Grace For Each Season, Vickie Gaskin's Story

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Hey friends, thank you for tuning into this episode of Her God Story. You're going to hear a good story that will encourage and inspire you in your walk with the Lord.

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I'm your host, Jodie Chiricosta, ministry leader at Somebody Cares America, an international author and traveler on this journey of faith.

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Now, if you haven't done so yet, make sure to like or follow this podcast on your favorite streaming platform so you don't miss any of my amazing guests.

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And now I have a question for you. Is there a woman of the Bible whose story has inspired, encouraged or taught you something?

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I would love to know who and why. Please tell me in an email to hergodstory@somebodycares.org and tell me why.

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It will encourage me and I just might read it in a future episode to encourage others who are listening as well.

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So please take a moment sometime today and email me.

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Chuck Swindoll once said, "When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both,

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you will discover a sense of divine refuge because the hope then is in God and not in yourself."

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We all go through various seasons and phases of life, some joyful and thrilling, some difficult and perplexing.

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And when we understand that in all things, God is with us, that he is good, that in his kindness and faithfulness, he is at work for us,

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we can live in each phase with confidence that he's in control.

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Recently, I faced a second bout of cancer. I went immediately to the Lord for comfort to hear his word for me.

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And he showed me something out of Isaiah that I had never seen before. It was a now word for me, which I hold on to.

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It talks about God being with us in every phase of our life. It's Isaiah 46: 3b-4.

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God says, "I have cared for you since you were born. Yes, I carried you before you were born.

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I will be your God throughout your lifetime until your hair is white with age. I made you and I will care for you.

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I will carry you along and save you."

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That scripture ministered life and hope to me whenever fear tried to creep in.

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Now, my guest, Vickie Gaskins, has experienced this truth of this scripture throughout her life, too.

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And she's still learning the depths of its meaning, even now.

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I met Vickie about 15 years ago when she joined the Somebody Cares team.

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Her zeal for the Lord, desire to know him and willingness to lay down anything that hinders her walk with him,

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is always an inspiration and encouragement to me in my journey with God.

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She and her husband, Terry, live in Texas and have four adult children, all but one married and three grandsons.

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She's worked in the custom home industry, served the Lord in various ministries and been an eager student of the word.

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Whether you're on a mountaintop, walking through a valley or somewhere in between, you will be blessed by Vicki's story and insights.

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Welcome, Vickie. Thank you.

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Vickie, you encountered the Lord fairly early in life, but then as many do, you strayed away from following him.

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Tell us about that and where your decisions took you.

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I think I shared with you that when I was a little girl, my mother had a real love for the church.

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I wish I could say it was a love for the Lord, but I don't think she knew him all that well.

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She just knew that church was where she was supposed to be, a good place.

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My dad, who had grown up in a church where his mom was one of those that made him go every single time the doors were open.

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It was not a church that he was pleased to be in because it was kind of a hellfire and brimstone church.

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When I grew up, my mom took us to church constantly.

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We went every Sunday morning, but my dad would not set foot in the church at all.

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His attitude was that he had been there for the last time and he never had an intent of going back.

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So I think when I was about 10, I know I was 10, but I think my church was having a reunion revival.

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As I sat there, I began to hear things that I think my heart was ready to hear.

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But one night in the middle of the night, I felt like the devil had come to get me.

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It scared me so much that I called out to Jesus and immediately that left.

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So I went to my mom the next day and told her, hey, I want to receive Jesus.

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Her thought was to call the pastor to come and visit with us.

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So he came and that particular night, my dad was there, my sister was there, my mom, of course, was there.

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The pastor was talking to me about receiving the Lord.

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My dad suddenly had conviction.

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I remember seeing him for the first time in my life cry.

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It had a profound impact on me.

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So we got baptized, the three of us.

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My sister also received the Lord that night and we got baptized on Sunday.

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And after that, we went from going to church with just my mom to my dad becoming a deacon and everything.

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We were there all the time.

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But as a teenager, I did some things that I shouldn't have done.

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And once I did that, I felt like the Lord was done with me because I had been taught.

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It's all about what you do, not who you are.

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So by the time I was six, 14, I decided I didn't want to go to church anymore.

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And because of my dad's upbringing, he decided that I didn't have to.

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And I've often thought of that because if I had told him, I don't want to go to high school anymore, I don't want to go to school.

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I don't want to learn math.

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He would have said, oh, young lady, you're going to school.

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But because it was church, he said, you don't have to go.

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And that was not a good thing for me at 14 because, as you know, it's easy for kids to get in the wrong group, get in trouble.

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As for by the time I was 17, I was a high school dropout.

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I lacked two and a half credits to graduate, but I dropped out, got married, was pregnant.

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Before my 18th birthday, I had a son.

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And at that point, he was sick, so I didn't get to go get him at the hospital.

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They brought him home and laid him in front of me and said, here's your son.

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And at that point, I had never held a baby, changed the diaper, made formula, done any of those things.

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I had no clue what I was doing.

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And that started my journey as a adult.

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By the time I was 20, I was married to the same man who was not in the law, ready to get married.

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He was an abusive alcoholic.

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We were up and down constantly.

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Yeah. So by the time you're in your 20s, you were in that very difficult spot.

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And it only got more difficult when you had your second child.

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True.

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Share what happened that turned you back to the Lord during that time.

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Well, my son was a special needs child.

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And so when I had my daughter, she was also sick.

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And she ended up in the hospital for two weeks.

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And I got a phone call one day from a doctor who basically said, you need to face the fact that your daughter has brain damage.

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And so when he said that, I had seen what he was talking about.

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And I just cried out to God for the first time since before I probably was 15.

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But I cried out to him and basically told him, if you will heal my daughter, I will get my life together.

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At that point, I didn't really realize what I was saying, but I did go back to church and I began to try to earn God's approval again,

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which, as you know, doesn't work all that well because we already have it.

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And if we're trying to earn something, we are have.

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But you did that because the next time you went back to the hospital, there was a remarkable difference.

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That's true. I went there that night and she was completely different.

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She came home. We had a normal childhood.

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And so I knew that God was real and I was trusting in him at that point to help us.

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Yeah. And even though you were committed again to the Lord,

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there were some things in your life that hindered you from really receiving everything God had for you.

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And I think that's true of all of us. When we when we come to the Lord,

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we don't realize all the different things that need to be removed from our lives before we can have that free and full trust and and flow of relationship with the Lord.

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But the Lord started setting you free. Share about some of that and how you began to get free.

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Well, I've often told people that I wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol.

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I was basically addicted to a man. I had such dependency on him.

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I would leave and then I would return. And my family was extremely frustrated with me.

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But there were all of these things going on in our marriage. It went on for a long time, for 22 years.

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Eventually, I began to see that it was having a huge impact on my daughter and on my son.

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And so the Lord began to talk to me. But I had to come to a place first before I could recognize that God loved me for who I was.

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Wasn't about what I did. He wanted the very best for me.

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He loved me. And I just it gave me the strength to be able to walk away.

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So you left your husband really on biblical grounds, having suffered years of abuse of all kinds.

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But it was a long process before and after your divorce. Tell us a little bit more about that.

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Before I left, one of the things that happened, I got involved in a ladies Bible study, which is a tremendous help.

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Just to have the support of other Christian ladies. And I began to study my Bible.

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I began to learn what the word said and what God had said.

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And I realized so many of the things that were going on were because of bad choices and decisions I'd made.

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So but I remember as I began to read the word, the first time I discovered that Jesus loved me, I read that in John 17.

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And I called up my Sunday school teacher in tears and I said, I just found this for the first time because I didn't hear that growing up.

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And it was like a beginning and a turning. And I got such a deep hunger for the word or for Jesus himself just to know him.

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And at one point, I remember standing in my house and I told him, if I'm ever by myself, I want to serve you with my whole heart.

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I want to serve you, even though my husband. And so it was like if I'm ever by myself, and that's what I want to do.

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But I continued to inch along and to grow. And eventually I did find the strength to leave.

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And it's it's just a God thing that I was able to leave when I did.

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When you left, your son came to live with you and your daughter stayed with your husband and tragedy struck.

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Well, I told you that I was beginning to see the effects of the lifestyle that we lived on my daughter.

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And honestly, she was 15 and she and I were going head to head constantly because of her issues.

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The Lord began to speak to me and I wanted to take her away from the situation, but she decided that she wanted to stay with her dad.

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And that was devastating for me because I never intended for her to stay in that situation.

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She was very strong willed as I had been as a teenager.

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But she stayed and we were divorced in January in October of that same year.

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And when she was 17, she died actually huffing butane. And that was devastating to me.

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For one thing, I felt like it was my fault because I had left her with her dad.

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I also blamed him. So there was bitterness there.

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I just really, really struggled after she died.

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We went through a long series of struggles when we first separated.

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And I was trying to regain that daughter, mother, daughter relationship.

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But one of the things that happened to me is that I went through kind of PTSD, if you will, after she died of an event that happened just before she died.

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And in that, that particular night, she and I had struggled. We came to terms. We made up. Thank goodness.

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Thank the Lord that we made up before she died that we had struggled about her living with me and everything so much.

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And then she and I went out to dinner. We had this long conversation.

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And I felt like in my pride, I was waiting for her to ask for permission to come stay with me. And she was waiting for me to offer her to.

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So I dropped her off at home after it was all over with. And it didn't go well.

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And the Lord, everything in me said, go back and get your child. And out of fear, I did not go.

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So after she passed away, I saw that event. I could see her in the restaurant. I could see us in the car. I could see me driving away.

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And I never knew when that moment was going to happen. It would just come upon me. And it was like it was devastating. And I wept and I cried.

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And for almost a year, I carried this weight and it was destroying me. And so finally, one day I went to my closest friend and I said, this is going on.

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She said, would you want to give that to Jesus? Maybe if you just offered all that up to him, he could help.

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And I was like, OK, I'll pray about it. I'll think about it.

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And so she I laugh about it because when the Pharaoh, when Moses came to the Pharaoh, when he asked him about the frogs in the oven,

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and he said, come back tomorrow and you can take the frogs out of the oven. And it was kind of like, do you want to leave them in there all night?

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So immediately I thought about it and I said, OK, I'll go back. And I ended up going back to my friend.

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And literally that day, I laid my daughter at the foot of the cross for the first time after she passed away.

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And I went to work the next day, two days later, and literally people would come to me and say, what happened to you?

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You look so different. You have peace. And they had never seen that on me since she died.

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And so I realized that God can take all of those painful things that we want to give to him and he'll carry them if we'll allow him.

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But one of the things that the Lord did before Jennifer died, and he's done that for me many times through the years,

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he sent people to help me through the process of something that was coming that I didn't even know was going to happen.

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And I believe it was 1989. My daughter died in 1993, so it was several years before.

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I went to a ladies retreat and there was a speaker there by the name of Barbara Johnson.

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She's since gone to be with Jesus, but she was a humorist. She was a whole lot like Armin Bombeck, except that she was very much focused on sharing her testimony.

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And it was all about how she had lost. She had three sons and she had lost one to Vietnam, one to a drunk driver, and one to the gay lifestyle.

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And he was still out there at that point. She didn't know where he was.

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But as she shared, she talked about how things happen to us and we have a choice in how we can respond.

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And at the middle of the day, we all broke for lunch. There were probably 300 of us there.

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And she came to me and said, can I have lunch with you? And it was like I was blown away.

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I literally was because here I was, you know, among 300 people. And at that point, I had such an inferiority complex that would have never dawned on me that anybody would want to be with me, much less Barbara Johnson.

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And so having lunch with her was a beautiful experience.

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But when my daughter died, I could remember how God had put this lady in my life and how he was preparing me.

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And it helped me so often whenever I would get overwhelmed, I could hear her, some of her comments, different things that she shared in laughter as she dealt with the death of her children.

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So I knew I could get over it if I would allow the Lord. It was a difficult time, but God is so wonderful.

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And he does heal our hearts if we'll lay them on the altar.

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And during that time, even before you had left, you know, left your husband, you started a 15 year career in the custom home industry.

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You kept moving up and moving up until you were finally vice president, but you had always had a burning desire to serve the Lord, as you mentioned earlier.

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And God finally opened a way for you. It was a little bit of a process. Why don't you tell us about that?

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Well, it was definitely a process. I think I told you that I had a lot of bitterness toward my husband and my ex husband by then.

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But I also had the struggle of dealing with that grief. And about 10 years afterwards, I still had a bitterness toward my ex or I blamed him for her death because he was in the house with her when she was having butane.

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And it was just really it was like, what kind of a dad were you? You know, but I had this bitterness and I came to a place where the Lord kind of offered me a challenge.

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Would I be willing to forgive him? But that was the very first step.

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And immediately once I got rid of that bitterness and I allowed the Lord to help me to forgive, suddenly my life began to soar. And that was probably in the spring.

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And before September, I was planning a trip to go to the Republic of Georgia on my first missions trip. I went to the Republic of Georgia on a mission trip.

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My boss promoted me up to vice president. There were all these different things. And when I came home, my heart was forever changed for missions because I realized that's who I am.

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And it was like that dream that was way back that I had to let go of.

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And the Lord began to revisit that with me. It started my church open to school for training and ministry.

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And I decided I wanted to go, but I had no real expectation out of that.

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One of the things that happened through the years is I felt disqualified to go on the mission field because I didn't have all the things that were required.

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And so when I went to my school the very first night, there was a prophetic word that was given that basically talked about how God gives a vision and though it tarries, we need to wait for it.

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And how it's not being recalled. It's irrevocable.

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And I'm going to read what it said, and I've got it in front of me here. It said, the storms of life and the winds of time settle the dust of inattention upon the stone tablets where the vision was written.

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Until they are hardly readable, the stone tablets represent your vision that was etched out by God and the gifts and the calling that is without repentance. But today the water and the declared word mixed with the words of the Spirit or the winds of the Spirit.

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Come and wash it with dust or all the dust, dirt and mold and mildew off of the vision stone. And I realized that that vision was for me.

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And so I began to get excited again and I started school. I went on this mission trip.

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And I kept praying God I want to serve you. What do I do? And eventually I graduated from the school.

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And it had to be God's timing. I can remember going to my pastor over and over. I think I want to quit my job. I think I'm ready to serve.

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And he'd say, wait, wait, this is not it. But in 2006, the Lord called me to set up the economic development corporation with four other pastors.

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And I began to run with that. My boss at the time, because I was the only assistant he'd ever had, was horrified when I told him I was leaving to serve the Lord.

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Thankfully, he was a Christian and he went to church the week after that.

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And the pastor there preached on Nehemiah and how he was building a wall.

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And my boss called me Monday morning and said, can we have lunch? I need to talk to you.

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And he said, God told him on Sunday, I'm building a wall. I'm using her like a Nehemiah.

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And if you don't get out of the way, that wall could fall on you. And he said, I'm not going to stop you. I'm going to help you.

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So in the end, after it took six months for me to get out of the office, but in the end, I had enough funds that the Lord provided because I did not have them whenever it started.

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But I had enough funds to be able to live on for two years while we started this ministry.

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When you stepped out in faith, quit your job, started in this ministry, the Lord taught you a few things because ministry is very different than business, right?

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Yeah, for sure.

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Tell us a little bit about what you learned and ultimately how God brought you to somebody cares.

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You know, in business world or in the business world, everything is on a deadline.

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Everything is on schedule. You have reports, you have things you have to have done.

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If you want a piece of land or if you're going to do something, you proceed and, you know, people get in your way.

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You kind of work around that and you keep on going.

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Everything is deadline charged.

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And first thing I figured out in ministry is nothing works on the schedule.

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Everything is about relationship.

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And I love how Doug Stringer is always saying that relationships define our destiny because they really do.

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And when you're in ministry, it's really, really true.

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But if you're not in a or if you're in a group and only part of that group is there.

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And that's another thing I learned is that ministry is never by yourself.

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It's always going to be in a relationship with someone in a dependency with other people.

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And so I had to learn to wait on the Lord.

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And that was very difficult because I had never had discipline before.

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But waiting on the Lord, that was a big thing.

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Finally, after two years of doing what we were doing, it wasn't proceeding as it should have.

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And what I learned through that two years is that God was using that two years to grow and change me from that business module,

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if you will, to ministry.

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But for three months, I kept praying, Lord, I can see the money is just going down because I was living.

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I was single and I had a house and I had a car payment.

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I had all these things.

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And the Lord told me, I will take care of you.

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And I remember he got onto me one day because I was trying to use up the last little bit of something that I had in the makeup wise or something.

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And he said, why are you doing that? I told you I'd take care of you. If you need something new, go buy it.

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You're acting like you don't trust me when you do that.

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So I went and I did everything that I would have normally in that two years.

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But at the end of that, I was looking at the savings going down.

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I'm like, Lord, either I've missed you or I've done poorly or something is wrong.

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And so I kept crying out to him. And he finally told me, no, you're not done.

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I'm very pleased. I love what you did.

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I love you. And I'm working on something. You just need to trust me.

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So for three more months, I would pray every day and the Lord would say every day, call Doug Stringer.

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And I would be like, I saw him as such a general in the army of the Lord that I was intimidated to call him.

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And so I kept saying, Lord, I can't call Doug Stringer.

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So for three months, every morning I would hear it called Doug Stringer.

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And for three months, I'd say, I can't do that.

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Finally, after three months, I was praying and I asked the Lord, can I call his associate that works for him?

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Her name was Kathy. And I said, can I call her instead? And he said, call Kathy.

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So I called Kathy. And when I did, I told her, I don't know why.

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I just have senseless connection to somebody cares and to Doug. And I'm calling.

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I need help. I need a job. I need to move forward.

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And so she started laughing, said, I have to call you back.

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She called me back about five minutes later and said I couldn't speak without talking to Doug first.

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But three months ago, I told Doug that I felt like the Lord was calling me to return to my home community in Louisiana, which we were in Texas.

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And he told me when I prayed in my replacement, I could leave.

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So for three months, you had been praying that God would send her replacement.

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And for three months, I was sitting in the chair saying, I can't do that.

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So the bottom line is I met with Doug a week later.

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And before another month, I was working at somebody cares and as a ministry outreach coordinator and working with Hurricane Ike Recovery.

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And God had some more healing for you there and a wonderful surprise as well.

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What were they? Start with let me just back up a little bit and say that when my daughter died, I had given up on the dream that every mother has with her daughter that they would have a wedding that they would have, you know, the mom, daughter is adult relationship.

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Grandbabies that they could help their daughter with all those things, but I had to let go of that dream.

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And through the years when I would be on mission trips or places, people would come to me and say, I just feel like the Lord wants me to tell you that he's going to replace double everything that the enemy took from you.

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And I would look at him and go, uh huh.

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And I would just kind of smile and go on.

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And I never thought much about it. And so when I went to work for Doug, I was overwhelmed really with so much to to learn and grow and do and the Lord was very faithful.

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But one of the things that was a part of my job was to have 1400 kids come in the spring.

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Actually, they were coming in the summer, but this I started in December, so they were coming in six months.

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My job, a part of my job was to have work for all these kids that were coming for a week of camp. It was through the group work camps out of Colorado.

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And my job was to make sure they all had something to do.

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So I was frantically looking for volunteers everywhere.

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And there was a man who was an hour away from our office that had known Doug Stringer for 30 years.

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And he lived down around the Galveston area, which was significantly hit by the hurricane.

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And there was a man who was staying on his campgrounds. They were doing disaster relief.

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And I called him. I called the pastor and said, I need volunteers.

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And he said, well, I have this man staying at my camp. I'll send him because we were having a big meeting.

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This man shows up at the meeting on February the 5th, 2009.

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And at the end of the meeting, everybody went home except for this man.

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And he came to my office and he had a jubilant questions for me.

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And we ended up getting married in August of 2009, that same year.

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Before that happened, right before the group, the kids were all coming.

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I had been to a prayer meeting that was a citywide event and I met a couple.

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And there was an issue that I was really struggling with personally where I had been wounded.

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And I just didn't seem to be able to let go of it.

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And so there were intercessors that did interhealing type ministry.

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And I shared with the lady about what I was struggling with.

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And she said, why don't you come let us pray for you?

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So I had a meeting in May with them and I went to this meeting and there were four of them.

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The first thing that happened is that her husband said, before we do anything, I feel like this is what the Lord wants me to do.

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And so he got down on his knees in front of me and he put his hand on my shoulders.

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I will never forget it.

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And he began to repent on behalf of every man who had ever used, abused.

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And he went down this long list of all the ways that we get wounded by men.

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And as he did, I ended up in the floor crying like a little baby.

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I felt like my daughter had died all over again with the weeping that was going on.

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I also was seeing the faces of every single one of those men that throughout my life had harmed me or perceived harm.

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I knew that I had to forgive them.

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And so I ended up verbally forgiving each and every one of them.

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And the next thing that happened after that, once I forgave them, I felt the weight of that leave.

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But at the same time, the next thing that happened is that the only thing I can call it is that I had a vision.

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I don't know how I've never had anything like that since.

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But as they were praying for me, I felt my heart come out of my chest.

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I saw it land on a piece of black slate.

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It was black. It was gnarly. It was scarred. It was hard.

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And as I sat there, I could see a hand washing my heart with water just trickling over it.

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And as that hand washed my heart, it began to become more lifelike and whole and healthy.

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And it was soft and it was tender.

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And then all of a sudden, I felt it pop back into my chest.

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And so I'm sitting there the rest of the night going, that was strange. That was so weird. What was that?

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And so I went home that night and I asked the Lord, what was that?

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And He told me, I gave you a new heart.

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And so what He did for me that night was restore the little girl in me.

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And He also allowed me to trust men again.

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And so it wasn't maybe two weeks, maybe three at the most, that I'm sitting in a meeting with this man that had not left the office,

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that I literally shoved out the door at five o'clock because I had things I had to do.

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Back in February, but He, as I sat there, I realized He's got really pretty eyes.

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And then I remembered I had made a list years before of what my perfected man would look like.

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And I began, I went and I found that list, which was amazing in itself that I could walk right to it.

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I think that was God's thing.

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But I began to check off things on my list.

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And without a doubt, He was like this was the man.

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And so it was just an incredible gift.

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But when we were getting married, and I brought this up earlier about letting go of that dream about my daughter.

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But when we were getting married, I asked my husband, obviously, how many kids do you have?

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I mean, we talked about all that.

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Well, it turned out that he had two daughters and he had a son.

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So when we got married, suddenly I had had a daughter and a son.

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Now, all of a sudden there are four, there are two girls and two boys, and I'm like, God doubled.

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And so I received that.

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But there was a more beautiful part of that that only God does.

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And that is that his youngest daughter was born within three months of the time that my daughter died.

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And she was also almost exactly the same age that my daughter was when she died when we got married.

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And that alone would be a beautiful thing.

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But when she came to Houston to be with her dad just a month before our wedding, and I had not met her.

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She came to stay with him for about 10 days and immediately we had a rapport and it was a beautiful thing.

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But she ended up through a series of events coming to stay at my house.

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And so she stayed with me for four or five days of half the time that she was there.

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And I finally one day said to her dad, don't you think you need to come get your daughter?

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Because it's like she's here to see you, but she's seeing me more than she is you.

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But there were by the time she went home, we had a beautiful relationship that had been established.

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And the precious gift and all that was that my son, who has never married, his two daughters now have babies.

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And so I've gotten the privilege to be Mimi to three grandsons that I would have never had had it not been for what the Lord's done.

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And it's just to me, it's one of the ways he just is so kind to us.

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And he gives us such beautiful, precious gifts that you honestly, you can't out give God. You just can't.

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So you were with us at Somebody Cares for four years, and then the Lord prompted you and Terry to move to North Texas, where you are now.

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And in those intervening years, God used you in prayer ministry and to care for your mom and her final years and to help struggling families in your community through some outreaches.

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But then right before COVID, God began to bring you into a new season, a new phase in life.

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And I think that happened to quite a few people, actually, right before COVID.

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A lot of the Lord was doing a new thing in people's lives. Share about what he did in your life and what he's been teaching you.

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Before my mom passed away in 2019 at the end of that year, but before that, everything that we had become involved in in our ministry,

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all of a sudden in the beginning of 2019, began to slow down.

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And we just, it was like the Lord was closing doors. And I thought, what have I done wrong? What did I do?

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You know, I didn't do it well, or this wouldn't be happening. And so I was going through a lot of inner struggles and personal struggles.

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My mom passed away in December of 2019. Then, of course, COVID happened.

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There were all these different events. Even our building had somebody knock a huge hole in the wall.

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And so we couldn't have ministry there. I mean, it was just one thing after another.

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And in that time, I began to have some health issues. I decided to go back to school full time because we were trapped at home with COVID.

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And the Lord began to speak to me and tell me, I want you, you've always been a Martha.

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And he said, I want you to learn how to become a Mary.

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And I will be honest, at the beginning, I said, God, I'm not sure I want to be a Mary. I kind of like being a Martha.

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But I really knew that he knew best. But he kept calling me to come away, come away, come away.

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And so I would tell him, I'm coming, I'm coming.

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And very often those events didn't happen because I was so busy doing ministry that I didn't have time to be with him.

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But after school, like I say, I went full time to school and then I began to have some health issues.

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And the last two years have really been a serious time of health. Just different things. I have autoimmune disorders.

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And you had a big revelation. You were thinking that the Lord was punishing you for different things.

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But God, in his kindness, told you something different.

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At the beginning of the year, actually in the beginning when I got sick, I was thinking that he was upset with me.

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And he began to show me that he was not upset with me, that there was life is full of ups and downs and all kinds of seasons.

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And he's with us in all of them. And in fact, that's what he said. I'm going to be with you all along the way.

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But he also began to show me the value of each and every season.

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I think we tend to think that certain seasons have more value than others.

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If we see an outcome of ministry, then we can latch onto that. Look at the fruit.

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And if we don't see the fruit, then we struggle or I do. I struggle with if it wasn't productive, that must not have had value.

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But what he's began to show me is that there is a value in every single day.

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And just even a week ago, I was praying one morning and I was imagining myself with Jesus.

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And I said, Where do you want to go today? And he said, I want to take you to the valley.

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And I thought that was odd that he said, I want to take you to the valley because I don't always want you to be on the mountains.

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There's value in the valleys just as much as there are in the mountains.

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And so we went to the valley together and I could see Jesus and I in this valley.

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There's this meadow, beautiful flowers, there's butterflies flitting around and I'm chasing the butterflies with him.

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And we're laughing. And all of a sudden, the scripture, Psalm 23,

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Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you're with me.

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And suddenly it gave me a whole new meaning to that whole chapter of Psalm 23.

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We see it as, you know, those are terrible times. I've got to go through this awful thing.

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And Jesus is with me and therefore there's nothing that's too difficult for him.

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And it just makes it all so much easier to walk with.

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And I love what you read at the beginning about Chuck Swindle saying that if we can embrace him in those seasons,

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it's so much easier and there is joy in every season.

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But part of the value, and this is something he showed me earlier, part of the value is the fact that I get to be with him.

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It doesn't matter where I'm doing. There's value in it because he's with me.

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So looking back over the various seasons of your life, what have you realized?

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I mean, there is value in every season, but I think there's some additional nuances to that as well.

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Well, and even in getting sick, I thought God was disappointed with me and that, you know,

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I thought we had such twisted ideas about God. And that's one of the things he showed me.

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You're so presumptuous when you think about me and he said this to me,

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that I could be so presumptuous in my thoughts and what and who he's like, because he's like, I'm not like that.

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But back in the spring when I was really concerned about my health so much and was praying about it,

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and he began to show me through Jesus with the woman who has been over for with an infirmity.

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I felt I feel in because I've been healthy all my life and now at 70. All of a sudden I don't have my health.

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And but I looked up what infirmity meant, and it basically was saying that it's the weakness that comes as we get older.

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And I looked and I read that scripture again, and it said that he was moved with compassion over her infirmity.

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He wasn't upset with her because she was getting old.

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And I'm like, that's so ridiculous when I look back at it and see it. But yet that's what I was thinking.

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He's just so kind to us. He's never mad at us about any of that stuff.

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But that scripture that you shared earlier about when you first got sick again and how he promised to be with you,

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that has been meaningful to me as well. I remember you sharing it and it has helped me.

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Recently, I was challenged by another pastor. Do you put more faith in your faith or do you put your faith in Jesus?

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And so I felt like that was a personal message from God.

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I've been seeking him daily saying, God, am I trusting you or am I trusting what the doctors can do and what I can do?

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And it's been like a measuring stick, if you will, for me every day. Where is my faith? What am I looking at?

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And I know that I will lift my eyes up to the mountains and I'll know where my health comes from. Comes from him.

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So I'm trusting that. Would you share about a woman of the Bible? I mean, you mentioned Mary.

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Maybe you want to talk more about her or somebody else, but talk about a woman of the Bible who's inspired or encouraged her and taught you something.

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Well, if you had asked me the most meaningful person, I would say years ago, I would have said Deborah.

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But now I would say Mary. And it's simply because I've begun to realize that Mary was the one that loved Jesus.

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She was the one that could see his needs. She was the one that could step outside of herself and focus on him.

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She brought pleasure to him and she ministered to him.

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And I think so often I have been so caught up in my own thing and what it meant for me that I failed to realize that it was him.

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It's about him. It's what he wants. And so that's who at this point in my life. That's who I want to be like.

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I want to be like Mary who can step outside her own needs and be more concerned about Jesus.

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You know, in Ecclesiastes 3, it's kind of a familiar passage to a lot of us, but verses 1-8, 11 and 14,

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Solomon comes to kind of a similar revelation to what Vickie's just been talking about.

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The New Living Translation reads, For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

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There's a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to harvest, a time to kill, a time to heal.

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And it goes on and on and on. And then it says, yet God has made everything beautiful in its own time.

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He has planted eternity in the human heart. But even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.

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And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it.

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God's purpose is that people should fear him. If you use the Bible Hub app, you'll discover that fear in verse 14 could also be translated as revere or stand in awe of God.

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And God doesn't cause us pain, but he does use different seasons in our lives to show us who he is so we can stand in awe of him for his beauty, for his goodness, for his kindness, for his faithfulness.

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Vickie, would you take a moment and pray for our listeners?

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Lord, I just want to thank you first for the privilege of being your daughter. And I pray for every single person that hears these words, that you would show them the value in every season that they walk through, whether it seems good or it seems hard.

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To know that you are with them, to know that you are faithful. Lord, even when we're faithless, you're faithful.

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To know that you are kind because it's who you are. You are a good, good father who means total good for us.

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And I pray that every single listener today would see and know and hear your goodness in their days.

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Lord, teach us to look for you in every, every season that we find ourselves in.

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Thank you.

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You know, friends, there are orphans as well as widows all over the world who need to experience a tangible expression of God's love right now.

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Many have special needs that we as a company of women can meet together, like Rachel and her two children who had to evacuate from the Gaza border because of the conflict there and now need to home with a safe shelter.

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Because of friends like you, we've been able to help her with that through our Widow and Orphan Fund.

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But there are more, many, many more around the world. Would you consider joining us with a special gift to help?

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Just go to HerGodGtory.org and click on the Widow and Orphan tab at the top of the page.

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Thank you for tuning in. In our show notes at HerGodStory.org, you'll find scriptures and other information we talked about.

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You can also get a six-week devotional of Women on the Bible that you can download for free.

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Or you can purchase a 12-week devotional that we'll send you for just $12, knowing that all the proceeds go to our Widow and Orphan Fund.

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We'd love to pray with you on our 24-7 prayer and text line so you can call or text anytime at 855-459-CARE or email us at prayer@somebodycares.org.

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And now, dear friends, I bless you from Ephesians 1:17 -18.

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May the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you may grow in your knowledge of the Lord.

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May your hearts be filled with light so that you can understand the confident hope He has given to those He called His holy people, because you are His rich and glorious inheritance.

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Her God Story is a ministry of Somebody Cares America and international.

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To find out more about or support the ministry, go to somebodycares.org.