labor and delivery experience. He's been so near in my marriage and the hard times and in the really good times. He's been near when I have struggled and been like, Lord, I love you so much, but I'm angry, or but I'm grieving, or but I don't know what to do next, or I'm confused. Even in those moments where I love him deeply, but I'm we're wrestling, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

It's biblical to wrestle, but even in those moments he was near and is near. And that that is why I love him. Because he has never left me, even when I've given him every reason possible to leave me, he has never left.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

And if you're not a believer, you're probably listening to this, like, why is that girl crying?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

But it's because I have encountered Jesus and every day I think it's so easy to take take uh for granted our life sometimes, but at least once a day. I have a moment where I am almost in tears because I am so grateful. I'm so grateful that he saw fit to pull me out of the pit.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

That he saw fit to pursue me, to pursue you, to pursue us as a human race. I am amazed that he put his son on a cross. And that as Jesus died for me and you, he knew when he was dying that there would be a time where I said, I want nothing to do with you, Jesus. I want, in fact, don't even bring churchy people around me. I want nothing to do with you. While he was suffering and dying, he knew that I would reject him.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

But he also knew that because of what he was doing, that I could be reconciled back to the Father.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

And he didn't stay dead, okay? He rose again, and because he rose again, he defeated the grave, which gives me and you and anyone who accepts that free gift eternal life. Gives us victory over Satan, it gives us victory over the schemes of Satan, because Satan, if Satan could have had his way in my life, if he could have won, who would have won, my life would not look like this. But he didn't, because Jesus is king, because the power and authority that comes with the Holy Spirit is unlike any other power or authority of this world. And so those strongholds, the brokenness that I had, because of the Holy Spirit, I have been healed and set free and delivered. And like I said, of course, I still have things, right? I'm a human being who struggles with anxiety, is a big one. I or fear, I wouldn't necessarily call it anxiety, but fear, we're working it out, it's a thing, because we're human beings. But if Satan would have won the day when when Jesus, like if Jesus wasn't who he said he was, if he wouldn't have rose again, that would have meant that Satan was victorious, but he wasn't. And because he wasn't, because he wasn't, I was able to find and have and develop a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so as I close it down, I just want to encourage you, you know, if you're struggling with the idea of Jesus, if you're struggling with the idea of church, if you're struggling with the idea of religion, um, I'm not one of those people who say, what is it? Like, it's not a religion, it's a relationship, because it is both. It is both a religion and a relationship. And the Bible says pure and perfect religion is to care for the widows and the orphans.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

So, like, it is, it is a religion and a relationship to.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

So I would just encourage you that you are not too far gone. There is no one too far gone. Trust me. If he if he could if he could do it with me, okay, if he could do like trust me, if you're listening to this and you knew me, you know. You know, okay, you know who I was before. If he can do it with me, nobody is too far gone. Nobody is too far to receive grace and mercy and forgiveness.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

And also, I would encourage you that the life that you will live in obedience to Christ, it would it's more than your dreams, okay? Like peace, joy, patience, patience, peace, grace, mercy.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

So many things that we just can't find in the world. We can find temporary relief, but we can't find true lasting peace in this world. We cannot find true lasting joy in this world. And we can lie to ourselves and tell, tell ourselves that we can, but we cannot. And I know that because I tried. I tried everything. I've tried witchcraft, I tried new age, I tried um spirit guides. I tried, I tried it all. There is no lasting peace and joy in anything but Jesus Christ. Period.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

I stand on business, okay?

SPEAKER_01 45:35

And so I would just, I hope that when you hear my story, you don't feel bad for me because I'm good. I really am good. What happened to me, those things that happened to me, yeah, it sucks. But I am who I am, and I see the goodness of God despite those things. Um and I pray, my prayer is that as this goes forth, that this would not be about me, but this would be about God and what he can do with a life surrendered to him. So thank you for joining today for my probably very all over the place testimony. It's so hard to tell a whole story of your life, right? Um, but I'm grateful that you listened and um I pray that you would reach out if you're struggling. Um just reach out, and I'd be happy to talk with you with no judgment because your girl was in the trenches, okay? No judgment here, just love. And um yeah, please reach out if if you want to talk, if you want to, if you want to share what's going on in your life, and um just encourage each other. So thank you for being here. I pray you have a blessed week, and we'll see you next Tuesday for the next episode. Bye.