Truth Talk with Wendi – Details, episodes & analysis

info@endabuse.com; Psalms 51:12, Isaiah 55:1, John 6:54, 2 Timothy 2:22, James 4:7 Brandon: It's one of those things where, you know, you're doing the wrong thing and you just feel like you can't help yourself and can't get out of that despair. That's the whole point. The start of the addictive cycle is despair. And despair can be lots of different things. Despair is not necessarily what you think, in the way of discouraged or depressed. Despair can be loneliness. Despair can be boredom. Despair can be guilt. There are so many different things that would fall under the category of despair, right? And then there's a trigger. Right? So, you get triggered from the despair. Then there's the fantasy. So, the trigger can be cleavage. The trigger can be a commercial. The trigger can be a magazine sitting on the rack as you go by, you know, and you're in this despair, you have this trigger. So then there's the fantasy and then there's the acting out. After the acting out, you despair. The guilt and white knuckling mindset of, I'm not going to do this anymore, and I'm going to white knuckle it until I get in that despair again, and then there's a trigger and, you know, so that was one of the things that helped me a lot with counseling, getting into counseling and understanding the addictive cycle. It was the Lord pursuing me. It was the Lord showing me these things. You have a bigger problem than looking at porn. Your bigger problem is you're not looking to me. So, just not looking at porn is not going to solve it. I mean there's Buddhists and Hindus and all these people that are so pure in their way of living and not contaminating their minds and being at peace or whatever. So, they're way more disciplined than most Christians and conquered their selfish desires and all these things, but they're not walking with Christ. They're not walking in the light. They're in the dark. So, the point is not to just not look at porn, right? The point is to be satisfied in Christ and so the Lord is like, okay, yeah, the triage, we're going to stop the bleeding and you know, your wife now knows and so she's going to help you and you're going to have some boundaries. I needed that time. I needed the understanding, the destruction of what this is doing, right. And obviously, I knew it was wrong, but all the things that we say to ourselves is that it's not hurting anybody. It's just between me and God and I know I'm sinning, but it's not hurting anybody else. Wendi: I'm extremely thankful that you have overcome the sex addiction and I'm thankful that you are willing to open up about it here and because I know there are so many people that watch us that have been, you know, affected by people who did not stop and get help. They made it to level three and four and and so you know, and there's so much damage and you know, and so thankfully that was something that you recognized and like you said, you know, the whole getting busted, was God's way of rescuing you from that pit that you were in. And so I know that that if there is anybody that is listening to this or struggling, and they need any kind of resources, you can definitely email us and we will get you in touch with Brandon who can get you some direction in that because I know in just watching you I've seen the change up close and personal and I know that you don't struggle like you did.

www.thrivingforwardblog.com; https://Facebook.com/groups/advocateswithattitude; "Predators" written by Anna Salter with trigger warning  https://www.amazon.com/Predators-Pedophiles-Rapists-Other-Offenders/dp/0465071732; www.recoveringgrace.org  Trigger Warning: Some listeners may find the content of this episode disturbing because of trauma or bad experiences in their lives. Some stories may trigger emotionally disturbing memories.  Andrew J. Bauman — porn recovery resources and support

Anne Blythe — betrayal trauma support

Sarah McDugal — support for momma’s surviving post-abuse

Sheila Gregiore — Biblical sex teaching

Gretchen Baskerville— Biblical divorce support

Emily:   It was pretty tumultuous. My parents’ marriage was never good. Not even from the beginning. And I would say as I approached about the age of eight, is when I started to spot my dad's narcissism and I started to realize even when he was playing with me, he was really more self-absorbed with himself and everything was really about him and I started to say things to my mom, like, “I really don’t think Dad loves me.” As an eight-year-old I could pick up on that stuff. And then life really started to fall apart when I was about 10.  My father had addictions going on, and I found pornography on his computer. One time, my mom and I watched him pick up prostitutes. While I was in my mom's car, we could see the road ahead, my father's vehicle and we would watch prostitutes get in his car.  He was engaged in quite a bit of behavior and the stress really started to affect me and then at about age 11 or 12, his sex addiction turned toward me and the abuse started. I was molested when I was 12. It didn't go beyond molestation, but I was definitely targeted and groomed for at least 10 years. All throughout my teenage years and into my early 20s, I always felt preyed upon, and I always knew that it was wrong even before I knew what sex was, and I know you've talked about this.  When you didn't even know what sex was and yet you knew something was wrong, and I was feeling used and violated. And like I said, preyed upon, and I knew it was wrong. Even though I didn't know all the words and the definitions of exactly what was going on, and I really didn't understand it. I was in my mid-20s and in counseling at that point, but yeah, that abuse started pretty early on. As a result, my little 10-year-old body didn't know what to do with all of this. I developed a severe, life-threatening autoimmune disease called Crohn's disease. And so, in the middle of all this abuse as a teenager, I was also living in and out of hospitals just barely staying alive. I think my lowest weight was 73 pounds when I was 16. You know, so I really looked like a holocaust victim. You could see every single bone in my body. I was just absolutely deathly ill. There was a brief separation that was mutually agreed upon for my sake, because the tension in the home was so severe, me and my mom knew that it was making me sicker. And so, there was an unusually made decision with a counselor that my father would temporarily be out of the home, which lasted less than a year and it would just be so they could continue counseling, and so I would be a little bit removed from that situation. But he finally just got to the point, had a couple of counselors fire him because they knew he wasn't willing to do any of the work. And others just flat out wouldn't take him because they would do one interview with him and they would tell my mom he's not going to take them on as a client because he's not willing. He's not willing to do anything. So, I guess after one year he finally just got fed up and came home one night and said, I have found an apartment and I'm leaving tomorrow. And that was it. He took a shower and went to bed, got up the next morning and he was gone, was not a fight. 

Louie Giglio - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsqCLyoU3o and Francis Chan- Rope Illustration: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=86dsfBbZfWs info@endabuse.com James 1:2-4, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 1 Peter 1:7, John 3:16 Our journey does not stop because we hit a wall or we have another trigger.  We just know that this is something else the Lord is doing in our lives and trying to teach us. We may pause for a moment, but we just keep moving forward. I just want to encourage you in that. I also want to acknowledge the fact that our lives, because of the way we think, the way we view things, and the way we see things and because we're protective over ourselves and our children, a lot of what we deal with is very heavy, and it's very tiring.   So, my season may be shorter than some other podcasts that you watch, we are going to take a break because I know for me if I'm not focused on my own health, and what makes me a good mom and a good wife to my husband and I'm not going to be good for anyone else.  I want to talk to you about the benefits that come from suffering. The Bible's very clear on this.   There are benefits.  It's not just like we suffer and God allows these things to happen in our life for no reason. The Bible is very clear, and what I want to do is share a few Scriptures with you that talk about what benefits come from suffering. The first one is James 1:2-4 It says, “Count it all joy, my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”   It doesn't mean you don't get knocked down, it just means you keep going. And that steadfastness has its full effect. It makes us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  That doesn't mean we are perfect, it means that because we allow the Lord to meet us where we are and pick us back up and keep walking with Him through this journey. Another verse is 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” In a nutshell, what that means is, that when we suffer, God comforts us through the Holy Spirit, and that comfort now we have received comfort, and now we can give that comfort out because you can't give something out that you've not received. The last verse I want to share with you is 1 Peter 1:7, “So that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” there is so much fear of man going on today, because there are people being canceled and people being targeted and, you know, there's all kinds of stuff going on. People are being silenced for lots of different reasons, and it makes me very sad. I want to give you guys this example that I saw several years ago, and it was so freeing for me.  I don't know if anyone knows who Louie Giglio is?  Several of you might, but you've probably all heard of the Hubble Telescope, which is this telescope that they launched many, many years ago and it just keeps going farther in space, and then it turns around and takes a picture of the Earth ever so often.  It sends it back to NASA. The Earth was really big and right in the center of the screen, and there was a little arrow that says you live here,  pointing to America.  The Hubble kept going and turned around and then the earth got smaller.  You live here and you could still see it. And after a while, the Earth was so little. It was a tiny dot on the screen, you live here. God just so clearly said, "I say you're precious, you're valuable, and you're worthy."

Romans 8:34, 1 John 4:4, Jude 1:24-25, Isaiah 55:9 info@endabuse.com

Trigger Warning! Some listeners may find the content disturbing because of trauma in their lives

Today I just want to share some really good praise reports about some things that have happened recently in my own personal life.   To try to encourage so many people who have very similar stories to mine, and may have lost some hope on some things that maybe they've had to lose in the process. I know that for me, you get to a point in your life where it's even painful to pray to the Lord and ask him for things like reconciliation and healing in relationships that get broken because you know when you pray about it, you think about it, and for most of us, we don't want to think about it.   So, it's this journey that the Lord has had me on and has been pretty intense in emotions and so I'm just going to tell you today, if I get emotional, just bear with me. This journey for me, of course, I've 40 years into having been sexually abused by my father, but it was 12 years ago, we just passed the 12-year mark at the end of last month,  that I finally told my dad that I needed to have some time apart from him.  I needed to be able to just really focus on my relationship with the Lord, and of course, that was the best decision that I ever made.  At the time, I did not have any idea that it would be 12 years later, and we still would not be reconciled. That was never anything that the Lord revealed to me, and obviously, I know why because I probably would not have been as willing to let him go at that point.  The first several months were horrible and excruciating and I thought about him all the time.  Then the more that I saw that I was really drawn more to find that father relationship with the Lord, the more fulfilled that I became in my relationship with him, the less that it bothered me that I didn't have that relationship with my earthly father.  Not to say that I don't miss him and don't love him because I do.  It's very, very painful in many different situations and circumstances, but it's not like it was at the beginning.  I prayed for a long time that the Lord would bring us back together.  I lost several siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles, pretty much everyone on his side of the family.  It just got to a point where the more I prayed about it, the more painful it was just to even think about it.  I had a pastor at one point that said, because I felt like I was supposed to pray about it, that's when the body comes together and lifts that up for you.  It's not that nobody's praying about it or if I don't pray about it, nothing happens.  It's that the body of Christ bearing one another's burdens.  I know that I've had people praying about things this whole time.  I just want to report that in the last several months, two of my long-lost siblings have reached out, and we have started talking.   They are now grown up and they have their own families.  I've been able to meet the family that I didn't know I had and nieces and nephews that I didn't know I had. It is truly amazing when I think about the times that were so hard or so painful for me, especially concerning the safety of my siblings and not knowing if they were okay. If they had experienced anything like I had gone through? It was so hard not to know and not to talk to them about it, but that's really where I learned to trust the Lord, and know that he loves them more than I do. He has a plan for them as well. So, thankfully, recently, I have discovered nothing like that happened and those siblings are absolutely wonderful. We are now back in relationship.  I'm so thankful because there's nothing I could do, or even pray about because of how much emotion and pain it brought to me. But what I love about Jesus is He sits at the right hand of God and he prays for us.

Proverbs 22:6  Ephesians 6:4b  Deuteronomy 6:5-9  Trigger Warning! Some listeners may find the content disturbing because of bad experiences in their lives.  Some stories may trigger emotionally disturbing memories.      Info@endabuse.com I am so excited today to talk to you about something that is very near and dear to my heart, and that is being a parent.  Being a mom or you might be a dad watching, you qualify.   We're talking about one of the hardest jobs in the whole world, but also one of the most rewarding.   Parenting in 2021 is not for the faint of heart.  There is so much going on in our world.  I wonder sometimes if I had an opportunity to go back and knew what my kids would be growing up in if I would have wanted to bring them into this craziness.  You wonder how in the world they're going to get through it, but we know from scripture that God numbers our days. He knows our birthday.  He knows our death date. Every single child that we have, God put them in this world, at this time for a specific purpose.  So, I rest in that because there are so many hard things when you're parenting, and so many of us have a deep desire for our children to love and like us. Unfortunately, that is not always a thing that can be accomplished, nor is it possible for them.   Loving us is obviously something that if we teach them about true love, which comes from God, then they can love us, even when they don't like us. Our goal when they are little seems to be just to protect them at all costs.  We would never send them out into the streets and play with a ball.  We would never just send them with a stranger.  There are so many things that you think about.  What does that mean to protect them at all costs? What if it really did cost you something. For instance, in my own personal life, I had two father figures that molested me. Well, one of them, my stepfather, I did not realize the degree that his sickness was until I had already allowed him to form a relationship with my children.  The reason is that what happened with him was so much less than what had happened before with my dad.   When I confronted him, actually when my mom confronted him, it stopped immediately. Well, other information came out, many, many years later that brought grave concern to me. I had to remove him from their life.  Well, that cost me quite a bit!   What it cost me more than anything was a relationship with my mom because that was not something that she wanted to hear. And that was very painful for her to hear after years of having a relationship with my kids.   My exact words to her were, “You can have a relationship with them, but he is no longer welcome to be around them, whether at your home or ours.” It was very difficult for me as well because my kids didn't understand it. And my mom was very upset with me. But here's what I told, not just her, but myself to allow myself the freedom to make this choice and have no regrets about it. I asked myself, what if one day in the future, fast forward five years, 10 years, what if one of my boys came to me with tears in his eyes, trying to drum up the courage to tell me that he did something to them?  I just want to leave you with a couple of scriptures that the Bible tells us are so important, as we are raising our kids at every stage.  Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way you should go and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Another one is Ephesians 6:4b, “Bring them up with discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.” If you don't already have a relationship with God, if you don't know Jesus as your personal Savior, I would invite you to reach out to us.

info@endabuse.com 1Timothy 6:10 Psalm 118:8 1 Samuel 16:7 1 John 3:5  John 6:1-15 Deuteronomy 4:29 Malachi 3:6 2 Corinthians 5:7 Hebrews 13:8 John 14:27 Psalm 91:2 Psalm 55:22   Just really felt burdened by the Lord that I wasn't sure what he was telling me, if he was telling me, or what he was going to do when I got to this place.  So, we decided to just see what the Lord has to say through me, in regards to what I see going on in the world that has been highlighted here in the last several days. What is sticking out to me like a sore thumb,  is it seems to me the evidence why I have trust issues. I don't think anybody on here who has seen any of my previous episodes would ever wonder why I have trust issues or blame me for having trust issues. I think that is just common sense. What I see unfolding before my eyes, is I'm clearly not alone. But it's not just one in three people or one in six people seem to be the statistics for those of us who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, but it literally seems to me that nobody on this planet trusts anybody else on this planet, and let me tell you what I'm talking about. There is so much going on, even here in Texas. We have a governor who will issue an executive order, and then we have judges who just decide they don't like that order, and they will just decide to do whatever they want to, regardless of what their authority tells them they can or cannot do. And so what it does is it puts people like the school boards, and other people directly affected by those orders in the crosshairs.  It just seems like every time there is an issue for anything that is then put into an order or goes to court, you have this judge that rules this way and then they take it to the court above them, and then that Judge overrules this judge.  Is just a struggle for power and the struggle for control. So, I totally understand that because, for me, I, do not like giving up control, I just don't.   I had things taken away from me at a young age, and I blindly followed a person who I should have been able to trust, and it did not end well for me.  That person was my authority. Therefore, I do not just trust easily. In fact, I usually don't trust at all.  I think some people start with okay if I meet somebody, I'm going to trust them until they give me a reason not to trust. It's the opposite with me, I don't trust you until you prove yourself trustworthy.    So it's just from different perspectives.

Today, I want to talk to you about something that I wrestle with all the time.  I've actually even made it a four-letter word in our home.  It's something that I do not like people telling me to do this thing. Can anybody guess what it is? If you're anything like me then, you automatically know the word is r e s t.  It is a four-letter word, I don't like it. It is not something that I am very good at, but it's definitely something that the Lord has been convicting me about, and I want to share some of that with you.  And first, I want to let you know that when people have trauma in their past, it is a natural human instinct to try to do things to fill up your mind so whether it's a project or a list, whatever works for you.  Whatever you can get into your mind, other than your thoughts about your past then it just makes things seem easier.  So we tend to fill up our lives with so many people busy with their work, you know the busier they are then the more important they must be. But the Bible is very, very clear that it's not just a suggestion to rest. In fact, in the Old Testament, there's a whole commandment of keeping the Sabbath. Now, we're not going to get into that today, but it's very clear that God is serious about rest and we're going to talk in a minute about how God rested in the Old Testament and gives us an example of that and how Jesus himself rested when he was walking the earth and giving us an example of what to do. But what I want to talk to you about today is the word, still and it means calm and quiet. Okay, now I have four children. That is not something that I get a lot of in our household, especially with two littles.  There are two little girls who love to scream all the time. I did not know they liked to do that. So calm and quiet is something that you have to seek out. So that is something that Jesus taught us to do when he was walking the earth. If you think about it when you are about to have a conversation with someone on the phone. Do you walk into the middle of chaos and have this conversation with them? If you're like me, you walk out with your phone and you try to find a place so that they can hear you, and you can hear them. Well, how much more important is it for us when we want to hear from the Lord and find a place of calm and quiet. And so many of us struggle to do that because I know for myself when I go to a place of calm and quiet when it's dead silent in this house, which isn't often, but when it is, my mind seems to go to what it thinks about the most, and that is just a natural default to things that have happened to me.  Because I, by nature a protector, I want to protect myself from getting hurt again.  I want to protect my children, so I can very easily go to those negative thoughts and feelings, and that's not where God wants our minds. And so, I'm going to give you a couple of scriptures that have really been helpful for me as to the instruction from the Lord so that we know it's not just a suggestion, but it's something he wants us to do. In Psalms 37:7 it says, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”

Email: info@endabuse.com  Website: www.endabuse.com

Romans 1: 18-32 Romans 1: 16,17 Romans 3:23 There is an author several of you might have heard, her name is, Jen Hatmaker, and she is one of the funniest, best communicators. If you have ever read her books, they are easy to read. They're very relatable and she's just got a gift from the Lord of talking to women. And so I had to read a book of hers called “Seven”, because it's my favorite number, and it was about an experiment that she did. And it was kind of like her journal as an experiment where I think in a nutshell, she took seven different months and picked seven categories. Let's say the month that she did clothing, she picked seven items of clothing and that's all she wore. She would do the same thing with different categories. This woman was a public speaker and she was able to survive with seven items, so I think the whole point of the book was, we can live with much less. So, out of the blue, probably, I don't know, two, three years ago, she made a public statement about her support for same-sex marriage and, of course, you know, the Christian world went crazy again, divided right down the middle. Some for support and some said, oh my goodness what did you just say? You're the pastor and you're supporting same-sex marriage and all that. So she posted about this experiment of just seven experiments on her Facebook page, and you know I was really struggling because I loved her as an author and loved some of the ideas that she shared. I relate to her in so many different ways. But then, this was something that when she came out with this public support, and even went as far as to say that she thought the union of same-sex marriage was actually sacred. There are some things that just did not sit in my spirit right. It's because I don't believe in it at all. I think it is very evident in the Bible that it is wrong. After asking the Lord about this, I believe he made it clear that we don't have to agree 100% with everyone to love them. After all, I'm wrong about so many things, yet God loves me. I believe that he called us to love, no matter what. If we're willing, we can learn something from everyone. Just because I don't agree with her position on same-sex marriage, doesn't mean that I can't learn other things from her that I do agree with. It also doesn't mean that I don't love her or people who choose a lifestyle that I don't agree with. We all struggle with sin in God's eyes. We have all fallen short of His glory and deserve his wrath, but for the blood of Jesus. I'm so thankful that he accepts me right where I am, and I want to accept them. I was right where they are, however, I would hope that if I had some kind of blind spots and was choosing a lifestyle of sin, that one of my sisters in Christ would come to me and in humility with the truth of God's word. I don't think I would even hear what they have to say if they just wanted to be critical and judgmental. Jesus never shied away from confronting sin, but he did it in such a loving way that people were drawn to him everywhere. Let me live my life in such a way as to reflect Jesus in my love for all others.” So that was my post that I felt like, the Lord revealed to me that allowed me to have the freedom to still listen to someone that I vehemently disagree with on matters of the Bible. And I know that in today's world we are so divided. I think part of the problem is that if someone says, one thing that we don't agree with, it's very easy for us to just dismiss everything about them. Whether we really feel that way or not, a lot of it is just the fact that we're not willing to even listen after we find something that we disagree with. 

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭43:1  Psalms‬ ‭56:8 Romans‬ ‭15:13‬ Psalms 27:10    www.endabuse.com First Day in Heaven Picture: https://myteashirts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/First-Day-in-Heaven-poster.jpg  Artist Kerolos Safwat              info@endabuse.com

Today,  I just want to jump on real quick, and talk to you about two things that I struggle with the most and the exciting news that we find in scripture about these two things. One is something that I struggle with within myself and the other one is something I struggle with in regards to others.  But we're going to first focus on ourselves, and that is how we feel about ourselves. And the number one word that comes to mind when I think, is “worthless”. That word is something that I have as a description of myself in my own thinking from early, early on. Today as a woman, knowing the Lord and walking with him for several decades. I know that I'm not worthless. I know that I can tell you that because of the blood of Jesus, I am not worthless. But it doesn't change the fact that we have an enemy that tries to convince us of that. Sometimes on an hourly basis.  It's something that we have to learn to fight against or else we will find ourselves slipping down into that mentality. And I learned long ago, you can't just stop thinking about something.  You can't remove it from your mind unless you replace it with something else. So, you know, kind of like if someone says to you,  Okay,  “don't think about a blue elephant, don't think about a blue elephant”,  what are you thinking about right now, a blue elephant. Okay, so you have to give them something to think about to replace the thought of that blue elephant. So today we are going to look at the scripture and have some actual ammunition. This is the Word of the Lord, this is how we fight our battles, right, this is what we do with the enemy. And these are some words that are coming out, worthless, you know, broken, whatever words that you identified when you think like that. These are some scriptures that I think are really going to help you, but what I would do is, pick one that resonates with you, and then memorize it and then that way, it's just there.  No matter where you are.   You don't have to have your Bible with you. It's just there, no matter where you are, you replace those crazy thoughts with one of these. Okay, so one is.  “But now, Oh Jacob, Listen to the Lord who created you, oh Israel, the one who formed you says,  “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” This is Isaiah 43:1. Now what stood out to me here is,  “I have called you by name, okay this is this the God of the universe.  He literally called you by name, like he knows my name. He knew what name that my parents would pick for me when I was born, He already knew it. Okay, so this God, that, and everything He would say came into being. He also knows my name. Then, on top of that, he says, You are mine.  Okay for those of us who feel like we are worthless and we are broken, and maybe we've been abandoned, or we don't trust the people that should have protected us because they pushed us away or whatever your situation is.   When someone claims you as their own, there is a sense of worth. There's a sense of belonging to whatever that is.   Sometimes it's a family member.   Sometimes it's a church. This is saying, I belong to God. There is no better place or a person to belong to. He says, You are mine. And that is something that, when I am feeling like I have literally no value, I have to stop and remember, that is the lie of the enemy.  That is a lie from the pit of hell.  I have one thought, that Jesus hanging on a cross and that thought of worthlessness has no value and goes away pretty quickly. 

Scripture References Romans 8:39  Proverbs 22:6 Genesis 50:20 Philippians 4:13 Romans 6:23 Galatians 1:15 Acts 22 Judges 11: 30

TRIGGER WARNING:  Some listeners may find the content of this episode disturbing because of trauma or bad experiences in their lives.  Some stories may trigger emotionally disturbing memories.

Today's a deep dive into shame: What causes shame, the effects of shame, and where the feelings of shame come from. Let me first say, this episode I want to share a part of my life with you. That #1, I am not ashamed of;  #2, God has delivered me from!  And if I don't share it, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the Lord because the miracle of my life, including this part of it is just that, “the miracle”. The fact that I am where I am today. Having experienced some of the things that I've experienced by my own doing and decisions that I made, of course, based on things that happened to me and how that made me feel, but as an adult, the decisions that I made, those things could have taken the worst turn in my life and I could be in a pit in Mexico somewhere.  And would not even be here today to tell you what the Lord has done.  So it's important to me to explain to you what the Lord's done in my life and how He's delivered me and another thing is that it is also evidence that there is nothing that you can ever do,  ever ever ever,  to go so far that God's arms of grace cannot reach you. I always tell people when you're dangling over the pit of hell, and you have somebody that comes and rescues you from that and pulls you up and puts you on solid ground, it is really really difficult not to talk about Him. It's kind of like when we first fall in love right?  All of my friends when I met Jim, knew immediately, and probably got sick of hearing about him because he was the love of my life and I wanted to tell everybody that I was so excited about him. Well, that's the same way I feel about the way Jesus rescued me and that's why it's really hard for me not to talk about Him.  A lot of that is included in this story and why I'm so passionate about what He's done for me and what I'm doing you can do in your life as well. When I was about 18 years old, (I graduated from high school a little bit early as I had barely turned 17 when I graduated from high school, so I had already graduated), I was waiting tables and I was dating a guy.  At that point was looking for somebody to fix my life.  The identity that I knew was mine, which was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and somebody who's worthless and broken, I just wanted all of those feelings to go away. And so this guy I was dating at the time, asked me to marry him, and I was so excited and was just so happy that someone wanted me. At that time, we were going to move to Colorado where his dad was, and help him in his business. Well, when we got there, we were living in the house with him.  One day, I had just gone off to go tan at the tanning salon and was coming out and getting ready, I was approached by another girl that was in the tanning salon.  She asked me just point blank, she said, “Hey, have you ever thought about dancing?”  And of course, I had to explain to her that you know as a Baptist preacher's daughter, we don't believe in dancing and I didn't ever dance because I didn't want to go to hell.  She starts telling me that's not exactly what she meant and that she was talking about exotic dancing.