Latest / Black Girl Interrupted Podcast / Grief...How do we deal with it??

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Grief...How do we deal with it?? · Black Girl Interrupted Podcast

• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, y'all you know who it is.
• 0:35
  It's your favorite girl from the five zero Food. This
• 0:37
  is your girl Ashley bringing you another beautiful episode up
• 0:41
  a Black Girl Interrupted tonight. I got a special guest
• 0:45
  with me, y'all. That's my girl Nicole.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You know what.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Let me correct myself. This is coach Nicole Baby. So
• 0:54
  anyone that is not familiar with Black Girl interrupted the podcast.
• 0:58
  I always, always, always, always always start my show with
• 1:02
  a mental health check in because I need to know
• 1:04
  how you're feeling. Because I know there are not a
• 1:08
  lot of spaces where we could come in and we
• 1:10
  could talk and we're able to be safe. But y'all
• 1:12
  know how we do it over here. I'm back. You'll
• 1:14
  interrupt the podcast. Y'all know. Mental health is something that
• 1:17
  I advocate for. You guys know my story. So I
• 1:20
  have to check the temperature. I need to make sure
• 1:22
  y'all are good. Happy Wednesday. We are two days away
• 1:26
  from the weekend. It is hunt Day, so let me
• 1:29
  know how you're feeling. And before I get started into
• 1:31
  tonight's conversation, I always play something encouraging, empowering, uplifting, just
• 1:38
  to let you know that whatever it is that you're
• 1:40
  going through. You can make it. Just don't ever, ever,
• 1:43
  ever give up. So as we finish our mental health
• 1:46
  check in, we're gonna jump into tonight's conversation. Here we go.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: It's an urge truth be told. Every champions felt it,
• 2:01
  every president has felt it, every king has felt it,
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  every lion has felt it. Every winner has felt it,
• 2:09
  every soldier has felt it. Every victorious person has felted
• 2:15
  to urge to quit. Don't you give up on your dream?
• 2:27
  I don't care if you don't have the money, you
• 2:29
  don't have the help, and you don't have the family
• 2:32
  for it, and you don't have the background for it,
• 2:35
  and you don't have friends for it. Don't you give
• 2:37
  up on you don't dream? Botchoot do it? Don't shoot
• 2:40
  do it? Don't choot do it. It may take you
• 2:44
  twice as long. You may have to take courses and classes.
• 2:48
  You might not read as fast, you might not move
• 2:50
  it's quick. You might not have as much. But don't
• 2:53
  you quit. Don't you quit? Don't you quit? You do
• 3:00
  make a difference. You do make a difference. You do
• 3:05
  make a difference. As weak as you are, as tired
• 3:08
  as you are, as many mistakes as you made. You
• 3:11
  do make a difference. There is something they wouldn't lose
• 3:14
  if you were not there. There was something that they
• 3:16
  would miss if you were not there. You do make
• 3:20
  a difference. You do make a difference. You do make
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  a difference.
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  Speaker 2: Keep popping.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: It's for people that are trying to hop their way
• 3:31
  back home come hell of how water, doing the best
• 3:34
  they can with what they got. That's what we are,
• 3:37
  doing the best we can with what we got. And
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  we may not break any ribbons, and we may not
• 3:43
  get any troupies. But if we can learn how to
• 3:46
  hang on in there, we'll be all right. I will
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  not lie tell you I feel like going on. But
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  I had seen days I did not want to get
• 3:55
  out in the bed, didn't want to put on clothing,
• 3:57
  did didn't feel like brushing my teeth. I said, days
• 4:00
  so dark that I just wanted to keep proving. And
• 4:03
  I didn't even care where I ended up on what
• 4:05
  you called me. They came, and they passed, then they
• 4:13
  came to pass. I kept the faith. I kept it.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: I lost a lot of stuff, I lost a lot
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  of friends, I lost a lot of strength, I lost.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: A lot of courage. I lost a lot of time.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: I lost a lot of money, but I kept down
• 4:33
  on my knees. I was still believing. Pro I was believing.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: No, only I was believing.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Be tryed.
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  Speaker 2: I was.
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  Speaker 3: If you lose the job, keep the faith. If you
• 4:48
  lose the spouse, keep the faith.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: If you bury your child, keep the faith. If you
• 4:53
  have to downsize, keep the faith. If you had to
• 4:55
  move in with your mama, keep the faith. If you
• 4:58
  actually wits in, keep the faith. If you have to
• 5:00
  catch the bus, keep the faith. If you have to dumb,
• 5:03
  keep the faith. If he gets sick, keep the faith.
• 5:07
  If you lose the kidneys, keep the faith. If you
• 5:09
  got a heart trouble, keep the faith. You might not
• 5:12
  get it, no hard, but they gotta keep your faith.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: That was heavy. That was heavy, but right on time.
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  Keep the faith.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: When I tell you, coach nor Cole have a lot
• 6:01
  of heavy days and a lot of these videos that
• 6:04
  I show for our mental health check in, they speak
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  to me, They resonate with me, because that's what I'm
• 6:12
  feeling in the moment. You know, is it's easy to
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  lose sight. It's easy to lose your faith. But as
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  long as you remind yourself that regardless of whatever storm
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  you endure and you encounter, you can make it through
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  because God prepares us for the war. You understand, God
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  dresses us in his armor. You understand we're covered. And
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  like I told you, sometimes God, and I say this,
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  sometimes God will bring you to a storm just to
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  be a witness.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think that I think that sometimes as Christians, right,
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  we have this false idea of what life is supposed
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  to be. We think that Jesus came to save us
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  from the inconveniences of life. That was not his job.
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  His job was to come and save us from sin
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  and from not being able to get to heaven. But
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  it never said in the Bible, you won't get sick,
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  you won't lose someone, that you won't go broke, that
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  people will not betray you. Because and we'll get into this,
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  the things that Jesus walk through are the same things
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  we walk through. He was the model for how we're
• 7:30
  supposed to do them. So a lot of times when
• 7:32
  you're new in Christ and you're so excited that I
• 7:36
  accepted Jesus and it's going to be all right now,
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  but then the enemy comes in like a flood, and
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  it's like what happened. It was never supposed to be
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  problem free. But as long as we keep the faith,
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  as long as we remember who our Father is, that
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  he's not sitting in heaven trying to torture us or
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  make us miserable, it's not. God is and will come
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  through it. Share what you feel, because someone else's overcoming
• 8:08
  is tied to your story. That's what you and I
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  are doing right here, right now.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you Jesus, thank you, thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Anybody just out the gate, share how you feel. The
• 8:20
  mental health checking is real because we're all struggling with something.
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  Speaker 1: It may not be the.
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  Speaker 2: Same story, but we all have things that we are
• 8:29
  trying to push through every single day. But no matter what,
• 8:34
  we keep the faith.
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  Speaker 1: So we have a few comments. This is my cousin. Hey,
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  pretty girl, I love you so much. She says, giving
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  up is not an option. Keep the faith.
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  Speaker 2: Amen.
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  Speaker 1: She says, faith comes by hearing the word of God.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So when I tell you this is my this is
• 8:53
  this this lady, miss miss missus Miles has kept me
• 9:00
  even on the days that I couldn't get out of
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  the bed. She prayed over me. We're in two different states.
• 9:09
  She prayed over me. She sends me a verse every morning,
• 9:13
  something encouraging, empowering to get me do my dame. And
• 9:17
  that helps with my mental you understand, because we need that,
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  We need the word. And I don't mean the mate believe.
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  She says, God carries us absolutely. But also she's your
• 9:32
  faith accountability partner. Yes, and we all need those. Oh
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  and she makes sure. I mean sometimes she'll send me
• 9:39
  full five messages in the morning. I'm okay with that
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  because I sit back and I read them and if
• 9:45
  I feel it gets, you know, maybe just a touch
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  of heaviness, I'm scrolling. Okay, what does she tell me today? Oh?
• 9:53
  This is the song I needed. Cool, Right, there's my
• 9:56
  other sister. Hey, beautiful, Hey, pretty girl. So missus Miles
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  lost her husband September twenty sixth.
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  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
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  Speaker 1: Her first holiday, my big sister, my godsister, Misha lost
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  her husband four years ago, so this is her fourth
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  holiday without her husband. So when I tell you, they
• 10:22
  have been my rider dies, they have just been my
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  cocoon of love and just everything that I needed to
• 10:31
  help me get through. And she says, hey, beautiful ladies,
• 10:36
  you know I love you, Beautiful, my beautiful page, beautiful beautiful, beautiful,
• 10:41
  that's she's everything. She's just I didn't go for her.
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  So for those that are just tuning in too, black
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  Girl interrupted. Tonight's conversation is brief.
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  Speaker 5: And what is it?
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  Speaker 1: November December? Around this time of the year, grief has
• 11:02
  no timeline. But I know around the holidays it does
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  get heavy for for most, for those that may be
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  celebrating their first holiday, you know, having the FIRS. And
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  I really don't want to use the word celebrating, but
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  it is. We're celebrating the life. This could be your
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  first holiday, this could be your fourth holiday, your thirtieth holiday.
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  There's no expiration and no timeline on grief. So I
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  have Coach Nicole here with me tonight. It is ain't
• 11:30
  life coach that specializes in grief and faith. Y'all give
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  it up? Give it up or missing the cole.
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  Speaker 2: Let me look.
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  Speaker 1: Let me see my little sound effects work. Girl like
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  a new little thing, So be the first one I
• 11:44
  try my little sound effects on. Let's see.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't hear it, but adam.
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  Speaker 1: Around the but pause, we got a couple of comments
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  that just popped in. Give me just a moment, she says,
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  we have to be there for each other. Absolutely, and
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  she says love y'all. And then there's my beautiful, beautiful
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  sister in Christ Jocelyn, Hey, beautiful, she recently lost a
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  loved one to suicide and hers holiday and say no,
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  it's not absolutely, And so everyone's here tonight for you,
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  Miss Nicole. We are still honored. We are.
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  Speaker 2: I really do feel honored again. You know, anytime I
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  can sit on someone else's platform and I'm honored. You
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  know the name right away, black girl Interrupted just drew
• 12:45
  me in because as black girls, life is always interrupted
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  for us in many different ways, and we don't always
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  feel seen or feel like we have a safe space
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  to talk about those interruptions. So blessings to you usus
• 13:00
  for creating a safe space to talk about these things
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  that in other cultures is very open, but sometimes for us,
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  we don't have those spaces to be honest about how
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  we're feeling. Right So you know, we're always painted as
• 13:15
  the strong ones, but we need a safe space and
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  a faith based safe space to be able to talk
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  about how we feel. So this is your first time
• 13:25
  seeing me. Blessings to you all. I am coach Nicole.
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  I am the founder of Faith over Fear Biblical life coaching.
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  So if you have not checked me out, I'm on
• 13:36
  all social media platforms and things like that where you
• 13:39
  can check me out. And I'm honored to be here
• 13:41
  tonight to talk about grief first and foremost. I'm walking
• 13:46
  through my own season of grief. I just want to
• 13:48
  be transparent about that. Before Ashley asked me to be
• 13:52
  a guest, we had already booked this and everything like that.
• 13:55
  But about a week and a half ago, my mother
• 13:57
  in law transitioned extremely suddenly. When I say extremely suddenly,
• 14:03
  like I had just talked to her that night, everything
• 14:06
  was fine, and twelve hours later she was gone. She
• 14:09
  did not have any health problems. We did not really
• 14:12
  get to say goodbye to her. You know, my daughter
• 14:16
  is the only grand baby, so you know on both sides,
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  so that was her MO mom, if you will. And
• 14:22
  so now we're walking through this space where we are
• 14:25
  going to lay her to rest over the next two days,
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  right before Christmas. So I've experienced a lot of loss
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  in my life, but I am actively walking through this now.
• 14:35
  And I told that to Ashley. She said, are you
• 14:37
  sure you still want to do this? I said absolutely,
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  because this is part of my assignment, and so I
• 14:44
  just want to let you all know that I am
• 14:46
  sharing that similar space that you all are right now
• 14:50
  as well.
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  Speaker 1: So Titia says, I will not dwell in grief or
• 14:54
  I would stay stuck in that season. There are souls
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  depending on my obedience.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And when we talk about grief, you know,
• 15:03
  when we talk about what is grief, right, we know
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  that grief is a physical, mental, or emotional response to
• 15:10
  a loss. Right, and in most cases, it can cause anxiety,
• 15:14
  It can cause depression, it can cause insomnia. Thank you
• 15:17
  so much, Jocelyn. I see that. For the condolences and
• 15:19
  everyone giving those in the chat, we know that that
• 15:24
  is what grief is. It can cause digestive problems, just
• 15:26
  all sorts of things, right, But also you can grieve
• 15:30
  over things that didn't happen. And I want to touch
• 15:34
  on that too, because a lot of times when we
• 15:36
  say grief, we focus on the loss, and that is important.
• 15:39
  People that we loved that really represented a huge part
• 15:43
  of our life they are gone and we get angry
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  about that. We don't understand it. Some of them were
• 15:48
  snatched from us, just like I described with my mother
• 15:51
  in law. Some were sick, and we watch them suffer.
• 15:55
  And I used to say to my mom a lot
• 15:58
  who is still living. I would say to her, why
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  does God take the people that he does? It always
• 16:03
  seems like he takes the good people and leaves us
• 16:07
  with the people that just not right like, and then
• 16:11
  we have to take care of them, you know, absolutely,
• 16:13
  you know, and it's like why. But also there is
• 16:18
  grief that is about things that didn't come to pass
• 16:21
  the life that we thought we would have as women.
• 16:24
  It can be things like infertility. Maybe it's job loss
• 16:28
  in this season around the holidays, maybe it is a
• 16:31
  new medical diagnosis and you cannot celebrate the way that
• 16:34
  you always did or wanted to. There are a lot
• 16:37
  of things that we grieve over. Yeah, you know, but
• 16:42
  going back to the loss, A lot of times we
• 16:44
  are angry with God. We do not understand God. Why
• 16:48
  did you take my husband? Why'd you take my child?
• 16:51
  Why'd you take my best friend?
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: That was definitely me when I lost my father in
• 16:56
  twenty twenty one. So my father passed from COVID and
• 17:02
  the day before he passed, I was told he collapsed
• 17:05
  in Walmart and he ended up. You know, the ambulance came,
• 17:10
  they took him. He went home. So by the time
• 17:12
  he got home, maybe a hour or so later, the
• 17:14
  ambulance came back and they said, we're just gonna take him.
• 17:17
  He just has to get some oxygen. And that was
• 17:20
  at maybe six six thirty that after and nine something
• 17:26
  that next morning he was gone. And in that moment,
• 17:29
  I said, what was he thinking. You know, we were
• 17:32
  at the height of COVID. You couldn't go visit your
• 17:34
  loved ones. He died alone, But then I had to
• 17:38
  realize he wasn't by himself. God was with him as
• 17:42
  he transitioned on. But in that moment I didn't understand that.
• 17:46
  I was so upset. I was so angry because I
• 17:50
  should have called I should have done this. You know,
• 17:52
  it's the cuttors should have wat us right. Took me
• 17:55
  maybe two years to realize and understand that's not the
• 17:59
  way God wanted it to be. God didn't want me
• 18:03
  because he told me, he said, had I had made
• 18:05
  it feasible for you to speak to him, it would
• 18:09
  have been harder for you to let him go, right.
• 18:13
  So I had to take him. He said, It's like
• 18:15
  ripping off a band aid. And in that moment I
• 18:17
  was angry with him because how dare you expose my wound?
• 18:23
  But now here it is almost five years later, and
• 18:27
  I'm like, it makes sense.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And then it was just all these deaths, back to
• 18:33
  back to back to back to back. My husband was
• 18:37
  diagnosed with prostate cancer in September, stage two. Really, God,
• 18:43
  here we go again. You're But then it was like
• 18:47
  he tapped me on the should It's like, you know how,
• 18:49
  you know how when you get in trouble, your mom
• 18:51
  pulls you by the back of your shirt, like, I
• 18:52
  get over here. He said, let me place you right
• 18:56
  here because I know you're angry, he say, but he's healed.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, why are you stressing? You know? And I often
• 19:05
  say when I'm coaching people, if God told you why
• 19:09
  he took them, would it really make you feel any better?
• 19:12
  Because at the end of the day, you just want
• 19:15
  the person bag, Like, let's just be honest about it.
• 19:17
  You don't really care why God took them. It's not
• 19:21
  going to make you feel better. You would reason with
• 19:23
  God as to why God's reason was wrong? Am I right?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Yes? It's like, can I negotiate it? What if I
• 19:30
  give you.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Well, God, I can help them, you know, I could
• 19:36
  do a little more, you don't. Whatever God would tell you,
• 19:40
  it would never be enough. But what I say to
• 19:42
  that is you have to remember that we are God's children,
• 19:47
  and everybody that we come in contact with is on
• 19:50
  loan to us, including us to other people. We don't
• 19:54
  actually own anyone, right And I know that's a hard concept.
• 19:59
  But the people that God blesses us with are just
• 20:02
  that His blessings. But there are assignments on their lives
• 20:06
  that have nothing to do with you. There are things
• 20:09
  that God has to do in their story that sometimes
• 20:12
  involve you and sometimes don't. I had an uncle who
• 20:17
  passed away. You know, he had a drug problem, and
• 20:20
  he passed away, and I remember just saying, I don't
• 20:24
  understand God, why would you take him? He was my
• 20:26
  favorite uncle. He looked out for me and transparently in
• 20:31
  his drug addiction. The doctors warned him, if you do
• 20:35
  this again, your heart cannot survive it, but he did
• 20:39
  it anyway. And I remember, being younger, saying, if you
• 20:42
  knew your heart was going to stop or you wouldn't
• 20:45
  make it, why would you enter that realm again? Didn't
• 20:48
  you love us enough to not use to not go
• 20:51
  down that path. But as I got older, I realized
• 20:54
  it wasn't about me. What about the damage he was
• 20:57
  doing to his body? What about if he would have
• 21:00
  stayed in addiction, how that would have affected his children,
• 21:04
  or me or the rest of the family. You can
• 21:07
  reach Come on, it's not about It's not about any
• 21:12
  of us. God's ways truly are not ours. I could
• 21:16
  talk to you about my story for a long time.
• 21:19
  We don't even have enough time tonight. If I would
• 21:22
  have sat in that, I would not be here this
• 21:25
  life coach in front of you. Because in the moment,
• 21:28
  it didn't make any sense.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And that's what I couldn't understand. It was like, how
• 21:33
  does two plus two equal five? Again? Right? Do we
• 21:36
  add one? Do we subtract to carry the I just
• 21:39
  was trying to figure out apples and oranges, peaches and pears,
• 21:44
  maybe because they all belong you know, they they're fruits.
• 21:46
  They begin with a letter peet. I just I didn't
• 21:49
  understand it until my father passed, Yeah, and then when
• 21:54
  my godmother passed, and then when I went through my
• 21:57
  own storms, I said, you know what God is trying
• 22:00
  to give by attention some kind of way. Absolutely the
• 22:04
  only way I could get you to see was I
• 22:07
  had to take something from you?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yes? And I see I see is it Tsha's comment?
• 22:13
  Can you put that on the screen? I can see
• 22:15
  I question God because then he answers. I see her
• 22:20
  commenting that. And if you don't hear anything else from
• 22:22
  me tonight, I want you to remember this. It is
• 22:26
  okay to question God because it's as black women, okay,
• 22:36
  we are raised in a way where it seems like
• 22:39
  it's not acceptable to question God. I'm sure someone will
• 22:42
  feel me on this where it's like we were brought
• 22:45
  up in a place where don't question God. You don't
• 22:48
  ask him anything. No, that is a lie. The Bible
• 22:51
  doesn't say you cannot do that. How will you understand
• 22:55
  the plans, the direction, what's going on? He's your five
• 23:00
  or don't your children? Aren't you supposed to lead them?
• 23:03
  How can you lead them if they don't ask you anything?
• 23:06
  You want and praise for your children to ask you things,
• 23:11
  But you think that you can't ask your father. But
• 23:15
  what do you do? You run to the group chat,
• 23:17
  you run to the discussion board, you run to social media,
• 23:21
  you run to the world and ask all these questions
• 23:25
  instead of saying God help me to understand.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you something. You almost made me throw
• 23:33
  this whole computer across this room. And I'm gonna tell
• 23:36
  you why because this lady right here, when I tell you,
• 23:40
  Mss Murcadal Missus Miles, she told me, she said, you're
• 23:45
  in a relationship.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: But it's something you don't understand, you ask for clarity
• 23:50
  because God is a man of clarity, never a man
• 23:52
  of confusion. So if it's something you don't understand, you
• 23:56
  could sit down and you could ask them God why Yeah,
• 24:01
  living in grief right, because He may not answer it
• 24:05
  right then, but you're gonna get your answer, so you understand,
• 24:10
  whether it be through a sign, whether it be through
• 24:14
  your children, your love, somebody. And my therapist told me,
• 24:19
  she said, you have all the time in the world
• 24:24
  to talk to God about something you don't understand. She said,
• 24:27
  you never let anyone tell you you can't commun the
• 24:31
  cable God. If you're confused about something, No, So when
• 24:36
  I tell you, Tisha just said it. We're in a relationship.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: We are in a relationship. And that's what's key because
• 24:45
  when you don't ask, all you do is walk around
• 24:47
  and be confused, and you don't understand where your life
• 24:52
  is going, why it's going the way it's going. What
• 24:54
  are you supposed to do with what happened? What are
• 24:58
  you supposed to do? So, like when I'm talking about
• 25:01
  my mother in law past, you know, when it first happened,
• 25:03
  it's like what it is a whirlwind. But now that
• 25:06
  I'm sitting with it, I'm like, Okay, God, what do
• 25:09
  we do now? What am I supposed to learn in this?
• 25:11
  Because nothing happens by accident? So what's my assignments? Even
• 25:17
  in grief? We all have assignments. Even in grief, when
• 25:22
  you're crying, when you're sad, there's an assignment on your
• 25:26
  life even in that. So what am I supposed to do?
• 25:30
  Am I supposed to help the family that's left? Am
• 25:33
  I supposed to help them get closer to God? What
• 25:36
  am I supposed to do? But all of us have assignments,
• 25:39
  even in grief, we have lessons. But when you sit
• 25:42
  there and you act like God can't handle it, that
• 25:45
  you can't ask him anything, He's waiting on you to
• 25:48
  talk to him and stop praying saying God, everything is fine.
• 25:53
  I think you know it's not God. I'm angry God,
• 25:56
  I'm upset. God, we had more things to do. I
• 26:00
  wish we had more time. God, I'm supposed to explain
• 26:03
  to my eight year old that her grandmother is gone?
• 26:06
  How did you leave us in this? And do you
• 26:09
  think that if you open your mouth and cry out
• 26:12
  to God that he won't answer, that he won't honor
• 26:16
  your request. He will even in grief. But you have
• 26:21
  to be bold. You have to be strong, and you
• 26:24
  have to him and say God, I need to understand.
• 26:31
  You gotta be intentional, and he can handle it. God
• 26:36
  is not offended by your questions. He can handle it.
• 26:41
  Chat he can handle it. He's not offended. He wants
• 26:46
  to know that you want to know. But it's no
• 26:49
  need to get up there and lie and act like
• 26:52
  everything's fine. He knows what you do at three am
• 26:55
  when you can't sleep, he knows what's in your mind.
• 26:59
  He sees you in the discussion boards in the Facebook
• 27:02
  groups asking for help, and he's just saying, well, when
• 27:06
  you're gonna ask me, because I'm the one running this thing,
• 27:11
  when you're gonna talk to.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Me, I'm the one that carries you. I'm the one
• 27:15
  that carries you in days that you can get up
• 27:18
  and carry yourself because God, right, I'm the one that I'm.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Sure you survived every difficult day up until now. But
• 27:27
  you don't want to ask me.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Come on now, you'll go and you'll run over there
• 27:32
  to the person that doesn't even believe in me.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, talk sensus and I'm discouraged the therapist.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: But I send the people to do the work that
• 27:45
  to passle the vessel. They're the carry of my word.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: He said.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: That's why I gave you therapists. That's why I gave
• 27:51
  you psychiatrists. That's why I gave you psychologists. This is
• 27:55
  why I gave your life.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's where that anger and resent it comes from.
• 28:02
  Because now you're in the Facebook group, you're in the
• 28:04
  discussion board, you're asking people, and they're giving you worldly
• 28:08
  advice because we are in the world but not of
• 28:11
  the world. And they tell you, Oh, if God really
• 28:14
  cared about you, he wouldn't allow that. And why does
• 28:17
  this stuff happen to you people? Because this was not
• 28:20
  God's original design. God's original design was the Garden of Eden.
• 28:26
  But we know that story, we learned it in Sunday School.
• 28:29
  Then happened the apple and all that. This is not
• 28:33
  what God want God wanted us to be. Do you
• 28:35
  know how much he loves us? But this is where
• 28:38
  we are until he comes back. So talk to him.
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: God.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I'm in this because I don't have any choice. But
• 28:44
  help me to navigate it, Help me to steward it right.
• 28:49
  Help me to be able to carry this thing so
• 28:52
  I don't look like what I'm going through.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I need you to pull me out of the bed,
• 28:57
  godd dark, because let me tell you, I sat in
• 29:03
  the dark for a long time the grief because it
• 29:05
  was familion. I felt safe. But God says, people can't
• 29:09
  help you or celebrate you when you're sitting in the
• 29:11
  doork because we can't see you.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Why need you to come on?
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: Get up?
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Get up, go wash your face, brush your teeth.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Look and even the things that didn't come to pass
• 29:25
  that you are grieving, talk to him about those. God,
• 29:28
  Why I'm the only one didn't get married. Why I'm
• 29:31
  the only one did have any children. Why can't I
• 29:33
  not get my dream house? I see everybody else out
• 29:37
  here then bought a house. I'm still in my apartment.
• 29:39
  Why I go to church? I try to do the
• 29:42
  right thing, you know, but I don't have anything everything
• 29:46
  I pray for seem like it go to everybody else.
• 29:48
  God help me to understand. I feel left behind.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But God says, we're not in a competition. You understand
• 29:55
  everyone's arrival time is different. And if we could understand
• 30:00
  and stop, let me. So I learned this coach and
• 30:02
  of cold as I went back through my journey to
• 30:05
  relearn the Bible. You understand. I knew it, but it
• 30:09
  changes as you get older. You understand because you start
• 30:11
  to see things differently. You see things from a child's
• 30:14
  point of view, a teenager, and then an adult, and
• 30:17
  then as an elder you understand, and then everything starts
• 30:19
  to make sense. But I asked, God, oh my goodness,
• 30:25
  you didn't tell me this.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: You didn't you.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: You didn't tell me this because I just had this
• 30:31
  conversation last night about Adam and Eve. You didn't tell
• 30:34
  me that this was okay. I'm ready for church. But
• 30:38
  I went to God and I say, God, why is
• 30:43
  this happening to me? He said, because you wanted everything.
• 30:49
  You wanted to be able to handle everything. So in
• 30:52
  order for me to let you see who I am,
• 30:55
  I gotta take things from you. And it's the things
• 30:58
  that you cherish the most. And I say, but he said,
• 31:04
  no period period. He said, because I talked to him
• 31:09
  by my suicide attempt back in June, and God says,
• 31:13
  you were living in a house with a foundation and
• 31:15
  a roof. Listen, did you hear what I just said?
• 31:23
  M h He said, you were living in a house
• 31:27
  with a roof and a foundation, and you thought you
• 31:31
  were going to be able to substantiate like that. You
• 31:34
  didn't have anything to substantiate that roof, he said, So
• 31:37
  I had to break you. I had to tear your
• 31:40
  house down, and I had to rebuild your foundation. I
• 31:46
  was grieving that because it was like everything was he
• 31:49
  was just taken and taken and taken, until finally, one night,
• 31:54
  at three o'clock in the morning, I was up. I
• 31:55
  couldn't sleep. I came in here in my office and
• 31:58
  I cut my music off and I cried, cried, cried cry.
• 32:06
  He said, I knew one day you would come mm hmm.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely, and that, yeah, that resonates so much with me.
• 32:19
  And when we talk about job, we always like to
• 32:22
  talk about job right, and people say, I'm in my
• 32:25
  job season. You know, you may be, you may not,
• 32:29
  But what job went through was a lot, but he
• 32:34
  was one of God's strongest soldiers. What job went through,
• 32:38
  some of us would not survive. Most of us would
• 32:41
  not survive.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: We would break.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: We would break at the first sight.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, what is the word I want to see? At
• 32:50
  the very first sight of trouble? We're ready to run.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: We're ready to run.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see like I was, you know, like I
• 33:00
  told you before we were covered, God prepares us. He said,
• 33:05
  weapons were formed, but they shall not.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: So I'm learning, miss Nicole in my season of grief,
• 33:13
  that I'm a back seat rider. Now you understand, Yes,
• 33:17
  because when I was driving the car. Now, I use
• 33:20
  this analogy all the time. When I was driving, you know,
• 33:22
  you can only look in one direction when you're driving
• 33:24
  a car on that straight ahead. When you're the passenger
• 33:28
  in the front, you know, and you're riding in the
• 33:30
  front seat passenger, you're focused on the driver because you
• 33:32
  need to make sure the driving those where they're going.
• 33:35
  But when you get in the back seat, you get
• 33:38
  to see everything that's right. It was in front of you,
• 33:41
  what's to the right, what's to the left. You could
• 33:43
  to see what's behind you. So I'm a backseat rider now.
• 33:47
  You know, I tell people all the time, I let
• 33:49
  God drive.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Husband.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're here.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're gonna this five ten years from now, we're
• 33:58
  gonna be like, yeah, you remember when it happened and
• 34:00
  what God did for us. So let me ask you this,
• 34:04
  miss Nicole. We're in this season of grief. It doesn't
• 34:09
  just happen around the holidays. It could happen you know, birthdays.
• 34:12
  It could be a scentth it could be a color.
• 34:15
  And I learned this in therapy, that colors are triggers.
• 34:18
  You may fragrance, a song, just anything, canna take you back.
• 34:21
  But my therapist told me, yes, your father passed on
• 34:25
  March the fourth, But what has happened since then? On
• 34:28
  March the fourth, right, I say, But she said, yeah,
• 34:35
  we celebrate the day to day passed. She said, but
• 34:37
  other things have happened to you since then? I said,
• 34:43
  but she said, no, period. She said, two days after
• 34:47
  your father passed in twenty twenty three, didn't you start
• 34:49
  your new job?
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: I said yeah.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: She said, okay, So why keep reliving what happened March?
• 34:59
  For one, you're still angry about it. That day is coming.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of times when we experience grief,
• 35:11
  that becomes our whole identity. Everything now gets identified under
• 35:17
  the grief umbrella. If you will, you know, somebody you
• 35:20
  know will say something to you, you immediately say, you know,
• 35:24
  I don't have a father, or my father died, or
• 35:27
  my mother died, or my child died, or you know,
• 35:29
  this happened to me. But everything about you is identified
• 35:34
  through the grief, right, and that's really not your identity.
• 35:37
  Your identity is a disciple. The grief and the loss
• 35:41
  is something that occurred in your story, but it is
• 35:45
  not the whole book. It is one chapter. And that's
• 35:49
  how we get stuck and we can't move forward. Is
• 35:52
  that once that grief happens, that's the whole story gets
• 35:55
  defined by that grief, that's the whole story. If you
• 35:59
  take a vacation, well you know, my father would have
• 36:02
  wanted to go here. That cannot be the theme. And
• 36:05
  I know that's difficult to hear and it's not easy,
• 36:08
  but that is what happened to you. And we think
• 36:12
  that grief is something we're supposed to just be done with,
• 36:15
  but it's a journey that looks different. But you can't
• 36:18
  stay in that those first beginning stages of it that's
• 36:22
  not what it's designed for us to do, and that's
• 36:26
  moving through it.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And that goes to my next question. What are the
• 36:30
  stages of grief?
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: So there are, yes, there are, yeah, So there are several.
• 36:38
  You know, a lot of them deal with, you know, anger,
• 36:41
  They deal with resentment, they deal with bargaining, and then
• 36:45
  eventually the goal is to get to acceptance. But many
• 36:49
  of us don't get to that acceptance because we can't
• 36:52
  get past the anger. We can't get past that we
• 36:56
  live in that. You know, sometimes when you look at
• 36:59
  people in the stores and they just look so angry,
• 37:01
  or people that you just know always look upset or
• 37:04
  mad with the world, they're stuck in that first phase
• 37:07
  of anger and they can't move past. They'll never get
• 37:11
  to acceptance, even if it's ten twenty years later. They
• 37:16
  have not done any work to move through those stages.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: So why does that happen? Miss Nicole?
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: What so.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: You said? The first stages is the anger? What keeps
• 37:28
  us there.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: What keeps us there is thinking that our view of
• 37:35
  life and how we feel life is supposed to go
• 37:38
  right is the only option. And when God's true design
• 37:44
  takes a different path, we get upset. We get upset,
• 37:49
  we think, we think that you know something is wrong here,
• 37:54
  because wait a minute, God, my plan was this. I
• 37:59
  felt like I needed to do this with that person.
• 38:02
  Why would you give me this person just to take
• 38:05
  them back? I wasn't finished with them. You know, it's
• 38:08
  almost like a child with toys, if you will right now.
• 38:12
  I don't mean that we are childish, but this is
• 38:14
  how children are. You give them something, they want to
• 38:17
  play with it as long as they want to play
• 38:20
  with it. But when you, as the parents, say you're
• 38:23
  done now with that, you need to put it away
• 38:26
  or I'm going to take it, they don't want to
• 38:28
  let it go. And that's how we are with God
• 38:32
  because they don't understand as children, well why not, I'm
• 38:35
  not done with it yet. It's mine. You gave it
• 38:38
  to me. How dare you tell me I can't play
• 38:40
  with it anymore? And that's how we are in grief
• 38:46
  is we're like, God, you gave me these people, right,
• 38:49
  And that's why we don't move past the anger because
• 38:52
  we feel like our design for our life is it
• 38:56
  and God's design really doesn't matter if we're being honest, like.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: We were robbed. Yeah, like we were robbed, and that's
• 39:03
  how I felt in the beginning when I falla passed,
• 39:05
  I was like, I feel like someone just came into
• 39:08
  my house and just robbed me. Like I just I
• 39:11
  felt empty.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's a valid The key, though, actually is
• 39:15
  that is a valid way to feel. But you can't
• 39:18
  stay there, right. You have to get up every day
• 39:22
  and say, Okay, God, I'm trying to move from the anger.
• 39:25
  I don't want to be mad for the rest of
• 39:27
  my life. I don't want to be feeling like everything
• 39:31
  was snatched from me. There is still more life for
• 39:34
  me to live, or you would have taken me too then,
• 39:38
  and we forget that you still are living.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Because I sat like that for two years after my fall.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Planks, we sit and and a lot of us hit
• 39:47
  pause right there, but I did.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted the world to stop because I wanted more time.
• 39:55
  I wanted to call. It was the guilt I should
• 39:58
  have called. I should have did this, I should have
• 39:59
  But as I said, God said, that's not the way
• 40:03
  I designed it. On my therapist sold when she says,
• 40:06
  as long as you're here, your dad is still here,
• 40:10
  and when you pass on, you'll still be here because
• 40:13
  your children will still be here and so on and
• 40:15
  so forth. So you you just you spoke to my
• 40:21
  heart because that was me because I just couldn't understand God,
• 40:26
  you're taking this, you're taking that. You just keep doing
• 40:29
  this to me?
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: What did I do to you?
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And then I started to well, maybe it's because I
• 40:34
  did somebody like this, So maybe because I did that.
• 40:36
  But then when I sat down and I opened up
• 40:40
  my Bible and I got the lesson because I became
• 40:45
  the student instead of me wanting to do it all.
• 40:50
  And then I had my accountability partners that say, I'm
• 40:53
  come on, get up.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was over, not ending. Yours is not ending.
• 41:02
  And look, I'm gonna take a sip before I say this. Right.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, because I had to learn to put a
• 41:07
  period right there at the end of that. You understand,
• 41:10
  I wanted to that almost to like a to be continued,
• 41:13
  But God says, when their assignment is over, that t period.
• 41:18
  You got to turn the page.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Now, you got to turn the page. And you know
• 41:23
  earlier I said, if you don't remember anything else, I said,
• 41:25
  it's okay to question God, but I want you to
• 41:28
  remember this as well. For those in the chat as well,
• 41:32
  grief is very near and dear to God. And I
• 41:36
  think that we don't remember that or don't think about
• 41:39
  that when it comes to God, because God would say,
• 41:43
  I know you're hurting, and you're said, but where were
• 41:45
  you when my son was on the cross and I
• 41:48
  was grieving? If you think about the whole Bible, God
• 41:54
  has grieved the entire timeline. So let's go back to
• 41:58
  Adam and Eve. Whether or not God knew these things
• 42:02
  were gonna happen, they still saddened him as our father.
• 42:06
  This was not his original design. That was a moment
• 42:09
  of grief, right to have to see Adam and Eve
• 42:12
  his creations now turn into something that he did not
• 42:16
  want to be right, to have Sinn enter the world,
• 42:20
  to now have it be a way that he didn't
• 42:23
  design it to be. Right, Then we know all the
• 42:26
  things that happened with Moses and the plagues and let
• 42:30
  my people all that kind of stuff he had to do.
• 42:32
  Do you think God enjoyed doing that? Like, think about
• 42:35
  that a second. Every time he has to do something
• 42:38
  to try to get us together, do you think he
• 42:41
  enjoins that? Do you enjoy reprimanding your children? What do
• 42:45
  we always say? This is gonna hurt you more than
• 42:47
  it hurt Tea. But because we don't understand who God
• 42:52
  is and our parental child relationship with him, we forget
• 42:56
  these things. Do you think when he had to send
• 42:58
  a flood and know what in the ark? You don't
• 43:01
  think he grieved that destroying the world. You think that
• 43:05
  was fun times for God? Go right? Then we get
• 43:09
  to Jesus, right, jesus whole story is grief that the
• 43:13
  Bible says. He was a man of sorrow when he
• 43:16
  was born. Right before he got here, he was judged
• 43:20
  for being illegitimate. Why because his mother was a virgin? Yes,
• 43:26
  nobody really believed that. You are you sure, Mary? Are
• 43:30
  you sure Joseph? That was nothing but drama. Let's keep
• 43:34
  it real.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, And he was born.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: There was no place for him to go, There was
• 43:40
  no hospital. He was born where the animals were. That
• 43:44
  wasn't a good thing, right, right, And they were looking
• 43:48
  for him, so that wasn't good. Then, as Jesus is
• 43:52
  growing up, we don't hear Joseph mentioned anymore after the
• 43:56
  age of twelve. So now Mary's a single mother. Think
• 44:00
  that made Jesus feel good?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I doubt it.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: He goes into the ministry. His father is not there
• 44:06
  right right, And then we know everything that happens after that,
• 44:11
  his friends lied on them, they betrayed him, they really
• 44:14
  sent them to die. You know, all these other things happened.
• 44:18
  And then he still says, God, can you take this
• 44:21
  from me? It's too much? Do you think any of
• 44:25
  that made God happy? Jesus was nothing but God in
• 44:29
  human form. But you mean to tell me that we
• 44:32
  think that God is just being mean to us. God
• 44:35
  is gonna say, where were you are those times?
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Ool?
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: And I've been grieving the current state of the world.
• 44:43
  Do you think this makes him happy? To watch his
• 44:46
  children behave the way they do, deny him, worship everything
• 44:51
  in the world other than him. Grief is near and
• 44:54
  dear to God.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, And the fact that we only go to Him
• 45:00
  in the bad times, and then once he picks us
• 45:04
  back up. And let me say this, miss the coal,
• 45:06
  because I've learned that God says, I'm tired of fixing
• 45:12
  you up, and then I fix you up to be presentable,
• 45:16
  and then you want to come back to me when
• 45:17
  you all tired and haggard, and you expect me to
• 45:20
  fix you up again. So this is what I'm gonna do.
• 45:24
  I'm gonna I'm gonna allow you to be tired and haggard,
• 45:28
  you understand, until you're ready for me to really fix
• 45:32
  you up and be presentable to the world. And I
• 45:35
  had to learn that because that was the only time
• 45:37
  I ran from God. I'm going through this, I'm going
• 45:39
  through that. And as soon as everything was clear, matter
• 45:42
  of fact, as soon as the cloud the sky was
• 45:44
  blue again, that okay, God, see you later.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Well, God said I got something for you. Mm hmm.
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: And that's why sometimes we have to sit in things,
• 45:55
  especially in this part of life we're in. God is
• 45:57
  allowing us to sit in things longer than we want to.
• 46:01
  He hears our prayer. He's not asleep, he didn't clock out,
• 46:04
  he didn't take a vacation day. He hears it. But
• 46:06
  he's tired of what you just said. Every time I
• 46:11
  bring you out. Look, when you're going through you laying
• 46:14
  in the floor, you got all the gospel music on.
• 46:17
  You're the first person in the parking lot on Sundays.
• 46:20
  Somebody says, how you doing. I'm trusting God? You know
• 46:23
  all these things. You got a fifty million scriptures. You
• 46:27
  know you can't turn on a revival every five minutes
• 46:30
  when you get home. But let the sun start to
• 46:33
  come out again. You forget all about God until the
• 46:37
  next time.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: And now you don't need him. Now you don't need him.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: And guess what, you didn't even give him the respect,
• 46:47
  the honor, the glory and the praise for what you survived.
• 46:53
  You just tell people, oh, I made it through. You
• 46:55
  don't say it was God that rescued me at three
• 46:58
  am in the floor when I was losing my mind,
• 47:01
  when the enemy told me I was better off not
• 47:04
  being here, okay, because I've dealt with that. You're murder
• 47:09
  on your family. You know those types of things. We
• 47:12
  don't say though. God brought us out. It's like something
• 47:16
  magical happening. We just suddenly were found out. It was God.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Girl, talk to me.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: He's sick of us.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: He is so tired. That's why God, That's why God
• 47:26
  took me off the back line and put me back
• 47:28
  on the main line. He said, because I'm tired you're
• 47:30
  calling this back number every time something goes wrong, I'm
• 47:33
  gonna block you. So now you got to wait in
• 47:35
  line like everybody else.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Again in this season of grief, I'm no longer grieving
• 47:46
  who I once was because I asked God to restore
• 47:50
  me in his likeness. Because I hear people say I
• 47:53
  just I just want to be who I was before
• 47:56
  this person past. I don't want to be that person.
• 48:00
  I want to be better than that person. I want
• 48:03
  you to restore me. I need you to make me presentable,
• 48:07
  and I'm gonna allow you to dress me. I'm gonna
• 48:10
  allow you to continue to do what you do. I'm
• 48:14
  gonna continue to allow you to put food on my table.
• 48:18
  You understand. Yeah, you feed me, you nourish me, you
• 48:22
  wash me. Why it is snow?
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely good days.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: The bad days when when I lose people, it's like,
• 48:33
  you know what, God, I understand. I understand. So let
• 48:39
  me ask you this, coach, Nicole. This is a million
• 48:44
  dollar question and we're gonna circumvent back to it. But
• 48:50
  how does grief affect your faith?
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And that's that's the that's the hard part, right
• 48:57
  because even though we're questioning, even if we are healthy,
• 49:01
  questioning God and trying to understand it, doesn't mean that
• 49:04
  your faith is not going to take a hit. But
• 49:06
  I think where we get it confused is it's okay
• 49:11
  for your faith to take a little bit of a hit.
• 49:14
  It's okay, it's normal. Right. The road was never meant
• 49:18
  to be easy. But that's why God said, you only
• 49:21
  need a mustard seed, right, And if you don't know
• 49:24
  a mustard seed, that little bit like between my fingers
• 49:27
  is about the size of a mustard seed. It's not
• 49:29
  this big Starbucks cup amount. That's all the faith that
• 49:33
  you need. Some days you're gonna have this Starbucks cup
• 49:36
  them out, but some days you're only gonna have that
• 49:38
  little mustard seed. But both count in God's eyes.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: So, Coach Nicole, how would you tell someone or how
• 49:48
  would you explain or express a person that is going
• 49:53
  through grief that you know they've lost again. It may
• 49:56
  not have been a physical loss. It could have been,
• 49:58
  like you said, a job loss, a friendship and those
• 50:01
  friendship breakups hurt too, divorce. You could be mourning who
• 50:05
  you used to be. How would you if I came
• 50:08
  to and I say, Koch Nicole, I just I don't
• 50:13
  know what to do. I just I'm trying to trust God,
• 50:15
  but God don't seem to be showing up. What would
• 50:18
  you say to me in that moment? Maybe not just
• 50:21
  necessarily in that moment. But if I just came here
• 50:23
  and I said, you know a coach for code man,
• 50:24
  God is he didn't let it down. God is just,
• 50:27
  and he just keeps taking and taken and taking. Talk
• 50:31
  to me as if my loss just happened.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: So what I would tell you first right away is
• 50:38
  that grief is love remembering. Grief is love remembering. And
• 50:45
  when I say it to you like that, the negative
• 50:49
  connotation that we have with grief, grief has this like
• 50:51
  negative connotation, like it's something that we need to escape, right,
• 50:57
  But grief is nothing but love remembering. And so when
• 51:00
  I say it to you that way, what that should
• 51:03
  release in you is that I can remember, I can
• 51:08
  feel the love that I had for whatever it is
• 51:11
  I'm grieving, and that is okay. It's not this thing
• 51:15
  that I have to mask. It's not something you need
• 51:18
  to pretend that didn't happen, or like you're okay. Like
• 51:23
  my husband, I share with you all. We are walking
• 51:26
  through loss right now with his mother and I say,
• 51:27
  how are you doing? He says, I'm okay. No you're not.
• 51:30
  You're not. It's okay to say I'm not okay. But
• 51:34
  grief is love remembering So when you have a sad moment,
• 51:38
  that's love remembering. When you feel triggered, that's love remembering.
• 51:44
  Thank God that you were blessed with love to be
• 51:48
  able to remember it. Because somebody somewhere wishes they had
• 51:54
  a memory of their father that was so wonderful and
• 51:59
  beautiful that they could remember it. Everybody does didn't have that.
• 52:04
  Somebody wishes they had a child where they could say,
• 52:08
  I remember being a mother and how that felt. Everybody
• 52:15
  doesn't get that. So it's okay to grieve because that's
• 52:19
  love remembering. That's number one. Number two. You cannot escape it.
• 52:25
  There's no magic pill or wind that you can wave
• 52:28
  for it to go away. You have to go through it.
• 52:33
  So stop trying to escape grief. I just told you
• 52:36
  it's love remembering. You don't need to escape remembering the love.
• 52:42
  But you give yourself permission to feel, to walk through it,
• 52:46
  to acknowledge it, to own it, to say I remember it.
• 52:51
  And my process might look different than yours, or my
• 52:55
  or someone else's, but I'm going to honor this love
• 52:58
  in a way that makes sense for me, and I'm
• 53:01
  not gonna run from it.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Is that why they say your cry when you come
• 53:05
  in the world and you rejoice when you leave.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely. And that's another thing. When we
• 53:14
  lose people, we never look at it like, my God,
• 53:17
  they got their crown. We never say that. We're so
• 53:21
  focused on what happened to us, the loss and the loss.
• 53:25
  And I understand, Please don't think I don't understand. But
• 53:28
  there's another part to that that my God, they made
• 53:30
  it to their crown, something we all should aspire to
• 53:35
  have one day.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: And that's what I'm learning is to celebrate. Yeah, the
• 53:42
  physical Yeah, that hurts, but as I said, you know,
• 53:47
  like my therapist told me, as long as you're still here,
• 53:51
  they're still here.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely. Now, there is a term that we use
• 53:57
  called biblically resistant faith or excuse me, grief, biblically resistant grief.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Can you elaborate a little bit on that for.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Us, Yeah, And really what that means is that a
• 54:08
  lot of times Christians feel as though they cannot grieve
• 54:13
  because that means that you are questioning God or you
• 54:16
  don't agree with him, and that I just told you.
• 54:20
  God is very close to grief. The Bible says also
• 54:23
  he's close to the broken hearted. We know all of
• 54:25
  those things, but just because you are a believer, because
• 54:29
  you have faith, that does not mean you cannot grieve.
• 54:31
  It's quite the opposite. God wants you to grieve. He
• 54:35
  wants you to bring it to the altar, he wants
• 54:37
  you to talk to him about it. A lot of
• 54:40
  times church will make us feel like and this is
• 54:42
  going to step on some toes, but sometimes churches will
• 54:45
  make us feel like we can't grieve, and that is
• 54:49
  not appropriate.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: That's like with mental health. Yeah, yes, he see, just pray.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know you have a loss, and then
• 54:59
  it's like the church, since they'll pray for you, But
• 55:01
  then what.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: How do I pick? How do I carry on after that?
• 55:06
  Because when I had this conversation last week when we
• 55:08
  were talking about how to deal with the loss of
• 55:11
  a spouse or the loss of a parent, they love
• 55:15
  you the first six weeks, I just say six weeks,
• 55:18
  you know, you get the phone calls, and then it's
• 55:22
  the seventh week, the eighth week, the ninth week, the
• 55:27
  calls come, you know, becomes you and far in between.
• 55:30
  And then it's like, okay, well where are all these
• 55:32
  people that said, girl, call me if you need me. Girl?
• 55:35
  You know, it doesn't matter the time. So I learned.
• 55:42
  Let me call God real quick. That's that's how you
• 55:44
  blocked me from the back line. He had to put
• 55:45
  me back in what everybody else? Because I was calling,
• 55:49
  I was blowing his phone up. And God says, go
• 55:52
  read this and then we'll talk about it later. Because
• 55:56
  I got a million people. He say, there's a million
• 55:59
  people in the world, but only one makes it.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, he said, and you were one,
• 56:09
  because you're still here.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Remember I told your house down, because how can you
• 56:15
  live on a foundation in a roof? So I took
• 56:20
  from you.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I did it.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: This person didn't do I did it like God took
• 56:26
  accountability for I did it. Yeah, And I said, okay.
• 56:31
  He said, so what you what you're gonna say to me?
• 56:34
  I said, nothing, nothing, sir, nothing, you got this. Let
• 56:39
  me Let me just be quiet and be obedient.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what I'm saying. It is. It is
• 56:44
  natural to grieve. It is scriptural to grieve. We talked
• 56:48
  about that. Even Jesus grieved for Lazarus. Right, you know
• 56:52
  that is in the Bible. You know it is okay
• 56:55
  to grieve. Never let anyone tell you that you don't
• 56:58
  trust God or you don't have any faith because you're grieving.
• 57:01
  That is a lie of the enemy. You have gotten
• 57:04
  to Yeah, they do. That is not accurate. So I
• 57:09
  hope I'm freeing someone tonight. It's not it's not. It's
• 57:14
  not accurate. Me grieve. Tell God how you feel. He
• 57:18
  gets it, He cares, he can handle it, you know.
• 57:22
  And and your faith is going to waiver in different
• 57:25
  times of life, like your faith is not always going
• 57:28
  to be this Starbucks cup size. All the greats in
• 57:31
  the Bible that we look up to, Moses, Noah, all
• 57:33
  of you know, they all.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Went through a lot. Because I tried to have the
• 57:38
  patience of June.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna give you a Bible story that
• 57:45
  we know very well just to illustrate this, so that
• 57:48
  the woman with the issue of blood, right, and if
• 57:52
  you don't know that story, there was a woman in
• 57:54
  the Bible. She had this issue of blood where she
• 57:56
  was bleeding for well over a decade, will say, and
• 57:59
  we know the story goes on to say she had
• 58:02
  spent all her life savings, she did everything she could do,
• 58:05
  went to every doctor trying to solve this medical problem.
• 58:09
  No one could help her. Eventually Jesus is there. There's
• 58:13
  a crowd. She's like, you know, I'm just gonna press
• 58:15
  my way through this Beyonce size crowd, if you will.
• 58:18
  That's how many people there were. And she presses her
• 58:21
  way through, and she touches Jesus on the hem of
• 58:25
  his garment, just a little hemn right, And he says,
• 58:29
  who touched me? And everybody looks around and Disciple says,
• 58:32
  she touched you. And he said, woman, your faith has
• 58:35
  made you whole. And then that instant she was healed.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: But you know what's powerful about that story, Asley, it's
• 58:40
  not the fact that she pressed her way to Jesus,
• 58:43
  because many people really were trying to get to Jesus. Absolutely,
• 58:48
  it's the fact that she's sad in that for over
• 58:51
  a decade, bleeding constantly. And you have to think about
• 58:55
  in those times, you know, they looked at people like
• 58:58
  that is unclean. They shame them, they didn't want to
• 59:01
  be around them.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: The scarlet letter, right, but even after.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: A decade, and you have to think how much grief
• 59:08
  she had about her life. She didn't want that for herself, okay,
• 59:15
  and all the things she probably missed out on because
• 59:18
  of her affliction, but her faith did not change because
• 59:24
  whether or not she tried to get a cure from
• 59:27
  a doctor or eventually Jesus, she knew that one day
• 59:32
  God would show up for her if she kept the faith.
• 59:36
  That doesn't mean that she always had this Starbucks sized cup,
• 59:41
  but when she pressed her way that day, she still
• 59:44
  had enough faith after a decade to say, God's gonna
• 59:47
  heal me one of these days, and I'm gonna keep
• 59:51
  trying to get to the other side even after all
• 59:55
  this time. If God would have healed her in six days,
• 59:58
  six months, or even six years, this story would not
• 1:00:02
  be as powerful as it is today. Absolutely, and what
• 1:00:07
  she grieved, she definitely grieved, whether the Bible calls it
• 1:00:11
  out or not.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: M Oh my goodness. Yeah, this is when I tell you,
• 1:00:23
  coach Nicole, we went to church. We're in church right now,
• 1:00:29
  Church is in session. As I hold, I'm the student.
• 1:00:34
  I'm here to be ministered too, because I've allowed grief
• 1:00:40
  to overcome me and not again, not just the physical loss,
• 1:00:45
  but the emotional loss or the spiritual loss. But here
• 1:00:48
  you are, you through this hook, and you realed me
• 1:00:52
  back in because I remember what it did to me
• 1:00:59
  physically what it did to me emotionally, what it did
• 1:01:03
  to me spiritually, because I did I was done with God.
• 1:01:08
  I was like, yep, you know what, whatever, God, you
• 1:01:10
  just keep doing all this to me. You keep taking
• 1:01:12
  from me, you keep doing this shit, keep doing that.
• 1:01:14
  I just don't understand until I had that break. Yeah,
• 1:01:20
  and he broke me down and he said, their assignment ended,
• 1:01:24
  but yours continuous. You still have purpose on this side,
• 1:01:30
  so don't let you die with them. And I didn't
• 1:01:36
  understand that.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of people do that. They will
• 1:01:40
  hit pause and you're in the casket with them. And
• 1:01:43
  I felt like I was, yeah, you may be existing,
• 1:01:48
  but you're not actually living, right.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: And that's what I was doing. I was just Okay, well,
• 1:01:52
  I gotta go to work. Let me do this. It
• 1:01:54
  was almost like I couldn't just really grieve the way
• 1:01:58
  I wanted to because when he passed, I had to
• 1:02:01
  go to Alabama and I went by myself. I didn't
• 1:02:04
  have any of his family members go with me. I
• 1:02:06
  had never lost a parent, so I didn't know what
• 1:02:09
  intel the where this was, where that was? How do
• 1:02:12
  you plan a funeral? But I will say this, and
• 1:02:16
  this is what brought me back to God. My father
• 1:02:19
  again was a pastor his church. Family moved on my behalf.
• 1:02:27
  As I navigated through this new chapter, you understand, like
• 1:02:31
  you told me, this was a new chapter. I had
• 1:02:34
  to put a period. Your father passed. Period. Now you
• 1:02:39
  got to go to the next page, and you got
• 1:02:42
  to start a new chapter. But this one entels him
• 1:02:47
  not being with you in the physical realm. How do
• 1:02:51
  I get through that? How do I navigate this? Because
• 1:02:55
  I couldn't go to my mom, I couldn't go here.
• 1:02:58
  You know, people say to call me, but I didn't
• 1:03:00
  want to be a burden to people. Was that the
• 1:03:05
  call from God that said I'm here any time you
• 1:03:09
  need me?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Yeah, it probably was. I mean, it probably
• 1:03:15
  was God saying you can just lean on me, come
• 1:03:20
  to me. I'm your dad. I want to take care
• 1:03:22
  of you. And he did and he will. But you
• 1:03:26
  have to trust him. You have to just try, you know.
• 1:03:29
  And and and showing up with with God doesn't look
• 1:03:32
  the same every day, right, you know, because if we
• 1:03:36
  want God to speak to us like with the loud
• 1:03:38
  speaker and be very clear and write these instructions down,
• 1:03:42
  and it's not always going to be that easy or
• 1:03:44
  that simple, but he will always show up and answer
• 1:03:47
  like tonight, absolutely, look at you, bless you.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Uma.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Look, I'm gonna tell you something before we get ready
• 1:04:00
  to close. There are two things that happen in life.
• 1:04:06
  We always say the enemy shows up with weddings and funerals.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: The reason that is the case is because those are
• 1:04:15
  two things that are very close to God's heart. When
• 1:04:19
  Adam and Eve got together, there were no children, yet
• 1:04:24
  the enemy came right out the gate as soon as
• 1:04:27
  Eve she touched down. You know, they made her from
• 1:04:30
  his rib and all that here comes to snake. There
• 1:04:33
  was no kin, no able, yet it was just the
• 1:04:36
  two of them. So for the enemy to attack marriage,
• 1:04:41
  lets you know how important marriage is and close to
• 1:04:45
  God's heart. Marriage is. The enemy will always show up
• 1:04:49
  in things that are close to God to destroy it.
• 1:04:54
  So then we have funerals. And we just talked about
• 1:04:57
  how important and close grief is to God because He
• 1:05:02
  grieved all through the Bible, all through Jesus's life. Grief
• 1:05:07
  is so important and close to God. So when we
• 1:05:11
  know that and we recognize that, we have to understand
• 1:05:15
  the enemy is going to show up then because where
• 1:05:19
  God wants us to get close to him in grief.
• 1:05:23
  The enemy wants us to get close to him in grief.
• 1:05:27
  Wants us to bicker, wants us to turn our backs
• 1:05:30
  on God, to question, to lose our faith, to stop
• 1:05:34
  going to church, to think it's the end of our story.
• 1:05:37
  Wants us to be depressed, anxious and suicidal, to turn
• 1:05:41
  to drugs, to turn to improper behaviors to cope.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Stop talking to me like that.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Listen. The enemy works over time. He knows what is
• 1:05:56
  he and close to God. Don't ever forget that he
• 1:05:59
  was angel. Let's not forget that story. That's for another life,
• 1:06:05
  another time. But let's never forget the enemy was an angel.
• 1:06:09
  He knows what is close to God and those demons
• 1:06:13
  that came with him out of heaven. So weddings funerals
• 1:06:19
  two things that are very close to God's heart. The
• 1:06:22
  enemy is always gonna show up. But when you know better,
• 1:06:25
  you do better.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Better.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: Now you're educated. Now you've learned that. So when those
• 1:06:31
  situations happen, expect the enemy to show up, Expect him
• 1:06:36
  to have people acting a fool, Expect all kinds of
• 1:06:39
  things to go wrong, But you hold to his hand,
• 1:06:44
  God's unchanging hand, those songs that our grandparents used to
• 1:06:49
  sing when they didn't have anything. That's what it is.
• 1:06:53
  Build your hope on things eternal, hold to God's unchanging hand.
• 1:07:01
  That's what you do. God didn't leave us. He knows
• 1:07:06
  we're said, he knows we're broken hearted, he knows we're devastated.
• 1:07:10
  He knows it's bad timing. But honestly, is there a
• 1:07:13
  good time to say bye to your loved one? No,
• 1:07:18
  he knows. Even if they'd lived to one hundred, it
• 1:07:20
  would never be enough time. You're always gonna.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Say we had one more thing to do, we had
• 1:07:27
  another date, we had another meal to eat, We had
• 1:07:30
  to do it.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: I forgot to tell them this, you know, I forgot
• 1:07:34
  to say that it would never be enough time. But
• 1:07:38
  we go back to grief, being love, remembering, and we
• 1:07:41
  thank God for the love that we had and that
• 1:07:44
  we can remember because somebody didn't have that, and somebody
• 1:07:49
  wasn't loved, somebody wasn't nurtured, somebody didn't have the opportunity
• 1:07:54
  to nurture.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: And I said that last week. You have some people
• 1:07:59
  that got no time with their mom or their dad,
• 1:08:03
  or their brother or sister because maybe they passed in
• 1:08:07
  the womb, or maybe mother passed during childbirth, or maybe
• 1:08:12
  father passed on the way to the hospital. We don't know.
• 1:08:16
  So I'm learning to appreciate the time that I have
• 1:08:20
  and not the time that I've lost.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: That's what I held on to, was I still had
• 1:08:28
  more time. When my daughter's father passed last year, she grieved.
• 1:08:34
  I said, you're grieving the time that you lost and
• 1:08:38
  not celebrating the time that you had. Because again me
• 1:08:42
  and you, you may have only had two years with
• 1:08:46
  your mom and have zero memories. You may have thirty
• 1:08:50
  years with your father and may only remember a handful
• 1:08:55
  of you know, maybe only have a handful of memories.
• 1:08:57
  So again, in my season of grief, because again it's
• 1:09:01
  a season, it's only a season, I'm learning to just
• 1:09:11
  appreciate the time that I still have, yes, and to
• 1:09:15
  make things right on this side before I transition, Because
• 1:09:19
  remember I told you, I have to pass God on
• 1:09:22
  the way out. I have to have a conversation with him, Yes,
• 1:09:27
  and I have to sit down and God is gonna
• 1:09:30
  pull out that rolodex and say, do you remember all
• 1:09:33
  those times that I kept you and you slandered my name,
• 1:09:39
  you disrespected my children, but I forgave you and I
• 1:09:45
  made you whole again. Yes, So before I can let
• 1:09:49
  you pass, I need you to just take a little
• 1:09:52
  ownership for that. And he's not asking for you to
• 1:09:56
  give him the moon to start. He just wants you
• 1:09:59
  to say I'm sorry. And that's it. Because God is
• 1:10:04
  a forgiving god, Yes he is. I feel like God forgives,
• 1:10:09
  but he does because I wouldn't still be here if
• 1:10:12
  he didn't forgive.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I left when my father passed in March four, twenty
• 1:10:17
  twenty one. I died too when my godmother passed. I
• 1:10:24
  left too. When my niece was found, I left with
• 1:10:28
  her and I was thinking, oh my God, I have
• 1:10:31
  a daughter and this and this and this and not
• 1:10:33
  understanding grief, not from a faith perspective, right, and the
• 1:10:40
  way you have just so eloquently broken it down, I
• 1:10:48
  now understand that I'm human. First, God understands that. See
• 1:10:55
  you said something that it made the hair on my
• 1:10:58
  arm stand up when you said, we put on this
• 1:11:01
  mask and we just go and and we act like
• 1:11:04
  everything is okay, when really behind that mask we're drowning.
• 1:11:09
  We just we're barely making it. But the way again
• 1:11:16
  you explained it to me biblically, biblically, and I needed that.
• 1:11:22
  You understand now we needed it, You needed it. Everyone
• 1:11:26
  that's watching needed this. So now as we lip the
• 1:11:32
  page of the book, your next assignment begins. That's right,
• 1:11:39
  because so let me ask you, coach Nicole with grief
• 1:11:43
  and these in this book and in our chapters, can
• 1:11:48
  we finally put a period at the end.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: You can, but everybody is not going to be able
• 1:11:55
  to do that. Some people will have dot dot, you know,
• 1:11:59
  some will have AMA, some will have a period. But
• 1:12:04
  it all depends on you and what God says. Your
• 1:12:08
  assignment is from the loss. But the key is to
• 1:12:13
  put something there and to not just continue to leave
• 1:12:17
  it open ended. There has to be something that happens
• 1:12:21
  after that.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: In other words, I need to put a period. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:27
  lit the page and continue on with my assignment because
• 1:12:31
  now I have a new assignment, and this assignment doesn't
• 1:12:35
  include my dad, it doesn't include the ones I've lost.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, And a lot of times in my coaching,
• 1:12:45
  I will ask people what are you doing with what
• 1:12:47
  you survived? We survived so much, especially as black women
• 1:12:54
  and in grief, right, because you know the fact that
• 1:12:58
  you survived the grief is proof of God being with
• 1:13:03
  you in the grief. I'm gonna say it again. The
• 1:13:08
  fact that you survive the grief is the proof that
• 1:13:11
  God is with you in the grief. You know, I
• 1:13:15
  feel like God left me. No, He's in it with you.
• 1:13:19
  That's why you are standing up every day. That's why
• 1:13:22
  you can get out of the bed. That's why you
• 1:13:24
  keep eating when you didn't feel like eating. That's why
• 1:13:27
  you didn't lose your mind. That's why you didn't walk
• 1:13:29
  in traffic those types of things.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: That's God. He saved me from myself.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he didn't leave you in grief. If he
• 1:13:39
  would have left you, you would have succumbed to your
• 1:13:42
  own emotions and feelings. But he's really there with you,
• 1:13:47
  taking care of you the same way we take care
• 1:13:50
  of our children, whether they can see it in that
• 1:13:53
  moment or not.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: So before I let you go, I need you to
• 1:14:02
  talk about this book. So I need everyone that is
• 1:14:09
  in this chat. I need y'all to go follow Quach
• 1:14:14
  on all streaming platforms. Let me take a let me
• 1:14:18
  let me just let me take a let let let's
• 1:14:23
  take like a ten to fifteen second, just a moment
• 1:14:28
  of just because you came and you swung on me tonight,
• 1:14:35
  I mean you you let let let me, let me,
• 1:14:42
  let me, let me breathe a little bit, let me
• 1:14:44
  just because nobody told you you didn't prepare you. I
• 1:14:50
  should have, you know what, maybe before we maybe I
• 1:14:54
  should have had a conversation with you first, because you
• 1:14:58
  just I mean, because no what I can't get on.
• 1:15:04
  I'm stumbling over the words almost through my glasses. Y'all
• 1:15:07
  know I can't see. You showed out. You showed up
• 1:15:15
  and showed out.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: Bless you, bless you.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Didn't nobody tell you to come in here and cut
• 1:15:20
  up with no scissors, not to do that.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: I was trying to go gentle to gentle you.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Sure, just what that one?
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: She say?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: That's gentle, baby, I mean she just baby?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 5: You you you you.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: You listen. If if the goal is to make heaven full,
• 1:15:43
  I am doing my part, baby, because the enemy is
• 1:15:48
  certainly doing his part to make it the other way.
• 1:15:52
  So if the goal for all of us should be
• 1:15:54
  to make heaven full, absolutely, and that means every time
• 1:15:58
  we have an opportunity to minage, and I never take
• 1:16:01
  opportunities like this lightly, then I don't know who's in
• 1:16:04
  the chat. I don't know who's listening. I don't know
• 1:16:06
  who will listen later. I can't leave anything to chance.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: No stone left unturned, no stone left.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: Unturned, So my conscience is clear when I finish.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: So you just came in here and just snatched up
• 1:16:20
  every weed, and yes, so all the rows, Okay, I'm
• 1:16:23
  not I'm not even mad about it. So cootional cold
• 1:16:27
  for those that are not familiar with koational cold. She
• 1:16:31
  found me on Instagram and I had to go to
• 1:16:34
  her page. And when I tell you, and this was
• 1:16:38
  about two o'clock in the morning, I'm in a bed
• 1:16:39
  scroll on Instagram and I said, I gotta, I gotta,
• 1:16:44
  I gotta get with her.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: I have to.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: And I was afraid. I'm not gonna lie, y'all. I
• 1:16:51
  was scared because I have been told no so many times.
• 1:16:55
  So Colchal, I want to give you your flowers tonight
• 1:17:01
  because what you did for me and everyone that's watching.
• 1:17:07
  Went to church and this ain't no holiday, do you know.
• 1:17:12
  It's only time people go to church holidays. That's all
• 1:17:16
  people go.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: But you came in and you swam the guillotine. You
• 1:17:20
  you just you you you did it. But I want
• 1:17:25
  to discuss this book.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Heaven Team. So this book was birthed out
• 1:17:34
  of another grief situation. So, uh, this is called The
• 1:17:39
  Heaven Team, a Child's Guide to Love Loss in Heaven.
• 1:17:44
  And so this is a book that my daughter, Layla,
• 1:17:48
  who was six at the time, came up with this concept,
• 1:17:52
  not knowing what she was saying. So we had another
• 1:17:55
  loss in my family. It was my husband's aunt, actually
• 1:17:58
  his mother's sister. She passed away about two years ago now,
• 1:18:03
  and that was the first person that had passed away
• 1:18:05
  that my daughter could identify really, if you will. So
• 1:18:09
  when we went to tell her that Aunt Roslyn, that
• 1:18:12
  was her name, and we honor her as well tonight
• 1:18:14
  that Aunt Roslyn passed away, she looked at me and
• 1:18:17
  she said, Mommy, do you mean the Heaven Team came
• 1:18:21
  to get her? And we said, what is the Heaven Team?
• 1:18:27
  And she said, with a confidence, straight face, isn't that
• 1:18:31
  a group of angels that come and get you when
• 1:18:33
  the doctors can't help you anymore, and the police and
• 1:18:35
  firefighters can't help you anymore, and they come get you
• 1:18:38
  and they help you get settled in heaven. And then
• 1:18:41
  when you get settled up there you go meet Jesus.
• 1:18:46
  And I said, well, yes, that's what happened. And I
• 1:18:51
  shared that with someone. They said, you should turn that
• 1:18:53
  into a book, and I said, I'm not an author.
• 1:18:55
  I don't know anything about writing a book, let alone
• 1:18:57
  a children's book. This is not my lane. So, like
• 1:19:00
  we often do, I ran from this, ran from it
• 1:19:03
  from God for about a year until God said, you're
• 1:19:06
  going to sit down. You're going to write this book.
• 1:19:09
  So I wrote it, and I brought the Heaven Team
• 1:19:12
  to life. So this is Skyler and this is Noah,
• 1:19:16
  and they take our children and even our adults. There
• 1:19:20
  are a lot of people who have purchased it who
• 1:19:23
  talked about you know, and it's fully illustrated, as you
• 1:19:25
  can see there. I love that it relates to us, Yes,
• 1:19:31
  fully illustrated. And they take you on a journey in
• 1:19:34
  this book of loss and how they can understand Heaven
• 1:19:40
  through the Heaven Team. And I had a family tell
• 1:19:44
  me one time, not too long ago when we released
• 1:19:47
  the book. The book has only been out for about
• 1:19:48
  three weeks, so you're not late getting the book. It's
• 1:19:51
  available on Amazon right now. And someone told me, you know,
• 1:19:56
  My daughter hates heaven because she says Heaven takes it everybody.
• 1:20:00
  She doesn't like Heaven, but when she read this book,
• 1:20:04
  she understood that Heaven's really where Jesus is. So now
• 1:20:08
  she's excited to go to Heaven when it's time. So
• 1:20:13
  the story is changing families, it's changing lives. So if
• 1:20:17
  you have a child that is going through loss or
• 1:20:21
  you know, I'm sad to say, but we know life
• 1:20:23
  is going to interrupt, you can get this for your child.
• 1:20:28
  Keep it on the shelf. There are daycare centers, libraries
• 1:20:31
  who've been picking it up, churches, different things like that
• 1:20:34
  that have it. And then we also have also available
• 1:20:38
  on Amazon, the coloring and activity book, so after they
• 1:20:42
  read the story, it's also on Amazon, they can go in.
• 1:20:45
  I know it's a little hard to see here, but
• 1:20:47
  they can do all different types of activities of coloring
• 1:20:51
  of God's Love. They can draw their own Heaven Team,
• 1:20:54
  they can write out a prayer, they can draw a
• 1:20:57
  picture of Grandma, who in the story is the one
• 1:20:59
  that passed away. So you know, there's all different types
• 1:21:04
  of things that we are offering for the Heaven Team.
• 1:21:07
  And this is just the beginning of Skyler and Noah's adventures.
• 1:21:10
  We will be expanding it to tell more stories from
• 1:21:13
  their perspectives, help children from a biblical perspective, and awesome
• 1:21:20
  understand grief I read.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: So I went on the Amazon because I told you
• 1:21:26
  I've been stalking Yeah, and I said, well, we need
• 1:21:31
  a Heaven Team for adults. When or is that something
• 1:21:39
  that we can expect to see in the future.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: It is, so, you know, I didn't know that that
• 1:21:45
  was going to be something, but the masses like you
• 1:21:48
  are asking for that. We need a Heaven Team for adults.
• 1:21:50
  We need something to break it down for us. So yes,
• 1:21:54
  there is a plan to not only expand it in
• 1:21:56
  child form. I can tell you the next one up
• 1:21:58
  will be about Losing Pet for children because that is
• 1:22:02
  something that's also close to them, and that will be
• 1:22:05
  out hopefully early early spring. But yes, there is a
• 1:22:08
  plan to also develop a Heaven Team for adults, hopefully
• 1:22:11
  by summer, if not sooner, so you definitely want to.
• 1:22:15
  The Heaven Team is available on all social media platforms
• 1:22:18
  as well. The book only came out Black Friday, so
• 1:22:21
  you are right on time. You can pick it up
• 1:22:23
  and it'll come in two days before Christmas on Amazon
• 1:22:25
  if you want to add it to some child's wishless
• 1:22:30
  but certainly I highly recommend it. It is important that
• 1:22:34
  we teach our children about heaven, and we teach our
• 1:22:37
  children about loss, and we teach our children that you know,
• 1:22:40
  Jesus and Heaven and that whole process is not a
• 1:22:43
  scary thing, right because when we don't, the world then
• 1:22:47
  will shape how they view it for us.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that I love the
• 1:22:53
  most is that it relates to us. Yeah, Yeah, and
• 1:22:58
  the understanding of sea us. Yeah, explaining how beautiful heaven is. Yeah,
• 1:23:08
  And that's something I can tell you.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: Before I published it, I said, well, maybe there's already
• 1:23:12
  a lot of books in this space that look like
• 1:23:15
  little little black girls and not a black lives and
• 1:23:18
  there's not a whole lot certainly that doesn't break it
• 1:23:22
  down like this in a way that we explain the
• 1:23:25
  Heaven team in a way that is easy for them
• 1:23:28
  to understand.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: Can.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: So that's really what I want people to know is
• 1:23:33
  this was created for our little Brown children, not that
• 1:23:37
  everybody cannot take part in it, of course, but I
• 1:23:39
  had them in mind because oftentimes we are not represented,
• 1:23:43
  and representation matters everything.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the most beautiful things when I
• 1:23:48
  when I saw the cover, because I went to your
• 1:23:51
  link tree.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: Like I told you, you're talking me. Yeah, well yes, well,
• 1:23:57
  if you find my LNK tree, we also have heaven
• 1:23:59
  tea merch you can order it. Yeah, you can get hats,
• 1:24:04
  t shirts, hoodies, tumblers, all kinds of things that will
• 1:24:07
  ship to you directly. You can do that. Can you
• 1:24:10
  post a link for the book? Can I put it
• 1:24:11
  in the chat?
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, so definitely you can. You can certainly, you know,
• 1:24:19
  go ahead and pick it up. I will put it
• 1:24:21
  in the chat. But I highly recommend everybody consider taking
• 1:24:26
  advantage of picking up the book.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: It it's man, it is that book is so beautiful.
• 1:24:34
  And I'm loving the fact that I'm seeing more books
• 1:24:40
  from authors that look more like us, yes, touching, that
• 1:24:45
  are going into these waters, you know, because at one
• 1:24:49
  point we didn't have that representation.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I stumbled across I cannot remember her name, but she
• 1:24:57
  did a book about God, but a black one. Mm hmmm,
• 1:25:04
  I cannot. I'm gonna have to go back and google.
• 1:25:06
  But when I tell you, thank you, you are welcome.
• 1:25:16
  I just and I'm gonna keep saying thank you so
• 1:25:19
  because I'm so grateful and I'm appreciative that I could
• 1:25:26
  be in your presence. Oh bless you and for you
• 1:25:30
  with everything that you're going through, because I'm telling you
• 1:25:33
  when you when you told me that your mother in
• 1:25:36
  law passed, I said, okay, I was already prepared to
• 1:25:40
  push the episode back to next week. I was already prepared.
• 1:25:43
  And that's why I asked. And when you said, this
• 1:25:46
  is right on time, I knew. I knew it was
• 1:25:52
  gonna be deep, but I didn't know that you was
• 1:25:54
  gonna drag me down and and and and and bring
• 1:25:57
  me back up. But with a better understanding and then
• 1:26:03
  with a better my vision is clear, with the clarity, yeah,
• 1:26:10
  of grief, because again I know a lot of people
• 1:26:13
  that are grieving.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: Right now, absolutely absolutely.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: And them being angry with God, and you coming in
• 1:26:23
  and you're breaking it down and you're saying, you told
• 1:26:26
  us God knows grief. He did this, this, He went
• 1:26:32
  through this, this, this, this, this, He didn't like doing it,
• 1:26:36
  but he had to.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had to. It is not I don't know.
• 1:26:43
  For some reason, I don't have an option to put
• 1:26:44
  it in the chat but that means see if you.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, can you put it in our private
• 1:26:52
  chat and I can copy and paste.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: Let me see if I can. I don't know if
• 1:26:58
  it'll it's not giving me that either.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know why.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you can chat me and then
• 1:27:03
  I can maybe do it. But while we try to
• 1:27:06
  figure that out for Elizabeth than anyone else looking, if
• 1:27:08
  you do go in Amazon and type in the Heaven
• 1:27:10
  Team book, both books will populate for you. And if
• 1:27:15
  you go to my social media's you can also find
• 1:27:18
  my link tree that will have where you can access
• 1:27:21
  the merchandise and things like that as well. That is
• 1:27:23
  not on Amazon. That's through a separate system. But let
• 1:27:27
  me see. Okay, let me say if I can post
• 1:27:32
  it there.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna copy. Restream is so new for me.
• 1:27:45
  I used to use stream Yard.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, there we go, we go, Okay, and this is
• 1:27:52
  my first time being on restream actually, so I typically
• 1:27:56
  use I used to use stream Yard, but stream Yard
• 1:27:59
  has gone to like almost fifty dollars.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: A month, and I'm just like, that's all that was best.
• 1:28:04
  So I'm navigating through restream. And but for those this
• 1:28:09
  is you know what I should have done it. Oh no,
• 1:28:11
  I'm gonna do it this way. I'm gonna go this way.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 5: Because I want them to Okay, copy, and this is
• 1:28:23
  how I will do this.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: We go and.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, come on and paste.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: There we are.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, there we are. I'm gonna do it this way.
• 1:28:53
  All right, there we are. So for those that are watching,
• 1:28:56
  I have posted the link. I'm going to leave it up.
• 1:29:00
  This is the link for the book The Heaven Team.
• 1:29:03
  It is on Amazon. If you go to her link tree,
• 1:29:07
  maybe you can find it there. When I tell you,
• 1:29:09
  this lady is everywhere. I cannot wait to see her
• 1:29:14
  on the big screen bringing the Heaven Team to a
• 1:29:18
  movie theater.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: Listen, that is close to my heart. I have not
• 1:29:23
  said that out loud, but is that is divine confirmation.
• 1:29:26
  That is something big picture that is on the table,
• 1:29:30
  you know, So I'll just speak it into existence. You
• 1:29:33
  know that we envision some YouTube shorts those are in development,
• 1:29:37
  and then you know, potentially moving it to a feature movie,
• 1:29:41
  you know, and things like that. So definitely stay tuned
• 1:29:45
  to everything the Heaven Team has to offer. If you're
• 1:29:47
  looking for more faith over fear content, I am on
• 1:29:51
  what I'm calling a sacred pause at the moment, just
• 1:29:54
  while I can lay my mother in law to rest.
• 1:29:56
  But I have a ton of content that you can
• 1:30:00
  go on in any of the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram,
• 1:30:03
  TikTok and you can go and watch my content to
• 1:30:06
  get you know, whatever you need to move you from
• 1:30:09
  a place of fear to faith and from surviving to thriving.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: When I tell you, we're gonna talk on the back
• 1:30:18
  end because I want to. I want to connect you
• 1:30:20
  with somebody that has done reality shows. She actually did.
• 1:30:26
  Do you remember the Whitney and Bobby Brown reality show?
• 1:30:29
  Who could forget that? And she also did the Nelly
• 1:30:32
  and a Shanty show. Okay, well I'm going to I'm
• 1:30:36
  gonna shoot miss Tracy your information. Yeah, and you two
• 1:30:40
  ladies collab on the back end because I would love
• 1:30:42
  that he is a black woman that is showing that
• 1:30:46
  black women can excel at anything they put their mind to.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, And I don't have a background in entrepreneurship at all.
• 1:30:54
  I'm very comfortable with my nine to five. But when
• 1:30:56
  God says go, you have to trust him. You got
• 1:30:58
  to step out the boat and you've got to go.
• 1:31:01
  So for anyone that's doubting, you know. Can I do this?
• 1:31:04
  Am I cut out to do what God keeps putting
• 1:31:06
  in my heart? Yes you can.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: We are proof of that, Ashley and I both And
• 1:31:11
  I'm going to introduce you to my sister Vanessa. Vanessa
• 1:31:14
  lives in Arizona. She is like the expert in p y'all. Okay,
• 1:31:21
  twenty twenty six, y'all, y'all. Just and that's her right
• 1:31:25
  there in the chat. That's her right there.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yes, definitely, I would love to connect and bring us.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Let me tell y'all, we are going to make magic
• 1:31:37
  for twenty twenty six. We are talking, but we are
• 1:31:41
  women about action right now and coaching Nicole. Before you
• 1:31:49
  leave on tonight and before you lay.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: Your head, God, bless you, oh blessed, thank you.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna m I just want to say thank you,
• 1:32:09
  thank you for just being present despite your season right now.
• 1:32:19
  You are so strong, You're resilient, you are amazing the
• 1:32:26
  most importantly your God's child, and I thank God for
• 1:32:31
  allowing us to cross past. And everybody will tell you that.
• 1:32:37
  Anybody that knows me, they know I cry. I'm so
• 1:32:41
  passionate about this, and thank you for allowing me to
• 1:32:46
  be the student. Thank you for teaching me and everyone
• 1:32:50
  that has watched how to navigate grief and for removing
• 1:33:01
  the negative stigma that surrounds grief because it could be
• 1:33:07
  a beautiful thing. I'm so sorry everybody that knows that
• 1:33:13
  I'm like the biggest crybaby ever.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: It's okay. It's okay, and I'm glad. I'm grateful to
• 1:33:19
  be able to share that and remember it's love, remembering
• 1:33:23
  it's not a negative. It's okay to grieve. It's okay
• 1:33:27
  to ask God. It's okay to say I am dealing
• 1:33:30
  with love remembering and I am.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't feel bad about it now. I
• 1:33:37
  understand Yeah, because you broke it down in a way
• 1:33:42
  that we could all understand. Because we've been told you
• 1:33:47
  can't do this, you can't do that, you know what,
• 1:33:49
  You're never supposed to do this, but you gave us
• 1:33:52
  the confirmation. I want everyone to know that this will
• 1:33:59
  not be the last time you see Coach Nicole on
• 1:34:02
  Black Girl interrupt the podcast. So I had a conversation
• 1:34:05
  with her. I'm gonna let y'all and I had a conversation,
• 1:34:09
  and I extended an extended invitation for her to be
• 1:34:14
  on Black Girl Interrupted, so this won't be the last
• 1:34:17
  time you see her tap in with her. She's amazing.
• 1:34:23
  And when I tell you, guards center my way for
• 1:34:26
  a reason and I'm not even mad about it.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: I love that and I'm not even mad about it.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: And I love you out loud and on purpose.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: And it's nothing you can do about it. That's what
• 1:34:38
  I always say.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: And yes, it's permanent until Jesus Christian Christ says, come on,
• 1:34:47
  you got gotta go over here and water this grass.
• 1:34:50
  I need you this garden over here, because that's how
• 1:34:53
  I feel like the transition is. I become a gardener,
• 1:34:57
  I move up to a cook, I become the designer,
• 1:35:00
  come everything that God has designed us to be. So
• 1:35:05
  on that note, I do want to say thank y'all
• 1:35:09
  so much for tuning into another beautiful episode of Black
• 1:35:12
  Girl Interrupted. The podcast, Black Girl Interrupted. The podcast streams
• 1:35:15
  live every Tuesday and every Wednesday at seven pm Central
• 1:35:19
  Time apm Eastern Time. I stream live to YouTube and
• 1:35:22
  Facebook and you can catch me. I'm on all streaming platforms.
• 1:35:26
  Follow me everywhere and stay tuned for some of the
• 1:35:30
  beautiful things that we're gonna have going on. In the background.
• 1:35:33
  So I love y'all. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone enjoys
• 1:35:37
  the rest of that week. Again, shout out to my
• 1:35:41
  girl coaching Nicole for coming through Black Girl Interrupted for
• 1:35:44
  coming and just gracing us with her presence and taking
• 1:35:49
  us to church because she did. And no, it's not
• 1:35:52
  a holiday, but we love you over here on Black
• 1:35:55
  Girl Interrupted the podcast. My condolences to your family. Thank
• 1:36:01
  you as you journey tomorrow to celebrate the life of
• 1:36:07
  your beautiful mother in law. Thank you, transition have been peaceful.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you so so much. I'm grateful, I'm humbled and
• 1:36:15
  I'm honored.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: Absolutely well, we love you. God bless you, and we'll
• 1:36:21
  see you in January, yes, ma'am, because I will get
• 1:36:25
  with you on those episodes because I'm gonna this weekend,
• 1:36:29
  I'm gonna put them together. But I'm definitely gonna need you.
• 1:36:33
  I absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have three episodes in
• 1:36:39
  mind that I'm definitely gonna need you, and it is
• 1:36:44
  regarding mental health. I will be there, think you thinking, thinking, well,
• 1:36:49
  God bless everyone. We love you, We love you, and
• 1:36:52
  we love you and it ain't nothing you could do
• 1:36:54
  about it. So everyone have a beautiful night, and i'll
• 1:36:57
  see you next Tuesday. I love you,