050: The Love of God is Everything with Arwen Becker

[EPISODE]

Arwen Becker: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the She Handled It Podcast. I am your host, Arwen Becker, and this is my 50th show. When I set out to do a podcast 18 or so months ago, I had been planning on it longer before that. I'm sure you can relate where you kind of have things in the mix but you have a hard time getting going. Well, that was me. But I finally got started in August of 2020, and this is now my 50th show. I've been amazed at all of the things that have happened just over the last 18 months since I started this podcast. And yet today I really wanted to focus on how much my faith has had to play a part in the last 18 months.

I know all of you listening were, of course, affected negatively in some way by everything that we've gone on with COVID. But yet I had some pretty big, monumental things that fell really in the last half of this time period of this 18 months that I've been recording this podcast. So, I want to talk a little bit more about that today. But I also want you all to know that at this point, number 50, I'm going to take a pause. I was really struggling with a lot of things going on in my personal life, which caused me to step back from recording every week to every other week and then eventually ended up repurposing some of the shows that were the most listened to shows.

Now, here I sit at my 50th show realizing that I need to continue taking a little bit more of a break for my family. And so, we'll get a little bit more into that but I wanted to let you know the song that I want you to add to your overcomer playlist. That playlist that we've been growing out that for me is more than 50 songs long and has brought so much encouragement to me in moments where I need to be encouraged, uplifted, when I need to feel like I'm a fighter and I'm just a woman who can overcome like a warrior, all those different pieces. And so, this playlist has really just been such a huge blessing for me, and I hope it has been for you as well. But the song that I want to add to today is one that has just become a real important song for me in recent months and it is called Seasons and it is by Hillsong Worship, and this song just reminds me that we all go through seasons. Some of those seasons are winter-like. They're difficult, they're cold, they're sparse, there's scarcity, there's fear. It's dark. It's cold, a number of different things. And yet my faith has been the rock that I have set my whole life on, and that has continued to walk me through those seasons. And so, here was the handful of words that I wanted to give to you.

I can see the promise

I can see the future

You're the God of seasons

And I'm just in the winter

If all I know of harvest

Is that it's worth my patience

Then if You're not done working

God, I'm not done waiting

I cry to that song. I've been crying to it a lot in the last number of months because I've just been walking through a really tough season. And the beauty is I feel like I'm getting to the other side of it but I'm hoping today can really provide you some encouragement that sometimes you just need to keep walking and moving forward. When I started, the whole idea behind this podcast was to bring forward stories of women who have overcome major adversity. And I've just met so many women that I wanted to share those stories, and a lot of them are things that I've seen in my own life. And yet my very first podcast, I started off by talking about how nobody wants to hear the successes, the little bits here and there, but that isn't what moves people to overcome and change and to believe that they can go the next step when they just hear the great things, the highlight reels. And we had a great last 18 months. There were some really good things, and I think it's important to highlight those because it's not as though it was all bad. You can always, in any season, you can find the beauty in it. I mean, even in the dead of winter, when everything's covered, the stillness and the quiet and being able to go stand outside and it's just like you can hear the wind and the snowflakes falling on the ground and the crunch of your feet, and yet everything that may have days before looked dirty and gray or whatever that might be, now is crystal clean and clear.

So, there's always beauty that you can find in that. And we did. We had a great 2020. It was a record year of business for us. We bought our dream home. I talked a little bit about that in the last podcast that I recorded when I was sick with COVID, and it was just a really transformative year. It was an amazing year of my marriage. Randy and I have now been married for 17 years. We have great relationships with our teens and we're just seeing them explore and expand as growing humans that are going into adulthood and these adorable young men. And one of the biggest things that I learned during that time period was to stop and smell the roses, slow the frick down. You know what I mean? And realized I didn't have to have everything scheduled. I didn't have to have everything on a task list that being present in the moment affords the ability to enjoy the unknown things that happen, the things that you can't plan for. And so, that's how I want to start, the little bits and pieces. There were great things that happened this year, and I'm so thankful. Most importantly, this dwelling of ours, after nine years of us living in a rental and really struggling to undo all of the effects of the Great Recession and us losing our home and now we got the beauty of being able to have our home again and be able to put that time and energy into our own place, in our own plot of land. And so, really great things.

But the pandemic, as much as in the beginning, of course, it was hard. Geez. But it was just like the blows kept coming. And I really thought once I got out of 2020, it would be like, “Ah yes, 2021, this is going to be the year.” Or you think that it's going to just all of a sudden, miraculously amazing things only are going to happen and you're not going to have all the crap to go along with it.

So, 2020, we had a pandemic. I had my book come out at the same time I started this podcast and I didn't get to have a book launch. I didn't get to have any of that formal joy that I would have had of writing my first book and doing signings and things of that nature. You know, we had to send 10 employees' home. Some of them are brand new, shutting down our office and 80% of our marketing. I mean, almost all of the leads that feed our company come through dinner seminars, which I didn't do for 16 months. And so, that shut down 80% of what feeds our company. And I had launched this new training company, and I just done my first pilot in January of 2020. That whole thing had to be put on hold. And once the two big things of this training company and me not having these seminars anymore, I was starting to question what was my worth in all of this? Because what I did at our company no longer was the day-to-day meeting with clients or even overseeing the employees because we have an amazing director of operations who does that.

And so, all of a sudden, I found myself going, “What am I supposed to do? What's my worth?” kind of that feeling of floundering, wondering what am I supposed to be doing right now? And then having to manage online school with teenagers at home and lack of routine. And all those pieces, they were manageable and then 2021 came and I was like, “Oh, yes. We're going to get out of this. We're going to be done with this pandemic thing,” which of course, didn't go away but at least we kind of got back to some semblance of life at least early on in the year.

And then February came and it was week after week, and I talked about this on my last podcast. It was just week after week. It was just one thing after another. My dad took a fall. He went into the E.R. They did scans for seeing if there were any breaks and they found cancer, that he had metastasized cancer. And the same day he was diagnosed, my mom got a call from her general practitioner that her mammogram had also found cancer.

So, within one day, both my parents had found out that they had cancer. And that, of course, started a lot of uncertainty as to, okay, so what's going to be the treatment for my mom? How is that going to work with what's going on with my dad? We didn't know my dad wasn't in good health.

So, then that led us to just weeks later having to figure out what we were going to do with my dad because he was in critical care for almost two weeks and just a terrible place to be. And so, we ended up having to move him into an adult family home. And then at that point, my mom starting to undergo her radiation for her cancer and then it's just like it was just one after another. Then a business friend of mine committed suicide and then literally within a week of that, I had two of my longest friendships over almost two decades, friendships fall away. And then I woke up Saturday morning and I couldn't feel my left arm. It was numb. It was cold. I had been having these senses and this is literally, it was like week after week. It was one thing rolling into the next thing. This is like a seven-week time period from the time my parents were diagnosed to needing to get my dad into a home to me finding myself in the E.R. with all this other stuff and my fingers are going numb. And after two-and-a-half hours of tests in the E.R., they thought maybe I was having a heart attack or that I had a blood clot or whatever it was.

They found out I had this rare diagnosis called thoracic outlet syndrome, where my clavicle and my rib were compressing the arteries and veins leading down the left side of my arm causing everything to go numb. And they were shocked. They couldn't figure it out for a long time. I was there for almost six-and-a-half hours. And it was just, fortunately, we found out it wasn't life-threatening but now I had this other thing that I needed to deal with and I had to figure out, was I going to get a rib removed because that's what they suggest or was I going to try and find out a way to do it with more naturopathic medicine? And I was exhausted. Then finishing off in August, we all got COVID, my whole family got COVID. We missed out on our 11-day vacation. I had to cancel seminars. That's tens of thousands of dollars for our company that cost it was already sunk into it and all those leads that don't go in our company because of COVID. It was overwhelming. I just had those moments where I was just curled up, bawling my eyes out, just going, “God, how much more can I handle?” And it was so tough. And yet with all of this that kept coming against me, I don't know how I would have handled it if I didn't have my faith in Christ.

And the last number of years, I mean, those have been the most trying of my entire life, 2018 forward, the absolute hardest years of my life, and yet I have been able to retain my sanity and for the most part retain my peace and stay at rest, especially in these last eight, nine months. Because of the changes of the seasons that we go through, I also realized that I had certain limitations. And through that, that's when I said, “I can't record weekly. I've got to go to every other week. I don't know what's going to be going on my family. I needed to leave enough margin of time so I can deal with these things.” But my old behavior, the old person that I was would have fought herself through it, would have exhausted myself to prove to others and to prove to myself, one, I didn't need help and, two, that I was capable of doing it. And I chose not to do that this time. I knew my limitations and I really felt that God was telling me very clearly that I needed to just sit down and rest. I needed to listen. I needed to be willing to change the direction and not exhaust myself and not push too hard, and that I didn't need to prove to myself or really anyone else that I could and that I would. And I let go of that expectation of perfection.

But the other thing that I've also learned this year, 2021, is I'm letting go of other people's expectations of me and for so many years, I was becoming who everybody else thought I should become. And I was so concerned about what other people would’ve thought and yet I am this woman who is blossoming into something that I am so excited to see. And it's who I have been created to be, not who everybody else thinks I've been created to be. And I finally learned to really start embracing my femininity and embracing myself as a financial advisor that doesn't have to look like what a typical financial advisor looks like and embracing all that God has provided to me and to acknowledge the gifts that he's given to me, and to not hesitate on those and to not apologize for those and not to feel like I should shrink back or shrink down because I might make somebody else uncomfortable. And the joy that I've had in watching this woman emerge from underneath all these layers of armor that I have utilized to protect myself over my whole life is absolutely thrilling. But, yeah, I do wish I discovered that earlier. Of course, if I can go back and talk to my 25-year-old self or even my 35-year-old self, that it didn't take me until I was in my mid-40s to figure it out. But I guess it's better late than never. I mean, if my intention is living to 118 years old, that's good. I got plenty of time.

So, I want to talk about my faith. You know, this is an area that I'm not ashamed to say I hesitate. And I know God loves me enough to accept me for that. I'm not the person who wants to talk in Christianese or is going to end every conversation with a scripture or actively praying for somebody, and maybe there are times that I absolutely should. I think part of how I walk out my faith was how it came to be. And so, I want to share that with you because I don't know if you're out there and you’re questioning or you're like I was who was actively as a child running away from God. I despised God. I despised the talk of God. To hear that Christ or Jesus or anything like that, those would absolutely make me cringe. And my dad is a good guy and my real dad is a good guy. He's got a great heart, just loves Jesus, always has, but I had very little relationship with him when I was a kid because my parents got divorced when I was six months old and he really wasn't around. The times where he was around, it felt extremely awkward and strained. And all this talk about God and Jesus, it not only fell short for me but it also was extraordinarily abrasive and it just became a repellent. I really thought that if God was who my dad was, I don't want that kind of father because I just felt like I had been left. You know, he had been married multiple times. My mom was the first and I was very hurt as a child.

Yet, it's incredible that when crisis comes and everything you know to be true is stripped away, that's often when we come to discover our higher power. And that's exactly what happened to me. You know, maybe some of you listening, you were rejecting God as I did as a teenager, repulsed, didn't know any of that kind of stuff. I didn't really believe that God loved me, that He existed, and I only discovered that love once I started to look for Him and realizing He wasn't looking for me. He was right there with me. And all these negative experiences that I had as a young girl really just made me actively dislike anything having to do with God or the name of Jesus.

And so, when I was 24, I was divorced and I was now living alone, and I was having to figure out how my vocation of working in wildlife rehab, which was the only thing I ever wanted to do, was now taken away from me and I had to go get a job that actually paid more money because I need to pay my bills now. And I had a business coach who challenged me and said, “I know the void that you feel, and I really recommend, if you’re a person who's seeking, pick up some books. Read some books about God, read some books about faith, and see what you find”. And so, I did.

And there I was in my one-bedroom apartment, and I certainly had plenty of free time to be reading some books. So, I picked up the books and I figured it this way. I picked up the books. I'll do what my coach asked and then I'll be able to checkmark “Study God” off my list, you know what I mean? But yet I began to realize in such a short period of time that God absolutely loved me, and He adored me and He designed me with a purpose. I was not an accident. I may have not been the plan that my parents had as their marriage was already breaking apart when they found out they were having me. But God had designed me with an absolute purpose and this unconditional love that I had never experienced as a 24-year-old divorcee, I had discovered it.

And so, as I'm rebuilding my life and I don't have any of my old friends anymore and I'm having to make new friends, I had somebody that was new to my circle who said, “Hey, why don't you come with me to church?” And I did. When you have a God-shaped hole in your life, which all of us do, we were all created by the same creator who creates the mountains and the valleys and all these things that me studying animals, growing up, I thought that it was just by accident. But to believe that He cares just as much for the hummingbirds that are at my feeder outside in the mountains and the trees that I can see and He cares more for me, the creation that He waited until last to create human beings to have a relationship with.

And so, I began studying this. I finally went to church and then I just remember the second church service and the pastor. I was in a ball of tears, amazing praise and worship and the pastor just asked, "If you want to have this kind of relationship, walk forward.” I was terrified with absolute tears, just streaming down my cheeks and so afraid to have to walk forward with the probably 1,000 people that were sitting behind me, this big megachurch. But I just knew I needed it. I was so desperate to feel whole again. And I was tired of doing it my own way. And so, I came forward and I just remember just standing up there so afraid but so relieved that I knew I was going to get something that I so desperately needed.

And this middle-aged woman with this big, blond bouffant, Texas-style hair put her hand on my shoulder and she prayed for me and we ended up going back. They had this prayer room and she was praying for me and talking through my decision as I was deciding to accept Christ and praying for that. And then when we did that, then she asked me if I wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so, she prayed for me and I got filled with the Holy Spirit and then she said, “Well, do you want to become a member?” And so, she prayed to me and I became a member. And then she says, “You know, there's water baptism at the end of the service. Would you like to get baptized?” And I was like, “Okay. Lady, I think I've done enough today. I think we'll wait on that one for a few.” So, I did end up getting baptized exactly one year later, but you got to love the woman's tenacity.

And so, here I was this 24-year-old. I was just months away from turning 25, broken. You know, I lost my vocation. I failed my first marriage. I just didn't know what the heck I was doing. And this void in my life was filled. This void that I was sure money would fill didn't fill, that I was sure that a relationship would fill didn't fill, but it finally got filled. In the midst of my brokenness, I found that that relationship with my living Savior, with Jesus Christ was what saved me, what gave me something that I had never had before. Now, it's this immovable Anchor in my life and my soul that I can always rely on. And I think about that. In those moments, I mean, that faith walk for me has been 22 years and I have continued to actively pursue understanding as best as us, humans, can try and understand in my own life what God wants from me. Why I was created for this moment in time, not 100 years ago, not 50 years from now? Why He created me for right now and whose life am I supposed to impact because of me living now?

And one of the things that I'm so, so grateful for is the darkest moment of my life back in 2018 when just everything that I thought mattered to me was being stripped away. And I just was walking and I just cried, and I just at that moment had such a realization that I was not alone in this room or on this path in this moment with God sitting there like from this up above position, looking down and going, “Oh, how sad for her.” I knew at that moment He was weeping with me that it hurt Him just as much as it hurt me to go through that. And that is the love of a Savior, of the only Savior, which again, I'm the first to admit that I struggle sometimes speaking openly about my faith, one-on-one with people, but I am so thankful for it. Because I recognize in my deepest moments of hurt, He was there. When I felt crippling shame for the choices I made, He was there. When people I trusted betrayed me, He didn't leave me. And even when my own emotions betrayed me, He didn't leave me. He never turned his back on me. And that is the most incredible love that exists, love you will never find in your spouse, in your kids, in your job. It's the love that you experience when you walk out in nature and you see this majesty that's crying out for how incredible it is. It was created by God who created you and created me.

And I'm so grateful for that love and I pray that you have that. I pray that you have that. And maybe you're like me. Maybe you didn't grow up in a Christian home. We heard God was talked that much. My grandmother was always an amazing woman of faith. I knew where she stood. I had to learn, I had to memorize Psalm 23 when I was probably 10, and I probably resented every bit of it at the time. But I know how to recite that even verbatim today because of that.

And yet with all these things that happen in my life in the last year, a lot of people have asked me, “I don't know how you're doing it,” or an expectation that it's crushing, crushing me. And, yeah, there were moments that felt crushing but in the grand scheme of things, I know where my power comes from and it's not for my own effort. It's not for me just pulling myself up by my bootstraps and making it happen. It's tapping into the energy of the Universe. And I know a lot of people will put universe in to replace God. God created the universe and everything that's in it. And that's fine. It doesn't bother me because I know what I was like. I knew how much I actively didn't want to even say God or anything like that but that's not me now. And I want to just share that with you.

And if you're out there and you don't have this kind of peace and joy and connection and love that comes from knowing the Creator of the heavens and earth, I want to pray for you. This is your moment. And so, you just close your eyes and repeat after me.

“Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. I ask you to come into my life. I recognize that I am a sinner who needs a savior. I believe you died on the cross and I believe that you rose again. Please come into my life, become Lord of my life, in Jesus name, Amen.”

You did it. That's it. Security. You're in heaven. All the days of your eternity are secured by that. And now it's time to actually start doing the work of being able to press in and understand how God thinks, how God helps us be able to find peace even in the midst of those storms. And that comes through a lot of different ways. One of the biggest things that we've already, of course, done in the past was plugging into a church. Well, that's been a little bit more challenging through COVID but there are a lot of online groups that people meet. There are a lot of churches across the nation that are meeting. I went to Joel Osteen's church in Houston maybe four months ago or so, and they were having church just fine. My church is still masked and not meeting very often but it’s there.

You just have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and start understanding the love that God has for you. And so, I got involved in Bible studies and I started doing a lot of different work over the years. But one of the simplest things that Randy and I have done I think since a little more than a decade now is utilize the online Bible app. If you go into the App Store, it's the top, the one that has a bazillion downloads and a bazillion positive reviews. It's officially called YouVersion so make sure you get the right one. But download that app and the awesome part about that app is, I mean, there are so many incredible things. There's every version of the Bible you would ever want. I don't know how many translations, I mean, just so many. I want to say probably 150 translations. I don't know. Could be more than that, languages, all that kind of stuff, but they have devotionals. And the devotionals, they're grouped by somebody who's new to faith or by youth or kids or women, men, marriage, dating, and then you can search under specifics like hope or freedom or addiction or pornography or money, whatever that might be. You can search under different areas and find these devotionals or you actually have people who have written words. It gives you an intro devotional, which kind of sets the tone, and then there are scriptures to back it up.

And Randy and I actually do these together. This is the way we do our Bible study and we're never even in the same room. He does it on his iPad. I do it on my iPad. That's what we utilize at church now is our iPads or our phones and stuff like that. And it's just such a simple way to be able to plug in and actually get the pieces that you are dealing with currently addressed, like finding peace in the midst of the storm. You know, there were a lot of devotionals that came out that were talking about what we were dealing with through the pandemic and how to be able to utilize the power that lies within you through your Creator, to be able to get through it and to see the blessings along the way and the benefits along the way.

I can't say enough about building in the local community. I've been in church communities that were not local to me. I mean, like 35 miles away type of thing and then I've been in local communities, and that's certainly a really big benefit. But getting plugged in and just starting to make the changes and understanding the way in which God thinks, and that's what the Bible tells us, how He thinks about a lot of different things and gives you a lot of direction on it, and it has been life-changing for me.

I mean, there are things, of course, I don't get always clear ideas. They're not black and white in how to handle this one situation. But you kind of have an idea of those things where my people might say intuition, well, the Holy Spirit talking to you it feels the same way. It's kind of like where you just have that sense of knowing. You're like, “I think maybe I need to go this direction.” And it's not this audible thing but it's a knowing and there's peace in it. It's when you go against that where you start to get out of that area of peace and that's just not healthy for you. And you know when you're there too. That's a conviction the Holy Spirit will also give you is when you know you're outside of that and it's those checks that you're going, “Oh, that just doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel right.” So, my devotional, I actually did one for YouVersion that I would love for you to read and give any comments on. And mine is called “Women and Money”.

So, if I was going to say these rapid-fire three questions, what's my best piece of financial advice? Well, I would say go to my devotional and read it. It's a seven-day devotional. You can find it. Literally, you can type in YouVersion, and then you can type in “Women and Money” or “Arwen Becker” and you're going to be able to find that devotional online even without downloading the app. But you can download the app again. Just look up my name or look up “Women and Money”, and it's only one of two devotionals on there that have to do with women and money. And it's divulging some of the story that I share but really just some of the pain that I've gone through financially. And so, that would be my financial advice to you.

Favorite book? I'm still coming back to this amazing book, and that is She Handled It, So Can You!, my book, and I have been giving events in recent months and just the feedback that I've received on that book because I wrote it all in story. I want to paint financial concepts in a way in which a lot of women like to learn, which is through story. And so, I know that that will bless your life. Zero question about it.

And then if I was going to finish off with a quote, I would say this is definitely the verse that I have learned to live by throughout much of my life, and that is James 1:2-4 and it goes. “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. And let patience or perseverance have its final work, then you will be complete, lacking nothing.” That is so powerful. I mean, if you break that down for a second, that's what Bible study is, I mean, when you face trials of many kinds, I mean, we face trials of many kinds, I have a laundry list of the trials I've faced this year, and they all just happen to come in a very short period of time. But all of us go through trials. All of us have hardships but knowing the testing of your faith, the faith is to believe in something you cannot see. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. So, the testing of your faith in the middle of those trials, when you go through that, when you persevere through that and you have patience, which patience sometimes a term that's more apropos is also the interchanging one of long-suffering. Long-suffering, sometimes that's the way it feels like, “Oh, be patient.” No. Sometimes you just feel like you're absolutely suffering for a really long period of time. But that long-suffering, that patience, when it's done the work it needs to do, when you've gone through that, you will be mature, lacking nothing.

That's where I want to be, mature, lacking nothing. And so, allowing myself to continue walking through these really tough times and a lot of them I fabricate not by intention because I want to make my life miserable but I am constantly striving for something new, which puts me in positions a lot of time that I'm having to exhibit a lot of faith, either faith in other people, faith in myself, belief that this is going to come to pass and I'm not going to look really stupid when I get to the end of it or fail miserably, all of those pieces. And so, yes, tap into it. This is a source that's waiting if you don't have it.

And for those of you who do, if you haven't been renewed in your faith, my goodness, I'm telling you, tap into that Bible app. Find something that is going to start to reignite your passion for what God's done for you. Sit down and think about some of the things that He's walked you through, some of the things you've overcome, some of the blessings that you receive that you should not have received in those times where we go, “God, you are way too good for everything I've done. I can't believe you were still this good to me.” Remind yourself of those. Get passionate about your faith again and start walking in that and drawing people into that and giving them something that many people are walking around aimlessly and they don't have in their life and they so want.

God, they want it and their hearts are crying out for it, but they don't know how to get it. And they have a world around them, a media that it's completely removing God out of everything and making them believe that they somehow can do it on their own. Impossible. You were not created to do it on your own. You were created to be in relationship with other people and relationship with your creator. That is where the fuel comes from. And anybody who says otherwise, they're fooling themselves. Because when the end of the day comes and it does just like it did for my dad a couple of weeks ago, you have to know where you're going. And I'm so grateful knowing that my dad's going to heaven. My dad, when I'm talking about my dad in this instance, it's my dad that went into hospice care in February, and he passed away a week and a half ago. I have joy and peace. I don't have this, I'm not broken, overly broken by it. Well, partially, I was fortunate. I got to walk alongside as his body was starting to fail and be able to say my goodbyes, and so I certainly don't want to project that there's a lot of times it's devastating. But my dad was 81. You know, death is not a period. It's a comma. You know what I mean? It's not the end.

So, this podcast has been such a joy for me and I'm just so grateful for the women and men who have reached out to me and thanked me and thanked my guests and reached out to my guests and thank them for their stories of vulnerability that they've been willing to share. And I'm just humbled. I'm just humbled that I'm finding myself here in this position and that I've been able to bring light and life and encouragement to all of you. I’m just so grateful. I'm so grateful you took the time to listen to be part of it, and I don't know what the next season is.

I don't know if this is the last podcast or this is just the pause, while other things in life work themselves out. I do want to make a special thanks to you all my friends and family and my husband who supported me, all of this, my kids who have given me some of the stories to tell my parents and my staff at Becker Retirement Group who have really supported me in this as well. My friends and my podcast team, Derek and Charlie, I just could not do this without you guys. It just means the world to me all the help and direction. And all the guests, every woman, and the handful of guys that were willing to come on and open up a part of their lives and to talk about the tough stuff and cry and encourage and have just been such a tremendous blessing to me and my life is so much richer because of all of you. And for anybody who listened for you, listener, out there, I thank you. Thank you for spending the time.

And this podcast, I just want to end with praying for you. And so, that's what we will do and then we will say our goodbyes. All right.

Dear, heavenly Father, we just thank you and praise you. Thank you for every woman and man under the sound of my voice, God. We just pray that you're with them, that you encourage them. You help them go forward, charge forth, be strong, Lord, that you give them the tools that they need to overcome the areas in life that they're dealing with right now and to be able to get through those. And, God, we know you are good, we know that You love us and we know that you have good things in store. Help keep our heads up, help us keep focused on you. Help us believe for something more. Help remind us that we are created with a unique purpose for the world around us and we are created for this time. And help us walk in the belief and strength of that. And we just thank you for everything that you do and all that you are in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. Love all you guys. Thanks again for being a part. Always means the most to me. All right. Bye.

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