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Transcript

Kiersten Schlough: This Is Not Who God Says I Am · Why I Believe

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Hello and welcome back to Why I Believe.
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I am your host, Michelle Von Ruden.
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And today I have my friend Kirsten Slu with me.
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Kirsten, how are you doing today?
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Doing great today, Michelle.
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How are you?
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I'm doing well.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Can you please introduce yourself to for the audience?
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Well, hello everybody.
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My name is Kirsten Slew.
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Professionally, I do design and photography, but we're not here to talk mainly about that today.
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We're here to talk about who I am and the things that I love outside of what I do professionally.
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So outside of that, I'm married to a great husband.
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His name's Trevor.
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We will be married for coming up on three years on July 1st.
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So that's really exciting for us to be able to get closer to celebrating that milestone in our lives because we went through a lot within our first couple of years of marriage.
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And then after that, I really love to help people learn about what they're just passionate about, what they're excited about, and just really equipping them and how to be able to
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use their skills and their gifts and their abilities to further the Lord's kingdom.
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And that's something I really love doing, especially with middle schoolers and high school students and just seeing like that's a hard phase to go through in your life where you're
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going through so many changes.
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You're going through a lot of things in your life.
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You're asking a lot of questions.
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And so I really love to work with youth and that's actually how I met my husband.
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We both served as youth leaders back when I was in college in Menominee when I was a student at Stout.
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we're just really enthusiastic about bringing people to the Lord and just pointing people towards Jesus no matter what it is that they're facing in their lives.
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That's awesome and I love that you're giving back to kids that are going through middle school because you struggled in middle school.
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You were bullied in middle school.
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Do you want to tell us a little bit more about why and what that looked like and how faith kept you going strong?
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Absolutely.
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So yeah, that was a hard time in my life and I think that's probably partly why I have such a heart for really working with teenagers because I know that that's a very hard time
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in life.
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I remembered going through that myself.
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I was really bullied by a lot of girls in my grades in middle school.
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A lot of the bullying went away in high school, but I still wrestled with identity when I was in high school about who I was and what I loved to do.
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and trying to figure out how do I balance all of this in my relationship with the Lord and what does it look like to honor him through that time.
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When I was in middle school I really struggled because they taught girls and guys separately and no matter how hard I tried to fit into the girls around me I just didn't
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feel like I was fitting into that puzzle and that was really hard for me because I wanted to really have relationships with women around me and with the girls and my classmates and
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my peers.
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But with the way that our classes were taught in middle school, like they taught girls and guys separately and we all wore uniforms and it was just, it was not the best experience
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for me.
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But it really allowed me to lean into my relationship with the Lord during that time and really truly dive into scripture and learning about what does scripture say about who I
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am?
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What does the Lord say about who I am and how he's created me to be?
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And how do I fully lean into that?
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So lot of that time was leaning into just giving my grief over to Him, letting Him take all my problems in the world and just fully surrendering that to Him.
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And as hard as it is to pray for the people that hurt you, like that's something scripture calls us to do is to love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us.
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And so a lot of that time that helped me heal as well was praying for the girls that I knew were hurting me, or praying for the people that were giving me a hard time, or...
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Whatever it was that I was going through in those moments and even since then, this has been a common pattern that I continue to experience through seasons in my life, is it is
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so, so, so hard to pray for those that are hurting us.
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But that's exactly what scripture calls us to do and what the Lord is wanting us to truly be doing is to be praying for those that are hurting us because, sure, anybody can love
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people that love them, but it is so much harder to love those that are really hating you and
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just throwing so many ugly things away.
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And in praying for those that were hurting me, I was really discovering how it was really molding me more and more into Christ's image and the way that he has created me to be.
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And just fully leaning into that with confidence helped me continue to gain confidence during that time.
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Yeah, that's great.
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And I love how you really leaned into your faith because that's helpful, but it's helpful on top of that.
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So you're getting bullied.
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You're not clicking with people that are around you.
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And then you get diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia.
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mean, talk about pouring it all in, right?
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So for those of us who don't know, can you tell us what dyslexia and dysgraphia are and how that affects you?
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dyslexia is the more common well-known, one of the frequently known learning disabilities.
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A lot of people know and understand it as difficulty with comprehending things from reading or flip-flopping letters around or words.
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For me, it was more of an issue of comprehension.
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I went to a different high school than I did middle school, and it was actually when I was at the high school that I went to.
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Shout out to the mini ha ha and the red hawks.
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Once I was there, I had a couple of teachers that pointed out to my parents, hey, we think that you should probably consider taking her in to get tested to see if she has any
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learning disabilities.
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Not because they were trying to put me down, but because a lot of teachers there also understand what to look for in learning disabilities, whereas my middle school did not.
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And I couldn't understand why do I keep thriving so well in the arts?
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Why do I love the arts?
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And I just really struggle with reading and comprehending things.
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Why do I take such a long time to take tests?
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Like, that's really confusing.
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And what I learned when I was diagnosed with that is, so obviously with dyslexia, you have difficulty reading from your paper to your brain and fully comprehending what's going on.
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But then dysgraphia is the opposite of dyslexia, so it's a double whammy as my dad likes to call it, because dysgraphia is pretty much the opposite of dyslexia where you have a
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long time and a lot of difficulty with comprehending things from your brain and somehow getting it written out onto paper.
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And so that's why I was really struggling in middle school and like my first year of high school, I struggled for a long time with feeling really stupid and really dumb because I
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couldn't get done with tests as quickly as everybody else.
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or was taking me a longer time to do academic things and it wasn't because I wasn't smart, it was just that my brain comprehends things differently and it takes a bit more time to
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comprehend everything.
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And so learning that was like, whoa, okay, now I understand why it's taken me so long and I'm kind of glad that I do have an official diagnosis because from that moment on out, I
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was able to get extended time on tests like AP exams or...
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In high school, when you get the big tests for preparing for college, like the ACT and SAT and all those things, I was able to get the extra time that I needed to be able to take
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those as well as I feel like that I could have and be able to continue putting my best work forward.
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And so that really meant a lot to be able to get that extra help and to know that I had teachers who cared enough about me to point out that observation to my parents and my
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parents saying, okay, maybe we
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should listen to that and take their recommendations.
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I'm really glad that my parents did listen to that.
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And I kind of wish that I had been tested sooner because it would have prevented a lot of pain deep down below the surface I wrestled with in middle school.
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Yeah, and I like how you finally realize that it's not that you're not smart.
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It's really just how you learn.
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Right.
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And I think, that, you know, in middle school and even in high school, just being slightly different, even if it's something out of your control is.
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is heartbreaking because kids are relentless.
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you know, sometimes you get lucky and you go to a smaller school, but a lot of times you're at a bigger school and you have that population, right?
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And it sounds like that's kind of your situation.
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So looking back now, besides maybe testing earlier, what advice would you give to parents who are walking in faith, but also really struggling with what their kids are going
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through?
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How would you wanted help looking back now?
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So advice to the parents is going to be different than advice to the teens.
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I'll speak to parents first.
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If you are realizing that your teenager or your kid is acting out or acting differently or struggling with something, do not be afraid to advocate for them.
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You get to be somebody who gets to help them and gets to push through things with them, who gets to build them up and encourage them.
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And this is why I really love youth ministry and why I love teens is
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As much as, this is speaking to teens, as much as we love our parents and the wisdom that our parents have to share with us from their life experiences, sometimes it's good to talk
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to somebody that isn't your parent about what you're going through in your life.
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And that was something that I really experienced a lot, especially when I was in college and going through a lot of hard things in my life, is because of my honesty and
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vulnerability with students about what I was facing in my life.
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I had students come and approach me like, I'm wrestling with this right now.
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Can you pray with me?
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Can you walk me through this?
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And it's just a beautiful time of being able to disciple people through the seasons that they're going through in their lives.
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And so two completely separate responses, but generally the same thing I say to both is lean into praying and asking the Lord, what is it that I'm supposed to do next?
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What are my next steps moving forwards?
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And that was something that was really, really important for me to be leaning into during that time myself, is asking Lord, what on earth am I supposed to be doing next?
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Like, I don't understand what's going on.
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then as I was getting closer to my upperclassmen years, because I was diagnosed when I was a sophomore in high school, when I got into my junior year and my senior year of high
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school, I had the opportunity to take a lot of different electives that really leaned into my strengths.
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and it was leaning into those strengths that started to help me realize, actually, I didn't realize that you can go on to do this professionally or you can go to college for
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this and that's something that's kind of exciting to learn about and I want to learn a bit more about it.
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And so I really poured into that during that time as well.
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And my teachers, of course, they all brought out the best in me.
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They really built me up and encouraged me in those ways because they were seeing that potential and what I was thinking about doing.
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And they continued to encourage me to
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lean into that and continue searching and asking questions about what should I be doing next after high school?
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Like that's a common question that a lot of seniors and juniors think about is what do I do next?
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And I think no matter, even if you don't have it all figured out, this is something I say to a lot of seniors is you don't have to have it all figured out.
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That's the world trying to tell you you need to have it figured out.
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But if you don't have it all figured out, that's okay.
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Lean into the Lord and ask him, what do want me to be doing?
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Where is it that you want me to be going next and how can I be honoring you in the skills and the abilities that you've given me?
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I love that.
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I think that's so huge because a lot of times we just think what we think and we forget that there's somebody else who's really calling the shots, right?
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So it's a lot easier when we lean into what God wants us to do with our lives versus trying to fight him at every turn.
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yeah.
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yeah, sound advice for parents.
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You know, I think it's so good.
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And that's why I wanted to ask that question is because a lot of times we don't understand because we haven't been there, but you have.
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on multiple fronts and you have that hindsight 2020 like this would have been really helpful or you know this is how it would have like things to progress and so thank you so
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much for sharing that story and you know at the end of the day bullying is not okay yes I understand that it's people trying to compensate and it's just you know it words hurt I'm
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at the end of the day like words hurt we can fix broken bones
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but it's so much harder to heal the emotional scars.
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And I wish that I could sit here and say, okay, Kirsten had her run of it in high school and middle school and it was done, but it wasn't done yet, was it?
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No.
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So unfortunately you experienced some church hurts and not in...
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uh
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more emotionally, not physically or sexually or anything like that, but more emotionally.
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So why don't you, as you're comfortable, walk us through what happened and how you were able to recover?
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Because you said something really key and I want you to share that with everybody today.
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So this is definitely an erecting part for me to share, but first and foremost I want to say if you've been through church right before, I am incredibly sorry that you have
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experienced that because it is not a reflection of your relationship with the Lord.
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It is not a reflection of Jesus either.
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It is reflection of us being humans who are sinful.
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We're gonna mess up.
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We're gonna make mistakes.
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We're going to go through
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several things in our lives and several trials, but how are you responding to those trials and those things that you are going through?
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And after I'd been let go from my position, I was a designer at a church.
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It was a really hard time and I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so much pain and where the pain was coming from.
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And that was really hard for me because I'm like, need community.
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want to lean into community.
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Scripture talks about the importance of having community around you when you go through hard times.
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And it also talks about considering it pure joy because it's a time like in James, the beginning of James, it talks about how it's going to persevere your faith and it's going
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to make you stronger.
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And I was like, Lord, I just don't understand what's going on right now because I still love design and photography, but I'm really hurting and trying to do it.
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And I'm really hurting and trying to even listen to any type of worship music right now.
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Like what on earth is going on?
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And it was, I was in this very room actually where I'm right now.
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filming this podcast with you and I just felt like the Lord was telling me, hey, go turn on some worship music, sit on the floor, and process through this with me.
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What do you mean, Lord?
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That's gonna feel kind of painful for me.
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Oh, it will, but I'm gonna point out some truths to you that you may be hearing during this time.
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And what I said to you guys earlier was the first truth that he pointed out to me is, hey, what you've been through is not a reflection of me.
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in your relationship with me.
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I'm still here for you.
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I still care about you.
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I will still continue to advocate for you.
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No matter what circumstance you're facing or what it is that you're going through, you already know the giftings and the abilities and the skills that I have given you and how
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you're wanting to use those to give glory to me.
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Don't get away from that.
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Don't shy away from that.
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Don't get scared of that just because you've been through some hurt.
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You already have a therapist that you're seeing right now.
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who is also a believer and she's helping you process through former trauma you've been through in other workplace environments and she's gonna continue to help you through that
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now and I'm gonna continue to show you truths through scripture or through her of things to process through with me and that was really an encouraging time for me and the Lord was
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like hey go pick up your pen and pencil again go get your camera like we're gonna have some fun with this and I was like why?
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this is gonna feel hard and he's like yes but it's gonna help you heal and so during that time one of the things that he not only revealed that to me but he also revealed to me
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he's like I love your creative abilities that I've given to you and I love when you use those to give honor to me and to just simply love on other people and to build other
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people up and that's what I want to see you continuing to do now it might be in a different context than what you think down the road or what you have been feeling like you
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were supposed to do but
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I'm going to continue to give you the encouragement in those areas and continue to build you up in that way because you might not see what I'm doing now, but you will down the
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road.
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And as painful as that season was for me to be picking up that pencil and like that notebook or the camera again and just processing, that was exactly what I needed because I
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just let it all out to the Lord.
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remember sitting in my room and just bawling my eyes out listening to worship music and it was exactly
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what I needed because it was part of what I needed to help me heal and fully leaning into there's a lot of truths written in worship songs as well, a lot of scripture in worship
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music.
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And so I fully leaned into that and really looking at what does God say about me?
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What does he love about me?
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Why has he created me this way?
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And what does he want me to continue doing?
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So that sent me into a time of healing and continuing to process what I had been through and where the Lord may be leading me.
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And on top of that too, if I didn't go through those things that I did, I probably never would have gone to where I go for church now.
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I love the church that I go to and I love my church body.
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I love the young adults community that we have around us.
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And my husband and I have grown so much since we started going to Oasis and I am so grateful for the people that we're surrounded by because like we're even with young
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adults, we're going through a season of sharing our testimonies right now or sharing testimonies with other people because
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If somebody's not a believer, they can argue with scripture all they want to.
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But they can't argue with your testimony because it's the story of how God is working in your life and what you're experiencing and what you're going through.
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And so that's why I think there's so much power in sharing your testimony with others because scripture also says we're going to overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word
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of our testimony.
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And I just think there's so much power in that.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I love that you're doing that as a church and as a young adult group and you're sharing those stories because I've heard a lot of stories and one of the things I've heard
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come at again and again is that, and even in my own story, is that their friends asked them to come to a youth group.
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Their friends kept asking them to come to a youth group.
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My friends asked me to come to a youth group in high school, right?
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And so,
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I think that's so important because again, community, community, community, because we can't walk this life alone, right?
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And even Jesus knew that his people needed community.
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That's why he had 12 disciples, right?
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Because they needed each other, because they were going to go through some hard things.
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They didn't know it.
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Mm-hmm.
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had an idea, but then we're go do some hard things.
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community and whatever stage of life you're in is super important.
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That's why if you think about it, we have dorms and colleges, right?
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Cause we're putting them in a community.
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And when you have your family and that's your community, you have your work and that's another community.
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And then you retire and then you're in a retirement community, right?
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And so community, community, community.
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And there's a theme here.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yep.
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do any of this alone.
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And the one person we need first and foremost in our lives is Jesus.
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I truly believe that, you know, and I think there's a lot of us that say, okay, I'm a believer, I walk my faith, but even you, you said you left a bad scenario, right?
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You called it church hurt and you found even more strength in favor.
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at a different location, at a different church with a different community.
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And I think that just goes to show that not every place is gonna work for everybody, right?
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So somebody else could have went to that same church and had a totally different experience, right?
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Because as you alluded to, there's still really good people there because it's not the community that's hurting.
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It's the person, it's the human, it's the center, it's the one person within that community.
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And I think that's really important to point out because it happens across all, all locations, religious and secular, right?
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And I think that's super important to really point out.
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but I'm happy that you found a place that you feel at home and that you feel that your faith has grown.
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So walk me through this.
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So how has your faith grown?
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So what are you doing differently now walking in faith?
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I mean, obviously you stepped out and you did the business, right?
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But how else are you walking in faith that's different from, let's say even three or four years ago?
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So I've learned so much this past year.
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My husband and I are going through a marriage course right now.
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Just the power that there is in unity amongst first and foremost like how God designed marriage and the intention that there is behind it and just growing with each other and
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with other married couples too.
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But before that we took a dreams and visions course and I never really under like I knew about the story of Joseph and like you'll read stories in scripture about like the Lord
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talks to you through like a dream or a vision.
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but I didn't really quite comprehend exactly what that meant until we took that course.
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And there was so many different times when it would show different scriptures that talk about understanding of dreams and visions or interpretation of dreams and visions.
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And what I had really learned during that time is when I was going through therapy, I had started to experience dreams and visions, but I just didn't know what it was or how to
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really comprehend what I was going through.
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I talked a little bit about it with my therapist and she encouraged me.
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hey you should ask the Lord a bit more about that or hey you should ask the Lord to show you more or just ask him if there's any meaning behind what you're seeing and I didn't
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really fully comprehend all of that till actually going through the course and then reflecting on some of those things that I went through in therapy and there was somebody
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at church who had actually said to me like hey I think the Lord uses like dreams and visions as a way to help heal you from what you've been through
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And she didn't even know my story of what I had been through previously or that I was seeing a therapist to process through any trauma I had been through in my life previously.
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And it's just such an amazing, like, awe-striking experience for me to be going through that now and understanding what I do now, because I never would have guessed about that or
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thought about that.
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That's the way the Lord is working on healing me and continuing to form me into His likeness.
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And...
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It was just once he showed that to me and revealed that to me like back in the fall I was just like, whoa, oh my goodness, this is insane.
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Wow, look at what you're doing, Lord.
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Oh my goodness.
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And I just, there was probably not a time when that went by when I haven't been in awe about processing through the pain that I went through, but the ways the Lord has healed me
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from it and the ways that he has taken what the enemies tried to use for bad.
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and how he's turned it into something good.
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And that was just such a rich, rich experience for me to go through at those times to start comprehending what does this actually look like, Lord?
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And let me ask you some questions.
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And there were some people that had really hurt me in college.
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And there have been times when I've had dreams and visions of them because they were really close friends of mine back in like our freshman and sophomore year.
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And then junior year on out, especially with pandemic on out, there were some hard things that
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we had all started to go through and they became very distant for a particular reason.
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That's a different story for a different time.
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But what the Lord has really shown me since is like, he's even had them in dreams and visions where I've been reunited with them or where I've been praying blessings over them
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and their marriage.
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And with what I've been put through by them, you wouldn't think like the world would say, don't you want revenge on them?
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Don't you want to be angry at them?
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Yes, I had a season where I was frustrated and angry with them, but that's part of processing through grief and part of processing through just things in life that you need
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to go through.
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We're all humans.
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We all experience emotions.
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And I needed to go through those phases in order to be able to go through complete healing and really, truly fully forgiving them for how they had treated me.
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like, honestly, like if they ever heard this podcast, like I would want them to know that I have fully forgiven them.
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for what they did do because there's such power.
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Forgiveness isn't for the people who wronged you, it's for you and for you being able to like of how somebody has hurt you.
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And that was something that the Lord started to show me through not only actually what I was feeling and processing through my feelings, but on top of that started to show me some
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dreams and visions of things with them as an extra way of reassuring me, hey, you have healed from what they did to you.
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and you have fully forgiven them because you wouldn't be feeling this way if you hadn't forgiven them yet.
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Yeah, and the Lord shows up in mysterious ways.
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If you're still and you listen, right?
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So whether it's a vision, a dream, or even the Holy Spirit talking to you, right?
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You have to be willing to listen.
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Yes.
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Amen.
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Right?
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That's a key component to a relationship because a relationship isn't a one-way street.
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Right?
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It's give and take, back and forth, right?
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Asking questions, waiting for answers.
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So you have to have both parts of that relationship to have the relationship.
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Yeah.
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Kirsten, thank you so much for being on today and for really being vulnerable and opening up about, you know, the bullying, the chur-chur, and, know, your experience in college for
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the little bit that we got into that.
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And I really appreciate it because not everybody can come out and share their story.
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But as we know, sharing stories and testimony is a way for us to learn from each other and to understand that we're not alone in the walk that we're walking.
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Mm-hmm.
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And as we end our time here together today, I would really appreciate it if you could share one of your favorite Bible verses with us as we end today.
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Okay, there are obviously a handful of ones that I have loved throughout the years, but the one that's really standing out to me right now is Ephesians 3.20.
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I had memorized this verse when I went to a Christian camp growing up, and I didn't realize how much it was gonna stick with me since, but I've leaned into it so much more in
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my life now than I ever have before, because I have some mentors in my life who have tied their faith together into what they do professionally, and this was the verse that they
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really leaned into.
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and they've seen the good fruits of it as well and I'm excited to see what the Lord does but it's Ephesians 3 20 and it's to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could
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ever ask or imagine according to his power that's at work within us.
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Beautiful.
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Yes.
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His power within us.
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I love it.
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Again, thank you so much for being here.
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I appreciate it.
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And thank you for the vulnerability.
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Yeah, thanks for having me on, Michelle.