Transcript

0:02
Thank you, Garrett, for that lovely introduction.
0:05
Some of you may not be able to see me right now, but he had an attempt of a joke and the joke had to do with the sheep and I'm actually wearing a Sherpa vest today.
0:16
So I do feel like it was fitting for today's podcast.
0:20
My name is Micah Dillon and I have been a faithful agent for 20 years, actually.
0:27
It was my first job out of college.
0:31
And in 2004, I graduated with my marketing degree from Old Dominion University.
0:37
And that was in May.
0:39
And in June, I got married to my high school principal.
0:44
And so we were eight years apart and hey, you know, it worked out.
0:50
And so then we took the summer, we took the summer to honeymoon, if you want to call it and enjoy life.
0:58
And I was like, what am I going to do with my life?
1:01
don't want to be a nurse.
1:02
I don't want to be a secretary.
1:04
I had worked in banking.
1:08
What are the options?
1:09
I live in a small town here in Franklin, Virginia.
1:12
We're under 10,000 people.
1:15
And that's the majority of what the females do here is work in those three categories.
1:21
And I knew that was not really going to satisfy me.
1:25
And By September of that year, a friend of mine from church had an appraisal done at her house and they got into a conversation and they said that they were looking for agents.
1:38
And she said, Micah, I think you would be good at that.
1:41
Now, mind you, my parents still live in the same house and next June they will have been married 50 years.
1:47
So they've never moved.
1:49
I'm not accustomed to moving and have lived in...
1:55
20 minutes from where I grew up my whole life.
1:58
So I've never really moved out of the area in 43 years out of Hampton Roads.
2:04
And so I was like, okay, I don't really know anything about that, but something sparked me to move forward with it.
2:11
And I did a three week intensive in Virginia Beach at Alpha College.
2:16
And by October of 2024, had my license and I am now 20 years later to say it was the right choice.
2:28
It was the right choice.
2:30
And I listened to a friend's voice and I really believed that the father sent her that directive to help me out.
2:38
So that was the faithfulness of the father and that was in 2004 as I said, but actually that was a good year in real estate y'all.
2:47
So my first year in real estate, had success and what I thought was success, I had some closings and those the closing started to increase and they said when you hit that 10 years things just really start working in your favor and I can say that started to happen and it started I started to win circle of excellence and so I'm four times four times four times in 20 years may not sound awesome but for somebody out here where the prices are a little bit lower I felt like that was an accomplishment and I'm thankful to have me and exceeded those goals.
3:25
But in 2017, there was a pivot in my life.
3:30
So my husband and I had just had our 13th wedding anniversary and a week later, I found my husband dead in the shower actually, y'all, to a heart aneurysm.
3:43
So he was not sick.
3:45
I do think looking back that he was in congestive heart failure.
3:49
So note to self for anyone listening, if you are having chest pains, do not get in the shower to relax.
3:58
Because if you actually have a...
4:05
a whatever those are called, a blockage, it can move to your heart when your blood flow gets increased and that happens when you're in the shower.
4:19
And so when in doubt, head to the ER, y'all.
4:23
So at 43 years old, he passed away that day and that was June 12th of 2017.
4:29
And I remember it vividly because I was supposed to show a house that day, the day before I had canceled it and It was a relocation deal and it was a Navy federal client and somebody was supposed to show the house.
4:44
And while I was at the hospital and they're tapping me on the shoulder to say, I'm sorry for your loss.
4:49
The first thing my brain wanted to do was to go outside and find out did they show the house and did that client get followed through on.
5:00
That goes to show the brain in survival mode.
5:05
starting to survive.
5:07
And I don't like that.
5:10
I don't like that story that I couldn't even, I had to go with what I knew.
5:14
And for some reason, real estate felt safe.
5:18
And I had to handle the next crisis.
5:20
And that was making sure that that deal got handled.
5:25
And then after that, I have been a singer and there's musicians on every side of my family.
5:35
My youngest memories are singing little songs in church for Christmas cantatas and being the girl who changed the transparencies at the church before we had digital things.
5:49
And so I got the cool job of changing the transparencies and being really good with my timing.
5:54
It was, I mean, it's totally, totally.
5:57
And so you got to sit there and, know, it was a big responsibility.
6:02
So my mom was the worship leader in a small church out here.
6:06
I lived in a town of 130 people and No stoplight one post office.
6:15
I was like I Think I was born into the wrong family.
6:19
You know, I tell people I'm a city girl born in the country I'm a city girl born in the country.
6:25
What am I doing out here?
6:28
but but The Lord has its ways.
6:33
anyway, all that to say, that's my beginnings is being in church.
6:38
My parents got saved in the Jesus revolution of the seventies.
6:44
And so they were radically saved.
6:47
And so I kind of grew up around church, around believers and my faith journey started very early on.
6:59
And interesting in my story, my mom's dad passed away of a heart attack.
7:05
My dad's dad passed away when I was 16 of a heart attack.
7:09
And now my husband also died of a heart aneurysm.
7:14
So the men in my life have had some heart problems.
7:19
And that had me digging deep.
7:22
But while I was in that hospital, all of a sudden, lyrics.
7:29
started to show up in my brain.
7:32
I will never forget it.
7:34
Sanctus Rio has a song called Hold On To The Promises.
7:38
And so I have to go in and out of melodies.
7:41
So I'm just going to sing it and it says, hold on to the promises, hold on to the promises.
7:47
Jesus is alive, so hold tight, hold on to the promises.
7:51
So just remember, I just got told my husband died.
7:55
I'm trying to deal with this real estate deal to see what's going on.
7:57
And then these songs are starting to come in my brain.
8:00
Neither life nor death can separate us from an eternal love of a God who saves us.
8:08
So hold on.
8:10
And I was like, my gosh, there's hope.
8:15
Like there's hope, you know, and something.
8:18
And so what I can now say that I couldn't say then is that The Lord will use whatever you have in your heart pantry to use as recall, to communicate to you.
8:30
And for me, lyric was safe.
8:32
And I didn't really know I could hear from the Lord.
8:34
So if any of you are questioning, can you hear from God?
8:38
I didn't hear an audible voice, but a lyric that came to comfort me started happening on June 12th of 2017.
8:48
So those things still choke me up.
8:51
because that's the kindness of the Father.
8:54
I didn't pray a prayer.
8:56
Go ahead.
8:57
No, no, I'm sorry, Mike.
8:58
I was just going to say, so all of this happens, right?
9:02
In an, in an instant where you weren't prepared, you weren't expecting it.
9:09
I love you.
9:10
have great sakes.
9:12
said whatever's in your heart pantry.
9:13
I've never heard it said that way, but that's such a good description, right?
9:17
But these, these lyrics that the Lord brings to mind to start helping you through this Season this incredibly difficult season right you enter into a season of grief.
9:29
You got two kids at home That are pretty young at this point and you lose your husband all of a sudden you're in real estate Which is a we all know it's a game that's difficult to slow down in And so you've got this incredibly fast-moving industry that you happen to be in you got a buyer that you're curious about right that day and then everything changes all you know flips on its head and As you kind of go through this grief process, right, you've come through this and you've started to just have, well, you can tell the other part of the story too, right?
10:04
But also you kind of come through this incredibly difficult season and say, I want to take what I've gone through and I want to use it to serve other people, right?
10:14
Which is the intent of why the Lord puts us through things.
10:17
And so I admire you for that.
10:20
But finish, why don't you finish the story and then we'll walk.
10:23
how we got to this place of the Widow Walk.
10:31
For 17 days in our church, we had just had our church anniversary once a year we do that.
10:38
Actually next June on June 13th, the church that I'm a part of, which I married the pastor's son, will have its 50th anniversary.
10:49
So it has been in in-laws family for 50 years.
10:53
They were one of the church plants from Rock Church in Virginia Beach from the original one in Kintzville.
11:01
They were under Bishop Jimenez and Ann Jimenez.
11:04
And then they were sent out in the seventies and they never looked back.
11:08
And this town has been impacted by this family that I married into for 50 years now, almost 50 years.
11:19
And so what a legacy, what a heritage.
11:22
You know, and so, parents.
11:30
Those Sunday school songs matter.
11:34
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine.
11:37
Don't hide it under a bushel.
11:39
What we deposit in will come out when the going gets tough, if those deposits are life-giving things.
11:50
And so I even tell our young people today, look, there's a lot of anxiety going on.
11:56
There's a lot of mental illness talk going on.
11:59
but there's a lot of lyrics out there that are talking about death, know, sex, drug, rock and roll, all these things.
12:05
But it's what we're depositing in our pantry.
12:08
So we're self-sabotaging when we're putting songs in that are talking about death, that are talking about suicide, that are talking about these kinds of things.
12:17
And I'm a testimony to say those weren't the songs that I put in.
12:22
And when death faced me, I didn't have lyrics of death to haunt me.
12:29
had songs of deliverance singing over me.
12:33
I woke up every day for the next year at least with songs singing over me in my brain.
12:39
I didn't have to put them on.
12:41
I had enough in my playlist in my heart, if you want to call it, to recall things.
12:48
And I have to tell you, Garrett, that two months before my husband passed, I was in Virginia Beach at that said church at a concert and someone came up to me and that I knew at the end of it and she said, Micah, you need to get out of your head and start writing.
13:05
And it felt like a sucker punch.
13:07
I was like, what in the world?
13:09
Where did that come from?
13:11
Two days later in my sister's house in Virginia Beach, a lyric came called, called the joy of the Lord.
13:18
Two months later, I had that song finished.
13:21
I sang it two days before my husband passed at our church convention called the joy of the Lord.
13:26
and I sang it again at his funeral on June 16th of 2017.
13:31
And I told the Lord, that is not how I saw this song going.
13:34
That is not.
13:36
That is not.
13:38
So the joy of the Lord has been my strength.
13:45
And to be honest, folks, joy and grief don't seem like they're friends.
13:55
How can you have joy when you just lost the love of your life?
14:02
And what I tell people is that God did not stop loving me.
14:09
when he rewarded my husband with heaven.
14:14
I've never heard it said that way.
14:17
And what does heaven have to offer?
14:21
Joy.
14:24
So I believe that I was giving an eternal deposit, a sovereign gift, that seven years later I can say that I'm on no antidepressants, I've never had to go to ways of coping, and the joy has continued to remain and sustain itself.
14:45
And I have to tell you, people are waiting for the other shoe to drop, thinking I couldn't sustain it.
14:52
Well, obviously in our own strength Garrett, can't, but if it's something supernatural, something that was a gift, then it can go and grow bigger than we ever thought possible.
15:05
Amen.
15:10
So that was kind of a little bit of how things began.
15:15
And in the Old Testament, they talk about the royal secretaries.
15:21
There were scribes.
15:23
They're scribes.
15:25
And I'm not a writer, and I never had been a up to this point.
15:31
But in the process of my husband passing, I received so much revelation that I was compelled to put a pen in my hand and start writing.
15:41
It was just dumping out, dumping and dumping and dumping and dumping.
15:46
And I felt more alive in the aftermath of my husband's passing than I ever had before.
15:56
And people were coming to my house thinking they were coming to console me and telling me, well, you've made me feel better than...
16:08
was here to pick you up, but actually you picked me up.
16:10
I've been told it for years, especially in the first couple of years.
16:15
How have you comforted me when I came here to comfort you?
16:19
Isn't that the gift of the Holy Spirit, the divine encourager to comfort us in time of need and to bring me language to continue to comfort me?
16:29
So fast forward into 2018.
16:33
Let me just tell you folks, Grief is an intense emotion, intense.
16:40
Love and grief are very similar in intensity, but their expression is very different.
16:48
And so I had no tools to understand how to deal with grief.
16:55
And I said, I gotta learn about feelings.
16:58
And I almost had a t-shirt made and it was gonna say, crap, I have feelings.
17:02
Crap, I have feelings.
17:05
Who wants to live like this?
17:06
Man, I was just skating through life, doing real estate deals, transactionally, you know, you're just moving through it, moving through it, moving through it.
17:14
And I don't have feelings.
17:15
Now I'm feeling these buyers anxiety now and it's like sticking to me and I'm having to work out more to shake off these feelings.
17:24
And now I'm feeling like a higher responsibility in my behavior to these clients and all these things started happening in my convictions about things.
17:33
my level of repentance and cutting off time in areas to get more time with the father, because I needed to understand the father's heart.
17:44
What do you know about my future?
17:47
Because I saw the next 20 years with my husband and what it was going to look like, and it was easy, and it was going to be good.
17:54
And that chapter ended overnight.
17:58
How do you walk out a story that you don't know?
18:05
So I went on the journey of discovering the Father's Heart and I said, you know, it started with the heart, it's gonna end with the heart for me.
18:13
I'm gonna start, I'm gonna be talking about heart matters the rest of my days.
18:19
And that's what happened.
18:22
And so I took a life coaching class to get emotional intelligence.
18:27
And I needed language on emotional things, cause I realized I didn't have it.
18:34
And in the process, an emotional awareness started waking up and a spiritual awareness started waking up.
18:41
And they had us do this activation.
18:46
And they said, can you imagine a ball of light?
18:52
And that's your worth.
18:54
And you're holding this ball of light.
18:58
Now can you imagine who you gave your worth away to?
19:05
Well, just so you know, I'm not really a picture person.
19:09
So I got nothing.
19:11
I was blank.
19:12
So my Lord, I got problems.
19:15
man, I'm really broke.
19:16
Man, I'm really broke down here.
19:17
I got so many walls up inside me.
19:19
I can't even get through.
19:22
But two days later, so it did take some time.
19:27
It connected.
19:30
I had given my worth to money.
19:34
My net worth mattered to me.
19:38
Where had I handed it over?
19:40
I had chased the dollar.
19:42
And I remember there were times in real estate where we had to, I was challenged about my commission at the closing table for all that matter to get the deal closed.
19:53
And there's a rule in real estate, some closings better than no closing.
19:57
And so what do we do?
19:59
We compromise to make the deals work.
20:02
And I felt shortchanged a lot of times, like, man, my services were rendered incomplete.
20:09
Why am I getting cut?
20:12
And I realized I had a poverty mentality, a scarcity mentality that there wasn't enough and I had to hold on to that commission check because I didn't trust when the next one was going to come.
20:26
And in that process, I realized that my identity was wrapped into my net worth.
20:34
And as long as I kept growing my net worth, my identity was validated.
20:42
And that is a shaky foundation, y'all.
20:45
That is not a firm foundation.
20:48
Money comes and goes.
20:50
In this business, we see it maybe more than most.
20:53
The economy's out of our control, the interest rates are out of our control, the demand for sales and the inventory's out of our control.
21:03
So many things, and yet we try to control it, and we have all these algorithms.
21:08
It's CSR, all these...
21:09
things that man has created to help us manage the control and yet we fail.
21:17
And for some, it's a complete success until things go completely out of whack and we have seen it.
21:24
I have seen it really flip.
21:28
And so I...
21:35
that my worst is that I'm a daughter of the king.
21:42
And when you realize that you're a daughter of a king.
21:48
Abundance.
21:51
is our inheritance.
21:53
We get to receive from a father who loves to give good gifts.
22:00
And whether you had a dad who was generous or not, and to be honest, my dad was a farmer and he was of the old school way where you work and you gotta earn to receive.
22:16
But I'm here to tell you that, Father God, you don't have to earn nothing.
22:21
to receive from him.
22:24
He loves you just because you're you.
22:29
And he made you uniquely for such a time as this.
22:33
And so I was like, my gosh, I need to learn how to hear from the father because if he can share with me things about myself to reveal about me, I think I can do something.
22:47
I think there's some purpose here.
22:49
And so I started journaling.
22:51
And those journals turned into a quote book.
22:54
I have a quote book called My Mended Heart, and it's 100 original quotes with scriptures.
23:00
And I say it's a little chicken soup for the soul.
23:03
And it has been a pocket-sized little baby book.
23:06
But for widows, you can only absorb a nugget of truth.
23:12
And a quote book is a perfect gift.
23:15
So if you are listening and you know a widow who you don't know what to get them, head on over.
23:21
to my website called the widow walk.org and under the grief expression tab, you can find my store with all the happy things that have flooded out of my heart because this girl learned she was capable.
23:36
And so what I tell people is that as I continued to go to the father's table, he's now made me able to sit at anybody's table.
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The father gave me confidence that it It didn't matter about my pedigree.
23:53
It didn't matter about my college degree.
23:56
It didn't matter about those things because when you sat with the father...
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And he gives you revelation.
24:07
There's no counter.
24:11
And there's people out there that are hurting.
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and they don't see a way out.
24:21
And by the grace of God, I ran to the Father again and again and again and again and again, and he never got tired of me.
24:34
And it wasn't a bother.
24:35
And look y'all, I had a five and seven year old at the time when my husband passed.
24:40
A five and seven year And one year on New Year's Eve, we were gifted some paper lanterns.
24:51
And so on New Year's Eve, we went and we took them outside, but we wrote notes on them before we lifted them off into the universe, hoping that they would reach daddy.
25:03
And my daughter wrote on there, it was good with you and it's been good without you.
25:14
That was from maybe an eight or nine year old.
25:21
And I said, God.
25:24
Don't let this story of tragedy.
25:27
I don't want to be a statistic.
25:31
I want the story to be uncommon.
25:37
And I want kids who are not a statistic about single family homes and childhood trauma and all these terms that are very buzzy right now, that there can be a God who comes and covers you.
25:52
And I just have to read a scripture that really spoke to me.
25:59
At the time I was reading the translation, the NCV, which is the new century version, and it said this in Proverbs 15, 25, the Lord will tear down the proud person's house, but he will protect the widow's property.
26:18
When you lose your husband and you're so-called covering.
26:24
It does not feel safe.
26:29
And when my husband passed, I didn't feel peace.
26:34
Even though I had joy, there was, there was, there was, I felt like a sitting duck.
26:45
and these scriptures came to comfort me.
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And I said, that's a promise.
26:52
Man, I'm taking you at your word.
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I'm gonna call you on the carpet on this one, Jesus.
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We're gonna find out just how serious you are.
27:04
And I went to another concert.
27:08
And for some reason we got into a conversation about feathers.
27:13
And he said to me, you know, I've gotten feathers throughout my life at different times and different colors.
27:19
I said, really?
27:20
That is so interesting.
27:23
And he said, I asked him one time, are these feathers for?
27:25
And he said, just know there's more where they came from.
27:27
That was the thought that he got.
27:30
And I said, okay.
27:33
Okay.
27:35
All right, Lord.
27:36
I need proof that my guardian angels are here.
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I need to know that I'm safe.
27:43
Y'all, I have a shadow box of feathers that I have found in random places, in random spaces, and I wanted white ones.
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And they showed up for me.
27:57
There's a scripture in Proverbs, I mean in Psalms 91-4, this is a popular one.
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He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you can hide.
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His truth will be your shield and protection.
28:14
The wonder of creation became a loving expression for me as I walked through this last seven years.
28:22
And y'all, I have to tell you, every June, which is my birthday month, our wedding anniversary month, and my husband's death anniversary, every June for the last seven years, and I've been in this house 16 years, there are fireflies in my woods.
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and the neighbor on the other side this year cut down almost all the trees that were the divider between us.
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And I said, man, I don't think they're gonna come back this year.
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There's no, I don't know.
28:57
They're not gonna come back.
29:01
And the night before Father's Day, the lightning bugs showed up again.
29:08
So if any of you are out there wondering, does God care?
29:13
Does he see you right where you are?
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I'm here to tell you, he started shouting through creative expressions, through trees and lightning bugs and feathers.
29:27
And I have dolphin stories.
29:29
And I became that crazy girl who's like, my gosh, why are you talking to the dolphins?
29:34
And now people send me pictures about their dolphins because Circumstantial things happened that were beyond my control.
29:44
And now when I go to the beach I say, you don't have to, but I'm out here waiting if you want to bring them by.
29:53
And here on Thanksgiving, we went to the beach this year for Thanksgiving as a family and we had an oceanfront, which I've never had with my family before.
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And guess what?
30:05
There we are on Thanksgiving and we look out there and all the dolphins start going across.
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Why?
30:15
We don't have to, we just say thank you.
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So what is a faithful agent?
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It's someone that is so thankful.
30:23
They are thankful to live.
30:25
They're thankful to be able to connect with people.
30:28
They're thankful.
30:29
They're not just people, y'all.
30:31
They have hearts.
30:34
And they need people who know how to connect to each other's heart because we're walking around with people all day long and no one ever feels heard or seen or acknowledged for who they truly are.
30:47
And I realized I need a change because I want to see people the way you do.
30:54
I want to see the good.
30:56
I want to see hope.
30:58
I want to see promise in people.
31:00
I want to see vision over people.
31:02
And so he started giving me vision.
31:04
And why am I on this podcast y'all?
31:06
Because my brother-in-law said, I think you should talk to Garrett because he has a two-ten collective and it's all about Christian agents.
31:17
And I've been in an office with Christians that were agents, but I was really asking the Lord this year, am I supposed to stay in real estate?
31:24
Because in April of this year, I founded a nonprofit called The Widow Walk.
31:30
And I really feel I'm supposed to start advocating for widows and widowers in my local town.
31:35
And my heart is really to take this beyond here and have chapters all over the country where we're checking on each other.
31:42
There's a caring model.
31:44
that he's growing a vision inside of me and I thought real estate was done.
31:49
And then in August of this year, I started journaling.
31:52
And when I started journaling, I felt like the father said, no, you've had favor in this for 20 years.
32:01
I never said that this wasn't your calling.
32:04
I said this wasn't your identity.
32:10
Jesus man, you hear how I'm talking y'all that didn't sound like me But it was encouraging and and directive that helps me know who's speaking Micah, serve the people and keep coming to my table.
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That's all I've asked of you.
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So I am here to tell you that I'm here to serve the people.
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And part of that is to contend for their heart.
32:41
Part of that, our mission, if you're watching the video, I have a mug that we just got in, my merch, I'm creative.
32:50
And our mission statement, I mean, it looks so happy.
32:55
It says, a community of widows on a path together towards a new start with a new finish.
33:01
We have a new start.
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and we have a new finish.
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And, and it's, you've taken this experience, right, of grief and turned it into exactly what you said.
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Like it's so much of, you know, just listening to your story is encouraging to me.
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And I just wanted you to have the room and the space to just share of letting the Lord use you.
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Right.
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I mean, I think it's such an example of none of us know what the ending is going to be.
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Like you said, you had these 20 years planned out with your husband and they were amazing.
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And it's, know, when my wife and I not the same thing, but we talk about, she lost her dad.
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lost my mom.
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It's you think you in your head, you had all these memories that were coming.
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You had all these experiences that were coming and you feel like you lost them, even though in the Lord's timeline, they, they weren't there.
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And, but it becomes difficult and you work through that grief and it is that time to come to the table and say, okay, Lord, this is not my life.
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Anyways, I, I'm not in charge of this, right.
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For us, like I happen to be in real estate.
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I love what you said.
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It's not your identity, but it is your calling.
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And we're here for a reason.
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And for you, it's working through that and allowing the Lord to just lead and guide you and to say, I want you to go serve the least of these, the widows, right, who have been left alone.
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whatever their situation is, I want to go serve them.
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And the cool part of the story from my perspective is you say, I'm going to do it right where I am, which is in the side of real estate, right?
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And we can do those kinds of things.
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so, you know, I, my hope for anyone who listens to this and has listened to this, you know, up to this point is that they stop and first seek the Lord and say, Lord, you've given me a story for a reason.
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And I want to use that story for your, your glory and for your honor and your praise.
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And I want to come, like Micah said, I'm going to come eat at your table.
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And I love your, you've say over and over, right?
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And you've said that through our friendship too, is you weren't a writer, you weren't any of these things, but the Lord just made you one so that you could go serve those whom He's called you to serve.
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And we all have that.
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Why?
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Because we have the Spirit living within us.
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We have a Holy, glorious Father who has good for us, right?
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And has a desire for what we will live out and who we will impact.
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And so, using our story to do exactly that, just like Micah has done by creating the Widowalk, which could be a whole podcast in and of itself, right?
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As you sharing about that.
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But Micah, I think you have a thought.
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I want you to take us out on that thought real quick, but then just share how to, if they want to connect with you or if they want to learn about the Widowalk or whatever, how would they go about doing that?
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But by all means take, I think you're looking through something.
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So take Take time to find what you want to say, share that, and then just share with us how they could connect with you.
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You know, as you mentioned, as you mentioned, having lost yourself.
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In 2021, in 2020, so during COVID, I lost my grandmother and she was the last grandparent.
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And she lived beside me my whole life and had really been one of my greatest cheerleaders.
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And she's hard for me to talk about because I miss her very much.
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And I wrote about this in my second book, It's called Heart Scribe Vibes.
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so I have a 12 piece album.
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These are available on YouTube.
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Micah Noel is my real name, my first and middle name.
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So Micah Noel.
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So if you want to find those, they're on Apple and Spotify.
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Noel, N-O-W-E-L-L.
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It's a little bit different.
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So look it up.
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But there was a song, it stung, Garrett.
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when I knew that my grandmother was closing out and we had some time with her.
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shut...
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And I felt anger coming up.
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And it was like, my husband was a loss.
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I mean, that's the hugest loss.
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But the compounding of losses started to sting a little bit more.
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And I said, man, these people cannot be replaced.
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And my foundation started to feel shaky.
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And another unraveling.
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And there I was in the car, crying.
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Then another song came on the radio.
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Fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love, my fear.
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I was like, my gosh, Micah, I've been standing on the love of my grandmother, standing on the love of your parents, y'all.
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They won't remain.
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We are passing through.
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And if we are holding our worth or our love, I realized so now all of a sudden my love was based in people.
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And it wasn't on the firm foundation of the father.
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And I had to get realigned, adjust some things within my heart because it was trying to take me out.
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And these are opportunities, y'all, when you go through levels of grief and compound deaths that bitterness is close behind.
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You can get very bitter in the process and it doesn't make you better.
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And so I'm so thankful, but two days before she passed, nobody contacted each other.
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My sister and I, she's also a musician, showed up within 30 minutes of each other.
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And there was four generations in my grandmother's house of my aunt and my mother and myself and my sister and our daughters.
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And we got to sing the blessing over her.
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That's a gift.
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in her home, in her home to sing the blessing over my 92 or 93, I don't even know now, year old grandmother.
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And as I was holding her hand, this old song comes to me and it says, I'm gonna run through the troops and leap over the wall.
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I mean, you see I'm a little ADHD on some things.
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So, and I'm like, what?
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This is a weird song.
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Like, why is this coming?
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And all of a sudden I'm like, I told my aunt who was staying with her, said, she wants somebody to hold her hand when she finally lets go.
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And I told my grandmother, grandma leap over this wall of death, man, leap.
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It's an opportunity to leap.
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And there's a song in here that I wrote that was called a kiss on the hand or something like that.
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And I just got this whole imaginary picture of my grandmother.
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this person coming to take her home and holding her hand and her seeing Jesus for the first time.
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And she was like, my gosh, it's always been you.
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I know you.
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I've been walking with you and I finally get to see you in the fullness.
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And I'm telling you y'all, it changes you on the inside and your perspective about death.
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But I wanna read this out of chapter, the treasure holder.
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And it's one of my favorite parts.
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And this is verbatim from a journal.
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I found a a hidden treasure inside my earthen vessel.
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It has taken something, some time to grow it from a thistle to explode it.
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But I started to water it and tell it to grow.
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I wouldn't have known it if I didn't start watering it.
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But when I found the hidden treasures that were implanted from the creator and you see them and honor them and water them, until they start to grow and remind them that they matter so, something transpires.
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Fruit by the foot! And when you hear the word should, I should do this and I should do that.
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Yet, when I surrendered the shoulds, I started to think about the woods.
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Well, I would do this, and I would do that.
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And that was that.
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The shoulds got taken over by the woods.
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And I would go on to discover all I was meant to find within the treasure chest called love divine.
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I love that.
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Go pick that up, right?
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They can pick that up, thewidowalk.org, right?
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They can go check that out.
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They can pick that up.
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And there's so many other resources.
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And I think above all, if there's something stirring in y'all's heart, if it's grief or if you're a widow, please reach out to Micah.
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But also if it's just stirring in your heart that whatever it is that you've gone through and you wonder, how could I turn this into something that would honor the Lord, reach out to her also.
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Right there, you know, it's not, nothing is easy.
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things are challenging and, as believers and all the stuff we go through, but the reality is it's not to be in a vacuum.
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It's not to be in a box.
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It's to be a blessing to others.
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And the, the, love the way you put it, Micah, the joy of your husband going home to Christ.
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Like what a joy.
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was thinking about that the other day and I'll wrap with this real quick thought, but think about the other day is I miss my mom.
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It's been two years.
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The reality is.
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I've had plenty of tears and sorrow and grief.
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She hasn't for a second and never will for eternity, which is doesn't make sense, right?
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But she will only live along with your husband, along with your grandmother, along with anyone we've lost who know and love Christ and is known by or are known by Christ.
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Only ever joy for eternity.
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What an incredible homecoming that is.
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And that's why It's a celebration.
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And that's why for us as agents, and we talk about this on the show, our mission, guys, is the gospel.
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Our method is real estate.
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We all have the same mission.
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It's to be light in a dark world.
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And Mike is doing that and Mike is serving that widow community and others.
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So, agents, I love you.
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know that Micah does as well.
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And I, it was honored to have Micah on.
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I hope it was impactful for you as it was for me.
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You guys know I talk a lot.
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So to just listen to Micah, that shows you how much I admire and respect her and her story.
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And so y'all, I hope you were impacted by it as much as I was.
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I love you, faithful agents, and I will see you next week.