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Nov. 7, 2023
Interview with Connie Jakab, episode 119
You are going to enjoy my guest today. She is a feisty mom, teacher, author, CEO, and mental health advocate from Calgary, Canada. Welcome, Connie Jakab.
Her son's mental health issues took her on a long, hard journey. But she learned so much she wrote a book: Bring Them Closer. I believe you will find so much help from Connie today.
Connie’s Resources:
Connie’s website: https://conniejakab.com/
Bring Them Closer Book: https://a.co/d/6ldaZKw
Enter to win a copy of Connie’s book: https://judydouglass.com/bookgiveaway
Judy’s Resources:
Join the Prayer for Prodigals community here: https://bit.ly/3uyhSWQ
Sign up for Judy’s monthly newsletter here: https://bit.ly/39TBlYt
Purchase a copy of the When You Love a Prodigal book for you or a loved one here: https://amzn.to/3RuiUx9
Stay connected:
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Transcript
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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast.
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And also help and hope for your own life journey.
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And remember, as I tell you every week, anything that speaks to you, anything you want to do in response to what you hear, jot it down.
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Because you're probably like me, if I think I'll remember and then I don't.
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So just take a note so you're sure to get to apply what's helpful to you.
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And you're going to love my guest today.
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She is a feisty mom, a teacher, an author, a CEO, and a mental health advocate from Calgary, Canada.
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Welcome Connie Jacob.
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Oh, thanks for having me, Judy.
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My pleasure for sure.
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So what's the temperature up in Calgary?
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Oh my, well, it's in Celsius, we're about six degrees.
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So I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's cold.
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It's cold.
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And I'm sure maybe in, no, I don't, my kids live in Montana and that's as cold as it usually gets.
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Maybe Maine is colder.
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But we dropped from the 90s in Fahrenheit down to the 80s.
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So we're doing well.
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I'm coming to you.
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That's where I come.
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Well, I'd wait a little while longer.
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It's still pretty warm and hot and sticky in Florida.
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So Connie, just introduce yourself a little.
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Tell us a little about your family and what you're doing.
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Well, I am living here in Calgary.
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I have two boys.
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I've been married for 24 years and, you know, we love, we love Jesus.
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We have given him our brave yes for our whole life, whatever he wants to do with us.
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And we've been through our share of brokenness in our own family, something that really surprised me.
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I thought that if I gave Jesus my brave yes, that all things would go smooth.
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You know, the steps of the righteous are not forgerd.
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Yes, always.
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But apparently they're ordered in the way he pulls out our gold through broken suffering.
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And I found that he has been with us.
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And so it's interesting.
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A lot of the struggle we've been through with our family has a lot to do with mental health.
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And that is my background.
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I've been a pastor, but I've also worked as a mental health and resilience specialist.
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And, you know, to go through that ourselves was quite a shock.
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Actually, that makes sense, doesn't it?
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You're far better equipped now to help others when you've actually experienced what they're experiencing.
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Now, Connie, when I first met you, one of the things that I'll never forget is that you are a hip hop instructor.
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Are you still doing that?
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And how did that happen?
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Oh, you know, it was so interesting how that came about.
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I had just graduated from Bible College and I only knew Christians.
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And I thought, I need to get out there and meet some non-believers.
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And so I went to a hip hop class.
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I also needed to lose some weight.
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And at the same time, I was ministering on the streets of East Vancouver to drug dealers and gang members.
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And I started teaching them the moves that I would learn in class and noticed that it really connected with them.
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That's awesome.
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They were probably more thinking about how can they entertain this little five foot blonde lady.
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That's probably more what they were thinking.
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Isn't she funny trying to be all cool?
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But I noticed that it connected with them and eventually actually left full time church ministry to start a hip hop dance company that worked kids on the street and bringing them off
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and to use this vehicle of hip hop to minister to them.
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It was probably some of my favorite years.
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And then continued to work with mental health and resilience in schools using hip hop, teaching dance and teaching them how to be resilient.
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Did that for about 20 years.
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And I don't do that full time, but I still can get down and I'm almost 50.
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So I plan on keeping this up for as long as I can.
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Well, you know, because I saw your instruction sometime, I'd seen videos and I talked to you.
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I actually paid attention and listened to some hip hop.
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It's probably not my thing, but I love that God took something that you started to do to help some people and spread it out so that you could help a lot more people.
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I just think that's awesome.
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Also, you wrote a book a number of years ago and asked me to endorse it.
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And your title was like to me, this is exactly what my whole ministry is about with people who have prodigals.
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The title of your book was Bring Them Closer.
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And that's still a book that's available.
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In fact, at the end, I'm going to tell them that we're going to give it away to a couple of listeners who will enter a drawing.
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But the concept of bringing them closer instead of pushing them away when kids are making decisions that are hard on your family,
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that are different from your beliefs or that are dangerous to them.
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We get frustrated and can easily push them away, not intending to maybe, but the way we respond, the things we say.
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And so I loved reading your book.
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And I was just thrilled to see somebody putting something out that was a help for the ministry that God was giving me with people who had prodigals.
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And so talk about that book a little and how it came about and the message that it contains.
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Oh, yes, for sure. And Judy, I can't thank you enough for your endorsement.
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It really meant so much.
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Our journey with our oldest son had started when he was about, well, three years old,
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just noticing that there was a lot of opposition and anger and rage.
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And at age six, he was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and oppositional defiance and ADHD.
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And at age eight, we ended up having to take him to the hospital because of a lot of these raging behaviors.
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And I remember bringing him there and the psychologist taking me aside and saying, what do you do when your son is throwing these fits of rage?
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I said, well, I send them to his room and I tell him, you can't come out until you're ready to be a good boy.
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That's how I was raised. Yes. And many of us have been raised that way.
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Yes. So I thought that I was actually probably even doing a little better than my parents because I might have gotten a little whoop outside my head as I was going to with my room.
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But then she said to me, oh, no, you never send the hurting away from you.
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You bring them closer. And I have to admit, in that moment, I was not thinking, wow, that would be an incredible book title.
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Or, whoa, I totally know what you mean. I think I was actually more confused. I didn't know what she meant.
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Even though I had a mental health background, even though I was working with some of the roughest kids,
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people would say, wow, you work with these types of kids. You should know how to do this.
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But with your own kids, when you're trying to raise them up in a home where we love Jesus and now you're going to love Jesus and this is how this looks, it broke the mold for me.
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And I think I didn't realize and just the long story short, when it comes to, say, when we brought him home, bring them closer, the book is, what did that actually look like?
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What does bringing the hurting closer look like?
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And what I realized was that out of my fear of him not going in the direction that I thought we were going to be going,
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I was starting to use things like fear, control and punishment as a way to keep him aligned.
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And the Lord spoke to me and said, that is not my kingdom. So true.
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So I didn't realize, first of all, one of the concepts I talk about in the book is peace in my heart means peace in my home.
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And I did not realize that a lot of the unprocessed story that I had for myself was actually not helping the emotional and spiritual temperament of my home.
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And so when he would get angry, because I had never processed anger, I thought anger was bad.
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We don't get angry. God isn't OK with angry. So I'm not OK with angry.
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For those listening, I think God is OK with angry, but I didn't know that at the time.
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And so when he would raise up an anger, I would raise up an anger.
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And that is a pretty natural response for most of us.
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Yeah, it is. It is. And I realized that as the Lord started to teach me about how he cared about my story, he cared about my emotions.
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He actually spoke to me as I would sit there and I would allow my son to feel whatever he was feeling and as uncomfortable as I felt,
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I would just sit there with him and I would say, son, you belong in our home. Nothing's going to break our connection with you.
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As I sat there with him in his mess, the Lord spoke to me and said, Connie, I don't send you away from me.
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I bring you closer in your mess. And that's where you're healed.
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So allow me to heal your heart so you can hold his.
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That's beautiful. I mean, seriously.
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And I think most of us need to hear that message over and over, because when the emotions rise up,
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our powers, our loved ones, it's very easy for there to then to be conflict and antagonism and the words that come out are harmful, hurtful and not helpful.
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So I remember reading something that you took your son out of school for a year.
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Did you homeschool then or what did you do?
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And you took him on trips. I was so impressed.
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Well, you know, we started to notice, especially after that hospital visitation, it was about three weeks long and he was separated from us.
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And I don't think any of us knew that that would happen. I was just told this is what you do.
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And I think we were all surprised. I mean, we were allowed to visit, but but he was there most of the time by himself.
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And I think that was quite traumatic for a 12, eight year old. He was eight. Yes.
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And so that year, he really started to struggle in school.
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And so I took him out because his anxiety was getting worse and worse.
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And I just brought him home to help him with his nervous system and to help him mentally just be able to relax.
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We had a great year. And my husband and I started to take our both of our boys on individual trips.
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Just because it would be a great time for us to connect with them one on one.
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And we've continued to do that. It's just been an incredible gift to be able to do that with our boys.
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So then your approach changed. Can you talk a little about then what it started to look like?
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You took them on these trips. You spent the time. But did they just not?
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Was he not angry anymore? Or did you have a new way to respond to that?
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Well, I think that as I started to learn how to let the Lord into all of my emotions
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and allowed him to help me process my story with him, I noticed my emotional temperament was able to stay steady
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no matter what emotion he was giving me.
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I was able to be a steady presence instead of somebody who was just as dysregulated.
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I began to look what's underneath behavior. So behavior is communication.
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We're all trying to fix the outside behavior, but God's always going to the heart.
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And so I was starting now that I was working on my inner world,
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I was able to start getting curious about how behavior was trying to tell me a story.
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It wasn't the behavior I was supposed to look at. It was about what was underneath
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and learning how to repair when there was ruptures and also learning how to connect at all cost.
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Danny Silk out of California, he's a social worker, a Christian social worker.
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He talks about holding our ends of the rope. Our children have an end and we have an end.
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And no matter what they do at the end of their rope, we need to hold our end.
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And so it was learning, what does it look like to hold my end of the rope, even when he's not behaving how I would want to.
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So can you give us a specific example of an event or something that helps us to see,
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all right, I hear what you're saying, but how do I do that?
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For sure. Well, I think one of the biggest ones was school.
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I began to notice that there was school avoidance, not wanting to go to school.
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And at first, you know, I'm resorting to fear.
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Like if you don't go, well, then this is going to happen or punishment, you know, taking things away.
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And also manipulation, like, well, if you go, I'll give you this.
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Bribery, otherwise. Bribery.
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I've never done that, of course. And it's not wrong.
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I noticed that it just wasn't enough.
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And there was about a three month period where I think he was in bed for three months.
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Wow. Yeah, it was quite significant because, you know, when kids are faking things, you know,
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around 3 p.m. when school gets out, miracles happen.
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Jesus showed up in the room and we are now healed of all disease.
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Until the next morning. Until the next morning when all of a sudden the infliction is back.
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But that didn't happen. And it didn't happen even over Christmas holidays.
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And so what I did was I started to instead of react, because that's what I wanted to do.
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I wanted to react. I was worried about what I would look like to the school.
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What a bad mom. Oh, yeah. That matters.
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It matters. And I know a lot of people with protocols. That is something that we that we go through.
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And I started to think about, OK, so how do I get curious about what's really going on here?
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And not needing an answer tomorrow, because answers don't come that quick.
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It was going to take three months and then really understanding what was really going on
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and then being able to respond to that rather than the behavior of school avoidance.
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So did you ask him questions or did you mostly observe a lot of listening and conversation?
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Or how did you discover?
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It's definitely not like I found direct questions like what do you think is going on?
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That would be overwhelming. Often they don't know.
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We don't even know half the time what's going on inside of us.
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And so I had to actually watch patterns and what would trigger certain responses and really,
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really actually get down with my my prayer light and asking the Lord, like, you know what's going on here.
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So what is happening? And really listening to Holy Spirit and and then also listening to what I was seeing
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and then responding with questions, asking, is this maybe something that you might be feeling out of that?
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OK, that's good. That's that's helpful.
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So I have another question for you.
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I did read just recently something that you said about boundaries or walls.
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Well, boundaries are a good thing for the most part, and they're certainly better than sending them away.
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And they're certainly better than rules in a sense where if you do this, this happens or that kind of approach.
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And so I have talked about, you know, setting good boundaries,
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doing it with them as opposed to just telling them what the boundaries are, but talking with them about it.
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But then I saw this. But are your boundaries becoming walls?
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And so I'd love to hear more about that.
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Well, I think that boundaries are meant to always keep connection as the goal.
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Yes, I agree.
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So when when a boundary becomes a wall, it's when we're trying to keep them away from us.
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We're trying to push them away. We're trying to maybe even we just don't like the behaviors.
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We don't like say, for example, that there's there's language we don't like.
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Well, I'm not going to listen to that.
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That that could turn into a wall if we're pushing them away.
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We don't want connection as the goal at that part.
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Not offending me now is the goal.
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OK, that's also then it becomes about us.
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Yes.
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Well, that's kind of an important thing, because a lot of the struggles that we have are because it is about us in a sense.
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It's it's what other people are going to think and say when they observe the behaviors and choices of our loved ones.
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Or is it about how we're handling it?
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The school will judge us or our friends will judge us.
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And so you're saying we need to be careful that the boundaries that we have, the understandings of what's you know, what we think are good ways to respond and that we demonstrate there for.
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It's one thing to tell them we have we this is how we talk about it.
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Here's how we respond.
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But if we don't do it that way, we're not really helping them.
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So but you're saying we can get so into that that it becomes a push away and not just a helpful understanding of what's the best way to react to things.
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Yes. And with our kids, it's different.
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If it's a friend, then the boundaries look different with friends and with adults.
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But as the leader of a child, as somebody who is in charge, somebody who is the culture creator of a home, that becomes different connection with that child.
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And and being open to discipline, like discipline means to teach.
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It doesn't mean to punish.
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And so what does that look like?
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So our boundaries always have to keep that end of our rope.
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We have to hold the end of our rope, which means a boundary with a child means I will manage me.
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And and then this is what we're going to do here with you.
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And every age is different, too.
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I mean, when they're two and they put the alarm bell, I don't know if you've noticed this in elevators, the big red button for the alarm is at their eye level.
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And so you thought, obviously, it should be a little higher, a little higher.
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Well, of course, as with a two year old, we've got lots of boundaries.
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But as they get older, one of the things that I find I love and again, Danny Silk is such an expert in this as well as a lot of social workers that are in this area of mental health.
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And that is this idea of letting them own their decisions and letting them see their consequences through and learning from them.
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And instead of being like, well, see, I told you so.
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It's more like, how can I support you? What did you learn?
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How can I help? Like, how what do you need from me?
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Those become very important questions as they grow up.
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And those become we're still holding our end of the rope.
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We're still got the boundary.
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And now it's not the separation where I think I'm trying to think of a good way for your listeners to understand the difference between a wall and a boundary.
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And I think that it kind of comes down to, does your child still feel like they are a delight to you in your boundaries?
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And if they do, you've got a boundary.
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If they don't feel like a delight, we have a wall.
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Oh, that's great.
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That's very helpful, I think, to delight.
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I love that.
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So you've talked several times and you're working in the arena of mental health.
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How does it happen in a family for your own mental health?
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What do you need to be doing?
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And then how do you help your children grow and have an understanding of how they can be in a healthy way?
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You know, it's interesting.
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I was thinking about that and I used to do a lot of school assembly talks on mental health.
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And I remember one girl, she was in grade eight.
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She came up to me after I did a mental health presentation and she said, you know, you speakers are all the same.
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You just say the same thing over and over again.
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Guess what? We're not listening.
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And that's what we might say about our children, too.
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Whether they're in the home or out of the home, they still might say we're not listening.
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That's right.
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And I thought about what she said and I realized what she was actually trying to say in her beautiful grade eight way was stop telling us what mental health looks like and start showing us.
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We were tired of hearing it.
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We need to be shown.
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And I think that in our homes, that is the opportunity.
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We don't teach as much as we as we model.
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And so how do we do that as parents?
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Like, how do we show them that we are taking care of the garden of our hearts?
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Taking care of our garden of our hearts spiritually, our time with the Lord every day, our ability to surrender, our need to react.
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That is actually developing in neuroplasticity, in mental health.
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That's actually wiring the brain towards love when we can show them instead of tell them how this works.
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And it actually creates neural pathways that begin to fire together that are able to withstand a lot of pressure and a lot of things that would test their resilience.
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And they can stand up against those things because they actually watch the adults in their life modeling.
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So what did that look like with your son?
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Well, I know for me, I honestly feel that as I began to really allow God into the crevices, I call them the crevices of my heart,
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I noticed that I was able to handle the hard stuff being thrown at me with both of my boys being able to handle a lot of their emotion,
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a lot of their struggles and be able to catch and release their emotion and going, wait a minute, you're you're angry right now.
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I'm not angry. You're angry. I don't need to hold that. I can be there as an anchor for you, but I'm not taking that on.
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And that came from honestly me and the Lord in my journal every morning before my kids woke up.
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That's very helpful, I think. So I guess my next question is, what did you do after that girl said that to you?
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What changed in what you were presenting?
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That was honestly probably the moment when I thought to myself, I need to stop talking to the students and I need to start talking to the parents and the teachers
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and start teaching them how did I do this for myself and how can they do this so that we can start modeling for these kids.
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So did you have any specific things that you felt you had to really make sure they understood what that might look like?
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Definitely the peace in my heart translates to peace in my home or my classroom.
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How do we how do we begin to emotionally regulate ourselves? How do we make sense of our own story?
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There's a lot of talk right now in education around being trauma informed, which is really just what is that student's story from their perspective?
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Well, how can we hold someone else's story and have empathy for them if we haven't processed our own?
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Empathy comes from us making sense of our own world so that we can then make sense or help make sense with others.
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And so that was a big one. Talking about behavior is communication. Belonging creates resilience.
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How do we create spaces where kids know they belong and that they're a delight even when they misbehave?
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Because I was taught that I'm only a delight if I'm doing things right.
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And that probably is true for many of us because that was what was the going way to handle your children.
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So you've learned a lot and I know you're sharing it broadly and you've been teaching parents and educators both.
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You've gone into schools and what are you seeing causes real change?
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What instigates or creates the change that's needed in our minds and hearts as parents or in those of teachers who certainly can respond in different ways as well?
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So what are the things that can be most helpful?
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Well, I really do feel number one, allowing God into our story and helping us make sense of that.
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It really does help with our own emotional regulation. Now my emotions don't control me.
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I hold them because I've given them to the Lord and he's allowed me to process that with him.
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And he is there now in that place as a centerpiece, as an anchor, because as we need to be anchors for these kids, he is our anchor.
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Because sometimes I thought to myself, who's holding me through this? And God was holding me.
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But we have to literally have to almost set that in our hearts that God is my anchor in all that I'm feeling and all that I'm holding.
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That to me has been number one. And how can we catch and release our kids and our students' emotions?
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How can we be the steady presence and be the culture creators? We are the culture creators of our homes and of our classrooms.
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And with him, he is all about creating places where people feel that refuge and they feel like they belong and that they can become all that they were meant to be.
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One of my favorite lines that each of us would discover what God made us for.
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So one of the things that you talked about was the idea that your church could be involved in some way in serving in the schools.
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You talked about you went across the street to the school and said, how can I help? What are some needs?
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But then you wanted to engage people from your church. And so how did you do that and what results, what came out of that?
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You know, it was really beautiful. I never underestimate the power of just walking across the street to your school, to whatever is in your community and just knocking on the door and saying, we are from this church.
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What do you need right now? Do you need sandwiches at lunch? Do you need someone to come in and read to the kids? Do you need? What do you need?
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I think that I noticed that there was such an open door. There was no hesitation, especially when they understood that I had no ulterior motive other than to help.
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Right. All I wanted to do. And then the doors just kept opening.
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And that's actually how I ended up working in schools for these 25 years is just because I took that initial step of walking across and knocking on the door.
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And how did you get other people engaged in that? Because that's my understanding was you did that.
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Yes. Well, all of a sudden, then we started to pick up kids in our community with a bus.
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So getting my church involved in how do we actually go to these families rather than inviting them to our church? Let's go to them.
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We started hosting programs in the housing co-ops because we would meet the kids in the school.
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We put on a play, actually, some of us in our church, we went over and put on a school play and produce that all for them.
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There's so many ways to get involved and and to to make lunches or just to be there to to help supervise kids after school, whatever that school allows.
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OK, so that is a great way to get people in a church connected with needs in the community.
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How did that improve or show progress when it comes to good mental health and good handling of troublesome kids or troubled kids?
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Well, you know, as soon as we we would go out every Wednesday night and go into these housing co-ops and we would actually go visit these families in their homes.
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I got a team together. We always went out in twos, a lot like Bill Wilson in New York City.
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This is where we got this idea from. And we would go into their homes and just visit with them.
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And as we worked with the family, that's when we noticed the difference.
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And isn't that interesting that I noticed that at age 27 and now realizing again that if we can work with the home,
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these kids are going to be OK because their parents know what to do.
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Their parents feel equipped, whereas a lot of times and I think where I empathize is even for myself, that was my number one thing that I struggled with is who's going to help me?
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Who could I possibly tell about the brokenness that we're going through in our house?
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The shame that you feel as a parent is enormous.
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And if and I noticed that as I was helped, then I was able to help and be a parent to both of my boys.
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So if one of our listeners is in a similar situation, who's saying, who's going to help me?
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And how do I do this? What would you tell them would be steps maybe that they could take to get on a good path?
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It doesn't necessarily happen overnight.
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I know that having observed as you've talked about the issues with your son over several years that it took some time.
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And so I don't want them to think, oh, if I just do this, it's going to be OK overnight.
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It might, but it probably won't because you're talking about patterns that have been in our lives and that they're used to.
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And you are needing to grow and change so that they have a better chance to grow and change.
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Yes. And you're so right. It doesn't happen overnight.
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For me, the initial it took about a year, to be honest.
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I think for me, the greatest thing that helped in the initial was my son had a counselor and he didn't want to go see her.
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I mean, he's eight years old and that just didn't feel right to him. So I would go.
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So instead of thinking, no, I'm going to force him to go, I thought, well, I'm going to go.
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And she would help me and then I would help him.
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That's beautiful. I like that.
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And I find, to be honest, I think that that's a great place to start.
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If a parent has a counselor or someone who's helping them, that is key.
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A lot of people are thinking, you know, just get my kid on meds, give them a counselor.
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But I think that it actually if a parent can have that counselor and the child might need it, too.
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They might. I mean, every situation is different.
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All I know is that it doesn't hurt for the parent to have that extra support.
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And then that was someone safe. I could share everything with.
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I didn't have to worry about them going, but but you're an industry, but you're a pastor.
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I look up to you.
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So if you had in front of you a parent or a group of parents who were struggling with children or young adults,
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not their children in the home still even, and they're like, OK, what are the main things then?
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I know you've said, but it doesn't hurt to, you know, reiterate so that in different words,
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sometimes it comes out and catches where it doesn't when we say it the first time.
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But so say you have a 22 year old who's just finished college and they're on their own
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and they are making some bad decisions.
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And for us, one of the worst things is they say, leave me alone.
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And that happens a lot.
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And so they're even being pushed away and not having the opportunity to influence.
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What what would you say to them?
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Well, that's first of all, I'd say that's hard.
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That is very hard and not uncommon.
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And so not to diminish any feelings that that might have going through that, how painful that is.
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But that being said, love always knows not to hold on and to grip people.
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And Jesus doesn't do that to us.
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You know, and we have pushed him away.
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If you've ever been the type that has pushed him away and I have, he has never stopped pursuing me.
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But he did it in a way that was very gentle and that didn't make me feel that he wasn't going against my wishes.
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And so I think number one is letting go of our need to be in control.
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Oh, yeah, that's a big thing. Control.
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Because in that moment, I think as parents, we instantly want to control.
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We do.
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And so letting that go, I think, is really important, and that's where God can help us,
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because then whatever response we give will not be resorting to fear, control and manipulation or punishment.
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Or, well, if you're not going to phone me, well, then forget about coming over for Christmas.
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Even though what you're really thinking is please come home for Christmas.
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Our behavior is communication, isn't it? Isn't that so interesting?
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And so, you know, and then we can respond.
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We can say things like, I will be here when you are ready.
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I will pray for you every day.
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And you will be praying, yes, but they don't even necessarily want to hear that.
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They probably don't know.
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But just knowing, like, I've heard so many stories and I bet you you have too of parents who said, I never gave up.
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I always prayed. I told them I'm here for you.
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I will be here when you're ready. And those kids coming back and saying, I am so glad you never gave up on me when I gave up on you.
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You were still holding your end of the rope when I dropped mine.
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And that concept is so good.
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So I will never forget the time my son lied about what he was doing and didn't do something then he was supposed to do.
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And I found him and was very angry at him.
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And I started to say, well, if you're going to do that, then don't.
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And I just stopped. And he said, don't what?
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What will you do if I don't do what you want?
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And I said, I'll keep loving you.
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And that was God. He stopped me from saying what was about to come out of my mouth.
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And instead, I think that might have been a pivotal point almost in my relationship with him that I was all right.
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I can't control you. I can put some boundaries.
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I can give wisdom. I can do various things.
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But I'm not going to tell you that if you do this, I'm out of here.
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And that's what I was about to say.
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And even though I would never have meant it, my frustration and I know that there are many of our listeners who have been in situations like that.
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So, Connie, any last words then you would give to these people who are in a hard place?
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It's really hard when someone you love, most often a child, even if it's a 30, 40, 50 year old child.
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And sometimes it's not just the personal relationship that's been strained.
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It's because they're addicted or they're making criminal choices or there are lots of things that can happen to them.
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And how do we continue to hold our end of the rope?
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Wow. Well, I want to remind everyone that you're braver than you think.
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This is probably the bravest thing you'll ever do is go through this.
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I wrote over myself and I felt it was really God who gave me these words and said, speak this over yourself every day.
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I am brave. I show up when it's hard.
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I love without walls. I forgive when it hurts.
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And I rise through the storm.
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And that is his promise to us because he enables us to live like that.
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And so I want to encourage everyone of your listeners with that, Judy, that they are great.
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Keep showing up. Keep loving. Keep forgiving. And you're going to rise.
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That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Connie.
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And I know that the listeners have been touched and encouraged.
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So I'm really grateful for that.
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And to my listeners, remember, did you write down something you want to apply?
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A phrase that Connie gave us that will be something you can hold on to and make sure you remember every morning,
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every interaction, every conflict that comes, that you can trust God in it
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and that he can give you what you need for that hard thing that you're going through.
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And so if you don't write it down, my experience is you forget, oh, yeah, what was it I was going to do?
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What was that phrase she gave us?
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And you can, of course, listen to the podcast again so you can hear them again from her.
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And her book, Bring Them Closer.
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We're going to have a drawing. We're going to give away two of those.
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And so when you go to the show notes in whatever place you're listening,
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it will tell you what to do to be entered into that drawing.
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And there will be some other resources from Connie that we're going to share with you where you can find them.
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And Connie, thank you. And bless you.
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May you continue to be a beacon of light in the midst of a lot of hard things out there.
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Life is not easy for a lot of people, most people. So blessings to you. Thank you.
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Thank you, Judy.
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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast.
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And also help and hope for your own life journey.
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And remember, as I tell you every week, anything that speaks to you, anything you want to do in response to what you hear, jot it down.
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Because you're probably like me, if I think I'll remember and then I don't.
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So just take a note so you're sure to get to apply what's helpful to you.
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And you're going to love my guest today.
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She is a feisty mom, a teacher, an author, a CEO, and a mental health advocate from Calgary, Canada.
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Welcome Connie Jacob.
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Oh, thanks for having me, Judy.
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My pleasure for sure.
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So what's the temperature up in Calgary?
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Oh my, well, it's in Celsius, we're about six degrees.
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So I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's cold.
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It's cold.
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And I'm sure maybe in, no, I don't, my kids live in Montana and that's as cold as it usually gets.
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Maybe Maine is colder.
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But we dropped from the 90s in Fahrenheit down to the 80s.
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So we're doing well.
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I'm coming to you.
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That's where I come.
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Well, I'd wait a little while longer.
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It's still pretty warm and hot and sticky in Florida.
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So Connie, just introduce yourself a little.
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Tell us a little about your family and what you're doing.
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Well, I am living here in Calgary.
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I have two boys.
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I've been married for 24 years and, you know, we love, we love Jesus.
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We have given him our brave yes for our whole life, whatever he wants to do with us.
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And we've been through our share of brokenness in our own family, something that really surprised me.
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I thought that if I gave Jesus my brave yes, that all things would go smooth.
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You know, the steps of the righteous are not forgerd.
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Yes, always.
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But apparently they're ordered in the way he pulls out our gold through broken suffering.
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And I found that he has been with us.
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And so it's interesting.
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A lot of the struggle we've been through with our family has a lot to do with mental health.
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And that is my background.
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I've been a pastor, but I've also worked as a mental health and resilience specialist.
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And, you know, to go through that ourselves was quite a shock.
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Actually, that makes sense, doesn't it?
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You're far better equipped now to help others when you've actually experienced what they're experiencing.
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Now, Connie, when I first met you, one of the things that I'll never forget is that you are a hip hop instructor.
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Are you still doing that?
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And how did that happen?
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Oh, you know, it was so interesting how that came about.
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I had just graduated from Bible College and I only knew Christians.
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And I thought, I need to get out there and meet some non-believers.
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And so I went to a hip hop class.
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I also needed to lose some weight.
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And at the same time, I was ministering on the streets of East Vancouver to drug dealers and gang members.
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And I started teaching them the moves that I would learn in class and noticed that it really connected with them.
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That's awesome.
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They were probably more thinking about how can they entertain this little five foot blonde lady.
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That's probably more what they were thinking.
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Isn't she funny trying to be all cool?
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But I noticed that it connected with them and eventually actually left full time church ministry to start a hip hop dance company that worked kids on the street and bringing them off
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and to use this vehicle of hip hop to minister to them.
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It was probably some of my favorite years.
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And then continued to work with mental health and resilience in schools using hip hop, teaching dance and teaching them how to be resilient.
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Did that for about 20 years.
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And I don't do that full time, but I still can get down and I'm almost 50.
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So I plan on keeping this up for as long as I can.
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Well, you know, because I saw your instruction sometime, I'd seen videos and I talked to you.
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I actually paid attention and listened to some hip hop.
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It's probably not my thing, but I love that God took something that you started to do to help some people and spread it out so that you could help a lot more people.
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I just think that's awesome.
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Also, you wrote a book a number of years ago and asked me to endorse it.
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And your title was like to me, this is exactly what my whole ministry is about with people who have prodigals.
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The title of your book was Bring Them Closer.
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And that's still a book that's available.
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In fact, at the end, I'm going to tell them that we're going to give it away to a couple of listeners who will enter a drawing.
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But the concept of bringing them closer instead of pushing them away when kids are making decisions that are hard on your family,
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that are different from your beliefs or that are dangerous to them.
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We get frustrated and can easily push them away, not intending to maybe, but the way we respond, the things we say.
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And so I loved reading your book.
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And I was just thrilled to see somebody putting something out that was a help for the ministry that God was giving me with people who had prodigals.
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And so talk about that book a little and how it came about and the message that it contains.
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Oh, yes, for sure. And Judy, I can't thank you enough for your endorsement.
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It really meant so much.
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Our journey with our oldest son had started when he was about, well, three years old,
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just noticing that there was a lot of opposition and anger and rage.
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And at age six, he was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and oppositional defiance and ADHD.
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And at age eight, we ended up having to take him to the hospital because of a lot of these raging behaviors.
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And I remember bringing him there and the psychologist taking me aside and saying, what do you do when your son is throwing these fits of rage?
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I said, well, I send them to his room and I tell him, you can't come out until you're ready to be a good boy.
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That's how I was raised. Yes. And many of us have been raised that way.
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Yes. So I thought that I was actually probably even doing a little better than my parents because I might have gotten a little whoop outside my head as I was going to with my room.
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But then she said to me, oh, no, you never send the hurting away from you.
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You bring them closer. And I have to admit, in that moment, I was not thinking, wow, that would be an incredible book title.
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Or, whoa, I totally know what you mean. I think I was actually more confused. I didn't know what she meant.
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Even though I had a mental health background, even though I was working with some of the roughest kids,
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people would say, wow, you work with these types of kids. You should know how to do this.
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But with your own kids, when you're trying to raise them up in a home where we love Jesus and now you're going to love Jesus and this is how this looks, it broke the mold for me.
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And I think I didn't realize and just the long story short, when it comes to, say, when we brought him home, bring them closer, the book is, what did that actually look like?
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What does bringing the hurting closer look like?
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And what I realized was that out of my fear of him not going in the direction that I thought we were going to be going,
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I was starting to use things like fear, control and punishment as a way to keep him aligned.
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And the Lord spoke to me and said, that is not my kingdom. So true.
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So I didn't realize, first of all, one of the concepts I talk about in the book is peace in my heart means peace in my home.
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And I did not realize that a lot of the unprocessed story that I had for myself was actually not helping the emotional and spiritual temperament of my home.
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And so when he would get angry, because I had never processed anger, I thought anger was bad.
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We don't get angry. God isn't OK with angry. So I'm not OK with angry.
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For those listening, I think God is OK with angry, but I didn't know that at the time.
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And so when he would raise up an anger, I would raise up an anger.
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And that is a pretty natural response for most of us.
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Yeah, it is. It is. And I realized that as the Lord started to teach me about how he cared about my story, he cared about my emotions.
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He actually spoke to me as I would sit there and I would allow my son to feel whatever he was feeling and as uncomfortable as I felt,
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I would just sit there with him and I would say, son, you belong in our home. Nothing's going to break our connection with you.
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As I sat there with him in his mess, the Lord spoke to me and said, Connie, I don't send you away from me.
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I bring you closer in your mess. And that's where you're healed.
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So allow me to heal your heart so you can hold his.
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That's beautiful. I mean, seriously.
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And I think most of us need to hear that message over and over, because when the emotions rise up,
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our powers, our loved ones, it's very easy for there to then to be conflict and antagonism and the words that come out are harmful, hurtful and not helpful.
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So I remember reading something that you took your son out of school for a year.
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Did you homeschool then or what did you do?
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And you took him on trips. I was so impressed.
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Well, you know, we started to notice, especially after that hospital visitation, it was about three weeks long and he was separated from us.
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And I don't think any of us knew that that would happen. I was just told this is what you do.
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And I think we were all surprised. I mean, we were allowed to visit, but but he was there most of the time by himself.
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And I think that was quite traumatic for a 12, eight year old. He was eight. Yes.
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And so that year, he really started to struggle in school.
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And so I took him out because his anxiety was getting worse and worse.
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And I just brought him home to help him with his nervous system and to help him mentally just be able to relax.
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We had a great year. And my husband and I started to take our both of our boys on individual trips.
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Just because it would be a great time for us to connect with them one on one.
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And we've continued to do that. It's just been an incredible gift to be able to do that with our boys.
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So then your approach changed. Can you talk a little about then what it started to look like?
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You took them on these trips. You spent the time. But did they just not?
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Was he not angry anymore? Or did you have a new way to respond to that?
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Well, I think that as I started to learn how to let the Lord into all of my emotions
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and allowed him to help me process my story with him, I noticed my emotional temperament was able to stay steady
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no matter what emotion he was giving me.
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I was able to be a steady presence instead of somebody who was just as dysregulated.
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I began to look what's underneath behavior. So behavior is communication.
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We're all trying to fix the outside behavior, but God's always going to the heart.
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And so I was starting now that I was working on my inner world,
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I was able to start getting curious about how behavior was trying to tell me a story.
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It wasn't the behavior I was supposed to look at. It was about what was underneath
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and learning how to repair when there was ruptures and also learning how to connect at all cost.
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Danny Silk out of California, he's a social worker, a Christian social worker.
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He talks about holding our ends of the rope. Our children have an end and we have an end.
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And no matter what they do at the end of their rope, we need to hold our end.
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And so it was learning, what does it look like to hold my end of the rope, even when he's not behaving how I would want to.
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So can you give us a specific example of an event or something that helps us to see,
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all right, I hear what you're saying, but how do I do that?
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For sure. Well, I think one of the biggest ones was school.
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I began to notice that there was school avoidance, not wanting to go to school.
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And at first, you know, I'm resorting to fear.
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Like if you don't go, well, then this is going to happen or punishment, you know, taking things away.
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And also manipulation, like, well, if you go, I'll give you this.
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Bribery, otherwise. Bribery.
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I've never done that, of course. And it's not wrong.
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I noticed that it just wasn't enough.
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And there was about a three month period where I think he was in bed for three months.
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Wow. Yeah, it was quite significant because, you know, when kids are faking things, you know,
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around 3 p.m. when school gets out, miracles happen.
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Jesus showed up in the room and we are now healed of all disease.
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Until the next morning. Until the next morning when all of a sudden the infliction is back.
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But that didn't happen. And it didn't happen even over Christmas holidays.
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And so what I did was I started to instead of react, because that's what I wanted to do.
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I wanted to react. I was worried about what I would look like to the school.
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What a bad mom. Oh, yeah. That matters.
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It matters. And I know a lot of people with protocols. That is something that we that we go through.
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And I started to think about, OK, so how do I get curious about what's really going on here?
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And not needing an answer tomorrow, because answers don't come that quick.
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It was going to take three months and then really understanding what was really going on
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and then being able to respond to that rather than the behavior of school avoidance.
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So did you ask him questions or did you mostly observe a lot of listening and conversation?
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Or how did you discover?
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It's definitely not like I found direct questions like what do you think is going on?
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That would be overwhelming. Often they don't know.
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We don't even know half the time what's going on inside of us.
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And so I had to actually watch patterns and what would trigger certain responses and really,
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really actually get down with my my prayer light and asking the Lord, like, you know what's going on here.
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So what is happening? And really listening to Holy Spirit and and then also listening to what I was seeing
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and then responding with questions, asking, is this maybe something that you might be feeling out of that?
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OK, that's good. That's that's helpful.
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So I have another question for you.
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I did read just recently something that you said about boundaries or walls.
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Well, boundaries are a good thing for the most part, and they're certainly better than sending them away.
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And they're certainly better than rules in a sense where if you do this, this happens or that kind of approach.
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And so I have talked about, you know, setting good boundaries,
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doing it with them as opposed to just telling them what the boundaries are, but talking with them about it.
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But then I saw this. But are your boundaries becoming walls?
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And so I'd love to hear more about that.
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Well, I think that boundaries are meant to always keep connection as the goal.
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Yes, I agree.
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So when when a boundary becomes a wall, it's when we're trying to keep them away from us.
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We're trying to push them away. We're trying to maybe even we just don't like the behaviors.
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We don't like say, for example, that there's there's language we don't like.
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Well, I'm not going to listen to that.
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That that could turn into a wall if we're pushing them away.
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We don't want connection as the goal at that part.
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Not offending me now is the goal.
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OK, that's also then it becomes about us.
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Yes.
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Well, that's kind of an important thing, because a lot of the struggles that we have are because it is about us in a sense.
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It's it's what other people are going to think and say when they observe the behaviors and choices of our loved ones.
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Or is it about how we're handling it?
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The school will judge us or our friends will judge us.
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And so you're saying we need to be careful that the boundaries that we have, the understandings of what's you know, what we think are good ways to respond and that we demonstrate there for.
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It's one thing to tell them we have we this is how we talk about it.
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Here's how we respond.
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But if we don't do it that way, we're not really helping them.
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So but you're saying we can get so into that that it becomes a push away and not just a helpful understanding of what's the best way to react to things.
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Yes. And with our kids, it's different.
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If it's a friend, then the boundaries look different with friends and with adults.
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But as the leader of a child, as somebody who is in charge, somebody who is the culture creator of a home, that becomes different connection with that child.
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And and being open to discipline, like discipline means to teach.
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It doesn't mean to punish.
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And so what does that look like?
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So our boundaries always have to keep that end of our rope.
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We have to hold the end of our rope, which means a boundary with a child means I will manage me.
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And and then this is what we're going to do here with you.
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And every age is different, too.
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I mean, when they're two and they put the alarm bell, I don't know if you've noticed this in elevators, the big red button for the alarm is at their eye level.
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And so you thought, obviously, it should be a little higher, a little higher.
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Well, of course, as with a two year old, we've got lots of boundaries.
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But as they get older, one of the things that I find I love and again, Danny Silk is such an expert in this as well as a lot of social workers that are in this area of mental health.
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And that is this idea of letting them own their decisions and letting them see their consequences through and learning from them.
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And instead of being like, well, see, I told you so.
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It's more like, how can I support you? What did you learn?
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How can I help? Like, how what do you need from me?
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Those become very important questions as they grow up.
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And those become we're still holding our end of the rope.
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We're still got the boundary.
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And now it's not the separation where I think I'm trying to think of a good way for your listeners to understand the difference between a wall and a boundary.
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And I think that it kind of comes down to, does your child still feel like they are a delight to you in your boundaries?
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And if they do, you've got a boundary.
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If they don't feel like a delight, we have a wall.
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Oh, that's great.
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That's very helpful, I think, to delight.
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I love that.
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So you've talked several times and you're working in the arena of mental health.
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How does it happen in a family for your own mental health?
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What do you need to be doing?
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And then how do you help your children grow and have an understanding of how they can be in a healthy way?
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You know, it's interesting.
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I was thinking about that and I used to do a lot of school assembly talks on mental health.
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And I remember one girl, she was in grade eight.
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She came up to me after I did a mental health presentation and she said, you know, you speakers are all the same.
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You just say the same thing over and over again.
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Guess what? We're not listening.
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And that's what we might say about our children, too.
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Whether they're in the home or out of the home, they still might say we're not listening.
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That's right.
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And I thought about what she said and I realized what she was actually trying to say in her beautiful grade eight way was stop telling us what mental health looks like and start showing us.
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We were tired of hearing it.
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We need to be shown.
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And I think that in our homes, that is the opportunity.
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We don't teach as much as we as we model.
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And so how do we do that as parents?
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Like, how do we show them that we are taking care of the garden of our hearts?
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Taking care of our garden of our hearts spiritually, our time with the Lord every day, our ability to surrender, our need to react.
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That is actually developing in neuroplasticity, in mental health.
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That's actually wiring the brain towards love when we can show them instead of tell them how this works.
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And it actually creates neural pathways that begin to fire together that are able to withstand a lot of pressure and a lot of things that would test their resilience.
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And they can stand up against those things because they actually watch the adults in their life modeling.
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So what did that look like with your son?
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Well, I know for me, I honestly feel that as I began to really allow God into the crevices, I call them the crevices of my heart,
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I noticed that I was able to handle the hard stuff being thrown at me with both of my boys being able to handle a lot of their emotion,
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a lot of their struggles and be able to catch and release their emotion and going, wait a minute, you're you're angry right now.
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I'm not angry. You're angry. I don't need to hold that. I can be there as an anchor for you, but I'm not taking that on.
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And that came from honestly me and the Lord in my journal every morning before my kids woke up.
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That's very helpful, I think. So I guess my next question is, what did you do after that girl said that to you?
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What changed in what you were presenting?
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That was honestly probably the moment when I thought to myself, I need to stop talking to the students and I need to start talking to the parents and the teachers
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and start teaching them how did I do this for myself and how can they do this so that we can start modeling for these kids.
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So did you have any specific things that you felt you had to really make sure they understood what that might look like?
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Definitely the peace in my heart translates to peace in my home or my classroom.
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How do we how do we begin to emotionally regulate ourselves? How do we make sense of our own story?
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There's a lot of talk right now in education around being trauma informed, which is really just what is that student's story from their perspective?
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Well, how can we hold someone else's story and have empathy for them if we haven't processed our own?
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Empathy comes from us making sense of our own world so that we can then make sense or help make sense with others.
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And so that was a big one. Talking about behavior is communication. Belonging creates resilience.
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How do we create spaces where kids know they belong and that they're a delight even when they misbehave?
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Because I was taught that I'm only a delight if I'm doing things right.
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And that probably is true for many of us because that was what was the going way to handle your children.
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So you've learned a lot and I know you're sharing it broadly and you've been teaching parents and educators both.
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You've gone into schools and what are you seeing causes real change?
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What instigates or creates the change that's needed in our minds and hearts as parents or in those of teachers who certainly can respond in different ways as well?
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So what are the things that can be most helpful?
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Well, I really do feel number one, allowing God into our story and helping us make sense of that.
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It really does help with our own emotional regulation. Now my emotions don't control me.
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I hold them because I've given them to the Lord and he's allowed me to process that with him.
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And he is there now in that place as a centerpiece, as an anchor, because as we need to be anchors for these kids, he is our anchor.
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Because sometimes I thought to myself, who's holding me through this? And God was holding me.
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But we have to literally have to almost set that in our hearts that God is my anchor in all that I'm feeling and all that I'm holding.
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That to me has been number one. And how can we catch and release our kids and our students' emotions?
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How can we be the steady presence and be the culture creators? We are the culture creators of our homes and of our classrooms.
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And with him, he is all about creating places where people feel that refuge and they feel like they belong and that they can become all that they were meant to be.
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One of my favorite lines that each of us would discover what God made us for.
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So one of the things that you talked about was the idea that your church could be involved in some way in serving in the schools.
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You talked about you went across the street to the school and said, how can I help? What are some needs?
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But then you wanted to engage people from your church. And so how did you do that and what results, what came out of that?
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You know, it was really beautiful. I never underestimate the power of just walking across the street to your school, to whatever is in your community and just knocking on the door and saying, we are from this church.
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What do you need right now? Do you need sandwiches at lunch? Do you need someone to come in and read to the kids? Do you need? What do you need?
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I think that I noticed that there was such an open door. There was no hesitation, especially when they understood that I had no ulterior motive other than to help.
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Right. All I wanted to do. And then the doors just kept opening.
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And that's actually how I ended up working in schools for these 25 years is just because I took that initial step of walking across and knocking on the door.
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And how did you get other people engaged in that? Because that's my understanding was you did that.
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Yes. Well, all of a sudden, then we started to pick up kids in our community with a bus.
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So getting my church involved in how do we actually go to these families rather than inviting them to our church? Let's go to them.
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We started hosting programs in the housing co-ops because we would meet the kids in the school.
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We put on a play, actually, some of us in our church, we went over and put on a school play and produce that all for them.
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There's so many ways to get involved and and to to make lunches or just to be there to to help supervise kids after school, whatever that school allows.
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OK, so that is a great way to get people in a church connected with needs in the community.
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How did that improve or show progress when it comes to good mental health and good handling of troublesome kids or troubled kids?
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Well, you know, as soon as we we would go out every Wednesday night and go into these housing co-ops and we would actually go visit these families in their homes.
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I got a team together. We always went out in twos, a lot like Bill Wilson in New York City.
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This is where we got this idea from. And we would go into their homes and just visit with them.
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And as we worked with the family, that's when we noticed the difference.
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And isn't that interesting that I noticed that at age 27 and now realizing again that if we can work with the home,
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these kids are going to be OK because their parents know what to do.
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Their parents feel equipped, whereas a lot of times and I think where I empathize is even for myself, that was my number one thing that I struggled with is who's going to help me?
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Who could I possibly tell about the brokenness that we're going through in our house?
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The shame that you feel as a parent is enormous.
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And if and I noticed that as I was helped, then I was able to help and be a parent to both of my boys.
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So if one of our listeners is in a similar situation, who's saying, who's going to help me?
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And how do I do this? What would you tell them would be steps maybe that they could take to get on a good path?
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It doesn't necessarily happen overnight.
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I know that having observed as you've talked about the issues with your son over several years that it took some time.
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And so I don't want them to think, oh, if I just do this, it's going to be OK overnight.
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It might, but it probably won't because you're talking about patterns that have been in our lives and that they're used to.
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And you are needing to grow and change so that they have a better chance to grow and change.
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Yes. And you're so right. It doesn't happen overnight.
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For me, the initial it took about a year, to be honest.
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I think for me, the greatest thing that helped in the initial was my son had a counselor and he didn't want to go see her.
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I mean, he's eight years old and that just didn't feel right to him. So I would go.
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So instead of thinking, no, I'm going to force him to go, I thought, well, I'm going to go.
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And she would help me and then I would help him.
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That's beautiful. I like that.
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And I find, to be honest, I think that that's a great place to start.
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If a parent has a counselor or someone who's helping them, that is key.
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A lot of people are thinking, you know, just get my kid on meds, give them a counselor.
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But I think that it actually if a parent can have that counselor and the child might need it, too.
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They might. I mean, every situation is different.
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All I know is that it doesn't hurt for the parent to have that extra support.
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And then that was someone safe. I could share everything with.
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I didn't have to worry about them going, but but you're an industry, but you're a pastor.
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I look up to you.
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So if you had in front of you a parent or a group of parents who were struggling with children or young adults,
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not their children in the home still even, and they're like, OK, what are the main things then?
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I know you've said, but it doesn't hurt to, you know, reiterate so that in different words,
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sometimes it comes out and catches where it doesn't when we say it the first time.
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But so say you have a 22 year old who's just finished college and they're on their own
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and they are making some bad decisions.
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And for us, one of the worst things is they say, leave me alone.
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And that happens a lot.
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And so they're even being pushed away and not having the opportunity to influence.
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What what would you say to them?
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Well, that's first of all, I'd say that's hard.
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That is very hard and not uncommon.
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And so not to diminish any feelings that that might have going through that, how painful that is.
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But that being said, love always knows not to hold on and to grip people.
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And Jesus doesn't do that to us.
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You know, and we have pushed him away.
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If you've ever been the type that has pushed him away and I have, he has never stopped pursuing me.
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But he did it in a way that was very gentle and that didn't make me feel that he wasn't going against my wishes.
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And so I think number one is letting go of our need to be in control.
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Oh, yeah, that's a big thing. Control.
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Because in that moment, I think as parents, we instantly want to control.
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We do.
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And so letting that go, I think, is really important, and that's where God can help us,
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because then whatever response we give will not be resorting to fear, control and manipulation or punishment.
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Or, well, if you're not going to phone me, well, then forget about coming over for Christmas.
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Even though what you're really thinking is please come home for Christmas.
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Our behavior is communication, isn't it? Isn't that so interesting?
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And so, you know, and then we can respond.
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We can say things like, I will be here when you are ready.
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I will pray for you every day.
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And you will be praying, yes, but they don't even necessarily want to hear that.
374
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They probably don't know.
375
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But just knowing, like, I've heard so many stories and I bet you you have too of parents who said, I never gave up.
376
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I always prayed. I told them I'm here for you.
377
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I will be here when you're ready. And those kids coming back and saying, I am so glad you never gave up on me when I gave up on you.
378
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You were still holding your end of the rope when I dropped mine.
379
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And that concept is so good.
380
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:09,000
So I will never forget the time my son lied about what he was doing and didn't do something then he was supposed to do.
381
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And I found him and was very angry at him.
382
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:20,000
And I started to say, well, if you're going to do that, then don't.
383
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,000
And I just stopped. And he said, don't what?
384
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,000
What will you do if I don't do what you want?
385
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And I said, I'll keep loving you.
386
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:38,000
And that was God. He stopped me from saying what was about to come out of my mouth.
387
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And instead, I think that might have been a pivotal point almost in my relationship with him that I was all right.
388
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I can't control you. I can put some boundaries.
389
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I can give wisdom. I can do various things.
390
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But I'm not going to tell you that if you do this, I'm out of here.
391
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:04,000
And that's what I was about to say.
392
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And even though I would never have meant it, my frustration and I know that there are many of our listeners who have been in situations like that.
393
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:23,000
So, Connie, any last words then you would give to these people who are in a hard place?
394
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It's really hard when someone you love, most often a child, even if it's a 30, 40, 50 year old child.
395
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:40,000
And sometimes it's not just the personal relationship that's been strained.
396
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It's because they're addicted or they're making criminal choices or there are lots of things that can happen to them.
397
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And how do we continue to hold our end of the rope?
398
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:03,000
Wow. Well, I want to remind everyone that you're braver than you think.
399
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:07,000
This is probably the bravest thing you'll ever do is go through this.
400
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:14,000
I wrote over myself and I felt it was really God who gave me these words and said, speak this over yourself every day.
401
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:18,000
I am brave. I show up when it's hard.
402
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,000
I love without walls. I forgive when it hurts.
403
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,000
And I rise through the storm.
404
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:29,000
And that is his promise to us because he enables us to live like that.
405
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:35,000
And so I want to encourage everyone of your listeners with that, Judy, that they are great.
406
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:40,000
Keep showing up. Keep loving. Keep forgiving. And you're going to rise.
407
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:44,000
That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Connie.
408
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And I know that the listeners have been touched and encouraged.
409
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So I'm really grateful for that.
410
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And to my listeners, remember, did you write down something you want to apply?
411
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:09,000
A phrase that Connie gave us that will be something you can hold on to and make sure you remember every morning,
412
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:15,000
every interaction, every conflict that comes, that you can trust God in it
413
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:20,000
and that he can give you what you need for that hard thing that you're going through.
414
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:27,000
And so if you don't write it down, my experience is you forget, oh, yeah, what was it I was going to do?
415
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:29,000
What was that phrase she gave us?
416
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:35,000
And you can, of course, listen to the podcast again so you can hear them again from her.
417
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:39,000
And her book, Bring Them Closer.
418
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,000
We're going to have a drawing. We're going to give away two of those.
419
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:50,000
And so when you go to the show notes in whatever place you're listening,
420
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:54,000
it will tell you what to do to be entered into that drawing.
421
00:41:54,000 --> 00:42:00,000
And there will be some other resources from Connie that we're going to share with you where you can find them.
422
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And Connie, thank you. And bless you.
423
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May you continue to be a beacon of light in the midst of a lot of hard things out there.
424
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Life is not easy for a lot of people, most people. So blessings to you. Thank you.
425
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:34,000
Thank you, Judy.
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