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Practical Chats for Intentional Living
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Monday Dec 02, 2024
Monday Dec 02, 2024
248. Stories Series: Discipline of Celebration in the Midst of Unexpected Loss and Grief with Jonathan Pitts
Psalm 37:4 (ESV) "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
**Transcription Below**
Questions We Discuss:
- How did your magazine, For Girls Like You, originate?
- How did life unexpectedly change during this season of your life?
- Will you catch us up to speed on what God had planned for you next?
Other Episode Mentioned from The Savvy Sauce:
Jonathan Pitts is a pastor and author. Since the passing of our founder and his late wife, Wynter, in 2018, Jonathan Pitts has been steering the ship at For Girls Like You. A ministry executive for almost 20 years, Jonathan is a pastor and a relationship-minded visionary leader who is passionate about reaching girls with the hope of Jesus and how the hope that He gives shapes their identity and purpose.
Jonathan is the father of the four girls that have inspired the ministry from the very beginning, Alena, Kaitlyn Camryn & Olivia, and a son, Jonathan Joshua Arrow Pitts. He is married to his best friend, Peta, and an avid golfer.
Follow Jonathan on Instagram
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: Leman Property Management Company has the apartment you will be able to call home, with over 1,700 apartment units available in Central Illinois. Visit them today at LemanProperties.com or connect with them on Facebook.
Jonathan Pitts is my guest today. His story of choosing a sacrifice of praise and remaining hopeful in the midst of experiencing loss after loss is inspiring. I just pray that this is uplifting to all who hear it.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Jonathan.
Jonathan Pitts: Glad to be with you, Laura.
Laura Dugger: Well, we're going to start by actually going back. So can you take us all the way back to your upbringing and just share a little bit about what childhood was like for you? [00:01:18]
Jonathan Pitts: Sure. So I grew up in South Jersey, which most people think New York when they hear New Jersey, but kind of a really rural spot. My mom is the daughter of German Lutheran immigrants and grew up in Iowa. My dad was an African-American guy that grew up in South Jersey. And so I found myself kind of growing up in a pretty, I would say, poor family, mixed family. I'm mixed, so half German-American, half Black. It was really interesting.
I grew up in a Christian home. My parents are awesome, godly people, really humble and God's done a lot in our family. The beginning of my life was a bit of an identity crisis, because I kind of didn't really know who I was. I grew up in a pretty rural town. I was kind of brown and looked like a Black guy, but didn't really grow up around a lot of other Black people. So I just kind of grew up a little bit confused about who I was, and that would kind of work itself out. [00:02:17]
And what's really neat is that God's worked in my life to kind of build a whole ministry in my life out of that. But yeah, like really humble means, South Jersey, really small, tiny, really Jesus-loving church that really shaped my siblings and I. I have Identical twin brother and three sisters. My parents were the kids' ministry leaders my whole life, and didn't even really retire until about maybe 10 years ago. So yeah, that was childhood.
Laura Dugger: That's incredible. I've got a few follow-up questions. But first, before I even circle back to that, what was your own story of personally putting your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Jonathan Pitts: You know, I would say my testimony is that I've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. It's that scripture I always go back to, because I grew up in a home where I don't really remember a day where I didn't know the Lord, or I didn't fear God, or I didn't at least seek to honor God and want to know Him and want to talk to Him.
But I'm the kid that grew up in a Christian home that went off to college. [00:03:19] And when I got to college, I didn't literally say this, but in my mind I was like, Okay, I'm going to just kind of really taste and see what the world is like. I kind of grew up very, you know, pretty sheltered, pretty straight-laced kid in high school. I was an athlete. So playing sports.
I was an Eagle Scout. I became an Eagle Scout at the age of 17. So I was kind of in a pretty like... I guess I'd call it pretty moral environment. And so I get to college and, you know, I'd never been really tested, I guess I'd say from a worldly perspective. And so when I got to college I kind of lived the life that many of my generation live, which is go to college and party.
What I would say about my life is really quickly in that journey I realized... I kind of tasted a little bit of the world. And it tasted really bitter to me. It wasn't satisfying. There was nothing about it that was fulfilling. I'll spare you all the stories. But in general, I was kind of living this double life. I was in the gospel choir. I love this saying, I was in a very musical family. I was in the gospel choir. [00:04:18]
My gospel choir leader was a man named Greg Ross, such a godly, humble man that was able to walk with college students where they are. And many of them oftentimes are kind of in this ambiguous expression of the Christians. They're trying to figure out what it means to be an adult, what it means to be a Christian. You know, it's like two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, two steps back. He was a really patient man with me.
Anyway, I was kind of living in two different worlds. And it's what's really beautiful for me is, you know, it was really kind of in relationship with my first wife that I was actually able to really rededicate my life to the Lord. Okay, I'm all in. I'm going after Him. I'm chasing after Him. And obviously that hasn't made me perfect, but it did give me a heart after the Lord that was always there. I think it was just a little bit covered up by just walking the ways of the world a little bit. So that's kind of a quick version.
But I would say, even then, like the Lord never left me. He was always there. He actually loved me in my ambiguity. [00:05:17] I remember being in college and just partying, my roommates, my college roommates, who are some of my best friends to this day, but then like doing a Bible study with them. I actually ended up apologizing to one of my roommates a couple of years later for my hypocrisy and He was like, man... He actually... what's really beautiful is He saw Christ in me. I've actually had an opportunity to disciple Him over years. God's just really kind and generous and patient and long suffering with us, isn't He?
Laura Dugger: Oh, that is a good word. And how amazing that it came back that way. And yet I'm wondering... I'd love to zero in on that time of life of college and young adult years. Because you brought up Wynter, who you met, I believe, during that time. So could you kind of unpack...? You've alluded to Wynter and then also alluded to her being a part of your testimony. You rededicating your life to the Lord and your ministry, I think you were saying, is what helped you with your identity. So can you unpack all of that within your young adult years? [00:06:25]
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah. I'll try. I met Wynter. I was 21 years old. It was a couple of days after 9-11, we found ourselves at one of my really good friends, we were at a party. And it was kind of like 9-11 had just happened. So everybody was so sad. And so we're like trying to liven up. It was my buddy's birthday.
So I actually met her at a party. I actually got her number because I'd seen her on campus but I'd never... I remember seeing her on campus a year prior to meeting her and being like, who is that? I've never met her before. I was just kind of intrigued by who she was. But I was like that guy that was like super. I never called her. I was just kind of scared to call her. She was friends with my friend, so he made the connection for us.
But anyway, I never called her. But maybe like two weeks later, three weeks later, I was in a class and she actually... I think I write about this in my book, or we write about this in a marriage book we wrote. But she actually was kind of stalking me on campus. She knew where I had this class at. And she stopped me one day and she goes, "Why haven't you called me yet?" So I called her. [00:07:24]
We went on our first date, which was Monsters Inc., the original Monsters Inc., which kind of dates me. And quite honestly, you know, we both kind of grew up in similar environments. She grew up with a single mom, but her mom got saved in 1980, the year she was born. And, you know, just really always was discipling her and encouraging her in the Lord. But she found herself in college the same as me, just trying to figure out who she was. I would say God used us in each other's lives to bring us really close to Him.
Anyway, it was kind of interesting. We dated for seven months. I proposed to her seven months into dating. And we were then engaged for a year. And it was really in that engagement year... we were sharing stories like our background. We both grew up in really charismatic churches. We had a lot in common. Even like some of the trauma we had from our upbringings and some of the great things about our upbringings, all that. So we kind of connected over that.
I would say our dating months and in the year of our engagement, God just really did a work on us to solidify who we were as individuals and who we were as a couple. [00:08:29] It was actually at her church, her childhood church that we both dedicated our lives to the Lord, which is really beautiful. I remember it to this day.
We get married in June of 2003, which was the same month we graduated from Drexel University in Philadelphia, which is where we met. But I'll never forget about a year before we got married, I remember sitting down on her stoop. She was in kind of like a brownstone. She's in an apartment like a brownstone in Philly, a really beautiful place. And we're sitting on the stoop and she said to me, she said, "I want to write a book." I just kind of laughed at her. I said, "Write a book about what?" And she's like, "I don't know. I just want to write a book."
And being the kind of self-righteous kid I was, I just said, "Well, you might want to figure out what you want to write a book about before you say you want to write a book." And she just kind of blew me off. Long story short, I'll kind of speed it up, we had our first daughter, Alena, in 2004. She was born less than a year after we got married. So she came pretty quick. We actually started our journey together after college in South Jersey, where I lived. [00:09:32]
And I was in pharma sales and my company downsized. But they downsized at the same time that we actually went to Dallas to visit Wynter's family. Her uncle, Tony, who's a pastor in Dallas, Tony Evans, and her cousin, Priscilla Shire. It's this family that was a ministry dynasty that I kind of didn't even know who they were.
So we went on vacation. But as God would have it, He would use that trip to change our lives because we'd go there with our, I think, eight month old baby at that time, Alena. And all of her cousins had kids. She had four cousins with kids. None of my family had kids at New Jersey. None of her family had kids. Her brother didn't have kids in Baltimore where she grew up.
Long story short, her uncle was like, "Hey, I'm looking for a grant writer. You're a grant writer." Wynter was a grant writer by trade, pretty new. And I was looking for work. And so anyway, we said, "We'll try it for a year." We went to Texas.
And really God would use Texas to shape her life, shape my life, our family, but really our ministry as well. [00:10:31] Wynter would begin writing. She'd begin kind of blogging and creating content. She did grant writing for a couple of years. Then she just decided... We had two daughters pretty quickly. And then after our second daughter, Caitlin is her name, she said, "I think I need to be home."
So in that process, though, God really did a work in her heart because, you know, we were both working pretty good jobs. But we weren't making crazy money. We really cut our income in half when she came home. It was really a trust process. But God did a work in her heart because the coming home.... You know, she always wanted to be a professional. She kind of struggled to be a stay-at-home mom or a homemaker or whatever you want to call it. And she wrote this scripture on a card. Her cousin would find it years later. But it was the scripture, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. But she would write about that scripture impacting her. But she had actually put that scripture in her closet on the wall.
Her cousin who would buy the house from... somebody that bought the house from us would find that card in the closet where she would pray. [00:11:32] Long story short, God would use that verse to really just pull her heart deeply into being a mom. And it would be in that process that God would actually have her begin writing.
She actually saw a need. Our oldest daughter was seven at the time and she saw a need for more content for twin girls, just girls that were beyond the mommy and me phase. And so she started creating what we just called a resource at the time, which would become a magazine called For Girls Like You Magazine, which is still a magazine to this day with thousands of subscribers.
So, anyway, that was happening in her life. At the same time, I had begun working in ministry with Tony Evans and... Actually sorry, Anthony Evans, who is a singer. I got a job down there, just kind of a sales job that I was in. But I had lots of margin.
And he was on the road singing and released the album. He was like, "Hey, do you want to go travel with me?" And so I traveled with him. And traveled with him one time... traveling with him two times to a bunch of times to road managing him. And then I began managing him.
Long story short for me, that kind of fun weekend kind of job, just traveling to churches to help him with his concerts would lead to full management of his career for about seven years. [00:12:45] And then that would lead to me working at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, which is Dr. Evans Church. And really I would kind of grow up in the Evans brand of ministry and find a lot of joy and purpose in, I guess, two things.
One, nonprofit leadership. The second would be pastoring. To this day I still pastor and I still lead ministry. I actually continue the ministry that Wynter began for Girls Like You. That would kind of be our time. We spent 14 years in Dallas raising our girls. It was a wonderful season of life before stepping into the next season. So I can keep talking about the next season if you want me to, or I can stop. So you let me know.
Laura Dugger: No, I definitely want to hear more, but I'll just interject. This is where I remember hearing about you and hearing about Wynter. And she was sharing on a podcast one time... I think she stayed up all night when she had this desire to create, like you said, just a resource. It was for your daughters. And she cut out pictures and I think maybe had some fashion pieces in there, but also probably Scripture and things about the Lord. And she put this all together, staying up all night. I think you all and people around her started encouraging her, "There's more here than just a nice resource for your family." Is that right? [00:14:05]
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah. I mean, to me, I think it's one of the greatest encouragements to do whatever God puts on your heart, not having any idea that He might actually take the thing that you're doing and make it something beyond what you could ever imagine.
I remember she downloaded a free copy of Adobe InDesign and started designing. And what's funny is I didn't realize until like three laptops later, because she kept downloading free copies of Adobe InDesign on different laptops so she could keep the free trial. I'm like, wow, she's really into this and she's actually creating something special.
She wasn't a designer. She just learned to design well enough to create this resource. What would become a magazine, the first issue, which we did a Kickstarter campaign for a thousand bucks. And if you gave like... I can't remember the amount of money, but maybe if it was like 30 bucks or 50 bucks, you'd get this resource.
But the first one had an article on the history of Chuck Taylor's, but it also had devotional in it. It also had things that are fun for girls and entertaining and encouraging.
We actually still call the magazine Edutainment to this day because we want to teach girls while we're also entertaining them, while we're also investing in their discipleship journey. [00:15:12] Yeah, it started out as just this labor of love that I would kind of encourage her to get organized around it. Because at that point I was organizing ministry. And she didn't even think it was the ministry at that point. It was just something she was doing.
I think between my skillset and her skillset and the people around us, God would just use all of that to help us see a path forward for what would become a subscription magazine that would just grow over several years that at this point has now been going for, I want to say, 13 years.
Laura Dugger: Wow. Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor.
[00:15:48] <music>
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[00:17:41] <music>
Laura Dugger: So I believe, if I have my timeline right, it was maybe 2017 or 2018 when I was starting the podcast and Wynter was on my initial list of people to reach out to asking her to be a guest. But your life unexpectedly changed at that time, and she was never able to be a guest. So can you share what happened in that season of life?
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah, yeah. So we were wrapping up our journey in Dallas. We both felt like God was moving us on, calling us somewhere else. What would happen is I would get an offer to be executive pastor at a church in Franklin, Tennessee, Nashville area. We actually have a church in Nashville as well called Church of the City.
And we both just knew God was in it. So we packed our family up. We obviously did our best to honor the season of life we were in, the family we had built. I mean, honestly, the Evans family have become... I mean, the Evans kids, Priscilla Shire, Crystal Hearst, Jonathan Evans, Anthony Evans, they've become like siblings to me and Tony Evans has become a spiritual father to me. [00:18:50]
Long story short, we packed up. We moved all of our stuff to Tennessee. We bought a home. This would be June 2018. We bought a house. We moved into that house. We actually left a couple of days later for my grandmother's 94th birthday and did a week in Iowa with my grandmother and all of my mom's family.
And then she would fly with my oldest daughter, Alena, to speak at an event in San Antonio while my three youngest girls and I drove to Dallas to really kind of wrap up the last week of my job at the Urban Alternative, which is a nonprofit for Dr. Tony Evans' teaching ministry.
So we'd get there Sunday, I'd pick Wynter and Alena up from the airport. We actually were staying at her cousin's kind of ministry property that had a small kind of guest house on it. We were staying there.
That Tuesday I'm just at my job creating standard operating procedures and all the things that you do when you're getting ready to leave. I was the executive director for a pretty significant Christian nonprofit. [00:19:50] And so I'm just doing all that. And I remember she texted me and she said, "Hey, I'm not feeling well." And I texted her back and said, "Hey, what's going on?" She never replied.
So I ended up getting back to the house and I walk in and her and my sister-in-law, her brother's wife and their couple of kids, her daughters, actually, two girls were there with my girls and with Wynter. And they were all just sitting there and they were all doing each other's hair. And they were playing this game. Some of your listeners might know this game. But you say you can be an elephant, but you can't be a cat. You can be this, but you can't be that. I didn't know the game to this day. I don't know what it is. But they were playing this game and laughing and doing each other's hair. So I was like, Ooh, she must be fine. So I actually laid down and took a quick, like 15 minute power nap. I was so exhausted from all the travel.
We would then pass each other kind of... I was walking out of this master bedroom into the kitchen to cook dinner and she was kind of walking into the bedroom to kind of do a power nap herself. We kind of knew each other really well at that point. We operated really well together. So she went and laid down and I would make dinner, which was Costco ribs and Caesar salad, which I'll never eat again. [00:20:52]
Long story short, I would eat some ribs with my girls. I would then go into the bedroom, I knocked on the door and said, "Hey, do you want to eat?" Said no. But I went into like after dinner to kind of floss my teeth from the ribs. I kind of look out and... you know, I've obviously told the story a lot over the last now almost six years. But she basically would have a cardiac dysrhythmia, they call it.
At the time, I thought she might be having a seizure and I would find out that her heart had stopped. So I would spend about 30 minutes, you know, doing CPR and calling the ambulance. My three youngest girls were home. Thank God my oldest daughter wasn't there. She had gone to kind of a water park with her oldest cousin. And so, yeah, long story short, she had a cardiac dysrhythmia. The way I say it, the way I like to say it, remember it is that she peacefully glided into the arms of the Lord while all that chaos was happening on earth. [00:21:53]
Yeah, we would lose her really suddenly. My girls at that time, Alena was 14, Caitlin was 11, and my twins were 9. And we would lose her really suddenly. Two things were true for me. One, and I said this to her, we got to the hospital, and I would say to her as she was... you know, they kind of found a slight pulse, but then they told me it was gone. So you should come say goodbye to her. I sang over her. And then I said to her, "Hey, you don't have to worry about the girls. I'll take care of them."
So that was kind of one of those things in my heart. I was like this next journey is going to be about these girls. I'm not going to fail as a dad. I'm not going to fail their mom. I guess I caught sort of an inner vowel now because I think the thing that I did that was good about that is I leaned into what I think any dad that's in his right mind will lean into if he loses his wife and his child's mom. He's just going to give his whole life to leading those girls.
But I think in some ways it also set me up for, I think, difficult moments when I couldn't be perfect, especially when I was pastoring my girls and not fathering my girls, which is a whole other story. [00:23:03] But that was the one commitment I made in that moment. But then within a couple of weeks, I had made this commitment that I'm not going to let this ministry die. I'm going to continue this ministry on.
What's funny is God initiated and started the ministry, and God's continued it. Same thing with my girls. God initiated their lives. I'm doing the best I can to steward all that He's put in my lap. And it would be a wild journey.
What would be awesome about our journey is that God airlifted us out of Dallas and placed us in Franklin, Tennessee, which if you haven't been to Franklin, Tennessee, you ought to visit because it's honestly one of the most peaceful places I've ever been. I call it, and I think it still is, not just for me but for many people, an incubator of healing. I feel like we got here, and we were just enveloped by a healing environment, including our church but beyond our church to the community.
There's a counselor here that you may know of, Sissy Goff, who Wynter had actually had on her podcast a few months before. [00:24:02] And she would actually become my girl's counselor and kind of like a family counselor to us as well. She was a godsend.
We would begin our healing journey, which I would say began and in some ways is still happening. Specifically for my girls, who they will grow up having a mom, but obviously just always experiencing that loss over and over again at different times in different ways. And so, yeah, it's been a wild journey, and God's done so much since then. But yeah, grateful that God brought us to where we are.
Laura Dugger: There really aren't words. I'm just so sorry for the sudden loss. I think she was only 38 years old, I believe.
Jonathan Pitts: 38, yeah.
Laura Dugger: And just the trauma that that introduces to the family, and yet so admirable the way that the Lord empowered you to have the strength to really love your daughters well. [00:25:01] And you have led all of us to see you doing that well. Even in the midst of that grief after losing Wynter, I remember hearing you say that you never lost your joy or your gratitude. And that was so intriguing to me. Will you just tell us more?
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah, I actually did a talk for my church, probably a couple years after that, that I had... actually somebody else share with me on the discipline of celebration, which is kind of a spiritual discipline, I would just call it. But it goes back to Philippians 4:8, which says, Whatever is true, whatever's right, whatever is honorable, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think on these things or dwell on these things.
And for me, what was really cool, I guess, just growing up in my home, and I credit my parents... My parents never shielded me and my family from hard times. We lived a lot of hard times. They didn't shield us from death or loss. Our church was a really small church. [00:26:01] I remember I went to so many funerals before I even turned 18.
I think what I would say is my family discipled me in the discipline of celebration and also just this healthy understanding of loss. There was no part of me that felt like God failed me or God owed me anything more. And so when Wynter passed away, I kind of had this innate first gratitude. We were married 15 years and 27 days when she passed away. On our 15-year anniversary, I actually surprised her. We did a wonderful dinner, and then I surprised her. I took her to this mansion in our area, and we did this candlelight dessert. We actually shared this dance together — Still the one. There was a mashup song called It's Still the One, Shania Twain, and another song. I'm forgetting it right now. You can actually find it if you Google — our 15-year anniversary. But I actually got to celebrate our marriage with her. [00:26:58]
So I was thinking about that. Obviously, I was really sad. I was depressed in many ways. But there was still this underlying gratitude for what God did. I didn't deserve her. I didn't earn her. I didn't deserve the family I had. I didn't earn the family I had. God had just been gracious and patient with me. There was this gratitude. I actually taught on that scripture and the discipline of celebration, and I just actually shared what God had done inside of me. And really what I hope, if you have it, you lean into it. And if you don't have it, that you begin to disciple... find somebody to disciple you in it or disciple yourself in it through scripture and through practicing it.
So leaning in, remembering, thinking about, trusting whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's right, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, whatever's excellent and praiseworthy. Thinking on these things, dwelling on these things, practicing that in your life.
It doesn't matter whether it's the loss of a spouse or it's just as simple as you didn't get the raise you wanted. Or your kid did the wrong thing at school. [00:27:58] Whatever it is, rather than leaning into the worst thoughts, lean into God thoughts, which is what's right and true and honorable and pure and lovely and admirable and praiseworthy.
There is something in every circumstance we walk into that we can dwell on that is better than we might naturally think or what the enemy might want us to think. So I just tried to do that. And actually, I noticed that I was doing that. And I would credit my parents and just the people that discipled me for that journey.
And really the first time that happened was, in our loss, I had to walk into this room, this family room after Wynter passed away, and the girls are in there. Thankfully, I had my spiritual dad, Tony Evans, and Priscilla Shire was there. A couple of family members and my other pastor, Scott Wilson, was there. By that time, people had gotten to the hospital. So I walked into that room with support.
But I got down on my knee and I said to my girls... the only thing that I knew was both true and hopeful in that moment, which is mommy went home to be with Jesus. And so it's like I kind of had this... I can't take credit for it because it was just there. But I had kind of this innate desire to want to lean into what's good and pure and right and lovely and honorable and praiseworthy and trustworthy. [00:29:07] I'm not butchering the script because I'm saying it so many times. But the reality is, I leaned into that.
Now, I don't want to say like... obviously like there's so many, you know... I mean, you know this is a therapist. But the reality is there are all these emotions that we need to experience, which includes anger. It includes like all these different things that I don't naturally do. I think anger is one of those emotions that I actually didn't know until probably getting into the new season where I was going to begin courting my now wife. That I would say things like, "I didn't ask for this. Like talking about the hardship with my girls in that process. I didn't ask for this.
So those things I had to learn that I'm still learning to do, honestly, that are godly things to do. But yeah, that was one for me. So yeah, I'll be quiet for a second. Sorry, I'm just running on.
Laura Dugger: No, that is incredible just to hear, again, like that gift that God gave you to meditate on that scripture and the power that He gave you to live it out. You're reminding me of something a previous guest said. [00:30:07] Her name's Brittany Price Brooker. And during the darkest season of her life, she was at church and she sensed God asking her, will you offer me a sacrifice of praise? And that is in scripture, the sacrifice of praise. And it sounds like the spiritual discipline of celebration as well. That's just very humbling to hear.
But Jonathan, you also continued on to make sure that Wynter's legacy would live on today. Can you share a few ways that you're actually doing that?
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah. I mean, obviously, the first thing I did is just try to really... Well, the first thing God did. Let's just say that. My older sister kind of after the funeral at the dinner, she said to me, "Hey, if you need me, God told me to come help you." She was living in New Jersey at the time. My sister, Carmen, had never been married, never had kids. I actually was like, "I'll be okay." [00:31:04] And I'm like this type A pastor thinking I'm going to just go to Nashville. I'm going to be just fine.
Anyway, a couple weeks later, I brought a chicken. And I remember coming up into my master bedroom in tears because I was just frustrated. And I called her and I said, "Hey, would you still come? And she said yes. Two weeks later, she was on a plane with a couple of bags and kind of gotten rid of her car and broke her lease and did all the things she had to do to come. And she was here. She actually would become a surrogate mom. My girls lived with me for three years after Wynter passed away.
So God actually knew what my girls would need in terms of additional mothering. And He would send that support. So He sent Carmen, other cousins and aunties and different people in my girl's life. That was one thing God did. I did the best I could to father them and make room for other people in their lives to come alongside. So God did that.
God also just gave me this heart to carry on for Girls Like You Magazine. [00:32:01] I actually turned what was I jokingly called a for-profit nonprofit because it was a for-profit organization that never made any money. I mean, Wynter published a magazine, but she'd go on to publish eight book titles, seven before she died. And the eighth one, she was actually working... She was taking a nap because she's going to work on the night that she died. She's probably 85% percent on that book, which I helped finish. But long story short, God would just do so much. She actually wrote that book that I mentioned in the beginning. She wrote way more than one book. And now she has like, I don't know, it's like 18 different resources in her name because she wrote so much other content before passing away.
So long story short, I turned that fledgling for-profit into a nonprofit because I knew that it needed to carry on. I also knew that the only way it could is if generous people came alongside. Because we never we never took a lot of advertising and the price of the magazine subscription would never cover the cost of creating quality content for girls. [00:32:59]
So for Girls Like You Ministries is now a nonprofit organization that has a subscriber base of around, I want to say, five thousand girls now. And we distribute somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 magazines every other month, depending on the partners we have.
We have a lot of church partners in different organizations that we send the magazine to to give to girls that would never be able to afford it or find it.
So anyway, carry that on. I've got a host of dedicated people, including several moms of tween girls that carry the ministry on with me. I've got a publisher named Roberta who God would bring to us six months before Wynter passed away. We hired her not knowing if we could even afford her. And she still is our publisher to this day. She's an amazing woman that's on our team.
But God's done that. I've just been the guy that's a big cheerleader that has... you know, all along the road my entire life, I've kind of fell for God's just continue to be gracious and use my gifts, but also be patient and merciful with me. [00:33:58] So it's a privilege to get to carry it on. It's a beautiful part of the portfolio of work that God's given me.
Laura Dugger: It is. And our household, we are subscribers and our girls delight in that. It is giddy squeals when that arrives in the mailbox. We loved it so much. We've shared it with friends and we asked our library to carry it as well so that others could find out about it. So I can't sing your praises enough. If anybody hasn't heard of it before, could you just share the website if they would like to see it themselves?
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah. Forgirlslikeyou.com. F-O-R. Forgirlslikeyou.com is the website. All of our socials that's our handle as well for Girls Like You.
Laura Dugger: Wonderful. I highly recommend it. It has been an incredible resource.
One reoccurring scripture that comes up for The Savvy Sauce is James 1:22. It says, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." And because our tagline here is Practical Chats for Intentional Living, we want to hear how you are applying these messages to your own life. [00:35:08] What action steps have you taken after hearing one of these podcasts that has improved your life a little bit? We would love to hear it. Please email us at info@thesavvysauce.com.
God has also done so much more. Will you catch us up to speed on what he had planned for you next?
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah, it's interesting. I started writing immediately when Wynter passed away because I was just journaling all that God had done. I'm actually practicing Philippians 4:8 by just writing down every story I could remember about our life and our marriage and our family and what God did in ministry. So I ended up writing a book called My Wynter Season, Wynter with a Y, because that's how you spell her name.
I call it a seasonal memoir because it was really... It's not a grief book. It's a book on what God did in that season of our lives. And so I wrote that book. And what's funny is, is I was getting ready to release that book. I would get a phone call from... that was two years after Wynter passed away. I got a phone call from a friend of mine who's a filmmaker, kind of a Christian, kind of faith driven filmmaker, a guy named Darren. [00:36:14] And I'd met him a year and a half prior, six months after Wynter passed away. And I was in all my grief. I kind of was starting my grief journey. Because I was so hopeful and I had so much energy to raise my girls, I hadn't really started grieving yet. So six months into my grieving journey, I find myself in California at a dinner by myself, very lonely, isolated.
And I sat down for dinner with a guy named Darren, his wife, Krista, and I shared my whole story with them. And a year and a half later, he would actually call me. We'd kept in touch because we had a common friend and just really connected. Darren said to me, "Hey, I feel like the Holy Spirit asked me to introduce you to my friend of mine. She's got a big story. It's her story to share. She's an actor and she worked on one of my films and I just feel like God told me to introduce you guys. Would you be open to meeting her? Are you dating again?" I said, "Well, I'm not dating. I'm dating my girls and I'm playing golf" is exactly what I told him. And obviously working and pastoring. I was quite content and satisfied. I think I got settled into the season I was in. [00:37:13]
You know, I kind of share the highlights of our story, but I just walked through a lot. I was just discovering kind of who I was and how to just grieve well. And so I wasn't really thinking much about moving forward or moving on as... people get annoyed when you use those different terms. I don't know how to say.
So moving forward, moving on, I wasn't thinking much about it. But anyway, I said, Man, I don't know. That's kind of actually something scary to me. I'm a pastor in Tennessee. She's an actor in LA, by the way, called missionally to Hollywood, got saved as an adult in Australia, which was where she's from and was an actor there.
And long story short, I just said to him, I said, "Can I see a picture of her?" And he sent a picture and I said, "I'll meet her." Look, I'll tell you this, like God is... I think the thing I learned in my 40s... two things I learned in my 40s. One is that I was a Pharisee in my heart. Like I thought I knew who and what Christians could be and what they could look like. Meeting my now wife, Peta, who we had no connections in common, we were from different worlds, she was from Australia, gave her life to Christ as an adult, thought missionally called to Hollywood. [00:38:23] I thought I knew what that meant, you know, and I didn't really know what that meant.
What I would discover is that God, He's just got... His people are everywhere in every space, trying to win as many people as they can to Him. They're just doing their craft well, and also loving people along the way and obviously living obediently for Him. What's funny is kind of the same way it happened with Wynter, I would fall vastly in love with Peta. We dated for six months. I knew we were serious. We got on our first Zoom call because it was COVID and she was in California and I was in Tennessee. We did a Zoom call. I shared my story. I actually said, "No pressure. I've already met the love of my life," which she was like, "This dude's not ready." Because I said that.
But anyway, long story short, we did our first Zoom call. I shared my story. She shared her story. We both have big stories and God is intertwined through all of it. It's too much of a story to tell, but we fell in love and we were engaged for nine months and nine months we were completely separate except for 10 days, which was actually a real gift to my girls. [00:39:29]
So we've now been married for three years on October 1st, and we actually have had a big, long journey. We had a miscarriage right away. We had a stillborn son. And then we just recently had a little boy named Jonathan who is... he actually turned four months on Father's Day and is a growing little man. I say that about Father's Day because I never thought I would have a son. One of the great redemptions I think in my life is getting back something I never even thought that I wanted.
That's a whole other story to tell, but God has been faithful to me and to my family. I've got this big blended family now, which is a whole other journey and a whole other scary thing that I was not ready for. So it's really beautiful, but that's been a journey as well.
Laura Dugger: And that journey sounds like a part two, that we'll have to have some time with you and Peta. We'd just love to hear more.
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah.
Laura Dugger: Grateful. [00:40:28]
Jonathan Pitts: We'd love to tell that story. That will tell my life, tell our lives, yeah.
Laura Dugger: Well, we will consider that to be continued. But this time has been such a gift. Jonathan, is there any place that we could go after this conversation to follow you and learn more from you?
Jonathan Pitts: Well, I mean, follow me for sure. Learn from me by God's grace. I would say For Girls Like You is a place...you know, I'm kind of still heavily involved. I say I father that ministry. So For Girls Like You is one place. Instagram is kind of probably where I share my life the most. And I don't know why I use this name, but it's Pitsjr26. That's my social handle. But you know, I mostly share just about my family there. But I also will share encouraging things from time to time, pastoral things.
You can always check me out at Church of the City too. Church of the City, if you're in the Franklin area, if you find yourself in Nashville, love to have you at our church. I still pastor at Church of the City. So would love to see anybody that's listening that would want to come to an awesome church.
Laura Dugger: Yeah, that's now on my bucket list. Our family would love to come down. [00:41:31] My husband would probably love to play a round of golf with you if we're down there.
Jonathan Pitts: Oh my gosh, let's do it. If there's any excuse to play a round of golf, I'm doing it. Even this week, I've been traveling and I'm trying to find, where can I find at least two hours to go play nine holes? It's kind of the only thing I do for fun besides watch golf is play golf. So that's kind of my hobby.
Laura Dugger: Oh, I love it. Well, you are familiar that we're called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so as my final question for you today, Jonathan, what is your savvy sauce?
Jonathan Pitts: I think my Savvy Sauce right now is, this is going to sound like a simple thing and maybe even a little bit cliché, but it's just like stay humble. I'm just reminded so much recently of I think just the humanity of myself and the humanity of all of us, that God works in spite of us, that He's gracious and that He's merciful. So anything that God has done in my life, anything that God has done in your life, it's only been through His grace and mercy. [00:42:31]
I just say stay humble about that because the Bible says that those that exalt themselves will be humbled and those who are humble will be exalted. And so it's just like one of those things I want to remind myself over and over again, that the only way that God is going to work in my life and exalt me, which only just means bring me to his level, bring me to Him, bring me closer to Him, bring me into His presence, which everything good in life comes from that, is for me to humble myself. And so, yeah, just stay humble. It's really a valuable thing to do and it's the best way to live.
Laura Dugger: I love that that's your savvy sauce because that is really the word that comes to mind to describe you because we've had just a few interactions prior to today that were related to partnerships in ministry. And I experienced you the same way during every interaction, and that was humble. But also just down to earth and encouraging and very gifted. So you combine all of that. I just want to say it was an honor to get to chat with you today and hear more of your story. [00:43:34] So thank you for being my guest.
Jonathan Pitts: Yeah, thank you for having me. And all glory to God for anything He's done in and through my life. So thank you for just allowing me to share my story. They say people that are grieving, they long to be... I think it's known, heard and loved. And just for me, being able to share my story has been such a fulfilling thing. So thank you for allowing me to share.
Laura Dugger: Wow. My pleasure.
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior. [00:44:36]
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. [00:45:38] Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. [00:46:40]
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Nov 25, 2024
Monday Nov 25, 2024
*DISCLAIMER* This episode includes one portion with thematic descriptions, so please use discretion.
247. Stories Series: Exciting Adventures Follow Radical Obedience with Susan Zobrist
**Transcription Below**
Isaiah 30:21 (NIV) Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Questions We Discuss:
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When did you begin following Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
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How did life change after that point, including the highs and lows as you progressed in your Christian walk?
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What were some surprising adventures God called you into?
Susan Zobrist serves as a Director at the South Side Christian Academy. She takes care of the daily routine needs at the school, teaches chapel, and oversees the student and family files. Her husband, Chad, serves as the board president in addition to his full time job. Chad and Susan have four adult daughters and four wonderful sons-in-law. They are settling into life with an empty nest and enjoying their grandchildren.
Previous Episode featuring Susan Zobrist on The Savvy Sauce:
Following God's Leading with Susan Zobrist, Cassie Meiss, and Lisa Waibel
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Midwest Food Bank
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: Thank you to an anonymous donor to Midwest Food Bank who paid the sponsorship fee in hopes of spreading awareness. Learn more about this amazing nonprofit organization at MidwestFoodBank.org.
My delightful returning guest for today is Susan Zobrist. You may remember her from Episode 133, which I'll make sure to link in the show notes. But Susan is so wonderful that I wanted to invite her back so that she could elaborate on her testimony and the mighty ways that she's experienced God's gift of grace and timing.
Susan is wife to Chad, mother to four adult married daughters, and grandmother to four grandchildren, who are all three and under. Susan is still the director at Southside Christian Academy, and now she's going to share some of her highs and lows of walking with the Lord over the past few decades, along with some incredible adventures that happened along the way. [00:01:31]
I learn so much from Susan every time I'm in her presence, and I believe you're going to also end this time more inspired to obey God in whatever call He's putting on your life currently.
Here's our chat.
Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Susan.
Susan Zobrist: Thank you for having me back.
Laura Dugger: Well, last time you were on the podcast you were sharing more about your current work with Southside Christian Academy. But today I want to go back a little bit further. So will you begin by telling us about your upbringing?
Susan Zobrist: Sure. I grew up in a home where I had a mom and a dad, a brother and a sister who were both older than me. We did attend church. My mom played the organ. My dad was involved. I don't ever recall hearing a clear message of God's love for me and that He was pursuing me and wanted a relationship with me. And combine that with the confusing message and messed up example of love I was seeing in my home. I was pretty confused about what God thought of me. [00:02:38]
My mom loved me deeply. She cared very well for me. My dad came and went for many years of my life. My parents ultimately divorced when I was 16. I can look back and see ways in that season that God was pursuing me through different people and through different situations. He provided a really sweet glimpse of a wonderful example of what a family should look like by a neighbor family that really took me in.
Even when my parents were getting their divorce, they had moved overseas, and they actually invited me over there for two weeks while my parents worked through the details of that. So that family just kind of did begin to show me what a Christian family looked like and how siblings should live and how parents love their children and were an example of that.
He also gave me a snapshot of several students around me as I was growing up who seemed to live a lot differently than I did. [00:03:39] They lived with joy and peace. I knew it was something that was attractive, but I wasn't ready to give up control of my life at that point.
The Lord was truly pursuing me, and really He could have filled every void that I was feeling, but I didn't care to get to know Him at that time. So I pursued every option the world would have to offer—popularity, boys, drinking, toxic relationships, allowing mental and physical damage to my body. And all these things have left scars in my life, and they never satisfied what I was truly seeking. It wasn't until about 19 years old when I began to see signs of the Lord really starting to pursue me.
Laura Dugger: There was one thing that you said that I wanted to go back to. You said in your family how love was distorted. Will you elaborate on that? Did you mean between your parents or other relationships? [00:04:41]
Susan Zobrist: The view of love that was displayed in my home, my parents... actually, my dad—had several affairs while I was growing up. There were times when my dad would move out for a little bit, but then come back, and it looked like everything was going to be great again. And my dad, he was the type of person who gave me everything I wanted, so I kind of sided with him generally. And there my mom was, steady and hurting and sad.
But then my dad would come back in and recommit, and things looked like they were going to be just fine again. So this cycle continued probably from when I was 3 years old to 16 years old. So that was what the view of family, to me, looked like.
Laura Dugger: Thank you so much for sharing and clarifying. That makes more sense in those pivotal years developing as a daughter and seeing this as your dad, which a lot of times we hear our dad is the first picture of what we imagine our Heavenly Father to be, even when that's not true. [00:05:49] At this point, did you put your faith in Christ first, or did you meet your now-husband, Chad, first?
Susan Zobrist: I met Chad first. I praised God that I started to realize that God was pursuing me in very small ways. I would get a little bit more of a glimpse of a relationship that looked attractive to me, or people who were, like I said, living with joy and peace in their lives, and I was starting to become curious. After a hard relationship, I made a declaration that the next person I dated I was going to marry. Mind you, I was still not following the Lord at this time.
So about a year and a half before I was saved, I met a guy. Actually, I had known this guy for quite some time because I was really good friends with his cousin. Mind you, he was six years older than me. So up till this point, there was no... you know, it wouldn't have been appropriate for us to have been together. [00:06:53] So when I first saw him and saw that he was interested in me, I thought, "Wow, this is the guy I'm going to marry because I declared this is who I'm going to marry."
So our relationship became serious pretty quickly. We met at a party. We spent a lot of time together and quickly became very comfortable with each other. I was still seeking ways to fill the emptiness and heal pain that I was carrying, and our relationship was not one that was moral, but we enjoyed each other. He was kind. It felt good.
Interestingly enough, Chad had been attending a church, and a little bit into our relationship, he invited me to join him. And so we went to church very faithfully. Our lives weren't changing at this point, but we were hearing the truth, and it was apparently penetrating our hearts.
One day, about a year and a half into our relationship, there was a clear message of God's love spoken. There was an invitation at the end to put your hope and faith in Jesus Christ. [00:07:58] And while the pastor prayed, we both squeezed each other's hands on notes to the other, indicating that today was the day that we would be saved.
If you've come to know the Lord, you know that there is an immediate just presence of the Lord that comes, and there's a lot of work to do after that, throwing off the old and putting on new. And it's not an easy process, but it's one that He promises to do with us. So like I said, I knew I was going to marry Chad right away, and I'm so thankful that we did. We got married.
Laura Dugger: I love hearing the origins and knowing both of you now. When did you find out that he knew that you were also the one he was going to marry? Because you knew right away, so when was it clear to him?
Susan Zobrist: Actually, that month that we were both saved and became followers of Jesus, that month he decided that he was going to ask me to marry him. [00:09:00] So that was in October of 1994, and that was a really exciting time for both of us. We were engaged and planned a date to be married in 10 months.
We were diligently planning. We were nervous, and we were eager and seeking immediate and drastic changes in our lives, and especially in our physical relationship. That was something that we were like, okay, we know we had not made good choices, so we had committed to stopping the things that we were doing that were dishonoring to the Lord, and we're going to pursue to have a godly relationship until we got married.
We were engaged that same month, planned our wedding. We committed to these really major changes in our lives and seeking out Christian friends. We were studying the Bible, and we were doing the things that we felt the Lord leading us to do. And those changes that He wanted us to make were so clear at that time.
We had hope. We were excited, and we just really felt like forgiven people, and it was such a blessing. [00:10:04] We took very seriously the verses in 2 Peter 1:5-8, to make every effort to add to our faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. That if we possess these qualities in increasing measure, they would keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was something we were serious about growing in.
For the most part, those months were so sweet and so good. It felt like we were doing a lot of just reorganizing in our lives. We had a tricky situation come up that we had stepped away from a lot of our friendships that were difficult for us to maintain. But someone in our life that was from that season was getting married in Chicago, and so we decided to go and knew that it would be quite challenging. [00:11:11]
I think we thought we could do anything at this point and put ourselves in situations that were challenging because we were so on fire for the Lord, but unfortunately, we went to the wedding, we made one mistake physically, and we got tripped up and I ended up pregnant during our engagement.
Six weeks after that intimate moment we found out we were pregnant. We were already engaged to be married in August, and this was in May when I found out I was pregnant. I'd never been so crushed, so embarrassed, and so ashamed in all my life. And remember, I'd done a lot of horrible things, but I'd never cared.
I was a Christian. I was staring at a life-changing, sinful situation that was going to have many consequences. I really didn't know God well enough at this point to understand that I was still loved and could be forgiven. [00:12:13] And so we were going to have a baby, and we were going to have to tell our new Christian community, which felt devastating.
I do praise God, though, that instead of staying in a place of shame and guilt, we learned what it meant to be truly forgiven by God and by people who followed Him closely and understood the message of forgiveness.
I'll never forget telling some of the dearest people who wept with us and then committed to really walking with us in discipleship. And so we entered that new phase, and we dealt with the shame and humiliation that it brought, but understood truly what grace looked like and realized we weren't going to be perfect.
Laura Dugger: Thank you so much for sharing that piece. I wonder how many people can relate. And yet it's so crazy to get to sit here and know Hannah today and her amazing life and your relationship and the way things are decades later. [00:13:21] You've said the word "grace". Just grace upon grace.
So life is changing a lot at this point, because even the timeline from connecting with Chad initially, that time when you thought, okay, well, I guess this will be my husband, how much time had passed before you were married and Hannah was born?
Susan Zobrist: We met in May of 1993, and we were married in August of 1995. And then Hannah was born in December of 1995.
Laura Dugger: Okay, and then she wasn't the last child that you had. You were on a trajectory with a lot of life change every year. And so even as you look back at that season, how did life change after that point, including your highs and your lows as you and Chad progressed together in your Christian walk?
Susan Zobrist: Life changed a lot. I think our perspective changed so much. Just coming up against hard things wasn't quite so hard when we had the Lord in our lives. [00:14:27]
Some of the things that we faced in those years, we experienced three different times... We had three miscarriages. And God just brought several women who had experienced the same loss and pointed me to Christ during that time.
My husband had a bout with depression that was really hard to support. I didn't understand that struggle and what he was battling, but God did. And through counseling and the proper tools, we've experienced victory in that. And we are certain that God is with us in that.
My dad actually returned to my life in 2012 after being absent for many years. He had an expectation that I would take care of him. When he returned, he was homeless. He had nothing and just kind of showed up with this expectation that he would just be welcomed back.
As a believer, I studied the Scriptures and looked at what was my responsibility in caring for him, and I found that it was to honor my father. [00:15:35] And what does that look like when you have pain from that and you are upset and frustrated with him and don't want to enable what has happened in his life? Just the choices he had made had led him to a very dark and ugly place.
So I made the promise that he would have food, shelter, and clothing. So Chad and I prayed through it and we took him actually to the Peoria Rescue Mission where he stayed for 45 days. I visited him there. I kept my end of the promise to care for him in that way. He had a heart attack during that time. And so I got him to a doctor. Ultimately, he ended up in a nursing home nearby. I cared for him until the day he died in 2016.
When he came back into my life, I had to let him know that he was forgiven. And I had to do that to release myself from just the pain and the frustration that I was feeling from him. So that was a very low point. That actually coincided with when Chad was going through depression. So just a very, very low place in our life. [00:16:47]
In that time, we had three children in 37 months, three girls, and then two miscarriages in the middle of that. And then we had our youngest two and a half years later followed by one more miscarriage. So we had a lot of life change in those times. But it was such a joyous time too.
Laura Dugger: Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor.
[00:17:12] <music>
Sponsor: Midwest Food Bank exists to provide industry-leading food relief to those in need while feeding them spiritually. They are a food charity with a desire to demonstrate God's love by providing help to those in need.
Unlike other parts of the world where there's not enough food, in America, the resources actually do exist. That's why food pantries and food banks like Midwest Food Bank are so important. The goods that they deliver to their agency partners help to supplement the food supply for families and individuals across our country, aiding those whose resources are beyond stretched.
Midwest Food Bank also supports people globally through their locations in Haiti and East Africa, which are some of the areas hardest hit by hunger arising from poverty. This ministry reaches millions of people every year, and thanks to the Lord's provision, 99% of every donation goes directly toward providing food to people in need. The remaining 1% of income is used for fundraising, costs of leadership, oversight, and other administrative expenses.
Donations, volunteers, and prayers are always appreciated for Midwest Food Bank. To learn more, visit MidwestFoodBank.org or listen to episode 83 of The Savvy Sauce, where the founder, David Kieser, shares miracles of God that he's witnessed through this nonprofit organization. I hope you check them out today.
[00:18:41] <music>
Laura Dugger: And even pausing to go back into that season when you now have four daughters so close in age, how did you and Chad stay united in that time? And what do you look back... you said it's a joyous season, so if you could put your finger on certain things that helped make it joyful, what would you share?
Susan Zobrist: One thing that God brought to us in a very early stage of our parenting was the idea of homeschooling. Our oldest got migraine headaches when she was four, and we ran a bunch of tests on her with the help of neurology and things and realized that she just had a trigger for stress that would give her migraines at four years old, which was just something I'd never heard.
So we were kind of thrown into the idea of homeschooling because the doctor said, "I don't think she could make it through a day of kindergarten." Well, I kind of had a different view of homeschooling that I thought I would never do such a thing, but God is so good in the way that He can change our perspective and call us to something that He'll equip us for. [00:19:49]
Those years were a true gift. We had four girls in a span of six years, and so it was just a joy to spend all our time with them during the days. Chad ran a small business in town, so he would come home for lunch every day, and we would have lunch together as a family and spend just such quality time with each other. Being that we spent so much time with our children because they were home all the time, we did prioritize date nights every week, and we were actually in a small group that met every single week.
So we would get a babysitter every Thursday night, and we would go to our small group where we had some of the best support. We were all pregnant with our first child, at the same time talking about parenting. And as you know, I didn't grow up in a Christian home, so I had no idea what I was doing. So Chad and I both were so committed to learning how to be Christian parents. [00:20:49]
Several of the people in our group were experiencing the same thing, but we were blessed to have a couple people in there who had been raised by wonderful Christian parents. So we were on that journey with different couples, and they are still dear friends of ours today. So we're really grateful for that.
Chad and I also found things that we enjoy doing together, whether it be watching college basketball games, or he's a hunter, so I would go sit in the deer stand with him and try to be quiet. But those are things that we just developed that we found. We enjoy being together, and so we prioritize that time as well.
Laura Dugger: I think that's so evident, even when our paths initially crossed, and you two would be doing your walk or your workouts at the same time. And I think also we see such a piece of humor playing in the relationship, in your whole family. But going back to the homeschooling, just one quick story. I don't know if I've shared this with you, but I was in town just at the local grocery store, and... I think it was a Sunday afternoon. [00:21:54] We had forgotten something and ran in, and it happened to be a day where all four of our daughters were dressed alike.
And this woman stopped me, and she said, "Oh, four girls so close together. You remind me of this woman that I saw a few years back, and she was dressed the same as her four daughters." I said, "Is that Susan Zobrist?" And sure enough.
Susan Zobrist: Oh, that's so funny.
Laura Dugger: So I counted it one of the highest compliments in parenting to be compared to you. But then there were other surprising adventures that God called you into. So will you take us further into your story?
Susan Zobrist: Yeah. I feel like as soon as we were all in for God, it was like there were just so many opportunities that God used to just navigate our lives, and we were very open to just obedience and what that looked like. Whatever God called us to do, we thought we had the courage to take the step of obedience and just thought that's what we do now that we follow the Lord. [00:22:57]
So the blessing of having four children, that was huge. I mean, it just took us on a wild ride. That was such a blessing. Also at church, there was a class that said "how to start a neighborhood Bible study". Well, I thought that was just so exciting because I thought... we had moved into a newer neighborhood in town. Actually, when we moved in, it had a dirt road. And so we were one of the first houses there. It was a spec house that we just took the dive and moved into. So we got to see all the houses be built. We got to see the road be paved.
And I was pretty anxious about starting this neighborhood Bible study. There was another neighbor down the street that went to our church as well. And I said, "Would you be willing to help with this?" And she's like, "Sure." I said, "Well, when do you want to start?" And she had the idea, "Why don't we start when the sidewalk gets paved?" And I thought, "Okay, I'll be patient until then."
I had my girls one day go out, put an invitation in every single mailbox. There were probably 65 mailboxes at the time to an invitation. [00:23:59] Come and find out about a neighborhood Bible study for women. Well, I probably had 25 women show up at my house that night for just an informational meeting. And probably over the course of four years, I think it was like 47 of the women came at some point to this Bible study. And it was so amazing to watch God work through me. And all I had to do was say yes and open my home. So that was a really exciting adventure that God had called me to.
Laura Dugger: You really do model this so well about loving your neighbor. It seems neighbors have always been so important to you. And even that's how our relationship began. And I'm so grateful. But the power that God speaks in the Bible about loving our neighbor, there was so much transformation that you witnessed. Are there any stories that come to mind even from that Bible study? [00:25:00]
Susan Zobrist: Yeah. I have one that's really hard, and it was very life-changing for me. One of the houses around the corner in our neighborhood... We live in a circle neighborhood. So it's just one circle with an inside circle as well. But there was an older woman living down the street and her daughter was living with her who was probably a little younger than me. And the mom and daughter started coming to the Bible study. They attended the Catholic Church and just really got into the Bible study.
Ultimately the daughter started coming to church with me. Well, she had a daughter who was autistic and who wasn't living with her at the time. She was at a school somewhere else with the dad. And they were living kind of apart. Eventually, the daughter and the husband came back home. And so the daughter moved from her mom's house back to her house but continued to attend the Bible study. [00:26:00]
Well, anyway, on a Sunday, it was Mother's Day, actually, I saw on the TV it said that the daughter of this woman was found dead. I saw it on the news and I thought, "I have to go. This woman has been in my living room, in my Bible study, I need to go find her." And it was the autistic daughter had been found dead.
So I drove to her house immediately and her mom was in the driveway and I said, "Where is she?" And she said, "She's at the hospital. She's tried to kill herself now since her daughter died." And she said, "How do you know about this?" And I said, "It was on the news." And she said, "You need to leave." So something in me just knew that something was really wrong.
The next day, I arranged for two of my pastors to take me to the hospital where she was, only because I had built this relationship with her through the neighborhood Bible study and we had become pretty close. [00:27:08] This gal really struggled with trusting the Lord because she thought she was being punished for some reason that's why she had this autistic daughter. And she was a doctor herself, so she thought she should be able to fix her.
Anyway, I went into the hospital and pastor on each side of me. I turned back around and said, "I don't know if I can do this." And they said, "Do you believe that she can be forgiven if she's done something wrong?" Because in my mind, I thought maybe she had killed her.
So we turned around, went back to the waiting room and they prayed with me and asked me again, "Do you believe she can be forgiven if she did something horrific?" And at that moment, I believed God can forgive anything. And they said, "Then you need to go in and tell her that."
So they walked me in and she looked at me and she said... I mean, she hadn't said to anybody what had happened. And she looked at me and she said, "I snapped. I killed her." [00:28:09] And I looked her in the eyes and I said, "You can be forgiven for this." And I prayed with her. That moment changed my life and what I truly believed.
I walked back out and an hour later, there was a guard at her door and she was never to be seen again. She has continued to spend the rest of her life in prison. She was convicted of murder of her daughter. I kept in touch with her for a long time. I'd go visit her in jail and we'd talk about how God can love her and forgive her. And she has come to know the Lord. She is doing Bible studies for other prisoners.
Even in our neighborhood, I don't know how our neighborhood would have handled such a thing had we not had the bond of that Bible study. And we knew we could come together and we could pray and we could wrestle with what had happened in our neighborhood together. [00:29:11] So I don't know why God did that with that perfect timing, but I'm so thankful he did. You know, and it was life-changing for many of us in hard ways, but also some pretty amazing ways in our lives.
Laura Dugger: Wow. There are no words adequate after that, but I think you draw out His timing. Such a gift. And even going back to how you started this, your obedience, simple obedience, He let you be a part of life change and getting to offer her that, that timing is just incredible and really because it's supernatural.
Have you checked out our library of articles available at thesavvysauce.com? New posts are added multiple times a month related to parenting, intimacy and marriage, personal development, habits, and other topics connected to what we discuss here on The Savvy Sauce. [00:30:13]
If you sign up to join our email list, you're also going to enjoy little extras delivered straight to your inbox. Our hope is to encourage you to have your own practical chats for intentional living. So these freebies will include things like questions that you can ask on your next date night, safe resources to read, to promote enjoyment in your intimacy and marriage, or questions to ask your kids to connect at a more relational level.
We hope you check out all the available reads at thesavvysauce.com under the articles tab. Okay. So that was a powerful story about what you got to experience through saying yes to God. Were there any other stories that come to mind from really radical obedience, but just simple obedience?
Susan Zobrist: I think that experience kind of set the stage for what God can do through any of us when we're willing to say yes. He'll give us the courage. He'll give us the strength. [00:31:14]
So it was something that was just normal for Chad and I was just to take that next step. I really felt the call to pursue overseas missions. And so we would always just kind of take the next step and see where God would take us. And so often God would lead us down a path. It was almost like He was saying, just checking to see if you'd be obedient, and then He would clearly close the door.
For example, stepping into a ministry here in the United States, we said yes to that. God took us down a path, closed the door clearly. We were going to go do overseas missions in Germany as house parents. We took our children over there to experience that. And really we got to the point of starting to raise funds and God closed the door on that and said, "I'm not ready for you to go." Those were types of things.
And that was a little bit frustrating because we had seen how God could use us when we would say yes. [00:32:16] But then we began to trust His timing more and more and understand that His plan is best and that we shouldn't push through doors that were closing.
Ultimately, I just continued to have a stirring in my heart for ministry. I was a stay-at-home mom full time. But it was starting to get to the point where my kids were... some of them had gone to school at that point. So I wasn't homeschooling everybody anymore. And I had some extra time on my hands. So I looked for ways to volunteer.
I ended up doing that in the south side of Peoria through delivering groceries to elderly people. That was something really scary at first for me. But building relationships with these older women who just needed their physical needs met, that was really satisfying. And God just blessed me to be able to do that.
And then ultimately, God laid on my heart to start a school on the south side of Peoria. And that was something that God had stirred in me earlier on. [00:33:16] I thought about starting a school for homeschool students where we could kind of do a collective school together when I felt like, you know, we were meeting together anyway. Why don't we do a school where we could collaborate in that way?
I had a heart to do this, but then I shared it with a friend and she said, well, why would you do that where people have access to a Christian school? Why wouldn't you do that on the south end of Peoria? And I thought, Wow, God had just placed me on the south end of Peoria. And it started to make a lot of sense.
So He opened the doors for us to start a Christian school on the south side of Peoria for parents who desired a Christian education or some alternative education who couldn't afford what was offered in Peoria. So that led to that.
Laura Dugger: Which is incredible to hear these little seeds. Was that Cassie Meiss?
Susan Zobrist: Yes.
Laura Dugger: We'll, again, link to that episode where you and Lisa and Cassie shared the full story of Southside Christian Academy. [00:34:16] But I love, even looking back in your story, how God would test you and give you something, and then if He closed the door... I remember Him even speaking to "thank you so much for your obedience, but this is not what I have for you."
It even makes me think of Joseph in the Bible where you were given this vision of the school I think when your kids were really little. And you started a binder for it.
Susan Zobrist: Ten steps to start a school.
Laura Dugger: But then just like Joseph, that dream, He still had a plan for it, but the timing was probably a lot longer than you initially anticipated. Will you just catch us up, though, on SSCA? Where are you at presently?
Susan Zobrist: Sure. We are currently in our ninth year of school. We have over 100 students that we are serving on the Southside of Peoria. We are fully staffed in a K-8 school with several volunteers and wonderful people who are supporting. [00:35:17] Our finances are great. We're so thankful for donors who have just poured into the school that that's something that we don't have to worry about. But God is surely blessing the ministry.
Laura Dugger: Yes, indeed. It's apparent to see. And even one more piece, that zip code where the school is located, that's unique, too.
Susan Zobrist: Can you share why? Sure. The 61605 zip code in Peoria is one of the 100 poorest zip codes in the country. So the support that families have in the schools, they're a poor school system that does their best with what they have. But it's kind of a broken area that I do feel. That there is hope that maybe these students who are being educated and who are hopefully going to be drawn to the Lord at some point in their lives would come back into that area and pour back into it and make it a place that will thrive someday.
Laura Dugger: And have you seen any life change? Are there any students that have put their faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior? [00:36:20]
Susan Zobrist: We definitely believe there are some. What that looks like looks a little different than when I saw it in my own children. But, yeah, we are nurturing them, we are discipling them, and we are walking alongside in however way we can do that to be sure that they are discipled in the truth.
Laura Dugger: Incredible what you're consistently doing. And just a good reminder for us to be praiseful as well. But, Susan, I've always admired the way that you parented your four now adult and married daughters. But when you reflect back over the years, what would you say were some things that worked best for raising them?
Susan Zobrist: I would say number one, we always prioritized church together. So we took our kids to church. We had them sit in the pews with us. We took them to Sunday school. We took them to Wednesday night activities. That became their community and their family. [00:37:25]
I feel like that was something that we allowed other people to speak into our children at a very young age. And they were used to that where there was accountability with other families. And that was huge, especially at the beginning of when we were raising our children.
I do think, too, having a consistent routine was so helpful in our home. Kids really do best when they know what to expect. I would just encourage people to be thoughtful about that plan. Because whether it's what to serve for dinner, what the plan is for the week, if it's can we order soda tonight at the restaurant, let those things be known prior because it just takes the anxiety and the questioning out of your kids when they know what to expect.
It makes far less arguments. And having to deal with real difficult moments and setting the tone proactive instead of reactive, that was so good for us. [00:38:26] We didn't do that perfectly ever but we got better at it as our parenting grew.
I would say consistency and discipline. Same kind of thing. This was kind of ridiculous. But remember, too, we were coming out of a life of chaos and no discipline in our lives to a very structured way. When we threw off the things that didn't please the Lord and were trying to put on the things that did, we had a really hard time not becoming legalistic. That was really challenging for us because we had to say hard no's to things that were temptations in our lives.
We wanted to see our kids not have those temptations around them, so we had some hard, fast no's that probably looked legalistic and probably were. And we were, thankfully... like we grew out of those as we grew stronger in the Lord. And we had his strength to say no to things so we could be around things. [00:39:34]
But the discipline, the consistent discipline, our kids knew if you did this, this is what you have chosen as discipline, as correction. Because we're going to make that very clear to you that it is your choice how you're going to live. So if you choose this, then this. We actually had a chart up that said, if... then; if... then. And... I don't know. I mean, we learned to be more flexible. But in the very early years, I think it was really good for our kids to know what to expect.
Laura Dugger: I think that's so helpful. Even Mark is reading a book right now by Craig Groeschel and it's a lot about making pre-decisions wherever possible and kind of what you're speaking to. But then, can you just give one example of an "if... then" for a parent to grab onto? If my child talks back or if they blatantly disrespect us, what was a consequence that helped? [00:40:36]
Susan Zobrist: Consequences were different for every child. That's for sure, too. Because it's not a one-size-fits-all. We got to know the hearts of each one of our children. Something that worked for Hannah, our firstborn, certainly didn't work for Natalie, our second born. Their personalities were way too different.
For example, we didn't do disrespect. So, good example. But if you speak disrespectfully, you would get your mouth washed out. And it was rare. I mean, we had to do that very few times because they knew what that was going to be like if it happened. By the time they were old enough to really make the choice, they weren't going to choose that. And I do believe the "if... then", but our kids also did, I feel like, made a commitment to the Lord at early ages. And I saw conviction in their hearts pretty young, which was just a gift from the Lord, honestly. [00:41:40]
I feel like training was very, very firm for probably the first five years. And then moving forward from there, it was... you know, they just knew what to expect.
Laura Dugger: And then even fast forwarding to present day, they all seem to be best friends with each other and with you and Chad. Still a very close family. Would you agree?
Susan Zobrist: I would. I would. It's really neat to see our four girls live in different places. I have been so blessed to watch them prioritize visiting each other one-on-one. I get a little jealous. I'm like, I wish I was there. But it's such a gift to watch them, you know, have relationships with each other from the youngest to the oldest to the middle two. You know, it's really sweet.
Laura Dugger: I think that's always a helpful vision to know what's true in our present reality, if we are in a season of really heavy discipline, to know, fast forward a few years and it will look very different. [00:42:42] That was super helpful because it was talking about parenting those little years. But do you have any other things upon reflection that you would recommend for those middle and bigger and even adult stages of parenting?
Susan Zobrist: Back to middles kind of and maybe into bigs, I see a lot of parents fearing like rebellious children and if I have too many rules, they're going to rebel. I guess something that we really worked through was when we're expecting our children to live counterculturally, we have to be willing to do it too. You know, I've seen parents who don't do that, but want their children to live that way. So we made a choice as a family to do that. And it was difficult. It's a lonely place at times. But being committed to that, I think, and holding fast to that, but also having each other was really helpful. [00:43:44]
One example. So our second daughter, Natalie, she had a group of friends who really liked movies, like watching movies at the time. And that was when you had to go to the movie store and like rent movies. And she was just like, "What movies can I even watch?" And she would ask that. So every time they'd go to the video store, I'd go to the plugged-in movie reviews, write down a bunch of movies. She would have them in her pocket and she would pull them out and say, "How about this movie?" And then they would be like, "What about this movie?" And she's like, "Well, it's not on my list." She got braver and braver to do that. But it was hard. But eventually she was respected for her opinions and her thoughts.
Ultimately they did become her own. They weren't hers at first, but she was steadfast in obeying. And then her heart grew to, okay, I get why they're doing this.
So being consistent and sticking with your idea that you need to live according to a certain way, even when it's really hard. [00:44:51] But not expecting only your kids to do it if you're not willing to do it as well, because they see it.
A couple other things. Just home management in those times. I feel like that was something that was really important to us. So having a calendar on the wall that showed what was going on. Again, it's just expectations that they can see what's going on.
Chores and lists and cleaning schedules, having toilets on Tuesdays, whatever. And having everyone have a little bit of responsibility in that. We didn't make our kids do terribly amounts of chores, but it was good. They still remember. "Remember when we used to clean our baseboards every week?" And I'm like, "Yeah, hasn't been done for a long time."
Meal planning. Like getting a grip on that from the beginning and getting them involved in that. And now I'm watching them all cook. And they love cooking. They do a really good job of meal planning and going to the grocery store and having a plan while they're having little kids too. [00:45:55]
Intentional play dates. Being the house where people want to be. It's hard to allow your child to go to somebody's house these days. And so being the house that's always okay to say, "Sure, let them come. Sure, have them over" because that's going to be important in how they develop.
One other thing just as they got older. Trust your children. Really believe them. When they say something, truly believe them until they prove you wrong. Don't think they're going to do something wrong. That was something we always just tried to really trust them and give them the freedom that was appropriate.
We were taught very early on, probably beforehand, our oldest was even born, about a funnel. And just to start the funnel so small, and then as they go, you'll just see what you can trust them with. [00:46:55] And don't give that trust to them until they're trustworthy in it. But you'll know, and you'll be able to just open that funnel more and more and more as they get older and as your relationship develops with them. But just give them opportunity to be trusted was a big deal for us too.
Laura Dugger: Okay, Susan, so we've covered a lot of phases, but you're also in this unique time where now your daughters are married. They're having kids of their own. So I'm sure your relationship with them has gone through waves and different changes. What wisdom would you share for how you're relating to them now?
Susan Zobrist: So, initially, when our children have gotten married, and they don't live in town, because the ones that we don't see as often, we would have a weekly FaceTime. We would sit on the couch, they would sit on their couch, and we would catch up on the week. We'd, of course, talk little bits here and there during the week as well. But we made that a priority. And it was a great way for Chad and I to catch up with the couples. [00:47:59]
Well, then grandkids started coming. And so I would talk with my daughter and her children during the week, and then Chad would do the same. So we kind of lost that one-on-one time with the adults, and it became more about the grandchildren. That was really fun, of course, but we never got great conversation with the adults who were not living in our town.
One day, my oldest daughter, Hannah, actually called me and said, "Can we talk?" And I said, "Sure." And she said, "I really miss you, and I really miss us talking. I feel like we never get time to just talk about things that are important to us. It's always about the grandkids." Wow, that was really convicting to me, but it was also such a blessing. I thought, Thank you so much for saying it, and thank you that that's how you feel and conveying that message to me.
So we have made it a priority now to every other week for sure to have a phone call that's during their naps, and it's just me and her. [00:49:01] And we catch up on the things that need to be caught up on between mom and daughter and friend to friend.
So I would just encourage, of course, love the grandkids and value the time when you're all together but take moments to connect with your children one-on-one. Even dads, you have a really special relationship with your daughters. Moms, special relationships with sons. I've seen that in a lot of my friends. Keep those connections because they're just valuable.
Also, we've made it a point, which I got this from a dear friend of mine, I said, "How do you see grandkids who are living in different states, or how do you connect with your children who aren't living in the same town?" And she said, "Our goal was to see them once a month somehow." And so we've made that our goal. It doesn't always happen, but we're pretty close and pretty consistent at this point in our lives.
So whether they come here, whether we go there, whether we meet somewhere, it's such a priority. [00:50:04] And I think it speaks to our children and their children of the importance that they are in our lives. So that's been a really special thing that we've adopted, too.
Laura Dugger: Wow. You articulate that so well. And I'm even thinking of our own story. We never outgrow that desire to be one-on-one with our parents and to have that special time together, that attention. And as Mark and I moved around the country, I'm so grateful that both sets of our parents invested in that as well. And sometimes even living far apart, we would have such quality time together that was deep and connecting. And so whether it's the adult child or the adult parent, I think either one can initiate that. But that is such a good word of wisdom.
Is there any other encouragement that you want to make sure you leave us with?
Susan Zobrist: I want to talk just a little bit about the new phase that we're in, being an empty nester and being a grandma. [00:51:03] Honestly, this has been a little more difficult than I had anticipated. And, you know, I'd been a full-time mom for so long, I didn't realize that once they were all gone, how much I depended on my relationship with them and them being present in my home.
I'm so grateful for the ways the Lord prepared my heart for letting go, but it's really hard. But just like every other season, this one takes some real intentionality. For example, I remember looking at Chad on the day that we knew for sure that they're not coming back. So I'm so thankful God gave us in those moments to say, now what, together. Because it's so easy to just go separate ways and live your lives because you're like, oh, it's the same person at the dinner table again tonight. You know, what are we going to talk about and what are we going to do?
Talk about the plan. [00:52:04] Talk about what are we going to do. Remember the things you loved doing together as a family, remember the things you loved to do together just the two of you, and formulate the things that you're going to do together now. Because it's really quiet and it's really kind of lonely once everybody's gone.
Find new ways to connect. Surround yourselves with community of people who are also in the Empty Nest stage, but also who aren't. I mean, Chad, he sticks around kids all the time because that gives him life. And I just have been able to form deep friendships with people who are in my stage. But he has to keep the younger families be connected to them. He'll be like, Hey, I'll watch your kids because he just enjoys that, you know. He knows what he needs to do to stay from getting depressed again or lonely and those types of things. [00:53:05]
Do whatever it takes to get yourselves right physically, mentally, emotionally. Exercise. It's so big because you can just become kind of slumped, you know, in a slump and not feel active like you used to be when you were running kids here and there and going to their events and things like that. It's like you can sit on the couch whenever you want and that's not going to make you feel good physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Go to a counselor together and say, now what? Can you help us? Because this is a really big life change. Be proactive and not reactive when some of those really hard moments come. Go get your well checkup from your doctor. Figure out your hormones because you change. I mean, we're getting older and our bodies are changing. And we want to be good physically to play with our grandkids and emotionally and mentally to take on the cares and the burdens that they have, too. [00:54:05] We're watching our kids go through hard things now as adults and their families and we want to be well to walk alongside with them.
So, it's not a time to just fall apart and deteriorate and sit and be lonely and sad. We want to be the best we can be for these next years, too. So, that's something that's been... it's new and it's hard. It's really hard.
Laura Dugger: But I think it even circles back to that first scripture that you were teaching us about continuing to add to this thing. And you said, God will be with us every step of the way with progressive sanctification. But I think that's a really good practical example of it.
Well, this time has been amazing, but you know that there's still one more question coming because we are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for you today, Susan, what is your savvy sauce? [00:55:06]
Susan Zobrist: My savvy sauce currently is to be rooted and stay rooted in God's word and in community with His people. That's based on Psalm 1:3. Just, you know, a tree planted by streams of water yields fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. I feel like we were kind of starting to wither. And it's because we didn't care for ourselves. And so, it's like, okay, replant, you know, get rooted even deeper and stay in His word and in community and fellowship with His people.
Laura Dugger: I think that is so encouraging as well. Because even if we've gotten a little off track or fallen off somewhere, we can course correct with the Lord and it can be reinvigorating.
Susan Zobrist: Absolutely.
Laura Dugger: But truly, in every season, you have been such a gift. I remember the first time that my sister-in-law, Amanda, introduced us when we were just first moving into our first home and you were instantly a friend. [00:56:08] You were someone I could turn to for parenting advice. Chad would give us a hard time when we would get pregnant with number three and four. And he'd say, "Congrats on the girl." And we're like, "Well, we don't know yet."
Susan Zobrist: Oh, we know.
Laura Dugger: He said, "Oh, we know how this goes. It's a girl." Which he was right every time. But you have been such a blessing and a mentor and a friend. And now it's fun to be friends with your daughters as well. We just love your family so, so much. You're very dear. And thank you for being willing to share your story today.
Susan Zobrist: Thank you for the opportunity. And thank you for your ministry. It's such a blessing to so many. And I just pray that it continues to do that.
Laura Dugger: Thank you.
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. [00:57:08]
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. [00:58:12]
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. [00:59:18] I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Nov 18, 2024
Monday Nov 18, 2024
Special Patreon Release: Theology and Discipleship with Ken Baugh
Colossians 3:1 (NIV) Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Questions and Topics We Discuss:
- Will you elaborate about God's design for vertical and horizontal relationships?
- How does character development take place?
- What do you think is the primary challenge for those pursuing discipleship in today’s culture?
Ken Baugh was a successful pastor before a crippling experience of burnout disrupted his career and set him on a journey to better understand the dynamics of spiritual health. With a DMin from Talbot Theological Seminary, Ken is the founder and CEO of IDT Ministries.
IDT Ministries Discipleship Website
Pastor Ken Baugh's YouTube Channel
At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Unhindered Abundance by Ken Baugh
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Monday Nov 11, 2024
Monday Nov 11, 2024
246. Stories of God's Tangible Love with Jen Moore
Isaiah 7:10-11 MSG "God spoke again to Ahaz. This time he said, "Ask for a sign from your GOD. Ask anything. Be extravagant. Ask for the moon!"
**Transcription Below**
Questions and Topics We Discuss:
- Will you walk us through your love story and experience becoming a mother to so many daughters?
- Did you have any warnings that things were about to drastically change?
- What unexpected event happened next?
Jen Moore is a beloved daughter of God, wife, and homeschooling mom. God wrote her story in ways she did not expect, but she worships Him through every chapter He continues to write.
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Sam Leman Eureka
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: The principles of honesty and integrity that Sam Leman founded his business on continue today, over 55 years later, at Sam Leman Chevrolet Eureka. Owned and operated by the Bertschi Family, Sam Leman in Eureka appreciates the support they've received from their customers all over central Illinois and beyond. Visit them today at LemanGM.com.
Jen Moore is my guest today. We've only known each other for about a year, but she's the type of person you can just dive into deep conversation with immediately. One of the first times I remember that we were hanging out for a park date, and she shared a bit of her journey with me and it has just stuck with me for months. So I invited her here today to share it in more detail with all of us.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Jen. [00:01:19]
Jen Moore: I'm so happy to be here, Laura. Thanks for having me.
Laura Dugger: Well, will you just start us off by telling me about your upbringing, and share even how you first encountered Jesus Christ.
Jen Moore: So I grew up in Miami, Florida, into a family that immigrated from Guatemala. My parents did the best they could with the circumstances they had to conquer. I was raised in a Hispanic Baptist church.
When I was a teenager, we started attending a Pentecostal church. Even with attending the church for various activities three days a week, I would say I did not encounter Jesus well into my adulthood. I had a brief hiatus from the Lord after moving out of my parents' house. When I came back to Christ, I really got to experience the love of the Father in various ways.
Laura Dugger: I love hearing people's backgrounds, so thank you for sharing that. Next, will you also walk us through your love story and your experience of becoming a mother to so many daughters? [00:02:24]
Jen Moore: Yeah, I like to use our love story as the fun fact when we go to parties, because our story is unique. Andy and I got married to each other twice. We got married really young, at the age of 19 and 25, after meeting through a mutual friend that was interning in his engineering office.
We got married and moved in and got pregnant all within our first year. So it's a lot. We started our family, and of course, a lot of trauma and childhood issues arose, which led to divorce, where we were either confronted on healing or avoiding and hurting someone else in the future. But God was so gracious and picked us to redeem our story, and we remarried. And guess what? We remarried and we continued to have more babies. [00:03:24]
It was a hard and fast love story. I loved being his wife and his biggest supporter as he grew in his career and all his adventures.
Laura Dugger: Wow. There's so much even in that. How many years was it between your divorce and then your remarriage to each other?
Jen Moore: It was a year being divorced, so it was two years we were not married, technically. But we said we sucked at being divorced because we were always together. It was just deeper issues that kind of led to that. I'm just grateful for the redemption story just within that marriage of how God chose us to be together after Him coming into our lives and healing and repairing our hearts.
Laura Dugger: Wow. And so you and Andy were both walking with the Lord now at this point and had how many daughters right then? [00:04:26]
Jen Moore: So we were married for seven years and had three at that point — three beautiful girls. And then we got divorced, and after that we were separated for about a year. And then we got remarried and worked together for an additional three years and had two more daughters. So in total, it was about 12 years together.
Laura Dugger: Wow. Did you have any warnings that things were about to drastically change?
Jen Moore: Yes. I had kind of this unrelenting anxiety and fear that someone in my close circle, immediate family, was about to die. It was either one of the girls or it was Andy. But it seemed like everywhere I looked, there were stories of hardship and grief that surrounded me. [00:05:26]
I had this pressure to know all the answers about how the house ran and what our finances looked like and what we had in savings and life insurance. It was one of those things that I wrestled with. It was hard to live with that anxiety, especially trying to balance if it's just me, this unhealthy pattern, or I was only five, six weeks postpartum, so maybe it was hormones. But even then I tried to control the narrative by having Andy eat healthier, or I got those Owlet monitors for the baby so I could track how she's breathing and sleeping through the night. Even then, God's plan was and is far greater than mine.
Now, looking back, maybe it was one of God's many graces as he worked to prepare my heart for one of the most unexpected things that was to come. [00:06:26]
Laura Dugger: We'll leave this story hanging for just a moment because I'd love to know what's a picture of your life at that time. That was the internal anxieties. But all of your girls' ages, and you and Andy, are you working or what was kind of the day-to-day?
Jen Moore: Yeah. He had just sold off his engineering business to a bigger company that was coming into the area, so he was in the throes of getting more clients and building up their company. So he worked five days a week, long days, pretty filled with meetings and trips and all that.
I stayed home with the girls. I think [Kalia?] was 11, maybe 10 going to be 11, and then stair-stepped from there, 7. And then Penelope was 5, I think. [00:07:28] And then Frankie was just going to turn 2, and then Weather was only 6 weeks old. So I stayed home with them. I homeschooled them at home. I mean, we just lived a pretty simple life of, you know, just home and school and church.
Laura Dugger: Well, and this next part is more difficult to get through, but what is the unexpected event that happened next?
Jen Moore: So, on March 10, 2020, when the world was entering the era of COVID, I entered into widowhood as my sweet husband went to be with Jesus. It started out, of course, as a normal morning. I'm prepping breakfast with the girls, and I'm nursing the baby. I'm homeschooling the older girls. I hadn't heard from Andy in a few hours, but I knew he was away on a business trip in Alabama. [00:08:34] We lived in the panhandle of Florida at that time.
The next thing I knew, I got a call. And it's one of those calls on your phone where you just know you have to answer. And it was from the local hospital in the town that he was on his business trip with. They told me that Andy was in a car accident with a logger truck and he was in critical condition and that I had to hurry and get there as fast as possible.
So I hurried and took the girls to a friend's house, except the baby, who was a newborn and I drove the few hours away. But along the way, I knew it wasn't a 'critical condition' situation. I just knew he died. To be honest, it was the biggest and most greatest fear that I ever had in my life. [00:09:39] It was the one that I always went back to when I was really scared. What would I do if Andy died? How would I support the family? How would I move forward? And right there in front of me, it became a reality.
As I pulled back the hospital curtains and saw my husband just bruised and battered, laying on the hospital bed. You know, I've never experienced my knees completely being weak, but they buckled when I saw him. And all I remember is, all I had the strength was to crawl over to him and just hold his hand.
Laura Dugger: Jen, it makes me so emotional. Just the humility of you to share such a sacred space and time with us. And I'm sure we're all feeling the collective... I'm so sorry. So your big fear had just become a reality. What did it look like after that? [00:10:55]
Jen Moore: Yeah, no one really prepares you for that. I mean, it's not something you expect to be walking in at the age of 31. You know, just what does that even look like?
I remember being at the hospital and then just staying there for several hours, mostly because I didn't know what to do. Nobody told me, now you go home, now you find a funeral home, now you do this, now you do that. The thought of just leaving him there was unimaginable. It's not something that I wanted to do, but I was not... I mean, even my parents and the friends that I had there, we all just kind of looked at each other like, now what? But God is just so good. [00:11:56]
I mean, we always fall back on this verse, Psalms 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed." As I entered a season of early, deep, heart-wrenching grief, I got to experience God quite like I never had before.
Laura Dugger: And how did God reveal Himself, especially in those early days of grief?
Jen Moore: God's just so faithful and He's so good. Like I said, it was my biggest fear. I had basically let Andy have this career and I just supported the household. Getting married at 19, I didn't go back to school. I just had babies and became a mother. And so my biggest fear was how to support these kids. Like, what are we going to do now? Now what? [00:12:56] Do I have to go get a job? What does that look like?
So the first way he showed up was he was on a work trip. So it was considered like a worker's compensation claim, which I never even registered in my mind. But there was all these things that I had to learn. And with a claim like that, you can choose your state in which you claim it in. The accident was elsewhere and we lived in Florida. So we either claim it Florida or the accident was in Alabama. It was vastly different, the claims.
In Florida, they give you a one-time payout, which would have covered a couple of years. But in Alabama, they give you a payout of over 60% of his pay for 10 years. Andy was if it happened in an intersection, if you would have happened in the next one, it would have been Florida. [00:14:02] He was four miles away from the state line.
So when the employer showed this to me, everyone was just speechless. Like, do you know what this means? And I just looked at him like, God, that's God. That's God taking care of me. I'm excited and I'm rejoicing not because my husband's dead, but because look at what God did. Four mile difference of me being able to care for my kids just a little bit longer than if it would have happened in Florida. So that was one way.
There was another time where the days of widowhood, I remember you don't realize how empty and cold your bed feels until your husband's gone for a really long time. And I just wanted to feel a hug, the weight of, you know, having someone hold me and feeling that warmth. [00:15:03] I just remember praying, God, I just want to feel held by somebody. I know I feel held by you, but I just would love that physical feeling of being held.
And then that day, a girl from my small group that really... I mean, we didn't have a great close relationship. We knew of each other, but it wasn't like a deep friendship. She showed up with a weighted blanket. And that was such a gift for so many months of just having that weight on me. It was like a hug every single night.
Between that and heating pad, I mean, it really made those days just a little bit easier to get through. Just a little less cold. You know, that reminder not being so in your face at night, especially with the darkness of the night, you know.
Andy was a flower giver. He loved showing up with flowers, and I love receiving flowers. [00:16:05] And for my birthday, I just remember being like, "All I want, God, that's all I want. I just want flowers, just flowers like Andy would give me. And a friend would be so faithful to answer that push from the Lord on their heart, and I would get flowers. And they would just, "Oh, I just felt like I needed to give you these." And I'm like, "These are my flowers. These are the ones I prayed for."
I would always shock people with my reaction, but it was so... like, seeing your prayers answered in such a tangible way, I mean, there's no greater feeling than that. It just makes you excited that the God of the universe is looking down at you and saying, You, Jen, matter to me, even in this state.
I'm reminded of a story with Penelope. She's my third, and she is... basically, if there was a unicorn and human version, it would be her. She's just joy in a cup. And she's such a gift to our family, because even when we don't see joy, she finds it somewhere.
For her birthday, Penelope prayed for a sign from heaven that her daddy was seeing her and loved her and missed her on her birthday. I asked her, "Penelope, what do you want to pray for?" And she said, "How about a rainbow?" And I said, "Why don't we go a little bit bigger and ask for a double rainbow?" And we just ended our prayer and the next morning, as we're getting ready for her birthday party, and I'm brushing her hair, she turns her head to look right outside and to our delight, there was a rainbow. [00:18:12] And not only was it a rainbow, but it was a double rainbow.
We all ran outside. It was raining. We were all just screaming and just praising God in our driveway, because we saw the rainbow outside. The girls were just in such disbelief that their prayer was answered. But they're asking, and then they're believing that just created that rainbow. I just will never forget that moment.
I had a friend text me after I posted a picture about the rainbow, she said, I saw that rainbow this morning, and it felt like it was for somebody as I drove under it. And I thought, "Yeah, it was for Penelope." And that was so confirming for me, you know.
Laura Dugger: That is incredible. Even last night, I was reading a book, and it pointed out a scripture in a version that I don't commonly read, but I appreciate. [00:19:14] It's in Isaiah 7 from the Message version. It came back again this morning in my quiet time. And so I'm just going to read it. And it's what God encourages Ahaz.
It's the Message, Isaiah 7:10-11. "God spoke again to Ahaz. This time he said, ask for a sign from your God. Ask anything. Be extravagant. Ask for the moon." And Jen, it just brings me to tears again to think of the personal delight that our Savior takes in our lives in every detail. And it's so especially moving when He manifests Himself to our children and answers their prayers.
Jen Moore: Wow, it's a beautiful verse.
Laura Dugger: And now a brief message from our sponsor.
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[00:21:29] <music>
Laura Dugger: Were there any other ways that you remember that he continued to keep meeting you right where you were at?
Jen Moore: Yeah. I have this one last story. Our lease was up shortly after Andy died, and I was confronted whether to buy a house or rent or things like that. And praying through that decision, it led me to buying a house. God put it strongly on my heart to tithe a big amount, $2,500. And I just fought it so hard because I was like, "God, am I hearing you right? Is that what my spirit is telling me?" With Andy being gone, every dollar mattered. Did I really want to tithe almost $3,000?"
Then I went house hunting on a Saturday, and then I put an offer in the house, and it was countered. [00:22:30] They countered it at $302,500. At that point, I knew in my spirit, I had to take it because the last four numbers were what I tithed. And it was such a connection to what I had been praying. Like, I'm going to be faithful to you if you're obedient to me. And these small things like tithing. Because that night, when I put in this offer, I wasn't sure if it was going to be accepted.
I was just praying as I looked at all these beautiful houses, like, "God, that's the house I want. I think that's a house that would bring a lot of healing to our family." And it was just that connection of, I tithed that much, and then the counter was exactly what I tithed. The last numbers. I just love how God loves to show off, I think, honestly. [00:23:34] And just confirming those signs again and again, whether that's the right direction or not.
Laura Dugger: And with that house, is that where your family did end up experiencing a lot of healing?
Jen Moore: Yes. We grew together. A lot of the grief journey, when it comes to healing, is making things your own again. Whether that's your master bedroom, or your bathroom, or your kitchen, or your house decorations. You know, really just taking that back and creating a haven for yourself to really heal in. We used that house as that place.
It was within miles of all our community that helped me so much in my grief journey. I had a friend that lived three blocks away, and then I had another one that was maybe two minutes down the road. It really was just a place that was a catalyst to that, too. [00:24:36]
Laura Dugger: And knowing you for a brief time so far, and looking forward to deepening our own friendship, I have already recognized that friendship and community is a high value of yours as well. And so were there any ways that your community showed up and loved you well through this?
Jen Moore: Yeah. My community was wonderful. They really were. I had two friends that took... every other weekend they would come and stay at my house for the weekends, Friday through Sunday. They helped with the baby, who was waking up at all hours. They helped catching up on laundry, and distracting the girls, and cooking meals. They did that for... I think it was like the first four months. And it was such a weight off my mom's shoulder, who felt like she needed to also be there. [00:25:35] I think I didn't cook for two months. There was a meal train for that long, which was so practical and easy to meet.
The men's group willfully signed up and moved to my entire house without me even asking. They came, and... I mean, I was still packing boxes as they shoved them in the moving truck. I mean, they were just like a... They were just so wonderful. There was practical ways that they really, really met some needs right from the start.
Laura Dugger: And that's so encouraging to hear, because that is the church being what we hear so often, be the hands and feet of Jesus. And those men, I just envision they were the hands and the arms and feet of Jesus, carrying those boxes, and those women coming alongside you, and even offering that emotional support and the practicality of meals. That really is so helpful, especially in times of grief. [00:26:38]
Jen Moore: Yeah.
Laura Dugger: Yeah, it really was. So how did your journey progress from there?
Jen Moore: Yeah. Since then, I've gotten remarried, which even through that, I've needed confirmation and God's reassurance that that's what He desired for my life. And that was the story for my girls, the story for Jeff, and the story for me.
Mending two families that are in and of itself gone through brokenness is hard. It seems sometimes on a daily basis that that hill is a little too hard to climb under my own strength. But God is so good. We had another baby. And this time it was a boy. And he's just such a joy. He really has been just such a sweet, sweet answer to our prayers for the girls and I. [00:27:42] I remember when we first found out it was a boy, and Jeff was like, "Jesus just loves you." I'm like, "He does! I wanted a boy, and I got one!"
Laura Dugger: That is incredible. After so many sweet, precious girls, and now Shepard is just so adorable and a welcome addition to the family. But even going back a little bit, are you comfortable sharing a few more details of how you and Jeff initially crossed paths, and how God continued to affirm, this is who I have for you?
Jen Moore: Yeah. We initially met at the coffee shop that our local church that we attended had. He was the barista that trained new volunteers. And I wanted to be a barista volunteer. So he trained me, and I just thought, "This guy's really charming." But I was married and really didn't think anything of it. And was like, "Well, he's too charming." I think I'll be safe and just go volunteer somewhere else. I didn't really continue that. That's just my initial meeting of Jeff. [00:28:50]
Then fast forward to Andy dying and then when we had to move, I remember seeing him there loading up boxes. And I was like, "Oh, Jeff is still around. He still exists." Didn't think much of it at that point. When I remember that, and he tells me that story, I'm like, "What did I even look like?" I was like, "I was in the early days of great gross." But he hooked up my washer and my dryer.
Fast forward to a couple more months, and we got into a small group together. It was four families that really believed in doing life together. We met every Sunday. Our kids would play together and then the men would talk and then the women would talk. Or we would play board games and all laugh. We were a part of a group together but really didn't really speak to each other. [00:29:54]
Then I just remember one time driving to small group and having those butterflies in your tummy feeling. And then being like, "Oh, no. This is not good." And I prayed. I prayed over anything those days and everything. So I was really clear with God, like, "If this is not of you, please take these feelings away." Like, I thought, I will be okay. I was in a spot where I was six, seven months out. I thought, I'm strong now. I feel stronger than I was before. The girls and I are in a good rhythm. I don't want this right now if this isn't what you want.
And he really confirmed it the next few days that was what He desired for Jeff and I. We had our first date, which was called an interview from Jeff standards, where I was pretty harsh with some of the questions. And he passed, and here we are. [00:31:05]
Laura Dugger: So you go on your first date, and he experiences this more as a job interview. You've told me before you had a list of questions ready for him. Can you share a few of those examples so we can grasp what that might have looked like?
Jen Moore: Yeah. I asked him from a range of, you know, what would it look like disciplining the kids, what your belief was when it came to that. And how has the Air Force affected your life? Because he was active duty at the time. Did he think he could handle grief and the weight of all that when it comes to the kids? And how did his desire for the local church look like? You know, was it meeting his needs? What his theology was on the Lord? I mean, just really practical questions that I knew down the road would probably come up, but it was better to just get them out of the way now. [00:32:07]
Laura Dugger: Well, and that sounds so prudent, as you're not only protecting your own heart, but also you have these five daughters that you're looking at the future and seeing if this would be a good fit. So I'm happy to hear that he passed.
Jen Moore: Yes.
Laura Dugger: Yet you've shared before that you still wrestled with some doubts if God really did have remarriage for you. So how did God continue to show up in tangible ways?
Jen Moore: Yeah. It seems really silly, but God would provide these sand dollars and He lives right next to the beach. We would go on a lot of walks on the beach when we had these, like, we wanted to have a hard conversation, but do it outside in a calming environment. When we wrestled with, well, is this us wanting to get remarried or is this what the Lord has for our lives? [00:33:10] Or, you know, this seems like… would it be really hard to blend two families in? Is this really how we want to live our lives now? It would be confirmed when we wrestled, like, hey, God, you're going to have to really show us that you want us together.
We had a community that wasn't ready to handle that transition period. So they kind of left us. We really just felt like, "Okay, everyone else is leaving. We need you. We need you to show up and tell us because everything else seems like it's a no. Like everything else is fighting against us." We would just walk on the beach and... these beaches are busy. You know, Destin, Florida is a very high-traffic beach. And we would find sand dollars, you know, even after the couple in front of us walked by, they would kick the sand in a way that would reveal a sand dollar and it would be our sand dollar.[00:34:18] I have them hung up now in my van and they're just a reminder of God's faithfulness.
Laura Dugger: Wow. Because I get the privilege of being your friend in real life and from previous conversations, you were even specifically asking together, you would say, "Lord, give us a sand dollar." And so every time that you found one, what was your reaction?
Jen Moore: Oh, I would just be jumping. I mean, I would just be like, "That's our sand dollar. That's our sand dollar. No, it's ours. It's our sign. And it's gifts from heaven." Yeah, it would just be so exciting.
Laura Dugger: Well, and such an Ebenezer to have these tangible reminders in your van that the Savior of the universe loves you so personally. I just appreciate you sharing all these stories.
How did you find out about The Savvy Sauce? [00:35:18] Did someone share this podcast with you? Hopefully, you've been blessed through the content. And now we would love to invite each of you to share these episodes with friends and help us spread the word about The Savvy Sauce. You can share today's episode or go back and choose any one of your other previous favorites to share. Thanks for helping us out.
And now as we fast forward a bit, what is your family up to these days?
Jen Moore: Yeah, three years removed from grief. It looks a lot different than those early days. It seems like this year, especially, it's been easier to breathe. The physical pain of heartbreak is gone. It also seems that God's been gracious and has helped us exit the stage of flight or fight mode that the girls and I were in for several years. So these days, life seems a little less anxious and a lot more filled with joy. [00:36:26]
We spend our days as much as possible together. We're always together as they are homeschooled. And we're just finding joy in the simplest things. Before Andy died, I was on the search for more. I wanted, you know, maybe if I had a career, if I wasn't a stay-at-home mom, maybe if I had more friends. God really showed me that more is my family that's directly in front of me. And just finding joy within them and in them and what's present in my life.
Laura Dugger: And even your new last name. God gave you the name Moore.
Jen Moore: Oh my goodness, yes. I didn't even think of that. Wow.
Laura Dugger: Are there any other ways that God has revealed any specific redemption for all these trials that you've walked through?
Jen Moore: Yeah. God's just been sweet and tender with the girls and I. [00:37:27] I knew I would be okay, but I really didn't want my girls not to have a daddy. You know, I still have my daddy and my daddy is like my world. I mean, I love him. He's hilarious. He's just such a huge part of my life. I just could not imagine not having that for my kids, especially girls.
I've said Weather was only six weeks old when Andy died and, you know, she didn't know him. But now knows no difference when it comes to Jeff. God's really been healing just a little bit of my heart every time with these moments that arise.
I remember in early widowhood being like, You know what I'm going to miss? I'm going to miss when Andy walked through that door and hearing 'daddy' and all the girls just running towards the door and they're just hugging him. He's trying to put his bag down and his cap down and they're climbing all over him. "Daddy, look what I did at school." You know, it's like, I'm going to miss that — not hearing those words "daddy". [00:38:32]
Now every time Jeff walks in the door, those three little girls and Shepard scream "daddy" every time he walks through the door. And it's like a bit of my heart heals every time I hear that. And God's just using that in the tiniest ways to redeem my story.
Laura Dugger: And that is my prayer even today with your willingness to share your story that God would continue to provide healing even in going back through and sharing all of this. Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you want to make sure we don't miss?
Jen Moore: I know you mentioned community earlier and I'm going to bring it up just one more time. My community was wonderful and they came together and rallied behind me. So my biggest stressor is I just cannot leave here without telling you the importance of attending and getting plugged in to the local church. [00:39:38]
You know, they are here to be the hands and feet of Jesus. They were just so, so helpful. I read once that hope requires three different things and it's a sense of control, a belief in something or someone like God and community.
That community held hope for me when I couldn't, you know, with God, of course. But if they're willing to put their lives on hold to take care of me, just being able to see God's grace be sufficient through all of that, it was just so hope-filled for me. A lot of people are discouraged when it comes to community because there's pain there, you know, with friends. Friends are hard, community. But community is work. It really is. But it's the best kind of work, I think.
Laura Dugger: Amen to that. As we take this message to heart and consider our own community, do you have any recommendations for any of us who are walking alongside a loved one who's currently experiencing the searing pain of loss? [00:40:49]
Jen Moore: Yeah. I think for people that are walking alongside someone that has lost a loved one, even if they lost their job or they lost hope in life, my recommendation is to be spirit-led in your life. You know, really seek the Lord. Be grace-filled. I think we need to remember that grace is a gift from God and sometimes it's like God's protection for us. And really to be action-oriented towards those people. If you don't know what step to take, just take the first one.
But that would be my recommendation on how to walk alongside a loved one that has experienced loss. Just really be spirit-led, grace-filled, and action-oriented.
Laura Dugger: Wow, those are some incredible takeaways. [00:41:52] I appreciate you going deep and sharing so much today and also your ever-present sense of humor as well. And so as we begin to wind down our time together, you already know that our podcast is called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so as my final question for you today, Jen, what is your savvy sauce?
Jen Moore: I mean, I sound silly, but my only savvy sauce is the Bible and prayer. That's what helps me and as a mom to so many. Just taking the idea that your prayer and quiet time and your Bible reading time has to be quiet out of your mind really helps. God will meet you there even in the midst of loud and hard. And there's wonders that audio Bible can do.
Laura Dugger: And you're speaking from experience with the full house and a lot going on. [00:42:54] It is such an encouragement. You are such a deep well of wisdom. I'm so honored that you shared this story with each of us. From the moment that I met you, I've enjoyed time with you and learned so much. You are that iron sharpening iron when you constantly are pointing it back to God and His goodness and His grace. So thank you for that in my own life and thank you for sharing that with us today. So appreciate you being my guest.
Jen Moore: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been an honor.
Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. [00:43:58] So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? [00:44:58] Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. [00:46:02] I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Nov 04, 2024
Monday Nov 04, 2024
245. Stories Series: Miracles Big and Small with Dr. Rob Rienow
**Transcription Below**
Matthew 18:3 (NIV) "And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Questions and Topics We Discuss:
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You have experienced some special miracle stories of God's provision in your life. Will you take us back to your childhood and share some of your early experiences with God?
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What were significant ways God showed up in your teenage and young adult years?
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How have you preserved these stories and passed them along to the next generation?
Dr. Rob Rienow married Amy in 1994 and they have been blessed with 7 children. His most important ministry is loving his wife and leading his children to know God and love Him. Rob’s mom came to Christ shortly after he was born so he was blessed to be introduced to Jesus at an early age. His parents divorced when he was in high school and God used that painful time in his life to give him a heart for young people and families going through dark times. He attended Wheaton College, then completed an MA in theology at Wheaton College Graduate School, an MDiv from Trinity International Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry in Christian Leadership from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
Rob’s life dramatically changed in 2004. God brought him to a place of deep repentance over the fact that he was disciplining other people’s children, but not his own. He was a spiritual leader at church, but passive with his family. Through that time of repentance, God turned his heart to the ministry of his children and his wife. God then led He and Amy to launch Visionary Family Ministries, a ministry designed to inspire parents and grandparents to disciple their children, to help couples create mission driven-marriages, and equip churches to build Bible-driven ministries. Their mission is to build the church through a global reformation of family discipleship.
He shares the biblical message of family discipleship at national and international conferences for parents, couples, and church leaders. He partners and consults with numerous churches, encouraging them to accelerate evangelism and discipleship through families.
Continue Learning from Dr. Rob Rienow:
Books and Resources by Dr. Rob Rienow
Other Episodes on The Savvy Sauce with Dr. Rob Rienow:
87 Visionary Parenting and Grand-Parenting with Dr. Rob Rienow
Special Patreon Release: Discipline that Disciples with Dr. Rob Rienow
230 Intentional Parenting in All Stages with Dr. Rob Rienow
Thank You to Our Sponsor: WinShape Marriage
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through our Website
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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: I am thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, Winshape Marriage. Their weekend retreats will strengthen your marriage, and you will enjoy this gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse. To find out more, visit them online at WinshapeMarriage.org. That's WinshapeMarriage.org. Thanks for your sponsorship.
Dr. Rob Rienow is my returning guest today. He and his wife, Amy, run a fantastic ministry, and they write books and resources. God has just gifted Rob with so much to offer. I'm going to link his incredible previous episodes on The Savvy Sauce in the show notes, and I know that you're going to really enjoy what he has to share today.
He's going to recount miracles he's witnessed in his life, as he excitedly gives glory to God by willingly sharing his story. [00:01:23]
Here's our chat.
Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Rob.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Thank you, Laura. I've been looking forward to continuing our conversation.
Laura Dugger: Well, I have as well. You are no stranger to the podcast, but in case anyone has missed your previous episode, would you just introduce us to your family and current phase of life?
Dr. Rob Rienow: Sure. Well, Amy and I are coming up on 30 years of marriage this summer, so we're going to celebrate big. We've been blessed with seven kids, ages 26 to 10. We've got four boys and three girls. Our eldest two are married and off the payroll. Our third child's getting married this summer. And announcement, announcement, we've been blessed with two grandbabies, Lissy and Bond. Our daughter and her husband have a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, Avie. And then they had a Christmas baby, December 28th, Ernest, our first grandson. So we've got this big growing family, a lot of happiness and a lot of problems. [00:02:25] When you put this many messed up people together, you get a lot of mess. So we are very much dependent on God's grace and mercy every day.
Laura Dugger: That is relatable. And just something I always appreciate is that you are full of joy and also full of truth and very candid. You've experienced some special miracle stories of God's provision in your life. So will you take us back to your childhood and share some of your early experiences with God?
Dr. Rob Rienow: Sure. Well, the first miracle was in my mother's life. When I was born, neither one of my parents were Christians. They came both from a very broken, difficult background. My mother was my father's fourth wife. My father was my mother's second husband.
When I was three months old, my mom was incredibly depressed. In fact, didn't even want to live anymore. On one of these days of depression and despondency, she was actually thinking about putting me and my older brother in a car and driving us off a cliff together. [00:03:30]
And on one of these days of depression, she called a friend and told her friend what she was thinking about, these dark thoughts. And her friend said, "Angie, don't move a muscle. I'm coming over to the house." Her friend came over. My mom was in her early 30s and she heard something from her friend she had never heard before. She heard who God was, how much God loved her, that God had proven his love for her by taking her sin and dying on the cross and rising again from the dead. And the grace of God worked in my mom's life and she repented of her sins. She put her faith in Christ, and as the Bible says, she was born again.
So when I was three months old, this was the first miracle in my life, which was the conversion of my mom. She gave her heart and her life fully to Christ. My dad, though, was an atheist and a secularist and he thought my mom had become a crazy Jesus person and he doubled down on his secularism and on his atheism. And even though then my mom was trying to follow Christ, there was this great gap in their marriage. [00:04:37]
Laura Dugger: Wow. So what was that like in childhood then, especially from the influence of your mom? How did you see her live out her faith that kind of transmitted to you and your siblings?
Dr. Rob Rienow: One of the things that my mom did from the very beginning was she kind of became an instant prayer warrior. Some of that was from the brokenness of her own background and just a tremendous neediness and desperation for God's power in her life. And that translated into, I'm going to say, a lot of childlike prayers. When I say childlike prayers, I mean that in a good way. You know, Jesus says, unless you have the faith of a child, you can't have a relationship with God.
So in some ways, when it came to my mom's prayer life, in some ways, she didn't know any better. In other words, like if we were sick, she prayed for God to heal us. If we needed finances, she prayed for God to provide, just like a little child would.
I remember one miracle story. [00:05:37] I was 11, 12 years old, springtime, and I had been given the task to go out in the yard and move some wood. I grew up in Connecticut, in a rural area in Connecticut. So move wood, spring project. And I pick up a couple of logs, I'm walking across the yard, I trip and fall, and the logs in my hands fall down on some logs on the ground, and my right index finger, I'm looking at it right now as I'm talking to you, got smashed between the logs falling and the logs on the ground. And I stand up — I had my gloves on — and I then take my glove off and look at my finger. And I don't know if you've ever overcooked a hot dog in the microwave before, but it was split from the top to the bottom. All the innards are now the outards. And at this point, I freak out. Up till now, I've been like, Ow, ow, ow. But then I'm screaming. I run into the house. Obviously, mom wraps it all up, off we go to the doctor. And it is broken, and they stitch it from the top to the bottom. [00:06:41]
This was, for me, as an 11-year-old, a crisis. This is a Tuesday. The crisis was that upcoming weekend, on Saturday, I had a baseball game to pitch in, and on Sunday, a piano recital to play in. Okay, Laura, I mean, Renaissance childhood, right? The sports, the music, the whole package.
As an 11-year-old, those are big deals. So I'm going to bed that night. I can still picture... You know, I don't have tons of childhood memories. I think everybody's wired up a little bit differently. But the ones that I have are very vivid. One of the memories I have is my mom just kneeling beside my bed that night and I'm going to sleep, and my finger's all splinted and wrapped up and stitched, and she says, "Well, Robbie, I'm going to pray for God to heal your finger because I know how important these things are to you this weekend." So I say, "Okay, mom."
I go to sleep, and my mom's praying there. I wake up the next morning, and my mom is still there. And she's kneeling beside my bed. [00:07:44] She had prayed all night for God to heal my finger. Now, I don't know, Laura, if this makes me an unspiritual person but I don't think in my life I've prayed all night. Maybe I've prayed late into the night or woken up in the middle of the night and prayed but I haven't prayed all night.
I wake up in the morning, and my mom says, "I've prayed for God to heal your finger. Why don't we unwrap it and take a look?" And I say, "Okay." So we unwrap the thing. And I want you to imagine that you went to the doctor right now, Laura, and you said, "I want you to put stitches in my finger from the top to the bottom." Now, nothing would be wrong with you, right? But just put stitches in. He could do it. The doctor could stitch up a normal finger.
We looked at my finger, and it had completely scarred over. I mean, I do have a nasty scar running down my finger now. But it had completely scarred over. And it was a little misshapen because it did get flattened. But it was healed. Like, it had completely scarred over. I could bend it. I didn't have any pain left. [00:08:51] And it was a real miracle.
Now, we don't in our family think, well, if you just pray all night for your child, then God will heal them, or every single time you pray in faith for healing, you're going to get a miracle. We don't believe that. But we would say this. If you never pray and ask for a miracle, you're probably not going to see very many of them. Right? So, I mean, sometimes God answers yes or no, but He encourages us as little children to come to Him and pray with childlike faith. And that was my mom. And that was one of the stories that I look back on and say, okay, I really saw God show up in a powerful way.
Laura Dugger: I love that so much. I've sat under your teaching before through your Visionary Parenting course. We even went through recently, our church did a Sunday school class with you teaching through that course. My takeaway was something simple to remember that comes to mind so many times, especially when our children get hurt. [00:09:53] You had recommended, it's great to go to the physician, but go to the great physician first.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Amen. Again, we're very pro-doctor and we're very pro-stitches and splits and all of that. But like you just said, having that childlike faith that when we're sick, when we're hurting, when we're in need, we go to God and we ask for His help and we ask for His miraculous work in our lives.
Laura Dugger: Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor.
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Laura Dugger: You were a Christ follower then. Were there significant ways that you remember God showing up in your teenage or young adult years? [00:11:53]
Dr. Rob Rienow: Well, the big one was during my parents' divorce. My parents divorced when I was 15. They had a difficult marriage. It was not all one-sided. But my dad traveled for business Monday through Thursday most weeks, and turns out that he had mistresses in different cities where he was traveling and basically wanted to keep his mistresses and stay married to my mom. My mom was not cool with that plan.
So, when I was 15, sophomore in high school, my parents got divorced. My dad's bad behavior and my parents' divorce was the big wound and trauma of my life. Part of what we had to do was to move, right? I had grown up in the same house my whole life, and my parents are getting divorced, and so it's, you know, sell everything, split the assets, all of that kind of stuff. [00:12:53]
My mom had not worked outside the home. She had worked some part-time accounting jobs while I was growing up, but she didn't have a career of her own, so she didn't have, like, assets of her own to fall back on. So, basically, they were going to sell the house, and my mom was going to get half of the proceeds of the house, and she could use the half that she got from the house to go find another place for us to live.
So my mom, in her childlike faith, set out on a prayer journey for where God wanted us to live, and the Lord put it on her heart that she needed to pray for some very specific things in our next house. So, she kind of wrote this prayer list: God, here's what I'm praying for in our next house.
She prayed for, I think, a certain radius, like three or four towns around where we lived. Part of that was that we were a part of a church, Valley Community Baptist Church in Avon, Connecticut, which was very important to us. We didn't want to be too far away from church. She prayed for a three-bedroom house, one bedroom for her, one bedroom for me, one bedroom for my brother. [00:13:56]
There were a couple weird things on the list. She prayed she wanted a house that had a walk-out basement, so it would be built kind of on a little hill. Connecticut's very hilly. So there's a lot of those.
And then the weirdest one was she wanted a house that faced south. The reason for that is that if your house faces south, your front and backyard both get sun, so she could have flowers in the front and the back. She was a gardener, and being in the garden was her place.
We needed to have a house signed and committed by April 15th, because we had to be out of our house by June 15th. Back then, it took two solid months from sort of closing day to move in. Sometimes that happens a little faster now, but back then it was two months.
So time's going by, and we're not finding a house. Sometimes we would find a house that maybe would have five of the six things on the list, and Mom would be like, Oh, we'll take it, but then somebody else would swoop down with their bag full of money, and it'd be gone." [00:14:56]
Finally, it's April 14th. This is the day before we need a house. I was actually on a mission trip in Washington, D.C. with my youth group, but a family from church called my mom, and they said, "We hear you're looking for a house, and we're going to be selling ours. Would you like to come take a look?"
So my mom comes over to this house about five o'clock in the afternoon, and it is lime green, Laura, lime green. But my mother had not specified color on her prayer list, so God cannot be held responsible for the color of the house. As you can imagine, she gets the tour, and everything she's been praying for is on this list. So she's getting more and more excited. My brother was there with her.
Then they start talking price. The asking price that these folks had was $30,000 more than my mom had. She really wasn't in a position to be negotiating or saying, "Well, I can do this. I can do this." She had what she had. [00:15:57]
So she's like, thank you very much. Really appreciate you showing me the house. She goes back home. Eight o'clock that night, phone rings again, and these folks want her to come back and look at the house again. So she's like, well, maybe they painted or something. I don't know. So she goes back, they look at the house. It was really weird. They gave her a tour again. She just had a tour three hours ago, but they give her a tour again.
She explained the story to me because I was away, she said, "I was standing there in the kitchen with this man and woman, this husband and wife with your brother Mark, and the man's wife hands him a note, and he reads the note." And then he says to my mom, "The world would have us get every penny we can get out of this house, but we think God wants you to have the house for whatever you can afford." Now, Laura, this is a three-bedroom house in rural suburban Connecticut. Is this a wealthy family? [00:16:58]
Laura Dugger: It doesn't sound that way.
Dr. Rob Rienow: It doesn't sound that way, right? They're not a wealthy family. And $30,000. So basically, they just gave us $30,000 is what they did. But this was like miracle part one. They were moving to Florida. And by giving us $30,000, they now no longer had the money they needed to fulfill the contract they had signed for their new house in Florida. So this was a big deal. This was a leap of faith for this family to basically be generous with us.
Three days later, their real estate agent from Florida calls them and says, "I don't know what happened, but the price of your house just went down $50,000." Laura, it was a miracle. And for me at 15 years old, it was God saying, "Rob, I haven't forgotten about you. I haven't abandoned you."[00:17:56]
Because when your parents are going through something like this, you have this fork in the road where you really only have two paths. One of the paths is to just hate God and harden your heart against Him, that if you're allowing this to happen, I want nothing to do with you. Maybe you're not even there. The other path is to basically lash yourself to Christ and to say, God, I have no idea why you're allowing this. I hate this. I have every kind of emotion in the world, but I'm just going to lash myself to you and you're going to have to get me through this storm.
But that miracle of this house that God provided for my mom was this moment for me that for so many years after that and continually, when now Amy and I get to places that seem dark or you really are asking the question, where is God? Has God forgotten about us right now? The Bible tells us over and over again to remember, remember, remember. Go back to the times both in Scripture and in your life where God has shown His might and power to you and you cling to those moments, those truths while you're in the darkness right now. [00:19:11]
Laura Dugger: That is so powerful. And so many thoughts swirling through my head after that, just thinking God delights in giving us rewards. Even though we know He's our ultimate treasure, He's still not opposed to giving us rewards here on earth.
The way that that couple listened to the Holy Spirit and sacrificed, really, their finances and were so generous and then what came, I love even the difference in money that your mom got a $30,000 discount that made it possible and theirs was even more. 50.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Yeah. And their family, and I've lost touch with them, but I'm sure they tell that story as a miracle provision for them.
Laura Dugger: For all of it. It just makes me think of Malachi 3:10, where it says, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." [00:20:20] So thank you for bringing that scripture to life in a real way that God met your family.
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I'm loving these stories. Do you have anything else that comes to mind? Because I'm assuming you have quite a few to share. [00:21:22]
Dr. Rob Rienow: Yeah. As I shared, parents got divorced, dad is unfaithful. It took God a lot of years to bring me to a place of forgiveness for what my dad had done. My youth pastor walked me through an intentional forgiveness plan, not just wishful thinking or time heals all wounds, but really making a choice in my heart to forgive my dad for what he had done. And then I began a daily prayer, which was very simple. It was, God, heal my heart of the anger, bitterness, and hatred that I have for my father.
In other words, I had made the choice with my will to forgive him. But Jesus says to forgive your brother from your heart. And I didn't have any power over my heart. You know, anger, bitterness, hatred, and resentment are not like little light switches that you just go down and you turn those off or give them to Jesus one day and they're gone. So God has to do a real heart miracle for you. [00:22:21]
So I spent six years doing that daily prayer, "God, heal my heart. I don't want to have any hatred, anger, bitterness, or resentment toward my father." And then one morning, junior year of college, I had a crazy early class at like 11 a.m., and I was getting ready to bolt out the door, I'm in my bathroom, and I was just thinking about my dad, and I don't even know why, but thinking about my dad, and I was flooded with a very different emotion.
Normally, if dad was on my mind, it would be a coldness or a bitterness or an anger. But flooded with compassion. And all sorts of things about my father's life came to mind. God brought them to mind. My dad was born in 1918, the pandemic of 1918, and his mother died in childbirth with him. We don't know the whole story or the whole history, but his father already had two sons, and his father wouldn't take him or couldn't take him. We don't know exactly what happened. [00:23:30]
So his mom dies, and his dad wouldn't take him. He also was a preemie baby. He was born at seven and a half months. Back then, that was a major, major life-threatening situation. So he spent the first year of his life in the hospital at the University of Iowa. And thank God for those nurses who took care of him. But, boy, you've got four daughters, Laura. I mean, you know that first year of life, so important for that little baby's heart and spirit.
Babies don't need nurses. Thank you, nurses. We love you. But they need a mom, right? They need a dad. They need grandma. They need grandpa. They need that family at home to be nursing that little spirit.
So my dad didn't have any of that. He then got adopted. He got adopted by his aunt and his uncle, who were brother and sister. So aunt and uncle, brother and sister, not incestuous or weird. They lived together, this single man, single woman, brother, sister. [00:24:33]
So he was adopted, never saw a marriage, never saw a family. His adopted father, Robert Rienow, who I'm named after, was the dean at the University of Iowa. He was an educator, and he was an atheist, and he was a secularist, and taught my father many things.
I remember growing up, my dad worked from home a lot in addition to his travel. So he had a home office, and he had his big man desk in his office, and I had the little man desk in his office. And I'd spend a lot of time with him there. And I remember a number of times growing up, he would stop working, and he'd turn to me, and he'd say, "Bobby, let me tell you the number one lesson that the dean taught me." So he referred to his adopted father as the dean, which is creepy. "Bobby, let me tell you the number one lesson that the dean taught me." I'm eight, nine years old. You look at your dad, and this is obviously going to be important, so I'm going to listen up. He says, "Number one lesson that the dean taught me was Jesus was just a man." Most important thing he taught me: Jesus was just a man. [00:25:36]
Now, Laura, your mom dies, your dad doesn't want you, you spend that first year in the hospital, you get adopted into this home. Where do you go to get wounds like that healed?
Laura Dugger: If you can't turn to God, I don't know what you do.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Correct, exactly. You're either turning to Jesus or not. Like, it's a one-stop shop. Jesus is the only one who's going to be able to heal wounds like that. And so his adopted father tells him the only person in the universe who can't help you is Jesus. My dad spends his whole life looking for women to love him. Married four times, lots of other relationships, dies with a picture of his mother on his dresser. How do you feel about him? Isn't that just sad, right?
In that scripture, Matthew 9:36, Jesus looks out at the crowd of lost souls. It says He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. [00:26:36] This was a real miracle in my life of God shifting... It doesn't mean my dad's not responsible for the things he did. It doesn't mean there's not boundaries and consequences for all that bad behavior. But it really shifted my heart toward him and enabled me to enter into a new chapter of ministering to him and trying to care for him and help point him toward Christ.
Laura Dugger: Wow. I had never heard all of that backstory before, Rob. But I also believe that's not where the story ends. So would you continue?
Dr. Rob Rienow: Yeah. We're going to fast forward. So now it's summer of 2008. My dad's 90 years old and we get a call... This was June. We get a call that he's been diagnosed with advanced cancer. I was speaking at a conference in Arizona when the call came. Amy was home with the kids. So Amy's home and she says, "We're going to sit down and write some cards to Papa Bill." [00:27:39] Our oldest child was 11 or 12. So crayons and markers and all this.
A little backstory. My dad had forbidden our children from sending him any cards with Jesus stuff in there. Like he was very hard-hearted toward God. I don't want Bible stuff. "I don't want Jesus stuff in my birthday cards, etc." Well, Amy sat down with the kids and she's like, "Well, he can pound sand. We're going to send a lot of Jesus stuff in these cards."
So my daughter, Lissy... I actually have scans of all of these. My daughter, Lissy's card, again, with the crayons and the markers, "Dear Papa Bill, we're praying for you. John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life."
My eldest son, this is my favorite card, he said, "Dear Papa Bill, we're praying for you. Here is a verse for you. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I hope you enjoy this verse. Love, R.W." [00:28:37]
Laura Dugger: That's amazing.
Dr. Rob Rienow: It's awesome. I wasn't home for any of this, right? I'm away speaking. And I'm like, If I had been home, I probably would have massaged that card a little bit, the messaging there, just from the standpoint of, like, card to dying grandpa, right?
But the Lord did teach me something very important and clarified something for me about the gospel. We talk about the gospel as good news, but it actually starts with bad news, that we're separated from God because of our sin, and no amount of being good can clean us up and welcome us into God's presence. We can't cover up our sin with our good deeds. In fact, there's great judgment awaiting us because of our sin. That's really, really bad news. But then we have good news, that God proves his love for us in this, that while we're still sinners, Christ died for us. [00:29:30] So these cards that went off to my dad were filled with bad news and good news, which is the gospel.
So then you go forward to August 10th, 2008. My father is in the hospital, and my mother and her husband go to visit him. Five years after my parents divorced, my mother got remarried to a godly man named Jack. My parents were cordial post-divorce, so I guess that's a good thing. Better to be cordial post-divorce than not.
So my mom went to visit him in the hospital with her husband. So your fourth wife and her husband come to visit you. My dad says to my mother and Jack, "Is there anything I can do for you?" Which is a weird question. He wasn't rich, and he's dying. My stepfather, Jack, says, "Yes, Bill, there is. Trust Christ. We want to be in heaven with you." My dad says, "I have been thinking a lot about that lately." [00:30:32] And he points over to his hospital room window where there are four cards, crayon and marker, taped there and he says, "Bring me the card. I want to read those again." And they bring the cards over, and they read, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" and "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." And my mom shares the gospel with my dad for the 1,552nd time and says, "Bill, are you ready to repent and trust Christ?" He says, "I am." And so he prays to put his faith in Jesus with his fourth wife and her husband.
My mom gets home that night. It was a Sunday night. My mom gets home from the hospital, calls out to us here in Illinois, tells us what happened. We have the party to end all parties. We've been praying for decades for my father's conversion. My mom goes back the next day to make sure that it wasn't like a drug-induced stupor. In other words, he's dying, he's got cancer, maybe he's just crazy. [00:31:34] So she goes back the next day, "Bill, do you remember praying with us yesterday?" "Oh, yes, absolutely." "Well, can we read the Bible with you?" "I would love that. Yes."
Now, the backstory there is many times in my parents' marriage, my mom had said, "Oh, I wonder if I could read the Bible here at dinnertime or something," and my dad would just become enraged and would have nothing to do with it. He was a new creation in Christ. He was born again. The old had gone, the new had come. He had a brand new heart and a renewed mind.
I have never seen a greater miracle. We're talking about miracles today. I've never seen a greater miracle, hands down, than the conversion of my 90-year-old dad.
We get in the car, we drive out to Connecticut, I spend three unbelievable days with this new man. He asks forgiveness for the affairs. Now, I had forgiven him years ago, but our relationship could not be fully reconciled until he asked for that forgiveness and received that forgiveness. [00:32:33]
He passed away, then, September 2nd, just a few weeks after that. I can't wait for heaven. I want to be home with my Lord and Savior Jesus, but I only got three days with my new dad. And we're going to have forever together without any sin in our lives. And I can't wait for that.
Laura Dugger: That brings a lot of tears. Yes, we cannot wait to be with Jesus in glory forever and all of the loved ones who have gone before us. I think you give so much hope. That's why the Bible says to share our stories, because it's His story of work in our lives. And it is so encouraging, even if we're praying for someone right now, and the enemy wants to tell us that they're too far gone or it's never going to happen. It can, and in his case, it did.
Dr. Rob Rienow: And you asked the question, and one of my questions for Jesus is, why was it the 1,552nd time that my dad heard the gospel that he repented? [00:33:35] Why not the second time? Why not the third time? You simply don't know when the Holy Spirit is going to soften someone's heart. Let me tell you one of my favorite bedside moments with my dad. He said to me, "Bobby, I've got a new life verse." Now, you're like, wait, time out. I didn't think he was a Christian. He wasn't, but he did have a life verse, it just wasn't from the Bible. Like verse, prose, poetry. It was a poem. And the poem was Henley's Invictus. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it or not, but you probably know the most famous line in that poem.
So again, back to my growing up years with my dad at his big man desk in his office, he had his life verse on a plaque on his desk, a little plaque that sat in front of him. And the verse was this, "It matters not how strait the gate, nor how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul." [00:34:36]
Translation, "If there is a God and if there is a judgment day, I'm in charge, like I'm the master of my eternity." So that was my dad's life verse. And so he says, "Bobby, I got a new one." I said, "That's good, dad. We definitely need a new one." And so he says, "My new life verse is this: There by the grace of God go I." Now, that's not in the Bible either. That's a 17th-century German guy. But I didn't think it was time for a Bible lesson. I thought it was a fantastic improvement. I'm sure Jesus will sort that out with him on the other side. But I'm just so grateful to the Lord.
I'm glad you asked some of these questions today. I know one of the things that God was doing in allowing a lot of seasons and years of pain and trauma, every chance I get to tell my dad's miracle conversion story, I do it because I think it just makes God look so good. [00:35:38] I think it highlights His love and His mercy and His grace and His power.
An answer to the question, why was the 1552nd time? It's because God is... He's getting a lot of glory for what He did as that story gets told over and over again.
Laura Dugger: Wow. I love your willingness to share this story. Even in this series, one of my side prayers for every guest is that it's also cathartic to go back and to relive some of this and remember, because the Bible oftentimes asks us to remember the goodness that God has displayed in our lives. And He didn't just do that in Bible times. He's still doing that with each of us today. So I think it also reminds us to pay attention.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Yes.
Laura Dugger: And I've wondered with all of these stories, how have you preserved them and pass them along to the next generation? [00:36:37]
Dr. Rob Rienow: Yeah, it's a great question. We're actually instructed to do that. In Psalm 78, it instructs parents and grandparents to tell your kids the great and glorious deeds of the Lord and the wonders He has done. That is a combination of the great and glorious deeds that He has done in Scripture, but also the miracles he's done in your life, these special moments.
These sorts of miracles we're talking about today are not daily, weekly things. These are powerful moments in our life, unique, special moments where God shows up. So I just would ask you, do your kids know your conversion story? Do your kids know these special moments that you look back on where you know God showed up and proved himself to you?
Now, maybe you say, well, I don't have a conversion story. I grew up with Christian parents and they had Christian parents and I came to Christ when I was a little kid. You know, I have a terrible testimony. That's just boring. Well, I want all of my kids and grandkids to have that terrible testimony. [00:37:40]
Laura Dugger: Amen.
Dr. Rob Rienow: I just want them... That's a phenomenal testimony. It's tremendous. Tell your kids what a miracle that is, that God has worked generationally in your family. Take whatever opportunities you have to tell them those stories, to write them down if you can.
One of the things that Amy and I did a few years ago, and we actually have to do an update now, but we've had our kids interview... like set up the video camera and interview the grandparents just about their life and about their stories. Amy's parents are believers. She grew up the same as I did, though. Christian mom, non-Christian dad. Her dad came to Christ after we were married and has had an incredible testimony. And then my father's home with the Lord, but my stepfather Jack is a believer.
So sitting down with grandparents, turning the video camera on, having the kids interview them, get their stories, and zeroing in on that question. How have you seen God work powerfully in your life? What stories do you want us to remember? [00:38:40]
Laura Dugger: I think that's a great encouragement for each of us, something that we can apply. Okay, Rob, so you said you're coming up on 30 years of marriage and you and Amy have seven children. So I'm assuming God has done a lot in marriage and parenthood. So what stories come to mind there?
Dr. Rob Rienow: One of the stories would be a marriage miracle for us. We're coming up on 30, but when we got married, even though she was a Christian and I was a Christian, I'll speak for myself. I was really clueless about what Christian marriage was all about or even what the purpose of marriage was all about.
The Bible says in Genesis 2:26, "For the purpose of marriage, a man will leave father and mother, cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Well, we did the first two. We left father and mother, and we cleaved to one another, and we became one flesh physically, but spiritually, not really. [00:39:45]
What I mean by that is I really didn't have any vision to spiritually care for her or spiritually connect with her. One of the ways that evidenced itself was we hardly ever prayed together as husband and wife. In fact, for 13 years of our marriage, we hardly ever prayed together. We prayed at meals. We prayed in crisis. And I've shared this story before. At the 10-year mark, we started praying as a family. I was really neglecting the kids spiritually for a lot of years, too.
But for 13 years, we were really on separate tracks spiritually. I was actually on a men's retreat, and it wasn't a retreat about marriage, it was just about our relationship with the Lord, and it was during a prayer and worship time, and God had to do a very miraculous work in my heart. [00:40:40]
He brought me to a place of repentance and conviction and even brokenness and convicted me that in 13 years, I had never woken up in the morning like with this front-burner thought that Amy's spiritual life that day was something I needed to be concerned about. In other words, that God had called me to love her and serve her and lead her. And that I needed a plan to just encourage her and bless her and support her spiritually.
The Lord, like, turned my heart to Amy and turned my heart to my ministry to her. See, even that word, Laura, if you had come up to me and said, well, how's ministry going? Well, I would have told you about church. Now, if you say, Rob, how's ministry going? I'm going to say, well, hey, let me tell you how I'm trying to connect with Amy and partner with her and encourage her. Let me tell you about the kids. Because that ministry began with her heart and her soul.
The first thing then that happened, and again, this was almost 17 years ago, we started praying together before we went to bed each night. [00:41:42] It's just a short prayer. I will pray, God, thank you for this and this and this today. And then, Laura, what I'll try to do is just think about a burden that Amy has and try to shoulder a little bit of that burden in prayer for her. So, "Lord, Amy is just... I know she's exhausted today. So, I want to pray she'll fall asleep quickly, not wake up one time, and wake up in the morning just feeling great. Give her her full strength back." Or, God, I know that she's got this very difficult decision tomorrow. She needs wisdom. Lord, your word says that when we need wisdom, we should ask for it, and you give without partiality. So, please give her the wisdom that she needs." It's just any burden that I sense that she is under, I want to shoulder a little bit of it in prayer.
We now have been praying every night for almost 17 years. Now, I am not tooting my own horn here. We have 13 years of no prayer, 17 years with prayer. So, I'm only plus four, okay, in our almost 30 years together. So, we're still digging out of a lot of prayerless years. But I cannot overstate, and I'll just mention one other thing real quickly here, that the area of prayer that we've probably gotten the best in and where we've seen the most miracles is prayer in the midst of conflict. [00:42:56]
So, Amy and I are having a fight about Lord knows what. And one of us says, I think we should pray. It's gritted teeth, and it's just horrible. It's the last thing you want to do because our walls are up, and we're angry with each other. One person says, I think we should pray and you say, fine, and you walk over, and I hold her hand. It's like a dead corpse, right? She's just angry, and I'm angry. And one of us says, "Lord, help us." Three words: Lord, help us.
So many times we've had the miracle, and it is a miracle, of the Holy Spirit rushing in, softening my heart to her, softening her heart to me. For the last 30 minutes, I've been like, you, you, you, and now all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit shows me, oh, me, me, me. And the same for her. And now there's an exit ramp off this conflict that we have been on.
But we have experienced these miraculous answers to prayer in our marriage as the Lord brought us out of that very... It was a dangerous time. We didn't know it at the time, but it was a dangerous time of those 13 prayerless years. [00:44:02]
Laura Dugger: I think what's so evident is your daily walk with the Lord in these practical ways that He's met you. And I think that's very replicable for shouldering some of the burden for our spouse or our children through prayer. But then also these big ways that God has shown up, and all of them are important. So thank you for sharing that.
Rob, this time has been so rich, but there's so much more that you have to teach us. So after this conversation, where can we go to learn more from you?
Dr. Rob Rienow: Well, Laura, I've loved it. I appreciate your ministry so much. People can connect with me and Amy through our weekly podcast, Family Vision. You can find Family Vision on any podcast service. That's just where Amy and I are sharing each week the things that God is teaching us and the areas that we're growing. You can find our ministry on any social media channel by searching Visionary Family Ministries or coming to our website, VisionaryFam.com. [00:45:05]
And a couple of our books that connect with our conversation today, one is called Healing Family Relationships. It is just a walk through some biblical principles to seek peace and reconciliation in your home. I share my dad's story in detail in that book, and I think you'll love it.
Another one that comes to mind is a book called Never Too Late. If you have an adult child in your life who's far from God and maybe you feel like you've been praying for them forever to come to Christ, or even just to be restored in their relationship with you, that resource, Never Too Late, would be the way to go.
Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We will add links for all of those resources in the show notes for today's episode. Rob, you're familiar because this is not the first time you've been on the podcast, but we are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?
Dr. Rob Rienow: Well, from our conversation today, The Savvy Sauce would be asking God to give you a childlike faith. [00:46:10] Sometimes we think about having a faith in God or having a mature faith, or you think about having a long-time faith or a deep faith. A mature, deep, long-time faith is childlike. And it is simply coming to God like a child in a spirit of neediness, putting your full faith and trust in Him, giving Him your whole heart in every area of your life.
Laura Dugger: Well said. Rob, thank you for your always helpful teaching. I continue to learn from your humor and your stories, and most importantly, from the overflow of your rich relationship with the Lord. So thank you for being my returning guest today.
Dr. Rob Rienow: Thanks, Laura. I appreciate our friendship. I know that your podcast is making a huge difference in people's lives, so thanks for having me on.
Laura Dugger: Aw, thanks for that. [00:47:08]
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.
This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.
This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. [00:48:07] This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.
We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him.
At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. [00:49:09] We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John.
Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." [00:50:11] The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Monday Oct 28, 2024
244. Stories Series: Medical Marvels with Carolyn Henricks
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NIV) "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
**Transcription Below**
Carolyn Henricks is married to Gary, mother to four married adult children, and grandmother to ten. She retired from her career as Pediatric Quality Coordinator at OSF St. Francis and now spends time volunteering in various capacities.
Questions We Discuss:
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What was it that drew you to a saving faith in Jesus Christ?
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What medical complications did your third son walk through?
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Do you have any wisdom to share first about parenting adult children?
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
*Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: Thanks again for joining us on this continued story series. I've loved capturing these stories of God's goodness running after us. Sometimes that's globally, and sometimes that's sharing stories locally. Today, it's such a joy to share a local story of my friend and my guest today, Carolyn Henricks.
We first met over five years ago as we started attending the same church as the Henricks and now our lives have overlapped in many ways. I'm so excited for her to now share the personal ways God has pursued her and has been with her all the days of her life.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Carolyn. Thank you.
Carolyn Henricks: Thanks for having me.
Laura Dugger: Well, I'm so excited to host you today. Will you just start us off by giving some context and sharing about your childhood and upbringing? [00:01:22]
Carolyn Henricks: Sure. I grew up in Atlanta, Illinois. That's about 45 minutes south of here. It's a really small town, about 1,200. I actually went to grade school in Atlanta, Illinois, and then ended up going to high school, to Olympia High School. So that's a consolidated school. It had eight different towns that went in there. I was actually the sixth class to graduate from Olympia High School because it was very new.
I have one older brother. My mother was a kindergarten teacher for 38 years. So that kind of gives you a glimpse of the kind of lady she was, full of patience and just sweet nature of her character. She was actually my kindergarten teacher as well, which is really fun. My dad was a buyer for a company out of Lincoln, Illinois.
My folks were married for 64 years and I think really had one of the sweetest marriages of anyone I've ever known. [00:02:20] While it was not perfect, of course, they truly really treasured each other daily and deeply. I think that even got sweeter with time. They both passed away in about 2020, really just three months apart.
I grew up in a church, and we literally were in the church every single time the doors were open. My parents loved and were very dedicated to our small church. Each of them served there in many ways, and even actually when they were too old to be doing so, they took a lot of the physical work that needed to be done in this really old building.
You know, while I was raised in a church, I would not say that I had a saving faith, I had a personal relationship with Jesus. I didn't have. We prayed before meals, but the Bible was never read in my home.
As I was thinking about this, I don't remember that the Bible was even read from the pulpit. I remember a lot of motivational-type sermons, but not a lot of scriptural ones. [00:03:25] I don't remember discussing our personal faith at any time as a young child.
My parents were very strict on respect and values. My obedience was driven out of a love and respect for them, not my desire to follow Jesus. But because I knew they would love me despite any mistakes and sins, I would often push the boundaries.
When I was in high school, my grandmother was very ill, and my parents found it easier to care for her if she would move in and spend most nights with us. I, at that time, was in high school. I had a full-size bed, and my grandmother slept there with me. It was a really very special time.
As she had aged and my grandfather had aged and then passed, my grandmother would always tell me, "You are just going to be a wonderful nurse." And so I grew up believing that I was going to be a nurse. And I did.
But my grandmother was a prayer warrior. I would say that she was the one who really taught me to pray. I specifically remember that her prayers were those of one who seemed like she was talking with an old friend. [00:04:35] So she walked through life with a confidence and an assurance of her faith. And I did not truly appreciate this until I had a saving faith of my own.
Laura Dugger: I would love to hear more about your saving faith. But first, when did Gary enter the picture, who is your now husband?
Carolyn Henricks: So actually, we met on a blind date. It was the last month of my senior year of nurse's training. One of my college professors, who knew him, was a good family friend of his, she really wanted me to meet him. She knew that I enjoyed water skiing and did a little competition where he skied a lot in competition. She said he was a nice young man, and he sang in their church choir and I just really needed to meet him.
So we had our first date, actually, the day before we graduated. And then I moved back to Atlanta, Illinois, for over the summer, and then moved back to Peoria to start my career. [00:05:37]
We dated on and off, I would say. As I told my kids, it was so different then. You know, you had a wall phone that you had to wait until it would ring to whoever it was. As a young lady, you didn't exactly call the gentleman. So I would wait for the phone to ring. So I decided to start attending the church that he went to and join the choir so that I could see him on Thursday nights and Sunday. We have now been married 40 years this past summer.
Laura Dugger: I love that so much. I'm trying to get the timeline correct then. When you were married, did you already have a saving faith in Jesus Christ, or what was it that drew you to that?
Carolyn Henricks: Actually, as a junior in high school, I was invited to go to the cabin. That's a place in Tremont that a young gentleman from high school had actually told me he was giving his testimony at the cabin that night. [00:06:40] I wasn't even sure what the testimony was at that point.
Went to the cabin, heard his testimony. I remember thinking as a young adult, and even a newly married, that choosing Jesus fully meant giving up something. Maybe that you had to look different, or you would act different, or dress different and giving up friends that we enjoyed. But God was so gracious and patient with me.
For me, my journey of faith was just that. It was a journey. We were only married about a year and a half when we became pregnant with our first son and about seven months along, my water broke. So we ended up delivering a little guy who was super tiny. Spent six weeks in the NICU and battled a lot of respiratory issues and feeding issues. It was quite stressful for a young couple, newly married.
When he was about a year and a half old, my husband's father, who had just retired, was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. [00:07:48] And it was a long 18-month journey. He was so young. He was 63. We were 27 and 30 when all of this happened. We helped care for him in my husband's home and actually when he then was in the hospital's home. And it was daily and emotionally and physically draining.
By the time he passed away, our kids were nine months old and three years old. And I remember while we prayed frequently during this time, I don't think that we truly, really embraced the peace that comes through Jesus.
Soon after this, a young couple that we had gotten to know really well through my husband's work, we really connected because our boys were about the same age. During her second pregnancy, she had found a lump in her breast. And by the time she delivered, it was a very aggressive breast cancer.
They were strong believers. We had actually taken them a meal a few days before she passed away. And that night... we often talk about this very specific night where we went and sat in their living room. [00:08:56] We had taken them this meal. And as we sat in their presence that evening, it was incredible. There was this tangible peace that just encompassed them.
They ended up ministering to us. And that evening when we left, knowing that would be the last time we would see her, we just wept. We verbalized to each other that they had something that we did not, but we didn't even know how to get it. We just didn't even know.
Soon after that, like a day later, Gary left for a business trip and he was unable to attend her funeral, which was at the Old Grace Press Church. The pastor actually preached the plan of salvation and offered the opportunity to be saved. And that was the moment that I, for the very first time, knew I was a sinner and in need of a Savior and gave my life to Christ.
Laura Dugger: We are always moved to tears when we hear the saving grace of Jesus. [00:09:55] It never gets old, the story that never gets old. And we tell it because He will do it again for others as we share.
Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor.
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Laura Dugger: So that was your story, but Gary was traveling at this time. Did he come to a personal faith soon after that?
Carolyn Henricks: That took some time as well. And not too long after that, we actually moved to Morton. So that was in 1990. At that time, we were still attending Gary's church back home where we had always been. Some friends invited us to come to Grace Church in Morton about within a month from when we moved. So we started attending there and immediately just dug in and started serving.
We both had such a love for music, still do, and we started helping direct a high school kids choir. We actually, back then, we did plays during that time. And it was so much fun. Later, we served with the junior high and high school ministries for about 20 years. [00:12:58] We both served on the worship team as well.
But being part of a church community certainly changed the trajectory of our lives. We both were baptized as believers at Grace. I think I was first, and he was maybe a year or so after that. We became members.
I think often of those who invested in us as a couple, we were new believers. And we kind of called ourselves first-generation Christians. You know, when you think of all the things that you learn as a new believer, and then trying to impart that in your children, and just they discipled us. We're so grateful for that.
But one of the most impactful things we did as a new believer was going on a short-term mission trip to Burkina Faso. The church needed a nurse to go and give some vaccines and someone with computer experience. So we jumped in and we did that. And what God allowed us to see and experience changed our view of Him and our forever view of the power of the gospel through that. [00:14:06]
Laura Dugger: You say you were offering some medical help on this trip. And I remember you said your grandma had prophesied over you would be a great nurse. Were you working at this point as well?
Carolyn Henricks: Yes, I was. I worked as a nurse and was working in the pediatric intensive care at that time. And due to some health issues that I had during my third son's pregnancy, I couldn't carry any more children. So, yeah, I was working in the pediatric ICU.
Now we had three sons at that time, which my husband would have said was the perfect family. But I was just convinced we needed some spice and pink in our family and just some of that true tenderness that only a little girl can bring.
So one day I was working in the pediatric intensive care, and a family that I had cared for had come up to visit us onto the floor, which wasn't unusual. They were carrying this darling 13-month-old foster daughter with them. [00:15:09] She was absolutely adorable.
The family had shared that they were very confident that her case would end up in adoption. They also really just felt like they weren't called to keep her because they had a really medical complex child of their own. They said that the caseworker would be looking for a family for a permanent foster placement.
So I immediately started praying, shared it with my husband. It did take him a little while for the Lord to work on his heart, but soon we became foster parents. And right before her second birthday, she moved into our home and we finalized her adoption with us when she was three and a half years old. Kelsey is now 25 and recently married. And God taught us so much through Kelsey.
By the time she had moved in with us, we were actually her fifth foster family. So much attachment trauma, as you can imagine. [00:16:09] Adoption is certainly not an easy journey, but it is so worth it.
Laura Dugger: It's incredible. During your time at Grace Church, what was the Body of Christ, the people in the congregation, what are some things that they did that stood out to really encourage you?
Carolyn Henricks: So, yes, we were new in our faith, new coming to Grace. Both of us had experiences in our churches where we became members and we served. And back then we expressed that, you know, we really want to become members at Grace Church.
An older couple that actually lived down the block from us took us out for lunch. And again, here's our testimony. They were like, "Oh, tell us your testimony and how you had a saving faith in Jesus." And at this point, we did not. At that point, we had not fully... I mean, yes, I had made a profession of faith at that funeral and that beginning journey, right? [00:17:16] But without discipleship and mentoring, it probably just happened at that point.
And so that's where we see Grace as being such a place where we were discipled and really our faith journey just grew from there. But this couple took us out for lunch and they said, you know, give us your testimony, tell us.
We really just both told about growing up in the church and really what that looked like. And so then they said, "And then you were baptized as believers." And we just very calmly said, "No, we were baptized as babies. And they said, "To become members of Grace, we believe in the importance of believers' baptism" and really talked a little bit about that.
At that point, I think we became really quiet because they said, "Well, you know, that really does need to happen. That's a step of obedience for a church that we believe is important before we become members."
Of course, we kind of got a little quiet at that point. We left there thinking, "Okay, I don't know what we think about this." [00:18:21] But it did send us down a path of wanting to find out: What was the importance of that? Why was that important?
Then that is when we both, in different time frames, decided to become baptized. It was huge. Interestingly, I had invited my parents to come to witness the baptism. We had two boys, I think, at that point. My parents elected not to come because they said I already was baptized.
But watching me grow in my faith and by the time Gary was baptized, they came to Gary's baptism and really were so gracious in saying, "I'm sorry, we weren't there for you. And we see this and the importance of that." So, yeah, that was really huge.
And I think about our boys, our young boys, even witnessing that of our profession of faith and our baptism as well.
Laura Dugger: One reoccurring scripture that comes up for The Savvy Sauce is James 1:22. It says, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. [00:19:25] Do what it says." And because our tagline here is Practical Chats for Intentional Living, we want to hear how you are applying these messages to your own life.
What action steps have you taken after hearing one of these podcasts that has improved your life a little bit? We would love to hear it. Please email us at info@thesavvysauce.com.
Now, at this point, you have Drew and Derek and Dylan and Kelsey. But specifically with Dylan, he faced a lot of medical complications. So will you share that journey with us?
Carolyn Henricks: Sure. Dylan, our youngest son, who's now 31, was born with a complex congenital heart defect. I did not know when I was pregnant with him that he had this, so it was quite shocking. I also had a medical condition that I didn't know until I delivered, which I ended up being pretty sick from.
Because Dylan had no way for the blood to get to his lungs right immediately when he was born, due to the anatomy of his heart, he required an open-heart surgery. He was just 24 hours old. [00:20:36] I clearly remember this visit that happened in the hospital from the cardiologist.
He came into our room and we'd already collected so many questions. We had so many questions. We wanted to know. We just began firing all these questions at him and desiring all the answers right then that took him all the way from adulthood. You can imagine. How many surgeries will he have? Is he going to be normal? Could he die suddenly at some point? What else are we to expect? Will he ever play sports? I remember thinking. That seemed so huge for some reason, right? Could he play sports?
But the doctor was so patient and gracious and kind with us. And he shared that what he did know was that our life with Dylan, due to the complexity of his heart, that it wouldn't be just his heart, you know, that special heart, that life would just be about stuff. [00:21:35]
He told us that while he didn't have the answers to all these things that we really desperately wanted to know, he shared that life would be about stuff and that God would provide those answers to all of our questions in the days and the weeks and the years ahead.
I don't know how many times I have thanked God that he did not reveal all of that to us upfront. Right? How many of us would choose to walk those hard roads if we knew? Thank you, Lord, for not letting us see the whole picture. That it is because you love us so much and desire our dependence to be on you, you are so gracious to give us just what we need in the time when we need it.
A verse that so spoke to us during this time still does. Romans 8:18. And it says, "Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later." [00:22:38] It's just become such a life verse for us for so many reasons.
Dylan ended up having another open heart surgery when he was 18 months old and at 6 years old. When he was about 10 years old, he had a routine checkup where they were just checking his heart and they actually found multiple fractures on his spine.
And after months and months of testing and going here and there, he was finally diagnosed with something called juvenile idiopathic osteoporosis. It's actually just a very rare metabolic bone disorder. It has nothing to do with his heart.
We actually were followed by a specialist from Shriners. We would have to go and spend one week in the hospital every single month where he would then receive these transfusions until he really began producing calcium in his bone again. [00:23:40]
This was actually a really hard diagnosis for me for whatever reason, for lots of reasons, in my faith, I think, because Dylan had been this kid who lived without pain, even though he had this congenital heart problem. But this time he lived in pain, and that was really hard.
So everything about this was just part of that stuff that the cardiologist had shared when he was born. Dylan was such a happy-go-lucky little guy that he made friends everywhere he went. Never knew a stranger. Made the best of every situation. Even when we were at Shriners, he would always make a new friend. He was one of those little kids who could get someone's whole life story in an elevator ride. And he just radiated joy even in the midst of his circumstances.
Something that I had not thought of for a really long time, Laura, when we were at Grace and we were in a Sunday school class. And it was right before Dylan was having his second open-heart surgery. [00:24:44] So he was about 18 months old. This one felt hard because, you know, we knew him as a little guy, not as a newborn. You know, so you knew his little personality.
A dear friend in a prayer that was in our Sunday school class just led the most prophetic prayer over him. She pleaded with God just to grow Dylan into a man who would glorify God with all that he had been through and would go through and that through Dylan's life, he would lead others to Jesus. And God really answered that prayer.
Laura Dugger: Yes, he did. I'm sure he did countless times. But Dylan went on to a medical career. I know of a local friend who their son had complicated diagnoses related to his heart as well and they didn't know if he was going to make it. Dylan was the medical professional working with them and they call Dylan their angel nurse. And that little boy's life was spared. [00:25:49]
So I don't know all the stories and lives that Dylan has touched. But I am sure, especially as a mama, it was hard to have faith and also hold hope at that time because you couldn't see the future. But will you catch us up and give us a glimpse into your family and what it looks like today?
Carolyn Henricks: Sure. So we ended up having four children. They are all married now. We have ten grandchildren. Our oldest son, Drew, and his wife, Rachel, they have three little boys. Drew actually took an internship with the Department of Army right out of college and has lived in the D.C., Virginia area ever since. His wife, Rachel, is a teacher. They love their church community and just serve there so well and faithful.
Our second son, Derek, and his wife, Kara, live here in Morton. They have one son and three girls. Derek is an associate pastor at Grace Church, where we attend and Kara is a stay-at-home mom and photographer. [00:26:52]
We certainly did not anticipate that they would be here in Morton someday, as Derek began his college and the first eight years of his career in the military. But the Lord led them to seminary in Louisville and then to the position here. And so, again, abundantly more than we could have asked or imagined.
Then Dylan is married to Sophie. And, as we said, they are both nurses. They have three little girls. Their second daughter, Ruth, was also born with a very complex congenital heart defect. But Ruth is now two-and-a-half, and she has had three open-heart surgeries.
Then our daughter, Kelsey, she lives in California and just actually was married a few weeks ago in a little private ceremony at our home to her husband, Sean, who's a Marine, and he was just deployed this past Saturday. So, Kelsey works as a fashion photographer.
Laura Dugger: Incredible to hear the faithfulness and what all God brought you through. [00:27:51] Now that we get to be neighbors and we attend the same church and our lives have overlapped, we get to witness that you and Gary are such helpful parents and involved grandparents. So, do you have any wisdom to share first about parenting adult children?
Carolyn Henricks: One of the things I often say is there are so many stages and phases of life that you cannot possibly relate to until you're walking in them. I don't know if you remember when you first had children and then you had friends who had children and it seemed like our whole world just revolved around the kids and you kind of couldn't relate to it at that time until you did.
Or, for example, I remember when I became a mother-in-law, the moment I became a mother-in-law, the empathy and the love I felt toward my own mother-in-law was so magnified in a way that I had never felt before. [00:28:51] I remember seeing these grandparents who always showed pictures of their grandkids. I thought that was so funny. And then I became one.
So, you asked about parenting adult children. How do we speak into our kids' lives at this age? Just like perhaps you walk along other parents who have kids the age of your kids and how do you glean from each other, right? Parenting adult kids is certainly different. I hesitate to use the word "hard". I would just say it's different.
And it's funny, but I can clearly remember watching my parents and maybe even with a little bit of a critical spirit at some time thinking, "Oh, I could do it so different. I will parent my kids so different." Again, the respect for my parents magnified when I had my own.
But just recently, one of our sons openly asked us if we saw something in their parenting skill or style, would we feel free to speak openly and tell them? [00:29:54] And without a hesitation, Gary, my beau, answered, "No, not unless you asked us." But somehow he was really surprised by that answer.
But interestingly, we shared that with all of our kids that have kids, and they sweetly told us, "No, please, we want you to share with us." But maybe that's a good question to ask up front, right? As a parent, you know, before you want to say something, give them the hypothetical. Do you want us to say something?
You know, sometimes just asking that permission and getting that conversation out in the open would be really helpful. As far as wisdom, I would say that transparency and humility is really important.
One of the things that we've been open and transparent about with our adult kids are those areas of parenting and marriage that we wish we could have had a redo, how we could have prayed more about things as a family that we struggled with, how we personally reacted instead of responded at times, and how we wish we would have not allowed anger to dominate over love many times. [00:31:07] But again, He was faithfully working despite us. And one of the best ways to help our kids and our adult kids is to ask them, How can we pray for you? And then do it.
Laura Dugger: I love that response. There's so much there. And just a little quick story of encouragement. My husband, Mark, and I were out with Derek and Kara recently, and we were at the local restaurant, Kemp 208. And sure enough, maybe an hour into our meal, we see you guys are being seated with a big group of your friends. And we were remarking at our table, How awesome to see our parents investing in their friendships. And Derek said you did a great job of that. All of growing up in, it is such a good model to each of us.
But then one of your friends came over past our table. They were walking into the restroom, and we were having a small talk with her and she just said, "Yep, this group of friends, we tell each other everything." [00:32:07] I just love the model that you maybe didn't even know you were laying out for each of us to invest in that community.
I'm sure you do talk about parenting in this phase of life with each other, and you're an encouragement to one another as well. Do you have any encouragement for the fellow grandparents listening?
Carolyn Henricks: I did not read the book Parenting by Paul Tripp, in case you haven't read it. It's wonderful, but I read it as a grandparent. And there were so many profound statements in the very first few chapters of this book that I was actually so sad I had never read it until my kids were grown. But I know now that I comply it to the wisdom of grandparenting.
It talks about that we get so caught up in our parenting every day that we truly lose sight of one of our most important roles as a parent, and now a grandparent, is just being an ambassador for Christ. And that is really just pointing them continually to Jesus. [00:33:12] This was so encouraging to me.
The great news is that we can still do this with our adult kids. We can still do this with our grandkids. And sometimes parenting is just pure survival, right? The everyday, the ordinary, meals, more meals, school routines, emotions, temper tantrums, sickness, disappointments, accidents, bedtime routines, and it starts all over again in 12 hours. And I can remember it so well.
I know this is so exhausting, and there are so many highs and lows in parenting. But again, I think Paul's words in Hebrews 12, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith." [00:34:14]
I would just encourage you to look to those who run the race before you, but also find those who are spiritual runners to run beside you. This is huge.
Laura Dugger: I think of your impact as a grandparent and your grandmother's impact on you and your faith journey and her prayers that were stored up for eternity about you. There's a previous guest, Dr. Rob Rienow, who talks about visionary parenting and grandparenting and really how in the Bible God reveals that He has supernatural influence that he gifts to parents and grandparents. I know we are so grateful for the influence of Mark's parents, of my parents, on our children's lives, and you guys model that as well.
But Carolyn, is there anything else that we didn't get to cover yet that you want to make sure we highlight? [00:35:15]
Carolyn Henricks: Sometimes it's kind of fun to ask your kids, what is something that impacted you as growing up that we did in our home? I've asked that question, and our kids remind us that throughout different life stages, it was just not uncommon for us to have house guests.
Sometimes that would just be an overnight here and there. Like many times, I would invite the parents of the patients I took care of to spend the night, and maybe they would bring that child to our home for the first night instead of having a hotel because they maybe lived far away. Maybe it was just someone who needed a few nights to stay, or if it was someone who needed a place to call home for even a few months. We did that many times.
And a few times it was just some kids whose life circumstances were just beyond hard, and they needed to stay a year. [00:36:14] But it taught us all so much. It helped us to take our eyes off ourselves and our own family and to do life with others. We often talk about how this stretched us as a family and a couple through the years.
Laura Dugger: Thank you for sharing that. You are already familiar that we are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So as my final question for you today, Carolyn, what is your savvy sauce?
Carolyn Henricks: I have not been able to stop thinking about this. But actually, as I prayed about it and was truly reflecting about the question, I would say it's kind of what I started with, which is I really believe we are called to share freely and often about God's faithfulness in our lives. This serves as a witness to others and produces an overwhelming sense of thankfulness and gratitude for what He has done in our lives. [00:37:15]
We often like to reflect on this question, Gary and I do, on which trial would we give back. And our conclusion is always the same. We would not give even one back because each one of the trials, even the really, really hard ones, God was there. He was right there. His hand was all over it, and He brought us through with such a new and renewed appreciation of who He was and how much He loved us.
So look back, remember, write it down. Share with those you love so they may be encouraged, not about what you have done or survived, but what God has done in and through you.
Laura Dugger: I love that so much. And you have so much savvy sauce in you. There is more you can answer. I even think getting to be in the same neighborhood now, Mark and I will so many times see you and Gary working out together on your bikes or going for a walk together. And your friendship is so apparent in your marriage, but also the two of you just have a little twinkle in your eye. [00:38:20] Maybe that's the love of God, I don't know, but that friendship shines through.
So I just want to say I'm so grateful that God crossed our paths, not just as neighbors, but attending the same church. You helped us move into this home where we're recording, and you've taught Sunday school for our daughters, and you've been willing to answer my questions at different times about parenting. So you are just simply a joy to spend time with, and I just want to say thank you for being my guest.
Carolyn Henricks: Thanks, Laura.
Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior. [00:39:30]
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. [00:40:31] Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him.
And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you. [00:41:34]
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Monday Oct 21, 2024
*DISCLAIMER* This message contains adult themes and is not intended for little ears.
Special Patreon Release: Remaining Sexually Engaged Through the Years with Dr. Michael Sytsma
**Transcription Below**
Colossians 3:14 (NIV) “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Dr. Michael Sytsma is a certified sex therapist, ordained minister, and co-founder of sexual wholeness. Dr. Mike has been working with couples in a variety of capacities since 1987. He currently works with Building Intimate Marriages in Atlanta, GA as he meets with clients, teaches, and speaks at various conferences. He and Karen have been married since 1985 and have two sons, Josiah and Caleb.
Building Intimate Marriages Website
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Chasing Sacred (Use code SAVVY for 20 percent off their Bible studies)
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:17] <music>
Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.
Chasing Sacred is a women's ministry that provides intentional tools for studying the Bible. Their mission is simple: to get women to love the Word through the process of inductive Bible study. They're offering all of us a discount for 20% off when we use the code SAVVY at checkout.
If this is your first time here, welcome! You may be wondering what it means to have a special Patreon release. So here's the scoop. Patreon was a platform we used to generate financial support for The Savvy Sauce, and we expressed our thanks to those paying patrons by giving them a bonus episode every month. [00:01:16]
But in 2024, we transitioned away from Patreon when we became a nonprofit called The Savvy Sauce Charities. The podcast is part of this nonprofit, which exists to resource loved ones to inspire growth and intimacy with God and others. So people used to pay to support us through Patreon, but now they can just donate directly to our nonprofit.
We spend thousands of dollars each year to record and produce these episodes, and we do pray that they're beneficial and that God sees fit to use them to be transformational in your life. If that is the case, if you have ever benefited from an episode of The Savvy Sauce, would you consider showing your gratitude through your financial generosity? Any amount is greatly appreciated.
In fact, if every listener gave only one dollar per month, it would completely offset our costs. [00:02:16] We have all the details on our website, thesavvysauce.com, but feel free to also reach out to our team anytime if you want to partner together. Our email address is info at thesavvysauce.com.
My guest is pastor, author, speaker, Christian sex therapist, and my previous professor, Dr. Michael Sytsma.
Here's our chat.
Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Dr. Sytsma.
Dr. Michael Sytsma: Thank you, Laura. I appreciate it. It's always an honor to be here.
Laura Dugger: Well, like I mentioned previously, you are a longtime friend of The Savvy Sauce, and listeners probably are already familiar with your previous three episodes. But will you just give us a quick picture of your life during this season?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: Sure. I've been married for about 35 years, have two adult children, you know, fairly stable career, love working with couples in my office, about 25 couples a week. [00:03:16] Actually, most of them are doing a fair recovery kind of work and really healing well from that. I love that kind of work. And then a lot of them are doing sex therapy. And then teaching couples and professionals how to work with sexual issues in their life and in their clients.
Laura Dugger: That is such a fascinating variety that you've got on your plate. Today we're going to be discussing how to remain sexually engaged through the years. So, what would you say is the kind of intimacy that you hope everyone listening will experience with their spouse?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: It's fascinating to me how couples will come into either my workshop, or to counseling, or to some of the seminars or teachings that I do, and we have different views of what intimacy looks like. Sometimes they put it in terms of frequency, or how successful they are, and how they touch one another.
For me, what my hope would be is that every couple learn how to just truly be authentic and transparent with each other, getting to the point that I'm not ashamed of any part of who I am, that I can expose that to my spouse, even those parts of me that I don't like about me, that my spouse is going to be curious, or I'm going to be curious about them. [00:04:35] We allow each other to be human and are gracious with each other. So that allows me to be my authentic self in front of you, more you as my spouse than anybody else.
You receive that well, you let me be human, and we're just gracious and continue to be curious about each other. To me, that's the kind of intimacy that I like to see happen. That rolls into the sexual piece, because nobody learns how to excite me, how to nurture me, how to care for me in that arena like you do. The sexual piece happens within that larger context of transparency and curiosity and grace.
Laura Dugger: I think that's a great foundation to come back to, that that sexual intimacy is just a part of the overall intimacy. But I would like to focus on the sexual intimacy in marriage in different phases. So let's begin with newlyweds.
From your work, what is the greatest blessing and the biggest trial for most newlyweds as it relates to sex in marriage? [00:05:39]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: I see three really different groups coming to see me for premarital, and I think the differences in them is important. One group are those that are very sexually limited. They haven't had much sexual activity with anybody, and probably very little, if any, with each other.
They've chosen to draw a boundary around themselves, and they're entering into marriage without having a lot of experience. They'll have some, usually, but not a lot. For these, I think part of the beauty or the joy that they have ahead of them, and part of the challenge, is realistic discovery.
They often come in with a fantasy of what, often, their first sexual encounters with each other is going to be like. They're going to need time to figure themselves and each other out. And many times they're working with an unrealistic expectation. The advantage is they get to discover all of this together. So the encouragement for them is be curious, to explore each other and self, to work on just being playful. [00:06:41]
I think the second group are those that are sexually experienced with others, but not necessarily as a couple. So I have a number of couples come in and say, Well, yeah, through a certain stage of our life, we were wild and crazy, or I might have been married before, but we've really worked on honoring one another, and we've drawn some boundaries and tried to keep that protected.
I think the advantage they bring in is, often, the fantasy piece is a bit disrupted for them. They know that sex isn't always as amazing as media might suggest it is. But the challenge is to learn how to connect with each other without bringing the baggage of their past in. They can bring what they've learned about themselves and about each other in, but how do I not impose that on my new bride, on my new groom?
Again, the way we do that is just by being curious about each other, learning, working on not engaging these experiences up against our past experiences. Take time to really ask, you know, "I've learned this about me. What is it like for you? What have you learned about you?" [00:07:46] And developing a unique way of connecting that is precious to them as a couple, that's informed by the others, but not compared by the others, or not dictated by the others.
I think the third group are those that come in that have been highly sexually active with each other. Many times they've been living together for a while. Sometimes they've been acting as husband and wife, even. And for them, the honeymoon stage, it doesn't have that newness to it. They haven't been waiting for this time. They are beginning life as a married couple, and even if they've been living together, it does change the relationship.
I think it's easy for couples in this category to let the sex life take a hit, because often they're going to be taking hits in other arenas of the marriage, or other arenas of their relationship. For couples that sex is new, even if it's just new with each other, the energy of that newness and the discovery and the play of it kind of helps to override some of those early struggles, where couples where it's not new, they don't have that energy to help override it. [00:08:53] So I think they have to put extra energy into keeping their sex life growing, and keeping it special, and keeping it rich for them.
So I think it depends a little bit on where the couple is coming in, in terms of their sexual experience as a whole and with each other.
Laura Dugger: That distinction is so helpful. You say that so succinctly from your years of experience in meeting countless couples. That's really helpful.
So if we fast forward a bit then, what are some of the unique benefits and challenges that come when the couple adds children into their family?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: I think this is one of the toughest arenas for marriage. We, in our field, will often talk about the birth of the first child as being the greatest trauma to a marriage. We can think of a number of traumas to individual lives, but when we think of a marriage, the birth of the child is the greatest trauma that happens.
Even though we see it as a good thing, it still disrupts the entire system. [00:09:55] We're adding another individual in, and it impacts on multiple levels. The stress, the fatigue, just refocusing attention. Now we've got this new little one that demands attention, and we have to give them attention, whether we want to or not.
"I've enjoyed this time in the evening where you always attend to me, and now you're not attending to me any longer. I want you to attend to our child, but I'm also a little resentful and hurt that I don't get attended to." And how do we sort through that? That can be really tough for a couple.
When it begins to occur, we have not just the financial issues, not just change in roles, and who's responsible for what, and having to readjust those, but it impacts our sex life.
You know, especially for the mom, as prolactin level goes up, and as fatigue goes up, and she's just not... she doesn't have the interest or the energy for it. That was an important way that he connected with her, and she's not available. [00:10:58] They have to often figure out where are we gonna find the energy, and he has to figure out how does he re-energize her in other ways.
This is just a traumatic time as couples have to lean in, be curious about each other, explore, really serve one another well, and recognize this is a tough season for this part of our relationship. We will get through it, and we'll stabilize, and we'll be fine. But sometimes it means just saying, you know what, our sex life is going to take a hit for a few months. And that just needs to be okay, because we have to put the energy into other arenas. Sometimes it means getting away occasionally. But just being gracious and careful with each other.
Laura Dugger: I like that language: being careful with each other. And during that next phase of marriage then, maybe the couple has a few kids, and they could range from toddlers to elementary school. During that season, what positives and negatives do you often hear from those couples? [00:11:59]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: The positive is often kids are a little bit more self-sufficient. So the primary caregiver, often mom, has at least a few more minutes that she can catch her breath. She may be able to sleep through the night now.
And often they have learned a bit of a routine as mom and dad, and how to connect with each other. Hopefully, by now they're figuring out places that they can carve out. They figured out how to be not just mom and dad, but also husband and wife.
I do think that's part of the challenge through all of these. But now is the time that they can start to really carve out that time and establish patterns of "this is where we are husband and wife. We are not mom and dad in this space."
Sometimes that space may be space in the house. You know, the master suite may be where we are husband and wife, and the kids aren't invited into this space. Or it may be certain times of the day is where we're husband and wife. [00:13:01]
One of the couples I'm currently working with, because of the mix of kids that they have, and the kids being in different schedules, two days a week they meet together at home for lunch. And lunch is grabbing a quick lunch, and then kind of their language is, we have each other for lunch. That's their time, their sacred space, where they are just husband and wife, not mom and dad. And none of the kids are at home, they've got free rain, it's middle of the day, so their energy is high, and they're able to step out and just be husband and wife together.
She says, "Most of the time we have sex, not always, but we're always husband and wife." And I think that's part of what can come during the stage as we set patterns that are going to carry through for often the rest of the marriage.
Laura Dugger: That brings me to something else that I've heard you speak on before. Could you just explain how you help couples give language to choosing either a marriage bed or a family bed? [00:14:01]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: Because of this concept of where do I have space that I am husband and wife, not just mom and dad, and helping couples to think about it, for some couples their master suite or their marriage bed is just that, it's a marriage bed. It's where we are husband and wife. And the kids are not really allowed in here, because they don't belong in our marriage. But they do belong in the places that we're mom and dad.
Other couples say, no, we're really not, we're not okay with keeping our kids out of that, we want a family bed. We want a bed where the kids, if they're afraid, can come climb in bed with us.
You know, there's plenty of people who teach on that, and support it, and research on it that say a family bed is a safe, comfortable, it's a nurturing environment for kids and for family. It's good if you do it. And I tell couples, I really, I don't care which they choose. I do think they need to be clear in their own minds as mom and dad, Is our marriage bed a family bed, that the kids are welcome anytime they want to? Or is our marriage bed a marriage bed? That it's where we are just husband and wife. [00:15:12]
If they choose it as a family bed, that's great, put some boundaries around it if need be. But then they really need to find some space where they are just a husband and wife. One of the couples I worked with, they took the guest room and transformed it into their couple place.
And she said, you know, that's where we could retreat as husband and wife, and the kids knew that they weren't welcome in this room. And she said, there wasn't anything horribly special in the room, it's just that's where we could get away and be husband and wife. I think that sends a clear message to the kids, whether it be the bed or a time of the day.
One couple said, "Yeah, I remember my mom and dad, Sunday afternoon, there was two hours that we could not interrupt them every week. That was their time that they were just husband and wife."
Whatever that time is, it teaches kids that they're my mom and dad, but they're also married to each other. They're husband and wife, and that is a relationship that is sacred, and I don't belong in that relationship. [00:16:13] I don't even get to know what's going on there. And I think that's good training for the kids as they get older, to create sacredness around the marital relationship.
Laura Dugger: And my guess is that it would be counterintuitive, but that the kids would actually appreciate that, maybe even especially as they grow older.
Dr. Michael Sytsma: You'll see when mom and dad are being husband and wife, that kids really work hard to insert themselves in the middle of it, and to push mom and dad apart because they want to be in the middle of it. But when dad looks and says, "This is my wife, back off," in a gentle or even a playful way, and mom says, "Hey, this is my husband. This is a hug just from him. You don't belong in here," the kids will fuss a bit about it, but we watch them settle.
That provides a stability for them that my mom and dad like each other. They're connected to each other, and I can't even get in the way of that. [00:17:15] It becomes a real source of stability and strength for the family.
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Laura Dugger: When married couples are parenting teenagers, what are some of the highs and lows the couple is likely to experience sexually? [00:19:23]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: Many times I'll have couples say, We thought that this would be an easy time for us sexually, because when the kids were little, we were getting up in the middle of the night, and we were always tired. And now the kids can drive themselves to practices and to school, and we're not playing taxi nearly as much. But what we didn't anticipate is now they stay up till midnight. And now they're old enough that if the door is closed and it's quiet in the bedroom, they start to guess at what's going on in there, and that's uncomfortable for us. You know, that they're more aware that sex may be happening, and their radar is out for it.
And so helping couples to, again, to be creative in how do we connect in ways that still feel private, that feel safe to us, that keep the kids on the outside of it, that can actually get more difficult as teenagers.
I think the other piece that comes in is teenage years are often not smooth years for a family. As teens begin to press against the authority of mom and dad, and kids get really good at splitting mom and dad, and parents often feel, you know, different role pressures. [00:20:32] And anytime there's conflict between us as mom and dad, it often shows up in the sex life as conflict in husband and wife.
And so working with couples to keep those two reasonably separated. We can't always, but how do we... Yeah, as mom and dad we might be struggling a bit because our kids just going through icky teenage years, but we still love each other as husband and wife, and we carve out time to connect there with each other.
Laura Dugger: How would you advise, then, a couple in that situation, let's say that their teenagers are becoming aware of what they're doing, how would you creatively problem-solve that, or what are some ideas to get them started?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: You know, what I like best, many couples are not real comfortable with. I like an open, transparent approach of, I like your dad, I enjoy connecting with him sexually, and you don't want to know anything about that. And usually the kid is like, No, I don't. I don't even want to... you know? But to say, "But I like him." Or to say, "I like your mom, I think she's really sexy, I enjoy being with her. [00:21:39] And you just don't want to know some of that. So you know what, if there's a sock on the door, just don't come around."
Just be more open about “I like being with, you know, your mom or with your dad.” Not letting them know what's happening during that time, but that it's okay to let them know this still goes on, we still enjoy each other.
Not all couples are okay with that. And for them, I tell them the same thing as when the kids are younger, that they just have to be creative around it. It may be that they can spend more time, you know, getting away someplace, or they can give the kid some money and say, "Hey, you and your siblings go out for a movie, and you know, don't come back for two hours. So all through it is just being creative, but prioritizing connecting as husband and wife.
Laura Dugger: Now let's transition into empty nesters. Are there any patterns you see in these couples? [00:22:39]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: If the couple has really spent their entire marriage being mom and dad, and not prioritizing being husband and wife, it's gonna definitely show up here. As kids leave, and their mom and dad roles continue to diminish, and they don't have a strong husband and wife connection. If they've prioritized their husband and wife connection and separated that from mom and dad, then this is an opportunity for it to really grow. So it's gonna depend a lot on what kind of energy they've put into it up until now.
One of the things to keep in mind, though, is often as they're moving into that empty nester stage, their bodies are getting older, and sexuality takes a different kind of role. It's not the young, athletic kind of sex, and so couples are beginning to figure out, how do we do this differently? How do we handle that our bodies don't always perform the way we want them to? Those kind of factors start to show up. [00:23:39]
I think another thing for empty nesters that I see quite often is a stage of disappointment. Often the higher drive spouse is waiting for the last child to leave, thinking when the last child leaves, we will be free to be naked around the house and have sex all day long.
And if that's not been the pattern for the couple, it's not going to be the pattern when the last child leaves. I'll often see a husband and wife get really depressed and discouraged at that point, because I've been waiting for years sometimes for us to reach this emptiness stage, where we can go back to being the erotic lovers we were on our honeymoon.
And just helping them to realize that if you haven't put the energy into it for it to be that, just the last child leaving isn't going to flip the switch. That you may have the space to do it now, but you still have to put the energy into getting back to where you're connecting with each other.
And then to ask for you to be like you were when you were first married is probably unrealistic anyways. [00:24:40] But now you have the ability, because you know each other, to make a truly rich, authentic sexual relationship with each other. But you have to put the energy into it, even when the last child leaves.
Laura Dugger: Couples who are entering years of aging, what are the most common issues and delights that they share with you?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: Oh, as they move into aging, I think the biggest thing that I work with with couples is accepting the changes that go on in their bodies. That you know, his body doesn't act like it did when he was 18 anymore. Can he accept that and be okay with it?
Because if he develops anxiety and fear around, you know, my body's not gonna work right, and she's gonna think it's about her, and I'm ashamed that my body's not working the way I want it to, then he's gonna tend to pull back.
And she doesn't understand what's going on in his mind, and she begins to think, well it's because my body's not as toned, and you know, it doesn't look like it did when he married me, and he just doesn't want me anymore. [00:25:45] And so she gets more afraid, and she pulls away.
Instead, helping couples to be open and transparent and accept, my body is what it is. You know, as her estrogen level goes down, her body doesn't respond in the same way. And you know, there may be an increased discomfort or pain, and encouraging her to spend some time talking to the doctor about what are some safe options for me? As he struggles with some physiological issues, what are some safe options for him?
And accept that our bodies are changing, and lean in, and let's do this together. Let's talk about it together. Let's be in this journey together.
That's probably the biggest thing that I work with couples. And the beauty of it is, it doesn't matter how old we are as we age, this can still be an important part of our relationship.
I had a couple in their mid-80s come in and sit down and said, "How can I help?" The older we get, the less we're concerned about how we come across sometimes. [00:26:44] And she looked up and she says, "Well, you need to help him, because sexually, well, he's not working so well anymore, and he's afraid of that, so he's not approaching me." And she said, "And I might be in my mid-80s, but I ain't dead down there yet, so we got to get this solved."
And I just thought that was great, you know, to say, "I still want to connect with him. I'm still enjoying this." And all we had to do is get them talking, get him acknowledging the fears, get her talking about what she was hoping for, and what was realistic. And it didn't take them very long before they were right back on track and enjoying.
Laura Dugger: Wow, that's incredible. One of the many reasons I believe in counseling, I think that it's just an incredible return on investment. One more question with these phases, are there any other transitional phases that we haven't covered yet, when you see couples going through a season of, yet again, adjusting their expectations for intimacy? [00:27:45]
Dr. Michael Sytsma: I don't know that it would be developmental stages as much as trauma kind of stages. You know, when a serious health crisis hits, and it disrupts their sexual connection, because sex takes energy and the law of entropy says if we're not putting energy into something, it'll degrade. If a couple's not regularly putting energy into their sex life, it begins to degrade.
And many times a health crisis, whether it be cancer or heart issues or any kind of a health crisis, can disrupt sex for a while. And the couple needing to acknowledge that, recognizing it, and develop a plan for how do we put energy back into it.
Sometimes that happens with a crisis of parents, or if a child is killed or dies in an accident or something. Those kind of major traumas to a family. Sexual wounds like infidelity or infertility. Any of those kind of traumas can disrupt a sex life, and the couple have to step back, re-plan how are we going to reconnect and how are we going to find healing coming out of this. [00:28:57] So less developmental stage and more of a trauma kind of a stage. I will see that as a time.
And many times couples need some help. And you know, a big part of what I do is just come in and provide some energy and encouragement and be a cheerleader. "You can do this. Here's the steps. You know the steps. You know what you did before. I believe in you." Many times they may need somebody that helps to energize this part of their marriage too.
Laura Dugger: I really appreciate you bringing up that phase because I'm sure so many people listening can identify with one of those pieces. If you could just speak one more word of encouragement, what hope would you want to offer them?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: You know, no matter where we're at in life, sex is not the most important part of who we are, but it is something that is powerful in drawing us together. And it's worth putting the energy into it. But sometimes just between the two of us we don't always have the energy to get it started. And reaching out to somebody who knows how to help us. [00:30:02] And that may be a book, it may be a good seminar that helps us to re-energize it.
But it's really rare that we find a couple that's kind of stalled out that they can't not just get it started again. But they can actually continue to build on it and develop a really rich part of their marriage in the sexual arena. To me, that is so cool. I hate it anytime a couple gives up hope and just steps back and resigns themselves to what it is.
Laura Dugger: I think that you are an incredible person that they could reach out to, Dr. Sytsma. You're recognized internationally and then have your offices near Atlanta, Georgia, but everyone listening can connect with you in some form online. So where would you like to direct them?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: IntimateMarriage.org is my website. They can access to see what kind of counseling options are there, what kind of intensives are there. [00:31:03] They can access the online teaching through that website. Exercises that they can work on at home are all listed on IntimateMarriage.org.
Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We will certainly link to that in both our show notes and on our resources tab of our website.
I just have one final question for you today. We are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?
Dr. Michael Sytsma: You know, one of the things that I spend a lot of time with couples on is being curious. As we talk through the stages of marriage, if couples can be curious with each other, rather than looking and saying, I need you to be this way, how can you be curious? Curiosity moves us away from being critical. It moves us away from being demanding. It allows us to create space that our spouse can step into and we can understand them better. [00:31:59] So The Savvy Sauce would just be curious about each other.
Laura Dugger: That's a good word. Thank you so much. You are actually our most frequent guest on The Savvy Sauce officially, and you deliver every time. I learn so much new from you. So thanks again for joining us today, Dr. Sytsma.
Michael: Thank you, Laura.
Annie: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. [00:33:04] This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10.9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. [00:34:10]
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process. [00:35:11]
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Oct 14, 2024
Monday Oct 14, 2024
243: Stories Series: Angel Encounter and Hearing from God with Mary Beth Zimmerman
**Transcription Below**
Hebrews 1:14 (NIV) "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?
Other episode Mentioned:
Topics we cover:
- Unique Upbringing
- Angel Encounter
- God reveals Himself in a Personal Way
Mary Beth Zimmerman has been married to her high school sweetheart, Dennis, for 42 years. In all the excitement of establishing their home and later, their business, they were privileged to raise three fun and energetic boys. Mary Beth is blessed to have a warm, kind daughter in-law and two precious grandchildren. She is now back to keeping their home and office in check with just she and Dennis at home. Mary Beth loves to travel with her husband and two of her favorite trips (besides their ongoing trips to Table Rock Lake with family) have been a motorcycle trip to Canada and a 12-day stay in Israel, walking and seeing where Jesus lived and died and rose again. She loves Jesus and encourages others in their walk with Him!
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Sam Leman Eureka
Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website
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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:01] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:18] <music>
Laura Dugger: The principles of honesty and integrity that Sam Leman founded his business on continue today, over 55 years later, at Sam Leman Chevrolet Eureka. Owned and operated by the Bertschi family, Sam Leman and Eureka appreciate the support they've received from their customers all over central Illinois and beyond. Visit them today at LemanGM.com.
Mary Beth Zimmerman is my guest today, and she happens to also be my aunt, who we lovingly call MB. Her husband is Dennis, so I'm used to calling them DZ and MB, which may happen during our time together.
But Mary Beth is a faithful woman, a prayer warrior, and she has a spiritual gift of encouraging others. So you can expect to feel uplifted and have your faith expanded, as she shares a few meaningful life stories with us now. [00:01:21]
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Mary Beth.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Thank you, Laura. It is a joy to be here. I love spending time with you, no matter what we do or talk about.
Laura Dugger: Likewise. Will you just begin our time by sharing a bit of your upbringing, and give us some context for your life?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Okay, well, the older I get, the more I appreciate my upbringing. It was unique. I'm the eighth child of 10 children, and both of my mom and dad were believer. They made it a top priority to tell us about Jesus and to teach us his word and to memorize scripture and live godly lives and attend church regularly.
So my dad was a businessman, and mom was at home with us kids. Our neighborhood was unique because we had families that were related to each other. My grandpa had bought a piece of ground, and his daughter lived next door, which was my mom, and all 10 of us kids lived there. [00:02:29]
Then on the other side of my grandpa was his son and his wife and their five children. And then on the other side of our home was my mom's sister and her husband and their seven children.
So if you walked across the street and went through the backyards, you'd be on another street where another family of siblings and their family lived. And it was two brothers and then their sister and their spouses and children. So there were quite a few children in the neighborhood.
And then on the end of our street and up a block was the family of our pastor and his wife and their six children. I think I'm getting the numbers right here. But in the whole neighborhood, there were 43 kids. So you can imagine, there was a little rivalry. There was a little chaos in the summertime when we were all home. And there was some family rivalry, but there were a lot of good, fun times had. [00:03:40]
Since we all attended the same church and we were all cousins and we all attended the same school, we knew each other very well. That was a blessing.
Also, the parents would go to church on Wednesday nights. And a lot of times they had choir practice even after church. So we knew that we had a few hours to just do whatever we wanted. Those were unsupervised hours. And we just played kick the can, we played baseball, and sometimes we did things that were a little bit ornery and we got in trouble for it. But those are what memories are made of, right?
So that was my growing up. Then in my high school years, I worked for my dad as a secretary for his real estate business and got married when I was 19. I had dated Dennis all through high school and got married when we were 19 and almost 20 he was. [00:04:46]
So that's the context of my growing up.
Laura Dugger: Well, and I love that I've gotten to hear some of these stories over the years that Dennis has shared that he still remembers your outfit and your halter top when he first met you. Because he was from the town over and you met at the pool. Is that right?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Yes. That also comes under unsupervised because I'd sneak out of the house sometimes with Daisy Duke shorts and a tube top on and go to the pool and meet him while my mom was at work.
Laura Dugger: It really was a different time. Very different supervision compared to today.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Definitely.
Laura Dugger: Well then, catch us up, how did your life change when you came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Well, as I said, my mom and dad were godly parents and I lived all of my life believing in Jesus, praying to Jesus. My prayer would always be, "Save me from going to hell. Keep me safe. [00:05:50] Keep my family safe."
As I grew older into high school years, I kept him at a healthy distance because I knew my life wasn't honoring Him. I always knew that Jesus was the Savior and I prayed every night that he would save me and forgive my sins. I believe that he was the Savior, even my Savior, but He had not become the Lord of my life.
For me, becoming a Christian meant surrendering my life to Christ and the best way I knew how to do that was to become a member of our church. Those were two separate things, but they were combined in my life. So when I knew that I needed to surrender my life, that was a non-negotiable. I knew that I had to make Jesus Lord of my life. I knew there was going to be a huge lifestyle change. I knew that I needed to make Him my Lord. [00:06:51]
So becoming a member of the church would require a little more. That would require me dressing differently. My activities would be different. Who I hung out with would be different. That probably kept me from becoming a child of God for a couple of years because there was a big emphasis on when you become a child of God, you live a separate life from the world.
I had been dating Dennis all through high school, and we were planning to get married after we graduated. I wanted my dad to walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. I wanted a long white dress, and those were things at that time that the church considered worldly. So I always knew I was going to get married before I surrendered my life.
About six months after we were married, we both had felt the call on our lives, and we had discussed it prior to marriage that the road that we would take would be to become members of the Apostolic Christian Church and be a part of that church family. [00:08:04] So on November 23, 1981, we surrendered our lives to the one who calls Himself the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, which we definitely had in our lives at that time.
We were baptized in March of 1982, and then the next big event in our lives would be to welcome our three beautiful boys into our family. Our son, Jake, was born in November of '83, followed by Caleb, joining us in July of '85. And then we welcomed David in the month of December of 1988.
I had the privilege of raising the three beautiful, rambunctious kids with my husband while at the same time starting a business of our own. And then for the next 42 years, we'd be freeing ourselves into both of those endeavors. [00:09:04]
Laura Dugger: It's so fun as an adult to hear all of that laid out because I grew up with your boys, but now as a parent, I'm realizing they really did come close together.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Yes.
Laura Dugger: And now a brief message from our sponsor.
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Laura Dugger: But there's a certain story that I remember hearing when I was really young, and it actually still comes to my mind often. So I'd love for you to take us back to that time when your boys were really young. Can you tell us more about a certain experience you had in Chicago?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Yes. That is a story that has been told over and over. You never get tired of telling it. [00:11:04] We had Jake and Caleb. They were about 21 months apart, and then David was about three years later. At the time that our beautiful story took place, Dave and Dan, my brothers, lived in an apartment up in Chicago, and we would love to go downtown and spend time with them for a weekend.
We had been invited to a wedding, and it was March of 1990. So Jake was about six and Caleb was four, and David was 14 months. So we left David with Mom and Dad, my parents, and went up to the wedding of our friend in Barrington, Illinois.
We were planning on leaving the children with Dave and Dan to babysit. So we knew it would be a late night after the reception, so we packed their pajamas and figured that they would go to sleep before we got home, and we'd just go to Dave and Dan's downtown, pick them up, and drive home that night. [00:12:13]
It was a chilly March night around midnight when we got to Dave and Dan's apartment, and there was no place to park close to the entrance. Dennis told me just to go on up, and he'd find a place to park and be there shortly.
Dave and Dan lived on the second floor, and in order to enter the building, you had to push the correct button on a door pad, and it would alert them, and they'd ask who was there, and unlock the door from their place, and the door would open.
So I did that. I got out of the car, walked up the sidewalk and the stairs, took my coat off, kicked off my shoes, told them that Dennis was parking the car and that he'd be in shortly. Dennis did the same thing. As I was talking, the doorbell rang again, they let Dennis in, and he started asking how the boys were doing. [00:13:14] All of a sudden, the doorbell rang again, and we all four looked at each other thinking, "What in the world? Who would be ringing your doorbell at this time of night?"
Dave pressed the intercom and said, "Yes," and a kind lady's voice came across the intercom saying, "There's a little boy down here wanting to get in." All of us just looked at each other, and Dennis, being the guarding, protective dad that he was, took those steps two at a time. It couldn't have been more than five to ten seconds at the max that he was at that door and opened it up, and sure enough, he looked down, and there was Caleb in his bare feet and his little teddy bear pajamas looking up at Dennis.
Dennis looked at him and lifted him up, and he said, "How did you get out here? Where's the lady that helped you?" There was no one in sight. [00:14:24] No one all the way down both sides of the sidewalk. And it was a flat building like a brownstone, you know, so there was nowhere for anybody to go.
So he and Caleb came upstairs looking bewildered, and we just started firing the questions to little Caleb. We were like, "How long were you out there? How did you get out of the apartment without us seeing you? Who was that lady? What did she look like? What did you say to her?" And he had zero answers.
He knew he was in trouble. He knew how frightened we were. So we just kind of took a minute and chilled. By the time we were all settled, you know, we finally just said, "Caleb, you know, what did she look like? Who was that lady?" [00:15:26] And he said, "She had long hair and she had a long coat." And so we were like, okay. I think he felt, at that little age, felt pressed to give us answers. But, you know, we said, "Well, what color was her hair?" And he said red. And we said, "What color was her coat?" And he said white. That is truly the only... he never could remember anything. He was just oblivious to anything bad, and we were just overwhelmingly thankful for whoever that was that she helped him.
The only thing that made sense was that God had sent an angel to protect him, to protect our little boy that night. It was an event that we would share with many friends and acquaintances, always with a thankful heart and giving all glory to God.
You know, there's a verse in the Bible, Matthew 18:5, that says, "Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me, for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven." [00:16:49]
So that was our story for Caleb at that age, Laura. But there's more to that story. Caleb's profession of choice later in life would be to be a law enforcement agent and that was very hard for his mama to accept. Fast forward 32 years, the protests were going on, he was a police officer in one of the largest cities in the United States. He wouldn't call home very often unless something really tragic had happened in his line of work or if he felt like he was in danger and needed prayer.
When the riots or the protests were going on a year or two ago, he called home and said, "Hey, please have everybody pray for me because we're going to be downtown tonight and there are going to be protests and it could get ugly and I'm not sure where I'm going to be stationed." [00:18:02]
Obviously, I called my dear friends and family and knew that they would be praying for him. It was just a really dark day one day and it was when things were at their heaviest. I was walking on my treadmill praying for my boy and I just heard the Lord say, "Remember when I protected him with angels when he was four? I can still protect him when he's 36."
And I fell apart all over again knowing that God had Him in His hand and that I did not need to fear. So the mercies of the Lord never fail. They are new every morning and He is great in his faithfulness.
Laura Dugger: Wow, I had not heard that story come full circle. [00:19:04] Makes me emotional, but it also brings to life two scriptures that describe angels in both seasons. First, back to that story, when Caleb was four, that button was too high for him to reach. There was no way he could get in by himself. And it makes me think of Hebrews 1:14. And it says, "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?"
And I remember one time looking up maybe Blue Letter Bible, looking at each of those words, but ministering means to meet the needs of. So she came and she met that specific need that nobody else could meet at that time.
Then fast forward to Caleb in his thirties and having another encounter with angels as God shared with you. And it makes me think of a prayer that we pray for our daughters, Psalm 34:7, that says, "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and he delivers them." [00:20:14]
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Amen. Yes. When Caleb decided to move to a larger city and become a police officer there, it was again, heart-wrenching for me. I prayed and God just gave me no weapon formed against my child will prevail. God has just reassured me through songs, the God of angel armies is always by your side.
The Lord just is so gracious, Laura, to His followers when we trust in Him. He comes through every time. That's why I love Jesus so very much because he's so very real in my life and He has been so faithful.
Laura Dugger: Absolutely. I love how you give glory where glory is due. You've already mentioned a few, but I just know His scripture is so meaningful to you. Are there any other certain passages that were impactful throughout your life? [00:21:22]
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Well, for Caleb, there are several. I have a letter that I wrote to him. It's in my Bible. Also, Dennis and I made a plaque for him when he graduated the academy with a verse of Psalm 141. And one of the verses are, "But my eyes are fixed on you, sovereign Lord. In you I take refuge. Do not give me over to death. Keep me safe from the traps set by evildoers, from the snares they have laid for me. Let the wicked fall into their own nets while I pass by in safety."
Laura Dugger: I love that. Thank you for sharing all of that scripture. It's always encouraging. You just clearly have a gift for encouraging people. There's just one creative example that happened recently in our lives. When one of our daughters broke her back, you delivered a huge goody bag full of gifts, which providentially arrived on this really difficult day where multiple of our family members were sick and we were feeling a bit discouraged. [00:22:32] Actually, a lot discouraged. Very discouraged.
But my favorite part was the note you wrote. I'm actually going to read it because it was so powerful and continues to be powerful in our lives. So you wrote, "Hi, [Sayloh?]. We are so sorry you are dealing with a broken back. We pray for you, asking God to help you be patient and pleasant while He is healing you. No doubt, you've got lots of people who love you praying and helping make this time go by a little faster. We know it's hard to be inconvenienced and patient at the same time. And God says in His word that when one part suffers, the whole body suffers. Sometimes this means our physical body and sometimes it can mean our body or community of the people we love. I thought maybe you'd like to be able to share some of these things in this bag with your family since they're all suffering with you. I bet they'd love to be included in receiving something for their part in helping you deal with your back. So take a look at what's in the bag and pick out your favorite thing or things and then share the rest with your sisters and mom and dad. I'll bet it will make all the hearts in your home happy. We love you and thank God for the way He's healing you and hope you're back to normal soon. Lots of love, DZ and MB." [00:24:00]
That ministered to us so much, especially to my mama heart, just thinking of Shiloh and Isla and Kessler who had also really suffered and gone overlooked when Sayloh was getting a lot of the attention at that time. But you recognized them, you honored each of us, and honored them for being such supportive sisters. So it was an incredibly touching gift.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Oh, thank you.
Laura Dugger: All of that to say, you have a spiritual gift for encouraging others. And even in that note, you continue to teach us.
How did you find out about The Savvy Sauce? Did someone share this podcast with you? Hopefully, you've been blessed through the content. And now we would love to invite each of you to share these episodes with friends and help us spread the word about The Savvy Sauce. You can share today's episode or go back and choose any one of your other previous favorites to share. Thanks for helping us out. [00:25:00]
Well, Mary Beth, a few years later, God was about to take you on a journey of spiritual growth. So will you set the stage and share that story with us now?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Sure. After I had had our three children, we lived like seven blocks from my parents and my mom would work second shift. So we spent, the kids and I... Well, Dennis was working also late hours at the car dealership at that time. So we had a lot of evening hours to spend together with my dad.
We would go for walks with Grandpa or we'd go get ice cream with him or we'd just hang out at his house. My mom and I got along great, but my dad, I adored. I just loved my dad. He loved me unconditionally. He taught by example. He was transparent. He wasn't afraid to tell me the mistakes that he'd made in life so that I wouldn't make the same ones. [00:26:06] He was a man of honor and of prayer. I love the memory of going to bed at night when I still lived at home with them and I would look in their room and they would be on their knees praying by their bedside.
He faithfully drove us to church every Sunday when I was a kid. He was a Sunday school teacher. He was esteemed in our community as a businessman and just loved by everybody. I was very proud to be called Bill Leman's daughter. I gained a lot of my identity from him being my dad.
Fast forward to 1992 on a beautiful day in May I was 30 years old and our boys were outside in our yard. I was with them playing baseball and we heard a siren coming and watched the police car fly by our house going towards the east. Then 20 minutes later the ambulance from Benson flew by our house going west. [00:27:12]
Little did we know that it was Grandpa and my dad being transported to the hospital until I got a call about an hour later. He had been involved in a car accident and he was not going to live to hear us tell him goodbye.
Needless to say, I knew I would be forever changed. My dad was the only one who understood all my highs and lows in life. He celebrated my highs and he helped me heal on the lows. So even as a little girl I still remember getting dressed up for church or somewhere special and mom would say, "Now go ask daddy how you look?" And I'd go twirl in front of him. He was just always there and he was always engaged in what I was doing. [00:28:12] We just had a really special relationship.
After the shock wore off that he was gone, I found much comfort in my siblings because he loved us all unconditionally and we had a very special bond in our family. We still do. We still get together regularly and there's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. I love my siblings so very much.
Our church family was wonderful and we had a very supportive small-town community in which we lived that came through in a big way also. But month after month I waited for the ache to go away of losing him. I never knew that grief could actually cause physical pain. But I had my heart truly hurt physically and I would find myself sighing through the day and truly like six or eight months I was still grieving for him pretty heavily. [00:29:24]
I was just thinking of all the things he was. He was my cheerleader. He was the one I could go get a bear hug from if I needed one. He was a sounding board and a confidant and he was my number one fan. You know, your husband is an awesome supportive companion like no other but your dad has a special place in your heart. Or he did in mine. I know yours does too.
Laura Dugger: He definitely does.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: So the emptiness that I felt continued for well over a year and I read books on grieving. I found tremendous comfort in music. I shared my thoughts with anyone who'd listen. I always prayed to God and I knew that my dad was with God and I knew that God was sovereign over His accident and I was never mad at God but I was just... I don't know. [00:30:26] I don't know why it took me so long to finally get one-on-one with God about my dad.
But there were just a lot of other things. My mom was hurting at the time. Here she was a widow and DZ was grieving alongside of me. He loved my dad about as much as I did and I was just... I don't know. I was just at a loss for what to do.
One morning while I was doing my devotions, I just started sobbing. I don't really recommend this or think that it's a good idea but it's really looking back after it happened I thought I really had a showdown with God that morning because I said, "If you're the only one who can fill this void in my heart, where are you? How does it feel to have that void filled? You know, what...? Come on!"
I found myself face down on our living room floor and I had just come to a wall and I was praying while I was doing my devotions and I got back up and I sat in my chair, my Bible was open and I just again heard God's voice not audibly but He controlled my thoughts. [00:31:59] And what I heard Him say was "I am your dad. I am your Father. I want you to view me like you viewed your dad. I want you to talk to me like you talked to your dad. I want you to trust me like you trusted your dad and most of all I want you to love me like you loved your dad."
I knew at that moment that God was someone I had really never known like He wanted me to know Him. I had realized that my dad was somewhat of an idol to me over the next months and that I had always put God in second or third place next to my dad and to my husband because they were always there for me. They always supplied what I needed.
So I had been converted for 10 years but I was freshly being introduced to who God was that day and my life would never be the same. I was very humbled and I knew that I was changed. And as I finished reading my Bible that morning the words were different. [00:33:09] I actually felt like God and I were having a conversation.
I heard His voice. I knew He was with me. I knew He wanted me to put my full trust in Him. I became as adoring of Him as I was of my dad. I came to the full belief that He and His word were truly one because after that, when I read the Bible, it was just 100% meaningful. I don't know maybe before I was reading it more out of duty but He was communicating with me like He had never done before. I wanted to kiss my Bible because I wanted to kiss God. I would have kissed my dad had he been there.
But from that point on the word really would become my counselor and God would continue to teach me and heal me where my dad left off. He would bring purity and renewal to my heart like my dad never could. [00:34:18]
I don't believe that God took my dad to show me Himself but I do believe that He knew that I would find Him then because that's when I truly searched for Him with my whole heart. So just as Jesus cried out in Hebrews 5:7-8, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him." Comfort in my case. He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a son He learned obedience from what He suffered. And He also knew that after I had suffered a little while He Himself would restore me and make me strong, firm, and steadfast because He is the God of all grace.
A kind of funny thing happened later when I had a full understanding of that incident of why God allowed that for me. Because I did. I said, "Lord you're so good to me for sharing yourself like that. I mean that's supernatural." [00:35:25] It wasn't but a few days later I was reading I think it's in Exodus or Deuteronomy where He said, "I showed myself to Moses as a friend by the name of Jehovah. And that's what I did for you. I am your friend. You can call me Daddy."
I mean, there were just several things like that. My life really did change that day and my perspective changed and my understanding changed.
But anyway, later when I sang the song The Solid Rock, I had sung that since I was a child. Knew all the words. But there's a part in that that says "my hope is built on nothing less nothing, less than Jesus blood and righteousness. And I dare not trust the sweetest frame." That sweetest frame was my dad that I was trusting in. So I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name. [00:36:35]
And just a lot of songs and the word, the Bible, just took on deep authentic meaning after that. And it's never changed. I mean, I just keep growing and learning more and He keeps revealing more of Himself. It's just a beautiful walk that I want to share with everybody that I know. And I want them to experience that too.
Laura Dugger: Wow. I love all of that for so many reasons. You make me think of a special time when I got to interview my dad about also losing his dad. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well because that was a special episode. But Grandpa Leman really was so special and yet what the Lord has taught you is available to all of us. He loves to talk to his children.
It's hard to describe and articulate but the Holy Spirit really sounds like He made Himself known to you and real. [00:37:35] And He does live inside of us if we are believers. And so that is so helpful to hear how it's played out in your journey. So thank you for sharing.
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Yes. A lot of times people... if I would say, oh, God said this or God said that... you know, even one of my siblings she said, you know, when you say God said this it, just kind of sounds weird because like people say, When I talk to God that's praying. But when you say God talk to me that's just hard for me to understand. And so it's available. I don't know why He does things to some people and not others but He does speak to us through the Holy Spirit and we can hear Him if we listen.
Laura Dugger: Even that transparency that's so helpful because, like you said, what He's even taught you and it's from John, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. [00:38:41] And so when we read the Bible, those are His words and we get to hear from Him absolutely in that way. So I appreciate all the stories and scriptures you've shared so far.
What other encouragement would you like to leave with us today?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: Well, an impactful scripture for me is Psalm 139. The whole Psalm. It's very affirming to who we are. My love language is words of affirmation. So I love it when God gets specific and says this is who you are and this is what you mean and this is what I do for you.
So to know that He knit me together in my mother's womb and to know that He knit my children together in my womb, how more intimate can you get with your creator and your Father in heaven? That's the impactful verse.
The best encouragement I think I can leave is to leave nothing left unsaid. [00:39:42] Life has so many highs and lows and I think it brings joy to our Father in heaven when we acknowledge our disappointments and celebrate our blessings and thank God for both of those.
Ecclesiastes 5:19 says, When God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them to accept his lot and be happy in his work this is the gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.
In my Bible, in the margin I have "this is my life goal. This is my life theme" because He is with us in awe in the joys and the sorrows. It's easy not to reflect on the bad parts because He keeps us occupied with gladness of heart because of Himself in our lives. So that's my encouragement. [00:40:48]
Laura Dugger: I love it. Kind of along those same lines you are a faithful supporter and listener of The Savvy Sauce so you already know that "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So, MB, is my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?
Mary Beth Zimmerman: My savvy sauce would be spending time in God's word every day. If it's hard for you to understand it like it was for me at age 19 when I became a believer, then ask God for understanding. He even says that in his word. He will give us wisdom and understanding if we ask. Read the word every day. Read the entire book and you will discover the meaning of your life.
Laura Dugger: Thank you so much for that. I just learned so much from your walk and relationship with Jesus and I love your sense of humor and your willingness just to impart this wisdom and encouragement to each of us. So thank you very much for being my guest. [00:41:59]
Mary Beth Zimmerman: It has been a pleasure. I love you, Laura.
Laura Dugger: I love you too, MB.
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. [00:43:02] This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10.9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. [00:44:02] And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." [00:45:07] The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Oct 07, 2024
Monday Oct 07, 2024
242. Stories Series: He Gives and Takes Away with Joyce Hodel
**Transcription Below**
Philippians 1:21 (NIV) "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Questions and Topics We Discuss:
- What are some of your highlights of raising children and parenting?
- Will you share how life unexpectedly and drastically changed on July 3rd, 2009?
- How has God sustained you through this loss?
Other Episode Mentioned on The Savvy Sauce:
82 Traveling with Your Family with Katie Mueller
Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company
Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website
Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast!
Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:17] <music>
Laura Dugger: Leman Property Management Company has the apartment you will be able to call home, with over 1,700 apartment units available in Central Illinois. Visit them today at Lemanproperties.com or connect with them on Facebook.
Joyce Hodel is my guest today. We are originally from the same small town in Central Illinois, a farming community of 2,000 people, and our families have known each other all my life.
Joyce is an exceptional woman with a zest for life, and she's going to share her story now of loss and hope.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Joyce.
Joyce Hodel: Thank you for having me, and I hope we can just talk friend to friend. [00:01:17]
Laura Dugger: Well, let's just begin by going back a bit. When did you surrender your life to Jesus?
Joyce Hodel: I have always known Jesus, and that credit goes to my parents, grandparents. I feel like I've had a legacy of faithful people in my life that just gave me stability. They were believers, and so right from the beginning, church and parents have been credit to them that they believed.
When I was 17, it's always a struggle to surrender yourself, and I was very busy in high school and probably was distracted and didn't want to focus so much on my spiritual life. But one night, I had a dream. And I remember in the dream, the newspaper came out, and it said, "Three days to the end of the world." [00:02:17] I was frightened. I woke up, and I was sweating, literally sweating, physically sweating, and I thought, "Oh, this is what hell is going to feel like. I've got to do something."
But I just tried to forget it, and I laid back down again. The next day, I went to work. I worked at the nursing home. It was the summer out of my senior year. That day when I got home, I did tell my mom that I had that dream, and she guided me, instructed me. She said, "Well, I just remember a pastor saying one time that sometimes we just need a knock on our head to make us move, to take a position."
And so that day at work, this little old lady came into my kitchen where I worked, and she said, "Could I have a glass of apple juice?" And I said, "Sure." I have done this hundreds of times, but I walked over to the big cooler, and instead of turning the corner, I ran straight into the wall, and I backed up, and I thought, "Mom, that's my knock on the head." [00:03:31] So from that point on, I felt that God was definitely calling me to walk with Him, and I have never turned back.
Laura Dugger: Wow. I had never heard that before. That is so incredible. He's so personal and unique in the way that He calls each of us.
Joyce Hodel: He is.
Laura Dugger: There's also a very important man that came into your life named Steve. Do you remember the first time that you met Steve?
Joyce Hodel: I don't remember the exact first time I met him. I was working in the summer. I was a teacher, so in the summer, I would be a waitress at a little restaurant in town called Raleigh's. And him and his brothers would come in for coffee or breakfast, and they were the kind that teased, and so I always enjoyed them, especially Steve. I loved his humor, his dry sense of humor. [00:04:29]
He then was converted at about age 29, and so he attended my church, and I met him. You know, he would travel with all the kids, all the young group, and so we just kind of got to know each other that way. I think we both were attracted, and we just had a fun, easygoing relationship.
But I started to think about him more. I remember him asking me things, kind of just... this is just Steve. He came to school once while I was teaching in the morning, and I said, "What are you doing here?" I don't know if he was checking me out or what.
But I remember when he finally asked me to be his wife, he came over for the first time. I had said yes, and he came over to my house, and I said, "What? Why me?" [00:05:29] He gave me an interesting answer. He said, "You seem happy most of the time. You are a good conversationist, and he was more of a quiet, stand-by-the-wall person. And he said, "I watched your mother, and I liked what I saw." And I thought that was so deep that he watched my mother.
Now, the joke on him was, I am more like my dad. So I'm glad my mother had a rich personality, but I kind of had the personality of my dad. But I guess that's what he based. And he knew I was a Christian, you know, that was part of it. But those are the three answers he gave me. And I thought, "How interesting!" Then we had an engagement, and yeah, got married. [00:06:29]
Laura Dugger: And then progressing in your story, next step, you were blessed with children. What was your experience like becoming a mother?
Joyce Hodel: Okay, when I was teaching when I was single, I really enjoyed the ornery little guys. And so I thought, "Oh, I think I'm always going to have boys." Didn't know anything. You know, I grew up with two other sisters and a brother. But when I was growing up, I played football out in the yard with the guys and stuff. So I just was kind of, yeah, into little guys, active little boys. And I ended up having three girls.
We lived on a farm. And I am so thankful for my girls now. I think because I had two sisters, and we are very close, we were all in high school together, senior, junior, freshman. They are my best friends. We shared a bedroom. And so because of that, I wanted my kids close in age. I feel like I have the same thing in my girls. [00:07:32] They have the same thing that I had as I was growing up. And it was very special.
Laura Dugger: Well, and some people may even remember your firstborn daughter. She's been a guest before on The Savvy Sauce. I just told you before we recorded, I was actually re-listening to her fabulous episode on traveling with family. So I can add a link of that in today's show notes.
But Joyce, when you reflect back on raising them, what are some of the highlights of raising your daughters?
Joyce Hodel: I have always believed it was vitally important to be there for my kids. So when Katie was born, I was done teaching for a while. I thought I'm going to concentrate on them. I don't want anyone else to raise my children. You have a window of time. It was very important to me, vitally important to be the first voice in the lives of my kids.
Highlights of raising children and parenting. [00:08:33] I can tell you I have enjoyed every single stage. Having fun with them, being a teacher, I guess. Maybe I have ideas. You can call them creative. But we would have Tipsy Tuesday. And I told them at the supper table they could sit wherever they wanted. Usually, people have regular spots, dad and mom too. That was such a simple thing that they just enjoyed. So they would always take Dad's seat or something. That was one thing we did.
We had Family Game Night often where they each got to choose a game. And they were little. Sometimes it was just button, button, who's got the button. Old, old game. I encouraged them.
We would have rainy-day picnics, wintertime picnics, just on the floor of our kitchen or in the living room. Anything you can do out of the ordinary seems to work for kids. [00:09:33]
Think outside the box. Always encourage them, help them with their homework. Encourage them to do the hard thing. Don't always take the easy way. Push yourself.
I wanted to train them to work as my mother had trained me. We had job sticks. Every Saturday they pulled sticks out of the jar, and they were hoping for one that was easy. But it didn't always work that way. I had like 15 of them. Just things like sweep off the porch or clean the bathroom, whatever. So we did that.
We have done a lot of traveling over the U.S. and Europe and Africa. If I asked my kids, my girls, what was the most important thing or what kept our family together and close, I think it would be traveling together, camping together. Always planned a big trip.[00:10:34] And so that's where Katie got her love of traveling because I loved it too.
I loved each phase and stage, and I love it now when I can talk to them as adults. Sometimes they're your mentors. It's not always me mentoring them. They teach me now that they're older.
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Laura Dugger: Joyce, even talking with you now, your smile and your joy is just so natural. It seems to just bubble out of you. But you're also not untouched by tragedy. So will you share how life unexpectedly and drastically changed on July 3rd, 2009?
Joyce Hodel: Yes, it's been over 14 years, so it's easier to talk about it now. But just to give you a little background of how God prepares you. The night before Steve was killed, I was out in my yard and a neighbor walked by. [00:13:39] We got talking about some happenings that had come out in the newspaper, or, I don't know, we just took rabbit trails down that there are times children are born that are kind of born late or maybe handicapped or challenged and you wonder how you're going to navigate through that.
And we were talking about certain women in our church or in our community that had children that, late in life, that, you know, my neighbor said that lost their husband. So there's a reason for those children. And I said to her... now on a side note, I have never said this to anyone in my life. The thought came from heaven, I think. But I said, "I will probably have a daughter that is on the autistic spectrum and I think she will always live with us." [00:14:40] And I said at the end of that conversation, "I wonder if I'm going to lose my husband early." And the next day he was killed.
And I have never forgotten that I said that. In fact, this neighbor said, "I can't believe you said that." And I said, "That's just how it was." So that's a little background.
We had been invited to a friend's house for supper that night and then we went up to the fireworks. It was on July 3rd. It was the tradition of Roanoke to have it the day before, a big city one. It is customary for people just to put their chairs anywhere. We were in the street. The men went to the car show but then came back.
At the finale, I remember we were holding hands and the finale shot up. And that is exactly when we heard a huge roar of an engine. [00:15:42] It just happened real quick. Didn't know what happened. But an older lady, she was about 89, first time she had been at the fireworks. She wanted to beat the traffic and so she was going to head out right at the finale and she stepped on the gas instead of the brake. And so she plowed all of us down. And Steve just happened to be caught under her car. So she ran over his chest and his abdomen.
And then she was just frozen in place in the car. 15 guys came around the car and lifted the car off of his body and then they pulled him out. From that point on, I just can say what I've heard. We all were hit. But he is the one that was caught under the car. I had a big wound on my foot. My head had to be stapled. I felt the car's wheels go over my leg. I remember that. [00:16:45] But I think his larger body just lifted it up and it didn't break my leg or anything.
So my sister and myself, we were all in the emergency room but we weren't as severe as him. We were transported by ambulance and he was taken by Life Flight. My prayer in the ambulance going, I wasn't sure where everybody was, but I heard the helicopter go overhead and I said to the medic, "Is that my husband?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Oh, he must be bad if he's in the helicopter." And he said, "Yes, he is."
And I remember praying, which was real odd for me, too. I said, "Oh, Lord, if he... excuse me. If he can't be what he wants to be, you take him." Because it would have been very hard for Steve to stop farming, and he would have felt like he was a burden to me. [00:17:46] So that was my prayer. And so then when we got to the hospital, the doctor came in and said they tried to save him, but they couldn't.
There were so many things that happened that I know God's hand was. They had practiced with the helicopter in the Roanoke field two weeks prior to that. Never had that been done before. They worked on him. My sister knew this because she was watching the fireworks from way back. And she said the helicopter turned off for 20 minutes. And it never turns off unless they're not going to transport them. They're gone already.
And she said after 20 minutes, she said, "All of a sudden it started again and they took him." They worked for 20 minutes and got a pulse." And I have been thankful for that small detail ever since because the girls and I got to see him again and touch him. [00:18:48]
And if he would have died on the field, we would have seen him in the casket, and that's it. So it was a real closure for us at the hospital. We got to be in a room with him. He was gone, but you could still ruffle his hair and touch him, and talk to him. So that was a real blessing in our life.
Laura Dugger: The helicopter stopped, but then they were able to get a pulse and you were at the same hospital, and your girls came and met you there.
Joyce Hodel: My entire family came. I remember them wheeling me out of the emergency room to go over and see him, and it was just kind of like a circle of angels or people that loved you, both sides of the family. We're just all there, nieces and nephews, and with sad faces. I mean, I think they knew something was severe. It was something I'll never forget. [00:19:48]
And then I stayed the night, and they patched me up, and my daughter stayed with me. Katie had just had a new baby, a two-week-old baby. And that's another detail that, to me, God took care of. She was due the time of the accident, and she said, "Mom, look at that. God made that baby come early, so I would be... you know, the worst part would be over, I guess, the birth and everything."
So, yeah, he just takes care of details that we have no idea. He's working in the shadows and the background all the time. There is never a detail that is overlooked.
I remember telling my daughter after the fact, days later, we talked a lot on the phone, and I said, "Oh...." It was something in me. I never wanted a loved one to die on a holiday or near a holiday, because I thought every time that holiday comes around, you're just going to be sad again. [00:20:54] So that was a thing for me.
And I was telling my daughter that on the phone once, and she said, "Mom, it was the 4th of July. Dad is free." And I have never forgotten that, that one holiday that Dad is free from all his... He was due to have open-heart surgery, Laura. But the doctor that spring... he had told the doctor that he couldn't do that because it was farming season, planting season. And he just couldn't have open-heart surgery.
Laura Dugger: What a true farmer.
Joyce Hodel: A true farmer that just didn't want his life interrupted. But I thought God knew the future and thought, "Nope, you don't have to go through that." He had a pin and 13 screws in his ankle. He had broken it a couple years before that. He had diabetes. So those things have just made me understand and realize that he was free from his worn-out body, and it was his time. [00:22:03]
Laura Dugger: Well, he was free on Independence Day.
Joyce Hodel: Yes.
Laura Dugger: And we all yearn for that day to be with Jesus in glory. And yet, being left back here at that point, was there anything meaningful that as you reflect back, it really stands out about what loved ones did to surround you through all these seasons of grief?
Joyce Hodel: Definitely. I just had family and friends, and it was good therapy to go back to school again. In August, you know, that was a place that Steve... he wasn't there. And so I wasn't always reminded. It was just good therapy.
I always prayed for healthy grieving. I would talk to the social worker, psychologist at school. You know, we talked a lot. And so I feel that I took one day at a time. I didn't look too far ahead, and then I thought, then I'll do tomorrow. [00:23:04]
God gave me little hugs along the way, if you want to call them. I do want to tell you something that happened to me. It was about six days after he died, and I was sleeping. I had a tough time sleeping, but this night I woke up, and it was more of a not really a dream. I would call it a vision. No one can take it away from me. It was so real.
I woke up, and I heard wings in my room, angels' wings. It was the flutter of wings. They were right to the right of me. Katie had told me once on the phone... I was holding his hand at the 4th of July, and I said, "Oh, I wish I would have kissed him. I wish I would have had one last kiss."
So the flutter of wings, Steve was right above me, his face, and I remember reaching up and him reaching down, and we had a light kiss. [00:24:11] And there was a bright light in my room, and he was gone. I got up right away, and I called my daughter, I said, "You wouldn't believe what happened to me." I've never had anything so impactful happen, I thought, that the God of the universe that has so many troubles to take care of, He gave me a final kiss, and then He was gone.
That's something that was very personal to me. I didn't know whether to say it, but if it can, God is such a personal God. He gives you what you need when you need it.
Laura Dugger: I am a wreck hearing this. That is beautiful. I am so grateful you shared that. Even the scripture I was in this morning was just talking about telling God's marvelous deeds to the next generation. And Joyce, you were telling that is a marvelous deed of our loving Father. [00:25:15] So thank you for sharing that.
How did you find out about The Savvy Sauce? Did someone share this podcast with you? Hopefully, you've been blessed through the content. And now we would love to invite each of you to share these episodes with friends and help us spread the word about The Savvy Sauce. You can share today's episode, or go back and choose any one of your other previous favorites to share. Thanks for helping us out.
Was there any other special way? When you talk about God hugs, is there anything along the way that stands out as something that He showed you, "I haven't forgotten you. I'm still with you"?
Joyce Hodel: Right. I think you have to saturate yourself with the word. The word speaks to you. You know, there is an answer and a comfort for everything that you're feeling. Is there a specific verse or something? I always found that what I needed at the time, He gave to me freely, whether it's in the Psalms or... [00:26:20]
I remember the sermon the first time I went to church. It was a visiting pastor. And he said something I wrote down in my journal. "Everything is on schedule." And I just remembered when you think that it's not what you expected, it's a mistake. Why in the world did that lady... was she up there? Why was I there on sitting on the street?
You know, everything's on schedule. There isn't anything that happens that is coincidence or that God isn't aware of. And so, yeah, my family and my friends just surrounded me.
When you believe in the sovereignty of God, it lessens your suffering. It lessens anything you are going through if you believe. He is such a complete God. He is over everything. Even though when we think we control or we do something, it's not you. He put it all together. [00:27:21] He set it up.
I found that gratitude, look at what you have and not what you've lost, is very healing. You have to self-talk sometimes. You know, it says to take every thought captive. I found myself doing that. Just take a thought when the evil one tries to lie to you and discourage you. You just don't listen to that evil voice. You take it captive and you go to the word and it turns you around.
Laura Dugger: That even makes me wonder what was that process of forgiveness like for that older woman?
Joyce Hodel: You know, Laura, I never was real angry with her. She came to our house a couple days later. My girls maybe didn't understand. But I feel like grace is given when you need it. [00:28:22] People would say to me, "How can you be not angry? How can you be...? And I just thought, "Well, you don't need the grace." He doesn't give it to you. But I've got a whole load of it." And I do give all credit to God. I never was really angry with her.
25 News came out, 31 News. They came into our house and the reporter wanted to know what I felt about this woman. Well, at the time, I had a 90-year-old mother. They wanted a shock treatment. They wanted you to blame someone. And so I hope that God gave me the grace to say it wasn't intentional. It was an accident. She didn't mean to do that. She just got flustered and stepped on the gas. And I said it could happen to anyone. So that was a process that I really didn't have to deal too hard with. So I'm thankful.
Laura Dugger: That's incredible. And yes, it does point to His grace. Joy is a part of your name in Joyce, and that does exude out of you. And yet, going through something like this, was joy able to return into your life again? [00:29:41]
Joyce Hodel: It was. My sister asked me once, what was the hardest time of the week? What was the loneliest time? And I said, "Friday night." We always used to go out because after the school was over, it was kind of like date night. We'd always go out. Megan would go with us or we'd meet somebody. I said, "That's probably the hardest time I look at and I think, Oh, I'm not going to have that again."
So to this day, I go out with my sisters on Friday night. I mean, they just started that. My brother made me 11 CDs of music. He had lost his daughter years earlier, and I think he knew that music filled my house. Music about heaven. Music about tough things that people go through. Hope.
I think music is the voice of hope. So I just filled my home with music and it strengthened me. And so family and friends, you know, whether you went for lunch or coffee or prayers. [00:30:47]
I had a teacher tell me at school, and it wasn't one that I was real close to, but she told me she prayed for me every single day for two years. And I was humbled by that. So you don't know where all the strength is coming from, but it's coming. I am part of a wonderful church family and my own extended family and intermediate family.
Laura Dugger: Well, and it's a good reminder. Even hearing this today, we can still be praying for one another, building each other up. You're such a role model. You're so inspiring with the way you walked through this. Is there any other encouragement that you would want to offer, whether someone is going through their own heartache and loss or a loved one of somebody who is? What would you like to say to them?
Joyce Hodel: I think everybody has a different journey of the way they carry on. I would tell anybody to, like you say, always go to the word and pray. [00:31:49] But sometimes... there were times I couldn't pray. No words came. And then I just said, Okay, Lord, you're going to have to pray for me. You say the words. You give me the strength that I don't even know what to ask for. I feel like He always gives more than He takes away. He is a giver, not a taker.
Keep busy. School helped a lot, just being busy. That was something that I needed to do. If you sit around in the darkness and emptiness, you're only perpetuating that. So go out, even if you don't feel like asking someone... It's real difficult. When you are a widow, you don't have a partner, it's difficult to call people, to initiate things, to be the aggressive one because you think, Oh, they're just going to do it because they feel sorry for me. I don't want to obligate them. [00:32:49] So you wait for somebody to call you. But that is probably not the way to be.
You have to kind of push yourself and get yourself out there and try to not be a miserable person that nobody wants to be around. I do feel like his self-talk regulates your out-of-control emotions. It just kind of gets you focused and thinking ahead. Or just today, not even ahead. Just, I can do today. I can do this hour. Don't know what's coming tomorrow, and nobody else does either.
I feel that He has put me in a place where I had a lot of love and friends and family that carried me. Or it's kind of like Jesus carrying you through them, and they do. And so I hope to do that for others. I think everything that happens, happens so we can pass it on, so we can do what has been done for us to comfort someone else. [00:34:04]
Laura Dugger: Well, and you do that so well. When you talk about making sure you're not a miserable person to be around, you are so far at the opposite of that and always have been. I've known you my whole life, and you're cheerful and exuberant. That is such a good challenge for each of us, regardless of why it's difficult to reach out and initiate.
I love that push to do that because that is love in action. And people would miss out so much if they didn't get to hang out with you because you're so enjoyable.
Joyce Hodel: Oh, Lord. I also think that the forgiveness, you always need to forgive something, whether it's something somebody says or does to you, or even in your mind, if you've conjured up something that they didn't even mean, whether it's on your screen or whatever. That forgiving and forgetting is a major step in a healthy outlook. [00:35:08] It only makes you miserable. We think it's going to hurt the other guy, but it doesn't. You've heard that. It only makes you miserable. So just try to think that they didn't do that on purpose, they don't dislike me, and just show them love. Shower them with love.
Laura Dugger: Well, I think that's even modeling what you're talking about with the self-talk. Rather than listening to ourselves or really listening to the enemy, you're being proactive to fight against that, to talk against that, even in forgiveness. I know I've told you that I've always thought I love that joy is in your name because it just comes out of you.
We've covered some weighty topics, and I'd love to end with a more lighthearted note. You know that we're called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. So as my final question for you today, Joyce, what's your savvy sauce? [00:36:08]
Joyce Hodel: I think you always need to remember. I journal so I can remember. You know, to write this down. You think you're going to remember, but you don't. All the details... I have a diary that's just a line a day, and so you can look back. It's a five-year one that if you don't want to get bogged down with writing a whole bunch, just write something significant, something important, something you want to remember.
So I think God always wants His people to remember, and so if you do that, whether it's by journaling or just somebody jogging your memory, I feel that His faithfulness will come through. And that is what you want to remember. That no matter what happens, He's always with you. He's faithful. He's there.
Laura Dugger: He's there. You have shared that so well in such a personal way, and I'm so grateful for your relationship with the Lord, that you get to see Steve again in heaven someday, and that you were so generous to be transparent with each of us, to offer each of us hope, and to pass along the comfort that you've been comforted with. [00:37:29] So Joyce, it has been a sincere pleasure to host you. Thank you for being my guest.
Joyce Hodel: Thank you for being a good hostess.
Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. [00:38:28]
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.
Romans 10.9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. [00:39:32] You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. [00:40:30] Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Monday Sep 30, 2024
241. Stories Series: From the Mission Field, Experiencing God in the Little and the Big with Patty Sommer
**Transcription Below**
Psalms 7:11-12 (AMP) "I will [solemnly] remember the deeds of the Lord; Yes, I will [wholeheartedly] remember Your wonders of old. I will meditate on all Your works And thoughtfully consider all Your [great and wondrous] deeds."
Other Savvy Sauce Episodes Mentioned:
204 Charlotte Mason Inspired Mini-Series: A Delectable Education with Emily Kiser
Patreon 55 Charlotte Mason Inspired Mini-Series: Embracing a Robust Life with Nicole Williams
Patreon 56 Charlotte Mason Inspired Mini-Series: Imparting Morals to Our Children with Liz Cottrill
Questions and Topics We Cover:
- What miracles, big and small, have you witnessed from God throughout your life?
- What is something we may not know that is true of many missionary families?
- What does a typical day look like in your world?
Patty Sommer is a Michigander by birth, though she has now lived in Ghana, West Africa for longer than she lived in Michigan. She is a follower of Jesus, wife to her best friend John for 21 years, and mother of 4 girls. She recently came to the realization that she is no longer a "young mom," but squarely in middle age, learning how to mother all her kiddos well, with her oldest 7,000 miles away at school in Tennessee and her youngest just finishing 4th grade. Her family is also in a transition in Ghana, as they are stepping out of a church plant that is very close to being autonomous and preparing to start a new one. Patty loves discipling young wives and mothers, and getting to share all God has taught her. She is a bookworm but does almost all her reading at night when the house is quiet. She loves spending time in nature, studying educational philosophy, and writing. She is currently seeking to master the art of sourdough bread.
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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:17] <music>
Laura Dugger: Thank you to the Sue Neihouser team for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to buy or sell a home this season, make sure you reach out to Sue at (309) 229-8831. Sue would love to walk alongside you as you unlock new doors.
We are continuing our series of stories today with Patty Sommer as my guest. Patty loves to lift up God's name by sharing his faithfulness in her life and telling people of His personal acts of love. I think you're going to be very encouraged by her stories.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Patty.
Patty Sommer: Thank you so much. It's such a joy to be here.
Laura Dugger: Well, we'd all love to get to know you a little bit better first, so will you begin by telling us a bit about yourself? [00:01:19]
Patty Sommer: Okay. So I was born and raised in Michigan by two Kentuckians, which is kind of a funny thing. They had just moved to Michigan, a young couple. And being from Kentucky, they were very nervous about moving to the far north, they thought. That's a place that for many years I called home.
Then in 2003, the Lord called my husband and I to Ghana, West Africa as missionaries. And we have now been here almost 21 years, which is hard to believe. I was raised in a Christian home, as was my husband, which has been such a huge blessing for us as missionaries.
Our parents and our grandparents on both sides have always been so supportive of us and so excited that we've been called to share the gospel with people here.
I have four girls, from 19 all the way down to nine. And we love learning and growing together, and we're so thankful for what God has called us to here in Ghana.
Laura Dugger: Wow. Was this something that was on your radar from a young age, or what was it that led you and your family to the mission field? [00:02:24]
Patty Sommer: Okay, so I actually did not like the idea of missions when I was young. I actually went through a time in my early teens where I really was feeling a leading, a prompting that way. I said, "Lord, I'll do anything but that."
Even though I had been raised meeting many missionaries, my parents had always been very positive, I just couldn't imagine leaving my home country and leaving my family and going halfway around the world to another place. So for about two or three years, I really struggled with that.
When missionaries would come to our home church and visit, I would try to pay no attention. I'd actually close my eyes during their little slide presentations and things. I really wanted nothing to do with it. When I was 14 years old, my best friend's big sister and her husband left for the mission field of Cambodia. And they were the first people I had personally known to go to the mission field.
We were at a summer camp, and actually this new missionary, her father, was the one leading devotions one night around the fire, and he was just talking about being willing to do what God asked us to do. [00:03:32] And I remember just this internal battle. The Holy Spirit just questioning me, would I be willing to surrender to what He had for me?
I remember distinctly saying this really silly statement now that I look back at it, that, "Okay, God, I will surrender to go to the mission field, but I know I'll be miserable the rest of my life," because I knew that's what it was going to be like.
But after I made that commitment really everything changed for me. The Holy Spirit really began to work in my heart, and He changed it, that instead of being a thing I never wanted to do, it being the thing I wanted to do with all of my life. And He worked that in me and I went off to Bible college. I met my husband there, and he, at the time that we met, he already knew that the Lord wanted him on the mission field.
We actually went on a college trip, and we came to the mission field of Ghana as a college trip. And that's how the Lord really began working in both of our hearts to come here as missionaries. [00:04:32]
Laura Dugger: Wow. Let's see. So then the timeline, so that was the first visit there, and you were already married then when you actually moved, and you did not have children at this point.
Patty Sommer: So we came on a college trip. It was actually through the university that we were attending, and so we weren't even dating at the time. We were acquaintances. Not long after that, we actually started dating and then started praying about where we should go.
So my husband actually came... We weren't married yet. He came back on another trip just to pray about if this was really the place for us or if that had just been, you know, the place that you see really affect you. I was back in the States and just praying also. And when he came back from the trip, he said, "No, I think this is where the Lord wants us."
So he graduated from college, and we were in Ghana... We got married, I think, two weeks after he graduated, and we were in Ghana a year later. So really quick transition out of college.
Laura Dugger: Wow. And what kind of missionary work did you go over to do in Ghana? [00:05:35]
Patty Sommer: So we do church planting. Along with church planting, of course, missionaries end up wearing lots and lots of hats, I've learned. But our primary role is church planters. That also includes training of nationals. We do literacy work. We teach in the public schools and do Bible clubs there.
We are actually running a small library that we're slowly working on building to help people have access to more literature and things like that. But our primary role is as church planters.
Laura Dugger: That all sounds so fascinating. You're right, that is a lot of hats to wear. But then also, when you moved to West Africa, did that influence your decision to eventually home-educate your children?
Patty Sommer: My degree is in L.Ed., and so I had this beautiful idea of coming here and setting up my own little classroom. I thought that was the best way to go. That's what we started with. I mean, I even put a bulletin board up in my house, as funny as that sounds, because that's how I'd been trained. [00:06:39]
Then I brought over an entire curriculum. I mean, everything was going to be just like in a school classroom. And then the Lord really started working in our hearts and really changing that up because of a few different things. So homeschooling, I knew, would always be something I'd have to do, but how we've gone about it has changed quite a bit.
Laura Dugger: So was there eventually a philosophy that you chose to follow, or do you want to elaborate on that journey?
Patty Sommer: Sure. So my oldest daughter is actually dyslexic, and I did not know that, of course. So we started right out, and, I mean, I drill it and kill it. I mean, we did the little blend ladders and everything exactly how I'd learned as a teacher, and we were not making a whole lot of progress.
And I kept thinking, "Well, you know, we just aren't working hard enough." Every day we would get done with school, and I'd think this isn't what I thought school was going to look like with my child." And so we just began to really pray, weren't sure what to do. [00:07:42] Nothing seemed to be working. I mean, I started right out at age four and so many things. And not that there's anything wrong with those things, but it just wasn't working for our family.
So we actually went back on a furlough when our oldest daughter was 7 going on 8, and we put her in the school actually that I grew up in and had taught him for a while before we came to the field. And I thought, "Okay, this teacher is great. She'll fix all my daughter's problems." Well, that was definitely the wrong way to look at it.
The teacher came to us just a few weeks into the school year, and she said, "Your daughter has dyslexia." And I said, "Okay, so what does that mean? How do I fix this?" Because in my mind, I consider that a problem. And she said, "Well, if you were living in the States, you know, we'd get you right in with a reading specialist." And she gave me the whole list. And she said, "But since you're going back to Ghana, I don't know what to tell you."
And so I went to my husband, I said, "What are we going to do?" And he said, "You've got this time. We're back on furlough to figure out what the Lord wants us to do. [00:08:43] I trust that you'll make a good decision."
I had already been digging a little bit, trying to find, you know, answers to what was happening in our home and in our school room. And I just kept coming across the name Charlotte Mason. And every time I read something about Charlotte Mason or Charlotte Mason homeschooling, it really struck a chord with me.
From the pictures I saw and the stories I read, I thought, "This is, I think, what I'm looking for." And so I just began to pray, and the Lord just opened up door after door. I met people along the way. And so when we came back, my daughter had just turned eight, my oldest daughter, and at that point, she could not put together two-letter words.
I said, "Okay, Lord, you're going to have to help us with this." And we dove into the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education as best I knew how, which wasn't really great at the time and we just began making tiny steps. And when she was 10 1⁄2, she was able to read her first book on her own. [00:09:42]
But more than that, it became the philosophy that our family needed. It has been such a gift to our family in so many ways, I can't even count.
But the Lord used something that I saw as a difficulty at the time to actually lead us to something that we just absolutely love and encourage everyone who's interested or struggles with any of these things to at least take a look at Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education.
Laura Dugger: We did do a series previously on The Savvy Sauce, and I'll make sure and add those links in the show notes if anybody wants to dive in deeper. But we are having a few more conversations on this podcast about homeschooling, and I'm so intrigued. So if you could, I know this is really difficult, but if you could just boil down a few tenets of the Charlotte Mason philosophy that have been most beneficial to your family, what are a few points that you'd share?
Patty Sommer: One of the very first things that really struck me, Laura, is that because my daughter couldn't read, she couldn't do the work. [00:10:48] So much of a box curriculum... and there are some good ones out there. I'm not saying that box curriculums are bad, but they really are geared for children who read very, very quickly and can comprehend what they're reading, and can write quickly. And she could do none of those things.
So I felt like using a workbook, she just kept getting farther and farther behind, and I had to do everything with her and everything for her.
When I read about Charlotte Mason's ideas of narration, which is the idea of a passage being read, and if the child cannot read it being read to them, and then the child narrating back or telling back what they have heard, that just really struck me that I thought that that could work with my daughter.
My daughter is very artistically talented, and so even the idea that at times she could do drawn narrations and there wasn't a huge emphasis right away on her having to write a lot upfront right away.
So that really helped Carrie also, in that she didn't have to try to take all the decoding she was having to do and then try to make her hands do that and think of how to spell things. [00:11:57] She could just speak back to me what she was learning. And I began to see fruit from it very, very quickly.
She didn't read immediately. I had hoped that this was like the magical ingredient. I've since learned many, many things about dyslexia, one that it can be a blessing, but that it didn't fix what I thought was a problem. But it did help her to have the tools that she needed so she could continue to learn and grow alongside of her learning to read, not being hindered by her inability to read.
It allowed us as a family to begin to look at learning in a whole new light. I loved also the emphasis Charlotte Mason places on the observations made by the child, that they are bringing their own mind to bear on the work that they're given to do. So spending time out in nature, considering what it is that they have read, taking time to read beautiful poetry and beautiful books. [00:12:56]
I was raised by a reader. I'm a bookworm. And my mother always was very particular that we read good books. She called the books that weren't as healthy cotton candy. That's what my mother called them. So she always made sure I had a diet of good books.
That also really drew me to Charlotte Mason's curriculum because I wanted my children to read the best. I wanted them to have the opportunity to read from many wise people who've gone on before us. So when I found this philosophy, I really began to see how it would work for our family.
And because it was a philosophy, it wasn't just me having to order a bunch of workbooks and trying to get them to us here in Ghana and the cost involved in all of that. There was a bit more freedom, too, to use what we were able to find where we were at.
Laura Dugger: And even that word freedom, that's what comes to mind when I learn more about this philosophy because Charlotte Mason believed in short lessons. [00:13:57] And when you put this all together, it's only a few hours total.
And even going back to you mentioning there are so many requirements of missionaries or so many hats that you're wearing, it sounds like you've really had a robust life with this homeschooling philosophy, that your family can be involved in so many things beyond just school.
Patty Sommer: I think another thing that I love, too, is she makes the point that education is a life. Education isn't something that we do from just 8 to 3, Monday through Friday. Everything we do in life can teach us something.
And I love that aspect, too, because there are days when we get a phone call and something odd happens, we have to deal with something. Someone's sick in the hospital and they need food taken to them, there's an emergency. That my children, just because they're not in this exact classroom 8 to 3, that they're not learning.
Just on Saturday, we were out visiting as a family, and we live in a huge city, over 4 million people, but there are still pockets that aren't city-like. [00:15:04] And one of those areas is actually in the middle of a huge area of factories, but kind of in the middle, this area has been left, and there's charcoal fields there. Because many people maybe are aware of the fact that in most of the Third World, people still have to use something to make their cook fires. So here in Ghana, it's charcoal.
What they do is they actually take wood and they smoke it and make it harder so that the wood lasts longer. That's really what charcoal is. It's been made for millennia.
But as we were going through there visiting the people, they were getting to see this, and we talked about it on the way back, what wisdom God has given mankind that they could figure out how to take wood and make it into a fuel that could burn longer and burn better for them, and just all the different things. And all of those things are adding up, stacking up every day for my children, and even myself, to grow in wisdom and the knowledge of mankind and the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the world He's created. So it is a very freeing philosophy of education, and it has been a huge blessing to all of us as a family. [00:16:09]
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Laura Dugger: I oftentimes have not met many other moms of four daughters. So do you have any other parenting wisdom to impart from your experience so far?
Patty Sommer: Oh boy. Parenting wisdom, that's a dangerous question to ask. I will say this. Again, I will quote Charlotte Mason because this, I think, was the quote that really struck me the most the first time I read it. She said, "The question is not how much does the youth know when he is finished with his education, but how much does he care?" And that quote goes on. There's a lot to it.
But I think one of the things that I have loved to see grow in my girls is the fact that they do care. [00:19:35] We live in a world where a lot of people are angry a lot and say they care a lot. But I think in actuality, we don't see many people who really take that caring and do something with it. If that makes sense. Many times it's just the agitation of the moment, the thing that is being put in front of our eyes or in our ears. But to see people who really care.
And I believe that when we pursue knowledge for God's sake, that that is what we will raise is children who care. I'm sure that you have been given lots of good advice over the years, but I think that that's the one thing that I'm so thankful that the Lord has led us. That it's not about knowing just something. It's not about getting a grade. But seeing in my children the fruit of the fact that because we have learned to care, that they are learning to care, that they're desiring to see God do a work in this world, not for their own benefit, not for material gain, but because they love the world that God has made and they love Him and they want to see other people come to know Him and see them grow in Him. [00:20:50]
Laura Dugger: Patty, what miracles, big and small, have you witnessed from God throughout your life?
Patty Sommer: I have so many. I'm going to have to limit myself. I grew up reading missionary biographies. They're one of my favorite genres to read. And they have been so encouraging to me along the way. But I remember reading stories and thinking, Well, that used to happen to missionaries. But I can say that God still does miracles for missionaries and not just missionaries. He does miracles for his children.
A couple that I love to share. One of them is about a big thing and then one is about something a little bit smaller, maybe.
Our third daughter, she was born in the States when we were on one of our furloughs. She was actually born... she's my fastest, fastest delivery. I was in the hospital 18 minutes before she showed up. She was born and they did a quick check and they said everything was good and they sent us up to the hospital room. [00:21:53]
She was really cold, and I didn't think anything of it. I just thought it's cold in the hospital. And a few hours later, they were coming around doing the checks for, you know, their hearing and their sight, and there was a NICU nurse who it was really quiet on the NICU floor that night. And they had just asked her to come down and help because a bunch of babies had been born that day.
She came in, she started doing the hearing test and she kind of gave us a funny look, and she said, "I'm going to take your baby out just for a minute to check a couple of things." And we didn't think anything of it. And then about an hour later, I looked at my husband, I said, "Where is our daughter? Can you please find that nurse?" I was starting to get a little panicky.
And he came back and he just had this look of shock on his face and he said, "She's been admitted to the NICU. She has a heart problem." We found out that day that she had a problem with her PDA valve. To make a complex thing fairly simple, there's a valve between the lungs and the heart in a baby that is open while they're in the mother's womb. [00:22:50] After birth, it's supposed to close immediately or within the first few hours, but hers would not close. So her body could not process oxygen correctly.
We ended up in the NICU for two solid weeks while they were trying to get her stable. That was a very difficult situation. When she was ready to go home, they said, "Most of the time, this will close on its own but you really need to see a doctor before she turns three, because if a child has it longer than that, the heart will enlarge and it can cause her great difficulty as she ages, even to the point of it, at some point, it could kill her.
Of course, we knew we were coming back to Ghana and so we just prayed, "Lord, just heal her up." And she seemed fine to us, but she was also five years younger than the sister above her. She was a very slow baby, very sleepy. And like I said, because she was so much younger, we thought, "You know, maybe you don't remember. Maybe all of our babies were like this." [00:23:50]
Then I found out we were expecting our fourth daughter, and she was born, and she was just full of so much energy. And I kept comparing my two girls, and I thought, "There's something wrong here. So we just have a clinic that we've used here for many years. One of the doctors there he's quite old. He's in his 80s, but still practicing.
So we just took her in and said, "Doctor, I don't know if you know anything about this. Here's the situation. Is there any way you could check and see if this valve might still be open in her heart?" She was two and a half at the time. And he did a couple really quick checks and he said, "Oh, yes." He said, "I can actually hear the backflow in her heart. This is going to need surgery."
And I said, "Well, do you know anything about this?" And he sat down and began to tell me how he'd actually dealt with a young lady 30 years prior in Ghana that had had the same thing. But actually, she was a grown woman. He was talking me through, and he said, "No, she needs surgery." [00:24:51] And I said, "Well, where can I get... what kind of surgery?" He's like, "Well, it's a heart surgery. It's not huge, but it's also not small." And he said, "There's no one in this city who can do this heart surgery." He said, "You're going to have to go to the capital city."
So we just began praying. We knew of some missionary doctors in Togo, which is the country to our east. They have a hospital there. And so we started praying and just kind of putting out feelers to different people we knew. And we were able to get the numbers. And we made a phone call and were able to talk to the heart doctor there. He said, "There's no way with the visa issues that you can get your daughter to us. And even if so, we don't have the equipment to do this surgery." He said, "She'll have to have this kind of heart test. She'll have to have this checked by a pediatric cardiologist. She'll have to have this, this, this." He said, "But there is one hospital in the capital city where this can be done." And so he gave us some information, and we just began to pray. [00:25:51]
We went down to the capital and we actually went to the hospital. And here we don't go to a hospital by appointment. You just go and get in a line and you literally just stay until the doctor sees you. And if he can't see you that day, you just go the next day. And that's how all the hospitals work here. We don't have enough hospitals for the number of people we have.
So we were just planning on taking our daughter and going and sitting in line at this heart hospital in the capital. That night we were staying at a missionary guest house, and a couple came in. We'd met them years and years before. I mean, just knew them by sight. Began to talk to the lady, ends up that she is a doctor in the far north in a little clinic up in the northern part of Ghana as an outreach. And she said, "Well, do you have this paper and this paper and this paper and this paper?" And we said, "No, we didn't know we needed them." And she said, "Well, you're never going to get to see anybody without these papers."
And we said, "Well, how are we going to get these papers?" And she said, "Well, the good thing is I actually know the head cardiologist." [00:26:53] She's like, "Let me write these papers for you." She just began writing out these papers and printing them off on her computer. And she had her stamps there and everything.
So the next day my husband was able to go with our daughter, and they said, "No, she definitely needs a surgery and she needs it right away." So we started planning what that would look like. We'd have to figure out what was going on here in our city with the church plant that we were leading at the time and where were we going to stay in the capital city?"
And we saw, Laura, the Lord opened door after door after door after door. And when the head cardiologist found out about the situation, he said, "I'm going to do this surgery for this little girl." It was just a miracle piled on top of a miracle. So nine years ago in May, we took our little two-and-a-half-year-old down to this hospital and we just had to hand over to the Lord and say, "Lord, you're going to have to do a miracle." And He did.
She had that heart surgery and she has come through it and she is strong and she is healthy. [00:27:58] The Lord provided the tests we needed. He provided the pediatric cardiologist. She'd just been back in the country one month. She'd moved from UK. And just how the Lord took care of every single thing. It could only be God.
So she's our miracle. And every time that I start to think, "Lord, we need this. We need this taken care of. We need this provision" He just reminds me, "I healed your daughter. I healed your daughter in a third-world country where people said it couldn't be done, and I gave you everything that you needed."
One more miracle that I love to share is our library here. To get things to Ghana is very expensive because usually we just have to put it in suitcases and bring it. And if you think about how much it costs to just carry a suitcase on a plane in America, multiply that times coming overseas.
There was a point where we were really growing and understanding of our Charlotte Mason education. [00:29:00] And we had books, but there were a lot of specific books that I had on these lists. And I was like, "Lord, how do I get these books here? I want to provide my children with this education that I believe that you've laid on our hearts. But we need books. And we would love to also be able to share books with the people here."
Ghana is... one of their national languages is English. So the people who go to school and learn to read will read English. So we felt like it was a way that we could help people here. We got a phone call from a missionary family that we knew a little bit. They were in one city and it hadn't worked real well for them and they moved to another city. And they were really discouraged.
We were going down just to try to encourage them. And we got into their house, I mean, they had bookshelves everywhere. Beautiful, full of beautiful books. And I was like, "Lord, they have all these books. Lord, how are you going to help us get books that we need?"
Well, when we were spending that couple of days with them, we were talking with them and things were not going well. [00:30:02] They were pretty sure they were leaving the field. We spent a lot of time just trying to encourage them to seek the Lord's will about it. Because leaving the field is a big decision.
And when we were there, the wife looked at me and she said, "Look," she said, "we are definitely going to be leaving the field." She's like, "But would you like our books?" I just started bawling. I didn't even know what to do with that. And I said, "Some of your books?" She's like, "No, look, we shipped in all these books." She's like, "I can get books in the States at used bookstores. Do you want the books?" And I'm like, "Well, we can't take them all." She's like, "Whatever you can take, you are free to take." And I mean, I think we maybe paid $100 for everything. They built our library for us.
And so many of the book titles that I have been praying about that have been on a list that someday, little by little, we might be able to get here, the Lord just dropped them in our lap. And since then, He's provided other ways for us to get books here and build this library. [00:31:00] But again, the Lord said, look, I can do at any moment what you need, as long as it's according to my will.
And we've seen that over and over in people's lives. We've seen God's provision. We've seen God care for us in ways that are just beyond the realm of what we could do as human beings. I'm just so grateful that He's allowed us to see those things, to see Him made strong on our behalf.
Laura Dugger: Wow, Patty, that is incredible. You're just reminding me of verses that I read this morning in my quiet time. So I'm going to share a couple of these. First, in Hebrews 4:16, I was reading in the Amplified version, and it says, "Therefore let us [with privilege] approach the throne of grace [that is, the throne of God's gracious favor] with confidence and without fear, so that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find [His amazing] grace to help in time of need..." [00:32:06] And this closing is what especially reminds me of your books. So that part "...grace to help in time of need [an appropriate blessing, coming just at the right moment]."
Patty Sommer: Yes, over and over and over again.
Laura Dugger: Have you checked out our library of articles available at thesavvysauce.com? New posts are added multiple times a month related to parenting, intimacy and marriage, personal development, habits, and other topics connected to what we discuss here on The Savvy Sauce. If you sign up to join our email list, you're also going to enjoy little extras delivered straight to your inbox.
Our hope is to encourage you to have your own practical chats for intentional living. So these freebies will include things like questions that you can ask on your next date night, safe resources to read to promote enjoyment in your intimacy and marriage, or questions to ask your kids to connect at a more relational level. We hope you check out all the available reads at thesavvysauce.com under the Articles tab. [00:33:09]
I love that you're sharing this story because it lives out Psalms 77:11-12, again, in Amplified. It says, "I will solemnly remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will wholeheartedly remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your works and thoughtfully consider all your great and wondrous deeds."
Patty Sommer: Often we're afraid to put our faith and trust in God because we really don't believe that He is capable, that He is, He is.
Laura Dugger: And I love that he did for you what you could not do for yourself in both of those examples, big and small.
Patty Sommer: Yes.
Laura Dugger: And then even to start to tie it together, even going back to your Charlotte Mason education, I'm so curious, what are a few of those specific titles that your family now gets to treasure?
Patty Sommer: One of them, it just sounds funny, Johnny Tremaine. It's a story from the Revolutionary War. I had seen it over and over. It was one I'd never read, even though it was quite a bookworm growing up. [00:34:12] And I wanted a copy of that so bad. And she had not one, but two.
Laura Dugger: He provides in abundance, doesn't He?
Patty Sommer: He does. He does. I also was able to get, this is just a total side note, little things, how he just provides us exceedingly abundantly above what we ask or think. I was really praying about cast iron cookware. And of course, cast iron is so heavy. To put that in a suitcase, there's no way that we could justify a 50-pound suitcase with two pots in it, right? So she actually said, "Hey, by the way, I've got five cast iron cook pots. Would you like them?" And on top of my books, I got my cast ironware.
Laura Dugger: My goodness. Well, it sounds like you've been, what the Old Testament talks about, blessed to be a blessing. Will you share where the library is at these days and how it's benefited others as well?
Patty Sommer: At this point, our library is a mobile library. [00:35:15] We have tried in various forms to try to set it up in a place. One thing that's really hard here is our buildings are not sealed. And so trying to keep books preserved in unsealed houses and buildings is really tricky. It's also very high humidity here. So you can imagine what that does to books.
So we had thought we had something set up at the place where our church is renting and that fell through. And then we thought we were going to build another little room onto it. And that fell through.
And so when we actually came back from our last furlough, I was just like, "Lord, you've given us this." At this point, you know, as people come, they ask for books, I can take them a book. But what can this look like practically right now?
So I actually was thinking about the old mobile librarians. I actually have my book bag. So whenever we have a service at this point, I have this big bag and I've got a patch full of books of all different kinds and all different reading levels for the people that read well and are interested. [00:36:16] And I take my book bag and I have the kids, they just line right up and we just go right through and we trade out old books and get new books.
At this point, I have a very small mobile library. It's in our home right now. We're just taking it little by little with what the Lord's provided. But it's exciting to see just what the Lord is going to do with it.
Laura Dugger: That is beautiful. It sounds like you're being very faithful in the small things. I can't wait to see what this blossoms into. I'd also like to know, what are some things that we may not know that are oftentimes true of many missionary families?
Patty Sommer: That's a tricky question because I would hate to claim something that all the other missionaries disagree with. I think one thing that goes along kind of with your question about parenting, I've realized that church planting, especially, and parenting are very, very similar. It's about the day-to-day, but it's also about the end game. [00:37:17]
When I was first expecting my very first, my husband and I were actually on a missions trip with our home church right before we were getting ready to come to the field. And we were helping. We were doing some backyard Bible clubs and things like that.
We were in northern Ontario, Canada, and the lady who was having us help at her home found that I was expecting and she said, "You don't really know me, but can I just give you a little bit of advice?" And I said, "Sure, please do." And she said, "Remember that you're not raising a child. You're raising an adult. You're raising a responsible citizen. You're raising someone who should be able to go on and keep the two great commandments." And that really stuck with me.
As we are transitioning as a family right now, our oldest is back in the state. She just finished her first year at college. We are also in the point of this church plant that we are transitioning ourselves out. The thing that has struck me over and over again is that our calling is never to set ourselves up. [00:38:24] Our calling is always to prepare our children and our churches and the people that we disciple to go on and grow and walk with the Lord themselves.
So I think as a missionary, at times, it's easy to forget that. Okay, this is going really well, this looks really good on paper, but my goal is not for it to look good on paper. My goal is for a church where the leadership can teach and they are growing in grace and that they are discipling those behind them and that they're passionate about preaching the gospel. And that the end game is what we must always keep in mind.
I'm not here as a missionary so that I can set myself up and have my little kingdom. Just like as a parent, I'm not here to set myself up as the ruler of my child. I'm, by God's grace, raising them to go out and do what God has called them to do. And so as missionaries, that's something that I think we always need to keep in mind. [00:39:26]
And it's something that can be prayed for for missionaries as they go through the hard things, as they go through the hardships, as they go through the difficulties to remember: what is our goal as missionaries? Our goal is to be establishing churches or our goal is to be building up believers. Our goal is to be training those under us. Whatever field, whatever area of missions God has called us to, it's not about us. It's about how God will be glorified in the future in these people and in their lives and in what has been done in that place for His honor and glory.
Laura Dugger: Well, it's also always fun to hear a day in the life of various people. So what does a typical day look like in your world?
Patty Sommer: One of the things we had to learn right away is that when you live in a place that isn't run by the clock, you either run yourself or you will be run. That has changed a bit in the 20 years that we've been here. But really, Ghana is a much slower place than what we came from in America. [00:40:29]
America is very much by the clock. The idea of being by the clock is still fairly new here. So we learned pretty quickly that if we just kind of went with the flow of things, we would not get a lot accomplished. So we have had to learn actually to be pretty set in what we do.
So a typical day here, I am very, very strict about school time unless there's an emergency. I wasn't at first. And I learned that to my detriment. So Monday through Friday, we're in the classroom at nine o'clock and we are done at one o'clock, which is the joy of a Charlotte Mason education. My children do have things they do in the afternoon. But as far as the actual school subjects, we're done at one o'clock.
Then literally we have each day kind of planned, what happens each day afterwards. And so we have some nights that are for ministering to other people. We have some nights we spend as a family. We have a midweek prayer service. [00:41:30]
Every Wednesday morning my husband and my girls go and they actually do Bible clubs at one of the government schools here, which is a great outreach in the area where our church is. On Saturdays is always family visitation. On Sundays we have church.
And then we also have things very set monthly. I only go grocery shopping once a month because that is a huge all-day endeavor. We go into the city. We don't have like one place where I can go and get everything. So we go from this market to that market, to this place, to the shopping center, to this building, to that building, to the butcher and we get everything for a month besides like, of course, the fresh stuff. But all of the meat for the month, anything that has to be processed.
OK, so if I want tomatoes for tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce or anything like that, I have to buy the tomatoes. So I buy huge bushel baskets of tomatoes and I have to bring those home and process them. And so trying to get the food for the month is a huge thing. [00:42:30]
Then my husband goes out on Mondays while we're in school and he runs to the market and picks up the fresh things that we need for the week. So just really actually quite regimented. If the electricity is on every morning, the laundry must be done because it has to hang because we don't have dryers here. Just things that for me are very normal.
I have to cook everything from scratch. So I have to put a lot of time into cooking every meal. Every supper meal takes at least an hour and a half. So at four o'clock I start cooking supper. So really just every day, just the thing that we've been given to do for that day, which is usually for me, school and taking care of our family. And then the things we have in the evening so that we can minister to others.
Laura Dugger: Wow. In your bio, you also mentioned that you're seeking to master the art of sourdough bread.
Patty Sommer: I'm trying.
Laura Dugger: I love that because it just makes me think of slow living, but you're sounding so intentional with your time. [00:43:31] So is there anything you've learned about that combination of being intentional to tell your time where to go, but also it is a slower pace, even making everything from scratch?
Patty Sommer: Oh, boy. I think that... man, I don't even know how to put it. I used to be a very frantic list person. My husband used to call me Martha Stewart and say, "You're Martha Stewarting again, honey." I would really work myself up. And I've learned that it has to be a balance. I have to be intentional with my time, because if not, it slips away from me, and I look at the end of the day and I say, "Man, I had these things that I wanted to get done, but I didn't even get done the things I needed to get done."
So learning to make the time. And to figure out also what it is the Lord actually wants me to spend my time on that day, I think, is also an important lesson I've had to learn. And I'm not always good at it, but hopefully we're growing in that area. [00:44:32]
Laura Dugger: Oh, that's so good. Any practical tips on that if we all want to seek the Lord as well? How have you heard his voice or then led to know which things are for you to pick up and which ones you need to lay down for that day?
Patty Sommer: I am by nature a night owl, but the Lord moved me to a place where everyone's an early bird. So I have learned that it's very important for me to get in God's word and prayer before I ever leave my room in the morning. Because if not, as a mother, everybody will assail me with a need, a problem, a question, a want.
So my husband and I, years ago, we worked out... He is an early bird, so he leaves the room and he comes out to do his devotions and he runs interference for me. This wasn't possible when I had, of course, tiny babies. But now that none of my kids have to have me first thing in the morning, so I do not leave my room until I spend time with the Lord. [00:45:32]
I'm trying to seek the Lord's face and just asking, what does today look like? And having a rough idea of what I should be doing that day helps. But knowing that where there's spots that, you know, I've got this time frame in the afternoon, what's it need to look like? Just asking the Lord, please make it very evident what I need to do at that time.
Laura Dugger: That's so good. Is there anything else that we haven't discussed yet that you want to make sure we don't miss?
Patty Sommer: I would ask as a missionary that those who listen to this, if they're praying people, that they would take the time to pray for your missionaries. There are so many people who've reached out to us over the years who say, "Man, how can we pray for you?" But there are some things that it's just impossible to really share. Not because we don't try, not because people who are listening don't try, but they just... when you've never experienced some things, you've just never experienced them.
But there are things that missionaries face that are just so different than what they face in their home country. And missionaries really do need your prayer. [00:46:34] And there are times that we've gone through difficulties and we can tell there's a calmness in our spirit, there's a quietness in our hearts because we know that people are praying for us.
We don't always know what missionaries are going through and we may not know how to pray specifically, but taking the time to pray for missionaries is really, really important. And it does more than most people imagine.
Laura Dugger: That's so helpful to hear. Is there a place where we can go after this conversation to learn more about your journey or just learn more from you?
Patty Sommer: So I'm on Instagram as Mrs. John in Ghana. That's where I do most of my writing now and my picture sharing there. We are on Facebook, but I don't a ton there. I used to write in the old days when people blogged. I wrote a lot about when I was younger and a young mom over. It's also at JohninGhana@blogspot.com. So those who are curious about the early years, you're welcome to go there. But I don't write there much anymore. [00:47:41]
Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We will add links to that in the show notes for today's episode. Patty, you may already be familiar that we are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge or insight. And so as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?
Patty Sommer: I think as funny as this might sound, this is something that I've been learning in recent years, whether it comes to homeschooling, whether it comes to my plans for the day, whether it comes for dealing with my adult child on the phone 7,000 miles away or dealing with my 9-year-old, that prayer is one of our most underestimated gifts from the Lord.
The more I learn to spend time in prayer, the smoother my days go and the more I feel like I am learning what it means to walk in the spirit. So prayer has not been an easy habit for me to learn. And it's something I'm still learning. [00:48:40] But I would encourage you to just start. Whether it's ugly, whether it's awkward, whether you fall asleep, whether you find your mind wandering, just start seeking to pray. Before you make a decision, before you talk to someone, when someone asks you for counsel, ask the Lord for wisdom, ask Him to guide you and He will.
Laura Dugger: Patty, I wonder if it's the fruit of that habit that I just experienced you as such a calm, peaceful soul and a faithful woman. And we're so grateful for the work that you're doing every day, both in parenting and in missions work. And then to disciple us through this conversation was such a gift. So thank you for being my guest.
Patty Sommer: Thank you, Laura, for inviting me. This has been a joy.
Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. [00:49:41] Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.
This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.
But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.
Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. [00:50:44]
Romans 10.9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. [00:51:50] You can start by reading the Book of John.
Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.