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Walking through loss - Part 2
11 Plays4 years ago
Vernon Terrell and Tammy Rivenbark of Grace Ministries International share their stories of losing a spouse to cancer and talk through tough questions, conflicting emotions, and offer a few practical suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Walking Free' and Guest
00:00:03
Speaker
This is your host Vernon Terrell with Grace Ministries International and it's time for Walking Free! Well, I'm so glad you're back with us as we continue the discussion
00:00:26
Speaker
with myself and Tammy Rivenbart, both of us on staff at Grace Ministries International. Welcome, Tammy. Thank you. Well, if you haven't heard the last episode, stop. I want you to go back. You don't have to, you're gonna do what you're gonna do anyways, right? But it might be good
Brenda's Journey with Breast Cancer
00:00:52
Speaker
for you to go back and listen to our last episode where Tammy and I both share our story of our spouses who passed away. Now to recap, my wife Brenda passed away from breast cancer which metastasized to the brain and the journey started in 2004, first diagnosis and she passed away
00:01:17
Speaker
in November, 2015. And that was, we were just shy of our 30th anniversary. That would have been February of the following year. And she, oh gosh, I have to do the math on how old, because she was 53, something like that. Give us a quick recap for you and John.
00:01:43
Speaker
Sure.
John's Battle with Cancer
00:01:47
Speaker
My husband John died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer, but he had been battling cancer for six years that began with colon cancer.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, he was 52 when he died. I was 49, widowed at 49. We had three children that were in their 20s. We had relocated when he was in remission.
00:02:21
Speaker
Cancer complicated the launching of some of my children, and it stranded me. It's so funny. Growing up in the church, I knew the story of Ruth a million and one times, but now I was identifying with Naomi, being widowed in a foreign land, kind of. That's what Alabama is. It's a foreign land. Definitely, especially if you're a Georgia Bulldog fan.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah. Your kids, again, they were in their 20s. A little contrast for me, mine were my autistic son was 17.
Impact on Children and Family Life
00:03:09
Speaker
My next in line daughter was 15, studying for her driver's exam. And my youngest was 12, almost 13. So we have a bit of a different stage of life thing for our kids anyways. Because it took us, again, 12 years to have our first. That was another crazy story.
00:03:34
Speaker
I think we both had our share of challenges with this awful thing. Well, let's talk about some of those. Let me pick your brain on some practical stuff first.
Embracing Life Amidst Tragedy
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I just want to, we're totally ad libbing it here, guys. Absolutely. But I do just really want to applaud you for, you know,
00:04:00
Speaker
Dealing with this subject and making this podcast and and I want to encourage the listeners because you know I have several friends going through a similar sadly, you know a similar journey right now and They you know when you walk down the aisle and get married or you sign up for premarital counseling Nobody prepares you for this stuff you say till death do us part
00:04:25
Speaker
But you don't think about it. You never think about it. You don't want to think about it. And the reality of it is, if you don't divorce, one of you is going to watch the other one die. And it could be a quick car accident thing.
00:04:42
Speaker
So many times it's a long You know battle with an illness and so and and I find For myself and my these friends, you know, we're just not prepared we're prepared how how to make your marriage strong and how to be a good parent and how to have date night and how to discipline your kids and how to be a good Christian, but You just not really prepared for this type of stuff. So and we're hoping maybe this podcast can at least
00:05:12
Speaker
be a launching point to help, maybe a primer to get you thinking about some of these things. One thing, I was quote, reading the Bible. I was listening to it. Um, but I, I count that as reading, as you're into counting. I'm not into counting, but, uh, so I was listening to Ecclesiastes.
00:05:31
Speaker
And here you've got Solomon going on and on about things and says, well, this is futile and this is futile and well, this is futile. He tried everything and the wise man of the world and he just couldn't find satisfaction and materialism in women and pleasure and all this stuff.
00:05:55
Speaker
He finally said, you know, it is God. It's knowing God and walking in God. It's not all these things. They can help. I'm not against, if you can afford something nice, man, that's awesome. But it's just not about that. But he says, he goes, you know what? You need to learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy life. And I would encourage
Walking in Love and Offering Support
00:06:19
Speaker
you to don't wait for the tragedy.
00:06:23
Speaker
to hit before you realize, I haven't been enjoying life or enjoying my partner, enjoy life. Now choose to enjoy life. Yes, absolutely. Well, let me go back. No, no, that was good. We need to set the stage. And when we're going through these challenges and again, this whole podcast is the idea of that we need to be that we need to learn how to walk free.
00:06:54
Speaker
Not walk under obligation to God. We don't have obligation to God. He's given us his life to live and express his life through us. It's walking free in who we are and the confidence of his love and the confidence of his grace and walking free and not just talking about it, not just saying, oh, I wish I could. No, you can. It's like some of the Matthew West songs. I love Matthew West. He goes, you know, we pray for God to do something. He goes, well, God, why don't you do something? And the song goes,
00:07:24
Speaker
God did something, he goes, I made you. So we go walk in love. And can we walk in love toward our spouse, toward our kids, toward our neighbor, toward our employer, toward whatever, walk in love. So there are practical things that we should probably touch on in these challenges.
00:07:48
Speaker
especially—and this is in our different situations—was John the primary wage
Financial Struggles and Community Aid
00:07:54
Speaker
earner? He was. How did all that work in the midst of this?
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, we were both, you know, working full-time outside the home. And so I ran into challenges with, you know, there was the Family Medical Leave Act, but that didn't replace my income. It just held my position. So the first time we went through cancer, it was incredibly stressful because
00:08:24
Speaker
John had sick leave. He was a federal employee, thankfully, so he had good benefits. And I can't say enough about that. Indeed. And he had, you know, all kinds of leave available to him. But I worked for—
00:08:40
Speaker
a bank, a huge bank in corporate America. And I didn't have a ton of leave. So I ended up having to do, it was very stressful, very, very stressful. Some of the burden of caregiving fell on my youngest child who was in high school at the time. I would run over on lunch breaks to the infusion lab and bring him lunch.
00:09:06
Speaker
It was just—it was really, really hard. It was—yeah. Wow. And through all of that—so during the process, your whole family life was just upside down.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah and that's one of the things I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on but you know in cancer this huge disease that has so much you know there's so many doctors visits and there's so much treatment and stuff when it comes in to a family it's like a chain it just you know it's like normal life is out the window it's like that patient and cancer treatment
00:09:49
Speaker
And all the side effects, that now becomes the center, the nucleus of the home. And so a lot of, you know, practical things. Home maintenance can fall by the wayside. Child rearing and discipline and schedules and eating and family meals and vacations can be gone.
00:10:09
Speaker
I mean it just and that really that's an area where friends and family can really be important and that's a family that's also an area where some of that destabilization really starts to impact the children and and everything so yeah I think for for us with our kids being so much younger yeah it was I'm grateful that the state of Georgia had a
00:10:38
Speaker
before the whole pandemic thing, they had an online school. Now it didn't work great for all our kids, but we did for that year, especially at the last year, 2015, I brought them all under an online school, Georgia Academy, something, forgot it now.
00:10:59
Speaker
where they could learn and have classes online and be home. And it worked out great. And my job was such that I could work from home.
00:11:11
Speaker
And so I was able to juggle things and work from the house, do calls, be available. There were times where at some point I couldn't be gone for more than two hours or so because I would really have to help my wife get up to help go to the restroom or go, whatever. Things you don't think about that, yeah. And so on and off, it was the doctor's visits and then
00:11:40
Speaker
everything and then managing my son and making sure that with his autism, make sure he had his care for him.
00:11:50
Speaker
It was just nonstop nonstop and then wound care because then there's burns and wounds and you have to go to wound care specialists and radiation
Role of Community Support
00:12:00
Speaker
and the chemo infusion and then all the, then just the other doctor and the surgeon visits and the, it's like, it seems like it's never ending. And, uh, I had no family here. My family had already moved.
00:12:16
Speaker
I'm not like, I mean, they were living in, my mother and father were living in Tennessee, and my brother was away. My sister was in another state, so it was pretty much me. And I had a, but we had incredible people from teachers from our school, from the school, parapro's, church folks, did a meal train,
00:12:45
Speaker
And I don't cook. You can ask my kids today. I mean, Stouffer's is my friend very much. The Kroger home chef is another dear friend of mine. That's what I depend on. But that meal train, if I got so much, we almost had to say stop, stop. We don't have enough room for the leftovers.
00:13:06
Speaker
You don't know how to say that, but we had so many good meals. That was important for me. Did that happen for you? Did you have that? Yeah, it came in fits and spurts. I mean, that's another thing with prolonged illness is that there's a big push at the beginning, early diagnosis, come home from surgery.
00:13:28
Speaker
for people to help but when it goes on year after year after year sometimes that's when you know and people they forget they get busy or they can't they can't you know be vigilant with you so that's where that's where people can really get lost and what would you want somebody to ask you know the sometimes people don't know what to say
00:13:56
Speaker
It's like, well, how can I help? Well, it's like, what's the right question they can ask that you could respond to well? Jeez. Well, I heard somebody say once, if you have a friend going through something like this, don't ask them, what can I do to help? Because then you're really giving them one more thing. They have to think of a response, right? And then have to worry about your feelings. Or they might have a hard time asking for help, like a lot of us do.
00:14:25
Speaker
So sometimes it's good to just do a little research, you know, spend time with them, listen, listen to them, go over, visit them, be with them, observe, take note. And then, I mean, the gift of presence, the gift of companionship is huge. And people need that. I know I could not have made it without the companionship.
00:14:51
Speaker
the people that walked through that journey with me, couldn't have done it alone. It was hard enough going through periods of that alone. But then also when you're providing presence and you're being there for your friend, observe and listen, and then come back with an offer and say, hey, I'm gonna watch the kids for you tomorrow. Go take care of yourself. Or hey, I'm gonna come over and clean your house this weekend. Would you rather it be Saturday or Sunday?
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, something like that. Or, hey, I've got some leave. Can I take your spouse to their doctor's appointments this week and let you off the hook that time or, you know, take a little break from that? You made, that's a great point that there's multiple people suffering. The person with the debilitating and this tragic illness and then those who are trying to support
00:15:49
Speaker
the person with the debilitating and tragic illness. There's two folks who are in various levels of grief and loss and confusion, and it's good to be there, as you said, present with that person, and have a thick skin.
00:16:10
Speaker
Sometimes the niceties aren't as nice or if I, you know, I may forget to say thank you or I may say, Hey, I need to take care of this. Basically saying you can go ahead and leave now. It's not, don't take that personally. Don't it's just things. There's just so many things happening. I know this is something I need to take care of.
00:16:33
Speaker
and know I love you, know I appreciate you, gotta go. Right. Or I may be in a bad mood. Yeah. You know? Yes. I just may be. And that's okay. In a good place. Yeah. And let me be in a bad, you don't even have to cheer me up. No. It's just let me be in a bad mood. Right. This job, you know, again, for me it was I had the ability to work from home and not many do, but I did.
00:17:03
Speaker
I had to wrestle with when, if I was in the hospital and, uh, and I'm, I'm sure I could have done things, but if I had a big conference call or had to be on, I took it from the waiting room. I took it from somewhere else. And, you know, some people say, Oh, you're not with your wife. Yeah. I'll have to just let you think I'm a pretty blankly blank blank, you know, that I'm having to take care of this. And although my work was awesome.
00:17:30
Speaker
the folks from at the Alcataloosa, not Nokia, and at Alcataloosa Enterprise were amazing. Supportive, just incredible, but there were some calls I did need to be on just to keep the income going. Right, yeah, I wanted to quit too. Second time around I was able to quit and be a full-time caregiver and that was great because we had to travel for treatment out of state and it became more complicated.
00:17:58
Speaker
But the first time around was brutal. It was really hard, working full-time.
Children's Coping Mechanisms
00:18:03
Speaker
I still had two kids at home, and they were older so they could help, but, you know, they're suffering. Did they feel pressure to— Yeah, they felt their own loss, their own fear, their own, you know,
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah. They had their own. There's that fight or flight response. Some kids and adults may just come right under and want to do everything they can. And others just want to be away. They don't want to see that person. Exactly. Did you have different experiences with your kids? Yes. Yes, I did. I had some of all that. Yeah. I had one who just wanted to stay away because they didn't want to either get in the way or they didn't want to remember
00:18:51
Speaker
mom like that. Right. And another who was just there, wanted to always be there and both were just responses. Both were trying to be loving. Right. But that's just how they were, how they were choosing. Exactly. Exactly. What about financial? Did you guys run into some financial
00:19:12
Speaker
Well, again, our insurance benefits were huge. But we did run into financial in the sense that, of course, there's all kinds of out-of-pocket expenses, as you know. Even with good insurance, there's so much out-of-pocket expense with a sick person. And I can't even begin to rattle off all of the things.
00:19:42
Speaker
But the first go-around, there was that hard challenge of we could not live without my income, and so I could not quit, and I could go out on family medical leave, because then my income wouldn't—my paycheck wouldn't be coming in.
00:20:04
Speaker
So the financial pressure of having to work and not be able to be with him like I wanted to and be at all the appointments, that was a hardship in that regard.
00:20:18
Speaker
What was going through your head with all the thoughts when you were working? Was it like the enemy attacking you with thoughts of, Oh, I'm not a good wife. Oh, I could be better or about God. Oh God, why don't you allow me to quit?
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, that was definitely—well, no, to answer your question, fortunately I didn't struggle with beating myself up. I knew I was doing the best I could. I was wishing things were different, absolutely.
00:20:53
Speaker
that tipped over into my issues with God. And I didn't really get angry at Him, but I have struggled my whole life with trust, trusting God, going back and forth, and is God good? Yes, He is. And then, oh, but then this horrible thing happened. And so, okay, I love you and you love me, but I don't trust you. And
00:21:17
Speaker
So, concept of God was really challenged during this period for me. How did you work through that?
00:21:28
Speaker
That's a tough one. That is, and there's no short answer. It was a process. I mean, God just... The healing has really come in the afterwards. It's been a long, slow process. And all I can say is that God just... He was there, and He loved me even when I was...
00:21:57
Speaker
holding him at arm's length, even when I was afraid of him, even when I was just afraid and afraid to trust him, you know. And every provision, every act of provision, every act of mercy, every, you know, just every little thing was I look back and see him being in the midst of it with me.
Experiencing God's Presence in Hardship
00:22:21
Speaker
And then when, you know, after some grief and everything, he really started actively, I would say pursuing me. He started actively pursuing my heart again, and just through a series of events, he just, the love of God just won me over. So... So it's like looking in the middle of that moment,
00:22:49
Speaker
keeping God at arm's length. He was still there, but he was allowing you to keep him at arm's length because that's where you were. Yes. And it was okay. It was okay. And that's such a huge thing. I see that now is that he just, you know, he didn't get his feelings hurt. I didn't disappoint him. You know, I didn't like block his, you know, provision. No.
00:23:13
Speaker
Right. And that's so important because God's not scared of our emotions and God's not scared of, you know, if we're upset with him and we're angry and we don't understand, we don't understand. And that's okay that we don't understand. As someone like me, I always want to understand. I'm going to put all the pieces together and I have to have the right answer.
00:23:40
Speaker
And it's sometimes there's just not a right answer. No. And we have to be and learn to be okay and God is in us in that process and with us in that in it with us through that process. Absolutely. And like you said sometimes it's just after that we start seeing it and we start seeing him that he's been there loving us
00:24:05
Speaker
and allowing us to do whatever we need to do until we're ready to receive Him again. Yes, totally. I've never seen an experienced grace so tangibly. And when I look back, it blows my mind the way I can see how He ordered my steps. It was just a very... The whole process has been engineered, and He prepared me for losing my husband
Reflections on Divine Guidance
00:24:35
Speaker
years before it even happened and I can just see his his engineering in it all and then that makes me Love him and trust him all the more but he never he never withheld that love or provision because I was struggling That is so good this
00:24:53
Speaker
The fact that we can see it now, the Scripture tells us that man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. And we don't always see the Lord directing our steps, but he is always directing our steps. And yes, we choose and yes, we have the freedom to choose and we choose good paths and sometimes sketchy paths. But the Lord is with us and all that and he's just loving us and directing us and loving us and that's what he does.
00:25:22
Speaker
you know, when we talk about emotions and now for a guy, especially my personality type emotions are like, I fear emotions. Oh, that's, wait, I just expressed one. Okay, good. What were some of the emotions that you had to, I'll stop on that for me. I was about to say for me, but what were some of the emotions that you,
00:25:51
Speaker
had to deal with during the time of hearing the cancer diagnosis until John passed away. What were those emotions?
00:26:05
Speaker
Well, fear was probably the ever-present dominant emotion. And I think that's probably going to be a top 5-1 for most people in that situation. But I will say—and I'm going to—
00:26:23
Speaker
I'm going to reference Enneagram here. For those of you that are Enneagram literate, I am a 6, and fear is our base sin, stronghold, struggle, whatever you want to call it. That's what we struggle with.
00:26:41
Speaker
So this is a six is worst nightmare of a wife losing her strong husband because I married that man because he was a sense of security for me and now it looked like he was leaving right and so that was my worst fear and and and you know as somebody who deals with fears I
00:27:01
Speaker
I want to live in my head creating my plans. Okay, I want to predict. I want to know what's going to happen. I want to be ahead of it. I want to forecast. And then I want to have plans to try and deal with these fears, you know, in the now and in the future. So that was the prevailing one, was fear.
00:27:26
Speaker
Was it fear mostly of the abandonment or fear of being a loan or fear of the financial impact or fear of what about my kids or just all the above? It was all the above but I It was it was probably the the fear of pain too, you know and just the fear of
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think being alone being alone and without support That was my my biggest fear. Well as an Enneagram one It was am I doing enough am I doing everything right making all the right decisions and
00:28:17
Speaker
making sure the doctors were right, although they're a thousand times smarter than I am, but still, is this, and the fear of making the wrong choice, and not being there enough, and doing enough, and performing enough, and not in a sense of, when we talk from a grace perspective of getting my identity through performance, but it's more of, is there more I can do, and even there, sometimes we have to learn to stop
00:28:45
Speaker
and as One of our staff people who hates my tagline tagline on this podcast stop talking start walking Sometimes we need to stop walking, you know, and since we're a counseling ministry stop walking start talking You know, but I come at this from a little different angle, but Yeah, it was
00:29:10
Speaker
Those emotions, I don't have a lot of emotions, but when I do, it's either anger, and anger that either someone's not doing something right, or they could do more in dealing with that, or anger at God. God, you are a God who can heal.
00:29:31
Speaker
So what's up right and going through the hey, you know lord i'm serving you and i've been doing this and i'm In a ministry of 30 years and doing corporate work and funding whatever. I'm doing all this stuff Where are you god? And he's i'm right here Well, can I ask you a question then because that raises a question that I think is important. Um Do you feel like your
00:29:58
Speaker
the church and your Christian life, everything, all the Sunday school classes, all the Bible studies, all the books from the Christian bookstore you bought and read. Do you feel like all of that prepared you to deal with Brenda's illness and death and being a widower? No, I don't think those specifically did, to be honest. It wasn't the, I think what prepared me
00:30:27
Speaker
Knowing the Bible didn't prepare me. I'm a big student of the Bible. I love the Bible. I would not be in the same place, and I don't know if I could have handled it in the same way, had I not understood and comprehended at some level God's grace and His love for me, that if I don't do everything right, if I do make the wrong decisions at times or I'm
00:30:57
Speaker
not doing enough, I'm still okay with him, that I'm loved. It was that moment where I came to understand his grace and learning how to walk in that grace. I think that's what really helped me because for such a long time I was a performer for God and I was just checking off boxes, checking off boxes and
00:31:25
Speaker
And when you're in the midst of this and you have work and you're a caregiver and you have kids and family, you just can't check all the boxes. There's just no way. And for an Enneagram one, that's like anathema. That's like failure in a big way. And that's something that I had to learn to let go, that it's okay if the boxes don't get checked and it's okay.
00:31:50
Speaker
My wife, even in her illness, hired someone to cut our grass. I can cut our grass. I can, I can do no. Oh, you poor delusional thing. Exactly. And we hired someone to come and clean our house. Now we could afford that a little bit. We had a little extra money. It was stretches, but we did that and probably the best thing we did. We didn't have to worry about it. What about you?
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting to hear you say that because as a one that would be a perfect undoing because you cannot get it all done and you cannot make all the perfect decisions and you cannot control it, right? You cannot be a perfect anything in that state of chaos.
00:32:34
Speaker
it was my perfect undoing because there is no getting away from the fear of death and being alone and pain and all of that so so yeah it was
00:32:52
Speaker
It was the opportunity of a lifetime to finally really get free from some things, right? Didn't feel like it at the time. And frankly, fear is always going to be an issue for me.
00:33:11
Speaker
your performance driven tendencies or flesh, it's always going to be an issue for you to some degree, right? It will. It's flesh is not going to go away. No, but wow, you know, there's a real turning the corner in an experience like that. But to answer your question, no, I did not feel like anything in my Christian formative
00:33:37
Speaker
Experience really prepared me much for death and dying and loss and I think it's because I found that whole process to be so It's so human, you know
00:33:56
Speaker
And we're not allowed to be human as Christians sometimes. As Christians, there's all this emphasis on our spirituality, on our walk with Christ, on our devotional life, on our hearts and minds. Did you memorize your verses today? Right. You know, and it's like... illness, sickness, fear, death, kids' house going to hell, I mean life going to hell. I mean that's...
00:34:27
Speaker
That's real stuff. If you're a good Christian, though, that doesn't happen, right? Right. Right.
Recognizing Emotions in Faith Communities
00:34:32
Speaker
And so I just was like, wow, all the emotions, all the physical pain, all of the decisions, all the practicals of I'm exhausted or insurance or, you know.
00:34:44
Speaker
And then afterwards, just the overwhelm, the mental, you know, the mental fog of grief, you know, the distractibility, the irritability, the self-medicating, you know, whether it be binging out in front of TV or shopping or eating too much or whatever, the comforting, the need to soothe and comfort yourself.
00:35:09
Speaker
just the dips in your faith, you know, where you feel so far from God and you're mad at Him. All that stuff is so human. And it—we don't talk about it enough. We need to get permission for people to be human, that it's OK to be human. You are human. But see, Enneagram 1, we don't think—we think we're superhuman. So it's—
00:35:35
Speaker
But let me and I know we're we're gone a little over from our normal podcast is so, you know, just so refreshing to talk through these challenging ideas. Let me ask a couple more questions and we'll just go through them quickly. OK. Let me just I'm going to do these last these last couple about what would you do differently?
00:36:04
Speaker
If anything, knowing now what you know and you've been through it, what would you do differently? Oh gosh, do you have a quick answer for that one? Something immediately come to your mind? I think for me, I would give myself permission to rest, which I still have trouble doing today in terms of doing differently.
00:36:30
Speaker
I would not, I would say stop and you don't just let things go a little bit more. I don't have to do everything. I would invite more people in. I'm more of a loner and this is where you do so well. You're a great networker of people and I think you've had some good support. I didn't and I had good support but I wasn't necessarily letting people in relationally.
00:36:59
Speaker
I had great support out here and wonderful, but maybe one or two I might let in. I would do that differently. I would intentionally go seek it out. That's something I learned. Gotcha. I'm going to answer your question this way. I think the one thing I did
00:37:23
Speaker
well that came to me that I would encourage every other caregiver to do is self-care. When we moved to Nashville and then we found the cancer right after we moved, I got involved in a cancer support community.
00:37:40
Speaker
And it was called Gilda's House, and they have them all over the country. But I got involved, this total free nonprofit, and I got into counseling. I got into a support group with other caregivers.
00:37:56
Speaker
I got into exercise and nutrition classes and I just was gently, lovingly, I was given community and I was just really encouraged that, you know what, when this is over, you need to still be here and you don't need to then have to deal with your own mental health breakdown or physical breakdown. And the best way you can love your loved one who's fighting cancer is to take care of yourself
00:38:22
Speaker
so that you can be more there for them more there for your family and so that when they're gone you know you're you know they've left you and they don't have to worry about you as much so it's made recovery and healing and leading my family a lot easier because i haven't had to deal with my own you know right
00:38:48
Speaker
Mess. Well, let me... I think that's a good place to end with that encouragement. And what I would say is if you are struggling right now, well, that's what we do at Grace Ministries. We can help you out. You can call us, 770-690-0433. You can go to the website if it's up and running. Have a little website attack. We'll go into that. We're trying to get that fixed.
00:39:15
Speaker
Hopefully it'll be fixed by the time you're hearing this episode. But you can go to our website. We've got a lot of exciting new things that we're going to be launching over the next month or two that I think you're going to really love that will help you as you are dealing with just life struggles or if you're in something like what Tammy and I had to go through. I hope you're not, but if you are,
00:39:42
Speaker
We'll have some resources you can call us. We have counselors that can help you through it, and that's what we want to do, is to minister to you. So, I thank you for listening, and wherever you are, I hope that you can step out by faith, walk by faith, and trust your Heavenly Father who loves you.
00:40:11
Speaker
You've been listening to Walking Free, a production of Grace Ministries International in Marietta, Georgia. For more information, go to our website at gmint.org. That's gminc.org.