Latest / The Redeemed Backslider / He Was Always With Me- Laurie Jo Elliott #TRB Episode 65

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He Was Always With Me- Laurie Jo Elliott #TRB Episode 65 · The Redeemed Backslider

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: For all of you who have donated to this ministry either in a monthly partnership or a one-time donation, I just wanted to tell you thank you.
• 0:12
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• 0:19
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• 0:26
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• 0:39
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• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am trying to cut them down to be a little bit more manageable so that you can watch it in one setting.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, these are real people with real testimonies of what a real and present God does and has done in the life of another person.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it is so meaningful um to me to be able to sit down and talk with them and and for them to really be able to talk about who God has been to them in their life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um I just wanted to say thank you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And to anybody who does want to support this ministry, um, you can do a one-time donation.
• 1:31
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• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I know you're not giving to get a gift, um, but it does matter, and I am very thankful.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, every bit helps, and we are going to see God bring home the prodigals, and we are gonna see him radically change lives, and we are gonna see him do a mighty work in this last hour.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you and God bless.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: With your host, Kathy Chastain, Christian-based psychotherapist and redeemed backslider.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Kathy Chastain.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a Christian-based psychotherapist and a redeemed backslider.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, with me in the studio today is Lori Jo Elliott.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she has a pretty amazing story as well as most of our guests do.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we um, like I've said many times before, not everyone that comes on the show has been backsliders, but everybody that does come on the show has had an experience growing up in church somewhere along their life, you know, or they've had someone praying for them.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so Lori is no exception to that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so I am excited to talk to her today.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I feel like her story is just a little bit different than some of the others.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm excited to jump in with her.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the studio, Lori.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I know I asked you in the email.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to just call you Lori, but do you prefer Lori Joe?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I it just started when I started going to the harvest center, there was another sister, Lori, and everyone just started calling me Lori Joe.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: The distinction.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Joe's my middle name, and when I was a child, I only got called Lori Joe when I was in trouble.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So now I kind of distinguish it like, okay, it's a new set, new name for me just because I embrace it now.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a time of trouble, it's a name of love.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll do my best to call you Lori Joe.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so um usually we kind of start in childhood, but we'll touch on that a little bit.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm I'm really interested in your later years.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you you wrote some things in in your testimony that I thought was really powerful and and I think where a lot of people live today.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um tell me a little bit about your childhood, and I know you went to church a little bit as a kiddo.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um I never went to church faithfully as a child.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: I never knew God then, but I would go to church with a few family members here or there, or and maybe a neighbor's family or a friend's parents would take me.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I felt like I didn't know then at the time what was going on, but I God was dealing with me as a young child.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um you said like eight years old.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like seven, seven, eight, nine those years.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would remember going to a church and I they had an altar call and I went to the altar and I just remember the tears flowing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I still get emotional when I think about it now because I didn't have the greatest childhood.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um my parents were split.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't ever remember them being together, um, but they both had addictions and we had a lot of I don't want to I mean you would classify it as abuse, but I didn't really look at it now.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: When I look back, I don't really look at it as abuse.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um just normal for you.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was normal.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: My mom went through her own childhood that was traumatic for her.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: So she only knew what she was taught.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um so she didn't really know how to, she was never shown love growing up.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: And she kind of was in foster care for a little while.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um and that's so heartbreaking.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's and it's much more common, I think, than what we realize.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really know what our parents go through because we only view them through the eye through the lens of being our parents.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: But when we really take the time to look at why did this happen and how did this happen, and we see that, you know, they had really troubling times as well growing up.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, I always thought, well, my mom just didn't care or, you know, I wasn't important enough for her to be there for things.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And now that I look back, and you know, I I had a lot of resentment for a lot of years for that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the person I am today, I was able to talk with her and you know, seeing it through her eyes, like she was never taught to love, so she didn't know how to show us love.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And she was probably just surviving, yes, she was in survival mode, and that's what I learned to do.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: But so I never allowed her to be there for me.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: I always took from a young age, I did everything on my own.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a conversation with my mom this past year.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is she local?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we were able to talk before we were never able to talk about my childhood without arguing because I only wanted to see my point of view.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and she only wanted to see hers.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: But recently, um, God's done a lot of healing in the last, I still get so emotional.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's done a lot of healing in the last year inside me.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I always thought, oh, it's my mom, it's my mom's fault.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, because I internalized a lot of it and the hurt that I felt that I never faced and just kept stuffing down.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: I never accepted the way I felt.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was ugly in return, the same, not just as her.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought she never wanted to be there, and she thought that I never needed her because I always did it on my own.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it really changed the perspective.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was able to forgive her.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because she only knew what she knew, right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: The assumptions that we make, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're hurt, we're rejected, we retreat, and then we just assume things about others that often are not true.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's good.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: When did you guys start that forgiveness process?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry I'm itching to everybody at home.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I my allergies are kicking.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've been itching all morning.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: So no, I had um, so I got hurt uh a little over a year ago at work and I was placed off duty because they couldn't accommodate me.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: So during that time, I was able to really dig in and let God search me for things that I needed to let go of, things that I needed to heal from.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because in all honesty, I don't believe people truly want to are out to hurt you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, but because of things that have happened to you in your life, your perception is really tormented or demented, kind of.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I harbored a lot of um hate and anger, which caused me to.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: God said a lot of digging.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: And as I would spend time with God, I more the more time I got with him by myself in my prayer closet, God showed me this wall.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've always had a wall up my entire life.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like a dam, right?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you get a little crack, that's when everything starts flowing out.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And when you feel that pain, it's almost like you're dying on the inside.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: You don't, because I never felt accepted.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: I never felt like I belonged.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I would recluse and I would keep up that wall, no matter who it was with.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: My children, my parents, my loved ones, my significant other, it didn't matter.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I kept that wall up and I kept my defenses up by being keeping you at arm's length.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And anytime you hurt my feelings, I would lash out an ugliness with hate, angry words to hurt you so that you would feel the hurt that I was feeling, which wasn't fair.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it is what happens, and it is what people do.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And but God showed me that I didn't really feel that towards those people.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was the ugliness that I had on the inside that needed to be healed.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he showed me this wall and he was cracking it, but he could only put one spoonful at a time to open up to let some of the pain out from what I had been through.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I would feel that just a little bit of pain, it would seem like, but to me, it felt like I was dying on the inside because I was relieving, reliving that pain from my youth.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: But God was actually pulling it out.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me, I he God told me I could only tip away a small spoonful at a time because our God's a mighty God, he could take it all away at once if he wanted to, but I wouldn't have been able to handle reliving all of it at once.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: So he just tips a little bit at a time, and I'm learning to love myself.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm learning to show my kids more love instead of the parent that's like, okay, everything's black and white, this is how it is.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, I have a little bit more compassion.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I found that compassion with my mom as well, because my mom she coped with life the way that she felt like she knew how and how she can do that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's like, you know, she's been a different person for at least 20 years now, but I never forgave her for the hurt she caused me as a child, the words she said.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: But now I realize that was just her doing the same thing I was doing to other people.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, we all just kind of need love and we forget that.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because people don't hurt you on purpose.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times it's a reflection of what's on the inside, yes, then what they truly feel about you, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think the vast majority of people are afraid.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nobody really wants to be vulnerable or show how much they actually care because it costs them something that's painful.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes in life, you know, there are people that will take advantage of that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I went from my childhood into a relationship where I always did for everybody else.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was so much easier for me to help to try to fix everybody else instead of trying to fix what was inside of me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: You were a nurse, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you naturally already have a helping, you know, generous heart for that caretaking, you know.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So fixing everybody else probably came really easy for you.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it also took the focus off of myself.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to focus on what I was feeling.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So um and we feel good about ourselves when we take care of others, when we do for others.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It it just kind of makes us feel like we're doing something good.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I never really had I never really felt like it was appreciated in my home life.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's totally different at work.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: At work, it's like sometimes you're the only loved ones that your patients have, and you're the only one that they see love from.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I felt like God put me in that calling.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, and I don't want like I don't want to shift blame on anybody.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: We all play a part in relationships, but um, you know, it just didn't work out.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't realize at the time how depressed I was, and how I mean, I would have suicidal thoughts, but I never knew.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: I knew that I could never act on them, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because I mean, I had children that counted on me, and I also there was something inside me that knew that that's not the right way to go and to deal with that pain.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't even know where to start from.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I I have questions.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um because I just there's a lot about your testimony I think that's super important to share.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So so just to recap a little bit, you were going to church with other people.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you had an early introduction to God, but but a really um troublesome home life that you didn't feel loved or nurtured.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: You wrote in your email.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you felt like a uh round pitch, a square peg trying to fit around the world.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, never ever did I feel like I fit in my entire life.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm and I I would do like I was in cheerleading, I did sports, I tried to fill that void with so many things.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh were you a sensitive child?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you are you sensitive?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, there there's hypervigilance, which is when we're in chaotic environments and we learn to pay attention to everything in order to keep ourselves safe.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: But then there is sensitivity that is just inherent.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're born with sensitivity and we notice, you know, other people's feelings, we notice smell, we notice environmental changes, we notice texture, we notice sensitive people are sensitive not just to other people, but to environment, to taste, to texture, to all sorts.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Were you like that?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I was like that, and it's kind of it's weird that you say that because sometimes I can walk into a room and I can feel what somebody else is feeling without them ever even saying I don't even have to know somebody.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um have you ever asked God about that?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you know very much about your spiritual senses?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go into this with my questions, but I know now it's discernment and I feel like God I have that sensitivity so that way I'm receptive to it, so that I will move and witness to somebody that especially the brokenness.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: I really recognize that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know if that's because I went through so much brokenness, but yes, we see in others what we recognize in ourselves, yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I really think part of it's like because some people just need that one little interaction that reminds them, hey, you are loved.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you do matter, yeah, God still cares.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um it's so weird because a while back, I don't know exactly how long ago, but I went into Wiener Snitzel in Porterville, and there was this man sitting on the curb at the convenience store, kind of near it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: How we made eye contact, I do not know because I was inside it's all spiritual, yes, and I just felt it and I was like, oh my gosh.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I told my husband, I'll be right back.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Where are you going?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I have to do something, I'll be right back.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I went and I spoke to the man and I prayed with him, and he just started crying.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: He was so broken.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And what amazed me the most is that God put that man in my path two more times after that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, just so that I can interact with him.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know where he's at now, but I believe that the words that God gave me for him made an impact that seeds seeds were planted, that he will find salvation in the Lord and that freedom away from what's will yes, what's tormenting him on the inside.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's wonderful.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just I don't know how to explain it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're following, you're walking in the spirit, yeah, and following the, you know, yes, it's I think people that I mean, I I I probably talk about this more than I need to on my podcast, but I see it and I recognize it, and that's a really dear place to me.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like people that are sensitive.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a book called The Highly Sensitive Child and the Highly Sensitive Person, and it really delineates all the traits of somebody who is inherently sensitive, meaning that's how God created you, right?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those people are much more susceptible and sensitive to the spirit realm, both God's spirit, but also demonic spirit.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and they're often, you know, I when that occurs, I feel like the enemy comes in at early ages as kids and and begins to instill fear and spiritual experiences, you know.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Kids report seeing things, you know, at night in their room, hearing voice.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: They they report all kinds of things, but there is a high correlation between those kiddos and adults who are sensitive by nature and how God created them because they can feel and sense the spirit realm, which is alive and around us on the daily, you know, it it it is more real than the natural world.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, going back to you, um I found it very uh interesting and why I brought the sensitivity up because uh prophetic things were happening in your life.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I want to talk specifically about intrusive thoughts.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: You said um instead of pushing through when you were reading your Bible and praying and feeling close to the Lord, which I think that was a a very common thing with you, you instinctively knew to read your Bible and pray, even though for much of your life, you know, uh adult life, you weren't really attending church.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, but you had a connection with God and you know you were reading your Bible and praying until you stopped because you were having a lot of thoughts.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: You wrote, um, I would listen to the lies of the devil.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to ask you, because you wrote um that you weren't good enough, the lies that he said, you weren't good enough, you'd already done too many sinful things, you were not worthy, um, and what you did could not be repaired because it already happened.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: When you were going through that, did you understand that those were not your thoughts, that they were the enemy giving you those thoughts, or did you think that those thoughts were yours, that you that that you were coming up with all of your own accusations to yourself?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, I didn't know what I know now.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I I just always felt like that was those were my thoughts.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: That was I mean you were telling yourself all those things.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that I mean There's just so many like oh, I don't even know how to not only the fact that I never felt like I fed in, but that I wasn't good enough.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: I could never step up to standards that the way that the world portrays Christianity to be.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because I didn't really know when I was young.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you weren't a part of apostolic faith.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you definitely didn't have those standards.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I just came in.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, like a good person doing good things, um, never messing up, never making a wrong decision.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and once you make that wrong decision, okay, well, God gave up on you, you know?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like the idea of God being punishing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, I heard something a while back about sometimes we view God as we do our natural father.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, my natural father was never there.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I remember meeting him when I was seven years old, but and he would show up every couple years and be like, here's 20 bucks.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, as a kid, I'm like, oh, 20 bucks.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can go buy this, I can buy that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, it was like that was not love.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: He was never there.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: He never loved me the way a father should love a child and the way that they should guide a child.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: So when I first started thinking about God, that's how I looked at him, like, okay, I'm not good enough, or he doesn't care enough that when I do make a mistake, he turned his back on me.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's how I felt my dad did.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, not only did I have a healing conversation with my mom, I had that with my dad this past year as well.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because my he came around when I turned 40 and said, I am ready to be a dad.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I'm 40.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need a dad the way you think I need a dad.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if you want to establish a relationship, I'm open to that because I don't know you.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: So in reality, you're not really my dad.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're my father.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: You gave, you know, you're I'm part of you, but you were never my dad.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a periodic relationship off and on for the last 10 years or so.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: And this past January, he was having surgery and he sent me some things because I don't know if he didn't think he was going to make it or what, but he sent me some pictures and just different mementos and heirlooms from the family.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And when he sent me the pictures, there were pictures of when I met him the first time when I was seven years old.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he had them all these years, and he still had them all these years.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I I told him, I said, Dad, I said, I always thought you weren't around because you didn't care.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: I said, but the fact that you held on to these, I know that you cared.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me, sis, I was broken and I didn't know how to live life.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: I had my own struggles and my own brokenness that I needed to work through, and my priorities were not straight.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: But now they are, and I'm sorry it took so long to get there.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know what, Dad, I forgive you.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's wonderful.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I forgive you.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized now it wasn't because of anything I did, it was because things you were fighting.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a healing process, too.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the apostolic, I just started uh I went started the heart of scissors in November of 2024.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been almost two years.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I've learned a lot about God and about myself and what God wants from me.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna take a quick short break for our sponsor.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be right back.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: This episode has been sponsored by my friend and dentist, Dr.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Craig Sadio at Smile Vicelia.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking for a dentist, you won't find a better one in Teleri County.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: He specializes in all your dentistry needs, plus cosmetic dentistry and ortho.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: His phone number is 559-734-7035.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you call him, please tell him that Kathy from the Redeem Backslider Podcast sent you.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, with your mom and dad, God has just totally brought restoration to you in those areas that you needed healing in.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just, and when I think about my mom too, I think my mom she needed the love from me as much as I needed it from her.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we do.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: We need that.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we need our parents and they definitely need us because just like you beating yourself up, um they beat themselves up too.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they because they uh they feel the all their own inadequacies and and they blame themselves for what that they felt like they couldn't give, you know.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as children, we don't ever stop and consider that because I think no matter what age, we just view our parents like that's my parent.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like yeah, they have a duty to me, basically.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we don't stop and consider them to be people and that they had their own life and they have their own hurt, and they had their own childhood struggles, and they really truly just did the best that they could.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And she did, and you know, she always taught us right from wrong.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and she always meant well.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: I I I really see that now.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and she has a good heart.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: She would give you the shirt off her back, and I never looked at her like that before.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she does have a nurturing heart, she just didn't know how to show it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Show it.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not surprising, but I'm glad you guys are so I want to get back.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: D you know, when you look back at your life uh, you know, like on a scale of one to ten, how uh pervasive do you think those negative thoughts were?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I call them intrusive thoughts.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's a clinical term, but you know, how how pervasive do you think they were?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would say a ten.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was constant.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: From a child too?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like they were just like some people will say their mind races or they're just like a constant companion, no matter what you do.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you put on a top and you have this critical voice telling you you look stupid, you look this, you look that.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I I from a young age I can remember, and um and I would try to put a facade out on the outward.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um even as a young adult and a young mom, I would I did so much the other way with my children.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: I gave them all the material things because that's what I thought love was, like to give them what I didn't have, you know?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: But um well, you were loving them the best in your way, your loveliness.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I would have been there emotionally for them, but I wasn't even there emotionally for myself.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: How could I be there for them?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's so too late.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, I know, and God's restoring that.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: My son, my son gets it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he kind of grew up with me.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was 18 when I had him, so he kind of gets it.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter, there's a struggle there with us.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: She's like I was.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: I see a lot of myself in her, but God's gonna God's gonna heal her too, and then he'll heal us.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: But first the healing has to happen separately before we can do it together.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: But he's already made such a great start, yes.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I wanted to go, so you also wrote um that you were depressed and oppressed.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I found the distinction you know, good.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I was glad that you were able to make the distinction.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you probably didn't know it at the time, but uh you have learned.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I just wonder if you could kind of explain to the listeners how you define the difference between depression and then oppression and how you were able to make the distinction to recognize that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: So um depression I feel like is just uh the internal sadness and um honestly, I think it's like grief.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's so much hurt and so much uh pain on the inside that you can't even function at times.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then oppression, I feel like, is um my circumstances around me, like weighing me down.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um some of it's stuff I took on myself, some of it was just kind of tossed upon me.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: But it was such a heavy weight, yeah, that I couldn't I was drowning, I couldn't come up, I was in sinking sand.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Every time I would get a little bit of yeah, I would sink back down.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's that's how I view it.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's good.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like this external pressure pushing in versus internally, yeah.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, keeping you stuck.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you wrote um that you had suicidal thoughts, and I wanted to like, do you did those start young?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, um, there's a difference between you know, thinking to yourself, oh, I don't want to be here anymore, oh I just wish I wasn't here, and not really having a plan.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then it it kind of grows over time where we start to now fantasize about not really wanting to be here and man, if I were to do it, this is how I would do it.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even though you said, I know I would never do it, which I hear a lot, yeah.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: People will say, I know I never will, but I think about it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for purposes of those who watch who may not have returned to their faith in God, um, a lot of people love God, but they just are battling themselves, right?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was wondering if you could kind of talk about the differences in that and what you experienced because it does morph, it does change and grow, and I don't know what you experienced in that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: So the first time that I remember having those thoughts, I was nine.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember my brother was on Ritalin.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to pause.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: For parents, I just want you to know you think your kids are okay, and you think that kids don't think these things.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, kids are having these thoughts early, six years old early.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So for you, it was and at that time life was good.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: We had a good home.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: I had my siblings, my mom was in a good place, but um I just wasn't happy on the inside.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and that thought, like, what was the thought?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because you probably didn't even know that word back then.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Suicide?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: I just wasn't happy, and I don't I don't even know why.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I do remember at nine years old, like I said, I met my dad for the first time when I was seven, but I was like, there was a part of me is like, why don't they want me?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: He felt the void, yeah, of love.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And his parents, like, why why why are they partaking in so-and-so's life?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's my cousin, he's you know, but he's also blood.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm their grandchild also.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't they want anything to do with me?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they were so secretive.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't understand their secrecy.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but at that time, and my brother was taking medication for ADHD, and I was like, if I just take those, I'll never wake up, I won't even feel it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then I I won't feel this anymore.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: This hurt.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't even know other than the fact that the abandonment, which I know now, but I didn't understand at the as a child why that was there.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just had that void there, and then and and the idea that came to you in that sorrow was to end your life.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that you know, back then there it wasn't as pervasive as it is now.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's in movies, it's in games, it's in songs, it's in everything.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that thought for people now when life gets hard is just it's so immediate.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I find so when I hear it from people more of my generation, I think, man, the enemy is just plant those seeds at such an early, early age.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, now that I look back, it's like, wow, you know, everybody has that void.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: We're born with that void.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we're born with that for the God.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and you don't find you're never ever ever gonna find it in the in your loved ones around you, right?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: In your siblings, in a spouse, in a substance, you're never ever gonna fill that void.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And some people think that, well, if I just end my life, I won't fill this anymore.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they think, yes.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not the case.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: God is wanting you to recognize that He is the one that fills that void.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, He's the one that heals that that hurt inside.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, until you realize that God is not a judgmental God, he's a loving God, he just wants you to feel his love for you.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you give your life to God, not only does he tip away that pain a little at a time and help you to heal from it, he helps you face it because a lot of times you don't want to face it because you feel that all over again.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you when you feel hurt, you tend to want to get angry again.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can't get angry, you gotta let God help you face that so that you recognize it, so that when it comes back to you, you see it and you recognize it, and you see, you know what?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: I recognize the spirit.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm not giving into it.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: I am a child of God, I have been chosen, yeah, and I am here for a purpose, and it's for his purpose, and to show the love that he showed for us to others around us, because there are so many people that don't have that love, right?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and it's so it's such an important point, too, is that when the Lord is trying to bring you to the place to confront your past, yes, it is a choice to allow that or a choice to keep it hidden.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're bottled up.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the reason people don't is for exactly what you said, is they don't want to go back to what hurt them.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to think about it, they don't want to remember because it hurt so much that they just wanna know.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't ever want to feel that again.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when God does bring you to that place, it is so that he could pull it up from the bottom of your heart and then allow you to release it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and then you never have to face it again, but you do have to confront it because that's where the healing is.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you you know, they always say how to the adult self-parent the child in in you, you know, you have to reparent yourself to the little girl, the little boy in you.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's because that was hurt.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: That little child was hurt.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you go back and you face those things, it allows you to grieve, it allows you to cry, it allows you to be sad, it it really allows you to have the appropriate response instead of the anger response or the shutdown response or the perfectionism response.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: It allows you to have the appropriate response, which is generally grief, generally sorrow.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there's there's freedom in that when we can really just cry for what happened to us because there was times I just I was lay on the ground, I couldn't speak, I couldn't even pray.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: But God was, I felt like the presence of God was with me, and all I could do was cry and let out all of that pain that I had.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, just because like God has released it from me, and yes, I still get emotional when I think about it because it's a true thing, but sometimes you have to realize it's not gonna be all peaches and cream once you have that healing and once you have that realization of what it truly was, because you're still gonna go through three things in life, you're still gonna go through valleys, you're still gonna hurt at times.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: People are gonna say things or do things that hurt you, and you have to choose whether or not at those moments that you're pastor always says you're gonna choose to be offended, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because offenses are gonna happen, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you're responding.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: You choose what you do with that.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: You can either become hardened and clam up, or you can be like, you know, that hurt me.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, some people are not meaning to hurt you, right?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's how you perceived it because of your past hurts.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it's good instead of making that assumption, it's good to say, hey, you know, when you said this, right?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: I took it as this, and it really hurt my feelings.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what you meant when you were saying that?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right, you know, and it takes a little bit of courage to ask somebody if that's what they meant.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes they're going through their own battle that you don't even know anything about, and it's more about what they're going through than what you what they are reflecting on to you.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and you have to remember that because if you get like we wear our hearts on our sleeves sometimes, and if you let every little thing knock you down, you're never gonna stand.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, yeah, that's good.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to learn to recognize that so we can response.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's still a battle every day that you you choose whether or not to take offense or not.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we we either hold it and bring it into us or we release it and let it go.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it takes a little practice to learn how to release.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the the key is if we recognize it as it's happening, it's it's so much easier to let it go.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you build up those walls, it's so much harder to get them back down.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and you can't do it on your own.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: God has to help you.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want so I feel like there's a thread that's run through your life, and that is for one, I feel like God has been very near to you, leading you.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: You've you have been able to recognize his voice in your life.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Even when you were not serving serving him, even when you weren't reading, even when you weren't praying.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: God has had a voice in your life that you hearkened to because you understood that it was him.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that is not by mistake.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want you to kind of tell about your friend that gave you a prophetic word.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I I think that that is powerful too, because God sent someone to you to give you a prophetic word when you were not again.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think you were serving him at that time either.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it was enough for you to reckon you've had a sensitivity to him, is what I'm trying to say.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: So um a few years ago, I moved to Oklahoma.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: I uprooted everything here.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: We moved to Oklahoma, and everything when I was back there become became very unbearable.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was so unhappy.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Again, the suicidal thoughts came back.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was I just couldn't take it anymore, and I started looking for a way out.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I did that by applying for a traveling nurse contract that brought me out back out to California.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then Lori Joe, were you in addiction or were you just around addiction a lot?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was around it.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I never was addicted.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: I did go through um about a five-year span where I drank a lot.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as a nurse, that probably kept you with some boundaries or something.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, that's good.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, but I never really understood the addiction from the addicted person's point of view.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Only from what I seen.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like it was probably just normal for you.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's that's all I knew, yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I came out here for a six-month nursing contract, and I there was a my contract was about ready to be let let up, and they wanted to renew my contract, but I was torn.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um I had a husband.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter, my grandson were out there, and I was torn about going back.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know what to do.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I had while I was out here.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: During that six months, I had a friend who her and her husband were um evangelists.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: They would go around and preach the word, but now they were more homestead because they were older and they would have Bible studies in their home.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I would go once in a while.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um I kind of started avoiding her a little bit because I started working a lot of overtime and I'd pick up a beer on my way home, drink a beer after work, and then go to bed, and then kind of do that a couple nights in a row.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then I went and drink for weeks at a time, and then I would come back and I would do it a couple days in a row and um not get drunk, but just enough to relax and go to sleep.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was avoiding her phone calls, and I was struggling with trying to go back or not to Oklahoma or extend the contract.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: And she had been texting me and just telling me she's thinking about me, and you know, God's working in my life.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I really gotta um give my life back to God.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: And this one particular message, she had been trying to reach me for a few weeks, and I kept avoiding it.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, one morning, I was sitting on the front porch.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: I did used to smoke cigarettes, I was addicted to nicotine, but um I stopped at two and a half years ago.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I was sitting on the porch smoking and she called and I was like, oh, I don't want to answer this call.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I let it go to voicemail.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: And she told me in the voicemail that she had a message for me that God had given her a message.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna call her back.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: I called her back and she explained to me, well, let me backtrack a little bit.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: So when I first called her, she said, How are you feeling about going back home to Oklahoma?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I'm conflicted, I don't know what to do.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I should stay out here, if I should go back.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Okay, I'm gonna tell you something.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've been trying to get a hold of you because God gave me a message for you, and I didn't quite understand it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: She said she didn't quite understand it because I was married and she wouldn't, she didn't understand why God was telling me what or telling her the message, telling her the message that she needed to tell me because God doesn't usually work in division, right?
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And before you say that, sh she had tried to reach out to you several times and she told God that if she doesn't answer, Lord, then I'm not gonna try again.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, she before that, before I called her back, that's what she she prayed and said, Lord, if she doesn't answer this phone call, I'm not gonna try again, I'm not gonna give her the message.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: So she left the voicemail and I called her back and she asked me about how I was feeling, and I said I was conflicted.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, God gave me a message for you, and he said that you are to stay here in California, that if you return to Oklahoma, what you felt before you left will be magnified a hundredfold and you will not withstand it this time.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I just started crying because before I left there, I didn't want to live life anymore.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: So and you knew I knew that if I did not listen to God's message that day, I would have gone back, and who knows, I may not be here today.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: So she told me that I needed to be obedient, pay my tithes, and get back into the calling that God has given to me.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, God.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know what the calling was at that time?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have felt a calling on my life since I was.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually got filled with the Holy Ghost when I was 18, 19, around there.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I got filled with the Holy Ghost.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: Not the time I had no idea what it was because I was down at the altar and I was just crying and crying, and all this heartbreak was coming out of me.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden, this phrase came out of my mouth.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: And if anyone could have seen the look on my face, I was like, what was that?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: What was that?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what that was.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it just kept coming.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I got filled with the Holy Ghost.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I got into church for what, seven years, I think it was.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then in my mid-20s, I decided, you know what?
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm never experienced life.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: This looks so much fun over here.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: This drinking, this going to bars with the girls from work.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: All this stuff looks fun, right?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I backslid for the 20 years and then fast forward to where I was now.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I got that message from my friend that God gave her to give to me.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I listened and I stayed.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: I extended my contract.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: About a month later, my husband that was in Oklahoma decided he didn't want the relationship anymore.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: And he wanted a divorce.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: And at first, of course, I was devastated, but because you weren't signing up for divorce.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: You were just No, I just needed a break and away from things to where I can get a hold of my own mental health and just I needed to heal myself and I couldn't do that taking care of everybody else out there.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: So um he had asked for the divorce, and I was like, okay, I kind of fought it at first, but then I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how oppressed I was with all of that out there.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want to pause because um there's a lot of meat here that I think is very important.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: I see people that come into my practice and you know, Christians of all different denominations, and they'll say, I know that God doesn't like divorce, I know that God is unhappy, and I can't, I don't know what I should do.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is going on, this is going on, this is going on.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that your situation really highlights a very important thing that I want to talk about.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is, I say this all the time that God is in the process.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you made the decision to heed that word, um, you weren't saying I'm gonna get a divorce, you weren't saying, you know, I'm done with my marriage.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: You were just taking the very next indicated step to renew your contract.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why I feel that that's important is because the enemy tends to give us our whole future in front of our eyes right now, and so he projects all the negative, like, oh, if I make this choice, this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that is how he often prevents people from taking a step.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and so for you, you had to just take the first step because when we do that, then the process then becomes what God wants it to be.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you know, and and for your husband to then decide he wanted a divorce, you know, who knows what would have happened if you wouldn't would not have just listened to God and renewed the contract.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my point is that you know that taking the first step allows God to work.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: And often, and I say this all the time in therapy, often our lives get blown up so that they can be put back together the correct way.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in your case, um God was after your eternal soul, and and I think that that's so significant in my life.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had to make I think the hardest decision of my life, and that was to move back to Viselia when my son was three years old, and I don't talk about it much, but but the Lord had really been, I was I I there's just so much going on, and I was not in a good place, but I always heard the voice of the Lord, and and he basically told me that if I stayed in reading, I was gonna die.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I I knew that my life hanged in the balance, yeah, like yours did, and it was very clear to me I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, and I had to make the hardest decision of my life to let my child stay in writing because at the time, you know, his dad was not gonna let him leave, and the judge was trying to force me to stay because my whole family was here.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um within six months of my moving home to Visalia, three of my friends were killed.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: The three I hung out with, and I knew that would have been me if I hadn't had obeyed God, and um I feel like with you, you knew that as well.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's something in us that knows when to listen to God's voice.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I feel like you knew, Lori, God did have a call on your life, and you knew that, um, and you heeded that, you know, and and whatever happened after you obeyed, God was in all of those details.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you know, not they're definitely not probably what we would want or what we would choose, but I know you can sit here today as I can sit here today and see that you know he's worked it out for good.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and he does work everything out for good.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I know I kind of took over that conversation, and I'm sorry, but I was so grateful to see that in what you sent to me.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because you're it's very evident God does have a calling on your life and and was with you even when you did didn't even belong, uh you know, completely had not even completely surrendered to him.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: You you knew him, you knew him, and he knew you.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you you felt him.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there like even after so after that uh conversation of the divorce, I just started reading my word again.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: I just started reading my word again and I would journal because I feel like I would read, and as I'm reading, God speak to you, would speak to me, and I would write what he was speaking to me.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought at the time I thought, oh, God's gonna restore this marriage, he's gonna, you know, but that was not his plan.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was someone else's free will, yes.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that that's really important because God could have restored it, but it does require free will from individuals.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I I feel like that God just had a mightier plan for me, a bigger picture.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't realize it at the time.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was lonely, I was heartbroken.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: And my gosh, to try to find the dating process in today's age, I was like, what is this?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: All these dating apps, right?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, oh, I'll just find something on there.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I would go to coffee and the and it had to be a public place, had to be during the daytime.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, this is not, God doesn't want me to do this.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I went to go delete the apps, right?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I met, or I didn't meet, I saw Brandon's profile.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to go there too fast.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, because I don't want to jump ahead.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're gonna take a quick break for our sponsor and we'll be right back.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, I wanted to tell you about a new resource.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: I recently wrote a book, a children's book, called Where Did That Come From?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's about intrusive thoughts.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're an adult, you know that you have intrusive thoughts, and children have intrusive thoughts, but they don't have the cognitive ability to understand them like we do as adults, but they really, really affect kids.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted to write a children's book that adults could use to help the children in their life, whether it's a Sunday school teacher, a pastor, a parent, um, a school counselor, a school teacher, or even other therapist.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to create a resource that allows us to talk to kids about the thoughts that they're having, but also teach kids how they can overcome those thoughts.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is a Christian-based book, so the solution is going to be a Christian-based solution.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I I'm not trying to sell a ton of books.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the purpose for me writing the book.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: The purpose is to create a resource that we could use to help more children.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, again, it's called Where Did That Come From?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find it on Amazon, and there is a link attached below.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope you'll get that.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it helps and hope it would be a valuable resource to you.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Before we talk about Brandon, you said at 18 you knew God had had a calling on your life.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: What did you feel like that calling was?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: My calling was actually to spread the gospel, to preach the gospel to those who haven't heard it, um, which scares me.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: It still scares me to this day.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because I haven't grown into that calling yet.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: God's doing the little processes right now, preparing me, right?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I knew because, like I said, when I read the word, I'm not one of those people that know the word, like I can give you the address of where the verse is, right?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: I know you absorb it, but I absorb it.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then God speaks to me through it.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I feel like He's giving you revelation.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I feel like sometimes the layman terms that God gives me that I journal are relative to others to be able to reach others because not everybody knows the word of God, not everybody has read the word of God, and if you just start spitting it out there, they're like, What are you talking about?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: But if you relate it to life circumstances, that's where you're able to reach people, and sometimes that little crack will happen.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I there's a coworker that I have, I'm not gonna mention any names, that's been through a lot in her life.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I've known her as a nurse for a long time.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: I trained her when she was a brand new nurse.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: But lately, God's been putting her in my path at work.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: And some of the words that I hear at church and that I read in the Word, and she'll say something, and I'm like, oh ding, that's my opportunity.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm speaking now.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it just brings her to tears.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I know God's dealing with her and He's planting that seed, and that's what God wants me to do.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have to be on a platform like preaching the word of God, be a preacher or a pastor or something, but sharing the gospel to those that have been broken and lost and have feel like there's no place for them.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: They're wanted.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, come on.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: And because of your sensitivity, you recognize who those people are.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's so.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, Lori, I just I mean, I feel like God had did call you from a very, very, very early age, and some might say from your mother's womb.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's what the Bible says, right?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: So when that happens, like there's so much purpose there.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's why you never fit in.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because you would have something else could have easily filled that to where the longing and desire for him wouldn't have been there, would not have been there.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it I feel like that kind of pattern fits so many people.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: The sensitivity, the emptiness, the loneliness, the the recognition that you don't belong, you don't fit, no matter how hard you try, wherever you go.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what you try to buy on the outside, it's still you could buy everything, everybody's wearing this.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna buy this and wear this too.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: But guess what?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: You still don't fit the mold.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like it's a it's a it's a different calling because of course every God has reserved a place in everyone's heart for him.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: But some people can be very content with a spouse or very content with a job or very content with their garden or their home, right?
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not the same pressing, it's not the same urgency as someone else that's more like you, who had that sensitivity and that pervasive emptiness because I think the calling is different.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I just I I honestly I just want to give love.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's all I want to do.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's God's heart.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, now we can talk about brand.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so fast forward, and I don't mean to control the narrative, but your story has meat, and um, I don't think I've ever done that on this show where I've just really like, no, we're going back, we're going back.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wanted to just hit this vein of what God who you are, yeah, and him, you know.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so you were getting ready to get off all the dating apps, and then you saw Brandon's profile.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: I saw Brandon's profile on Facebook, and what caught my eye was tongue talking, one God believer.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to remember word for word, but I can't remember all of it.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see if you wrote it down.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um G in Jesus saying baptized God believer, something like that.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's what caught my attention.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was like bam.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I just liked his profile and we kind of talked back and forth through the messages, and then we finally exchanged phone numbers.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: But this all happened quickly.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um whenever we exchanged phone numbers, he we talked a few couple times and then he invited me to church.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Was he already a member of the Harvest Center?
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: Always already a member of the Harvest Center.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: He'd been there a couple years, I I believe.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I was like, Yeah, I'll go.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, in the 20 years that I was not in church, not living for God, people would say, Hey, you want to go to church?
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd say, Yeah, sure.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: Then come down to I'm like, no, I'm not gonna go.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: But this time it was like no hesitation.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Yes, I'll go.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so the first time that we met was that Sunday morning.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: He asked me on Saturday night, and we met Sunday morning.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: That the church, the atmosphere when I walked in, the love, like you could just feel peace, you could feel love, no judgment.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was so just and then God just started dealing with me during worship.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: The tears just started falling, and I was like, okay, I'm home.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is where I was supposed to be.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had been I think you know that yeah when you when you walk into an atmosphere like that.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I had no, I knew nobody in that church, not one single soul.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't technically I didn't even know Brandon.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: That was the first time I met him, but uh we went to lunch after church.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_02: I went home and then I went back for Sunday service, Sunday night service.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I worked 2 p.m.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: to 10 p.m.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: So during the week that week, I had picked up a double shift and I was praying on my way to work.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, God, I don't know if this is who you want me to be with.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: Backtrack a little bit before I've seen Brandon's profile.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: I had called out to God at nighttime.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was just crying because I was so lonely.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I had called out to him, I just said, God, my life is yours.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: I just give it to you.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever you want me to do, that's what I'm gonna do.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: Who you want me to be with, that's who you're gonna guide into my life.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then Brandon's profile came.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: Then we met at church, and then I was praying on my way to work, and I was like, God, if this is a person you need you need or want me to be with, I need you to tell me because I'm I'm a stubborn person, you know.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't always listen.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we think what we want is what we need, and that is not the case.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, and I just wanted what God wanted for me.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard God plain as day, say, Brennan is the man you're supposed to be with, you're gonna serve me with him.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh, okay, God, I hear you.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so did you journal any of that?
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do you did you write down your words?
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: I still have that.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then a couple days went by, and some out at work I see things that normal people should not see.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_02: It had been a pretty gruesome week, and another incident had happened on a Thursday night, and I my supervisor came in, and I felt like I was coping pretty good, but He was like, You need to take some days off.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I'm good.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can handle this.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, I see it all over your face.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: You need to take a couple mental health days.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: You've been through a lot this week here.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: You need to take a couple mental health days.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Okay, I'm gonna do that.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then I seen the purpose conference advertised at the harvest center, and I told Brandon about it.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, you guys have a purpose conference?
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he said yes.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um I was like, I want to go.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went, and that Friday night, it was Bishop Mark Morgan and he was teaching us, and all of a sudden he says, That couple right there, I want that couple to come here.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Is this a week into you and Brandon dating?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was not even the full week is over yet.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, not even the full week is over.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't even considered us as a relationship or anything.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, who is he talking to?
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized he was talking to us, and I was like, Oh, this is awkward.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know these people, and he's plus no experience being called out from a you know for a prophetic word.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I walked up and he told us, he said, God is doing mighty things in you, he's going to use you both for mighty things of God's kingdom.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: And he had us laid hands on each other and pray.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Okay, God, I heard you.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is a third time this week that you sent confirmation my way.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: So about Brandon.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: About Brandon.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that just makes it all like, okay, no matter what comes, you already know that God puts you together.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he, you know, I was so broken on the inside, and I didn't know how to communicate properly with a significant other.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, let alone somebody care about my needs and my wants without expecting anything in return, just doing it because they care.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've never experienced that before.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: To be loved.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, to be loved.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it was God's love evident through him.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that just touched me in so many ways, and it just opened my eyes to God in a whole new perspective.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we met on November 3rd of 2024.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: We got married May 3rd of 2025.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: And six months later, and November 3rd coming up will be two years that I walked into the harvest center.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: God has done a quick work in you, Lord.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you already had, you know, you probably didn't have as much scriptural foundation.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, I kind of think you had more than a lot of people who were just coming to the Lord because you've always heard his voice.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's always been very present with you.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's just so amazing because, like I said, the love of the church and like coming in, and then um the ladies just embraced me like I was their best friend, and I was developing healthy relationships with the sisters of the church.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Sister Candace invited me to the Bible studies she had at her home, and I just I just felt that unity and that sense I finally found where I belong.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and it's because God was in it.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_02: So um I just want now, like God has moved in me the growth, the the foundation, like going through to the Bible studies.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I did the discipleship classes in pastor's house, um uh 20 weeks, I think that was.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_02: But that gave me the understanding and the root foundation that I needed because I didn't see it coming, but the trial of getting hurt at work and losing finances and whatnot, it didn't matter because yes, it was hard.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna lie.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you sometimes you give in to your carnal self and you think, why am I going through this?
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I just found you.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it's to strengthen you even more.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that foundation, that root that it was established by the teaching of the shepherd that God put in my life at that at the harvest center, the pastor and Candace and the ladies that were there for me to lean on, they were so strong to help me to grow.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's my turn to do that with the next person, yeah, you know, to disciple the next person.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but God is doing so much.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just got invited, or I don't know if you call it invited or what, but I'm now gonna be teaching, helping teach with the Sunday school.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yay.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've been on the purpose team for about a year now.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like sometimes we get lost in the fact of position and comparison maybe of others, but it's not about what God is doing somebody in somebody else's life compared to what God's doing in your life.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: You have a specific calling, and if you don't fulfill that calling, somebody else is gonna miss out because these people are doing what God called them to do and being used, right?
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: You have to focus on God and let him lead you into what you're doing so that way you're being led in your purpose so you can bring others to God and his to his kingdom so they can get the sense of belonging, the sense of love, the sense of that they do belong and they do matter.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just the biggest thing right there.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: That we are all called, right?
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're all called, but people think that you have to feel like you fit in or that you're perfect to be called.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_02: No, come as you are.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_02: God will take care of everything else.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: He does, He takes care of everything else.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you you're gonna reach people that others can't reach.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're gonna relate to them in a way others can't relate.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be exposed to different people others are not exposed to, you know.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's a life, and I don't know if other people are noticing as much death as I feel like is going around, but I feel like there's so many people dying early and young, just people that you know.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it it's just a lot, and um, you know, we talk about saving a soul, you know, and and getting people to heaven.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, you know, for people outside of church who don't really think in those terms, they don't know how to relate to that.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when you think about, you know, someone could die tomorrow, someone could die next week that you're connected to, yeah, and that their time will be up at that point, you know, like every single day matters.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: It does, you know, and that that man that you saw at the store that day on the curb, you know, his day could have been the next day or two, and he and you came along, and maybe it was just a choice he made towards God in that moment that would extend, you know, because lives don't change overnight, but we are making choices in the most critical points of our life that matters.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And once we make that choice, God then begins to put things in motion to where the next choice is coming down the road.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: But he, I really believe for you, for me, and for others, like we don't know when that critical moment of choosing really is, you know, and and our life could have been cut short.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the thing to be we all go through something every day, right?
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And there's times where things are harder than others in life, but that's not what you need to focus on.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_02: What you need to focus on is the love of Christ and letting that shine through you because, like you said, that one encounter with that one person could have been the encounter that changed their future for the good, you know?
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but when we're so absorbed in ourselves and our own issues, I'm not saying that you can't think about your issues or you can't worry about them, but you take them to God and give them to God so that way that is not a weight on you, yeah.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that you're able to be free, yeah be free and follow what God's leading you to and who he's leading you to.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to just have you talk uh about the other prophetic word that you got from your pastor because I think what what really marked your life for me, what I've noticed is the which I've said already many times on this, is the very consistent way that God is speaking to you.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um the confirmation and the way, you know, like I feel like there's a lot of people out there who we could hear a word and you know when you hear it that that's the Lord speaking, but you can also forget it, not steward it, let it go, not obey it, and you miss right what's we we miss that moment, but you have been very aware when God speaks, and God has sent people to give you words, and your pastor gave you a word.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I want you to tell that story real quick before we wrap up.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let me just backtrack.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_02: When I was in junior high, we had to write a reflective poem about our life.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_02: During and we did a picture clause clause with it, but and I still have it to this day.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like rat it and tat it, but I still have it.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: But at the beginning of my poem, I love that by the way, that you journal and that you keep all that.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sometimes we need a reminder.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I I go back through mine a lot because my words have been like 30 years delayed.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like like this one you're gonna share, you know.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, go on.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it was, I think it was in eighth grade.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_02: We had to write a reflective poem, and at the beginning of my poem, I was a cocoon, and I was a scared cocoon trapped in this huge world of addiction and abuse, right?
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's what was going on in the world around me.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And long story short, I don't remember all the ins and betweens.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_02: I just remember I was a scared cocoon, and at the end of the poem, I blossomed into this butterfly, and I was free and I was able to fly away from everything I was confined in around me.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: So as I said, when I first started going to It was in eighth grade.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_02: That was in eighth grade.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I first started going to the harvest center, I was 47 years old, almost 48, and past it was only a few services services in, and pastor, I was worshiping God, I was raising my arms, and I just felt like this glow, a rip, like I don't know how to explain it.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_02: I just felt this glow and I felt the ever-presence of God.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And Pastor, I heard him say, I see a cocoon cracking open, and the I could see the butterfly wings coming out.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And instantly I knew that was God speaking to me, telling me it is your time, you are finally gonna be free from all of that chaos, all of that hurt, all of that anger and bitterness, and just oh, all of the ugly stuff was just gone, gonna be gone.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew immediately that was God speaking to me through pastor.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And did you did that poem that you wrote it immediately came back to my mind?
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately, like God is so good that way.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was like I don't know, how old are you in eighth grade?
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: 12, 13?
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're you're around 13, 14.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_01: It depends when you start school.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that was really critical time, like thir 30 plus years later.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at that, what does that do for you in relationship with the Lord?
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how has those words affected you?
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I didn't what I went through as I was growing up was for was not for nothing.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_02: That was meant for a purpose so that I can reach people that have gone through similar s similar things that are closed off and broken that way.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're closed off and you're broken, you don't want to open up to anybody.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And when somebody like I because I've been through that and I've been through that brokenness, I can recognize when to speak and when not to speak.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I recognize that spirit of brokenness and God the greater I once heard, I don't want to misquote, but I I once heard somebody say the greater the pain, the greater the calling.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so a thousand percent.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_02: All of that was so that I was prepared for now, yeah, and for the people that I'm gonna encounter now.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_02: God wants his people, he wants everybody to to hear his word, he wants everybody to know that they belong, that they're not discarded, and it doesn't matter yes, you do matter.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what you've done, what you've been through, what you grew up in, what you've chosen to do, what you have been through that wasn't chosen for you, it does not matter because you matter to God, yeah, and you are important.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like um it has like do you feel like it has elevated your trust in him?
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it easy for you to just trust him because he's given you these words over your lifetime and he's confirmed his word to you and he's proven his word to you.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make walking through difficulty easier?
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_02: It does make it easier.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that I don't have doubt sometimes, right?
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_02: For sure, but it does make it easier, and every promise that he has spoken over me has come true.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not in the way that I thought it would, right?
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Or how we imagine it to be, but the way he wanted it to, in his perfect perfection, you know?
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's better, don't you think?
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it's like it's not the picture we can come up with in our mind, but it is perfect.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_02: It is, and we just have to remember that, and it's not about us, it's about him and reaching those that need to be reached.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I I don't think, you know, I've been praying a long time for the fear of the Lord to come back upon the earth in the earth because I just I don't think that there is a real understanding about the finality of death and the very real reality of hell.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um I feel like yeah, the the I I feel like it's so important to reach people now.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just yesterday I was thinking we have to work while it is yet day because the night is coming, and I feel like more and more and more, especially over the weekend, the night is coming.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And not not in a fearful way, but I I've been going back through Exodus and just reading through Exodus and you know, um the children of Israel went through the first three plagues, three you know, things that that was brought up on the land of Egypt.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, gosh, we've got to be able to stand and we have to be able to recognize the hour that we're in, yeah.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and really just evangelize everywhere we go.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lori, so what as we wrap up, um I'm excited for you.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I really I am excited to see what God has for you and and who you're gonna reach.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I hope that there's a boldness in you to just open your mouth and speak because I feel like the word of the Lord is uh is in you, you know, like like you can step out in faith and know that God has got you.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I I'm developing more and more each day as time goes on, the boldness.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because there was a fear of speaking out before, and now I know that even in speaking out, if someone rejects it, they're not rejecting me.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_02: No, they're rejecting the word of God and what God has.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes they may reject it today, but because they heard it, they'll remember it and accept it another day.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right?
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because the seed has been planted.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everything starts in seed form.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I I usually end in a couple questions.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, I'm just gonna end in one.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um for anybody that's listening that has felt the call of God on their life or has been feeling more and more like you know, they're they're pondering, going reaching out to the Lord.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what would you want to tell them?
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_02: I would tell them to do it.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_02: He's right there reaching back.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's waiting for you to reach your hand out.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_02: His hand's already there.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's waiting for you to grab back and he can bring you through anything that you've been through.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_02: He can heal your heart, he can heal your mind, he can heal your body, he could heal friendships, family relationships, even church hurt.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_02: He can heal church hurt as well, because no matter what you have gone through, uh, you are still loved, you still matter, and we're just waiting for you to come back so we can help show the love of God to you.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it'll be so much better than what you think.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so much better.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, Lori.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, thank you for being here.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was um I'm excited.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when is the purpose conference?
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that every year?
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_01: They usually have it every year in October.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't heard of dates yet.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_02: I know that the church is getting our many members are going on the mission strip.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I know there's a lot of focus on that, but I haven't heard any dates yet.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_01: So for anybody in the Porterville, Lindsay, Strathmoor, Strathmore area, any anyone on the east side of the county, Tulary County, the Harvest Center Church uh in Strathmore.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um so thank you everybody for watching.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, if you are a backslider um or you know a prodigal, we would love to hear your story.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, please email me Kathy at theredeemed backslider.org um and share this with someone that you think might benefit.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, God bless.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_00: We are so glad you joined us.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a story of redemption or have worn the label of a backslider, we would love to hear from you.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to support our ministry, your donation will be tax deductible.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Visit our website at the redeemed backslider.org.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you will tune in for our next episode.