Christian Author & Encourager

Hope-Filled Fiction and Faith-Filled Reflections for 
 Weary Hearts

These are Karin's favorite scriptures...

Corinne, you speak about healing from emotional pain and past wounds. What caused your emotional pain and wounds?

I had a furious father. To give him some grace, he was in World War II. He was in Holland and a Dutchman and had a lot of PTSD. He had autism and anxiety issues, and in those days, it wasn’t a known subject like it is today—people didn’t talk about it. If you had a problem, you just had a problem, and you kept it to yourself. There was no Google or any information. So my dad was a furious man, and he would take out his anger on my sisters, my mother, and me, and there was a lot of abuse and violence. It was horrendous. It was awful living with him because his anger was so unpredictable, triggered by anything from coffee that was too strong or too weak.

Did you feel you had to tread carefully around him?

Yes. So, I’ve been around the world. I’m in Sydney, Australia, now. But this all happened when I was living in South Africa. I was born in New Zealand. My parents met in New Zealand, but they immigrated to South Africa. And this is where I spent most of my childhood and adult life. South Africa was already a very tense country with all its problems and things going on. So this didn’t help my dad because there was so much anxiety and stress already in the country, so it just escalated his temperament. To make matters worse, the many burglaries and personal misfortunes he experienced, coupled with his refusal to seek help, took a toll on him. In those days, people considered going to counseling a sign of weakness, so they avoided psychologists and talking to someone.

Can you share the moment or the time when you first realized God was restoring those broken pieces in your life? Was that when you got married and started ‌a family?

I think predominantly it was. I had kids; they went to school, and there were parents' meetings. My parents never did all that because they were never involved in my life. So now, I was getting involved in my kids' lives, and I started making friends. As I started talking to my new friends, I realized they shared things I had never experienced. However, I felt blessed because I accepted Jesus at age 12, and with Jesus in my life, I could speak to God about these things. And I'd say, I'm different. I didn't enjoy being different because it was a bad sort of difference; a good difference is fine, but mine was a strange one. I would be in a conversation in a room, and suddenly I would feel uncomfortable, run away, and disappear. Today it's totally different, but in those days I used to get petrified in a crowd.

I used to worry that I could never say the right thing and feel like I was putting my foot in my mouth because I had no social skills, and then Jesus started dealing with me and showing me He had the problem. We tend to think it's everybody else, and people are weird; in actuality, it's you that's weird—you just need to look at the fingers pointing back at you. Then I got hold of some books and tapes on how to be a mother, wife, and woman because my upbringing had not taught me these things, and I had to tiptoe around my dad until I left at 17. I started realizing what is right and godly, and God showed me things that I needed to change. When I embarked on my journey of wanting to change, I realized I couldn't go on like I was, and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired—I didn't like myself or how I treated people. I became overly defensive to protect myself. It was all about me because that's all I knew. My existing skills were useful at home, but I was no longer in that environment and required new skills for social integration. I needed to learn how to be a wife and mother and mix with people. The need for personal change became clear to me, and with God's help, I learned how to fix my problems. 

I’m really glad that God showed you, and He really directs our steps when we ask Him for help. He hears every single one of our prayers, and when we ask Him for help, He’s right there. 

That’s right. And that reminds me of that scripture, Ephesians 3:20. God will do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that we could ask or think. I needed to trust him more abundantly. I had to believe that there was a better life waiting for me, because unless you lay hold of it and believe God for it, you can’t get it. It’s all there for you. God’s provision is for you, but you have to tap into it. And so the first thing you’ve got to do is realize that you need to change. And who likes change? I mean, we don’t even like an app change or a bank account change. We don’t like change. But God is so great. He just takes you on a journey, and it’s your journey, your pace, your time. He leads and guides you. And He did. He worked within me and changed things. And today, I can honestly say, I’m a totally different person. Thank you, Jesus.

Many people feel overwhelmed in life’s storms. What helped you hold on to hope and trust God when everything around you felt heavy and uncertain?

You know, I was very fortunate. When I got saved at 12, the lady who introduced me to Jesus invited me to Sunday school. We could have Sunday school because the school rented out the hall. The reason I went was that my father was present all day Saturday and Sunday. Thankfully, there was not much interaction with my dad, only in the evening. I was in school Monday to Friday and attended Sunday school each week. I decided that a few hours out of the house on Sunday would provide some much-needed breathing space. 

Then the lady who introduced me to Jesus asked the children, “Does anyone need a friend? And I really needed a friend. She said, “Jesus will be your friend for the rest of your life” after I raised my hand. That’s what I need. I really need a friend. And so I invited Jesus into my life. But the beautiful thing is the way she introduced me to Him was that He was with me every moment of every second of every single day. I believe she sensed my body language. Understanding psychology helps you recognize when someone experiences trauma and unhappiness. She likely perceived that, as a 12-year-old, I appeared stressed, withdrawn, and troubled. She encouraged me to always go to Jesus, so I did. I figured that I would put Jesus in my pocket, in my school uniform, and I would talk to Him all day. Everywhere I went all day, every day, talking to Jesus. And today, when I go shopping, I talk to Him, asking Him to show me where the sales are or find whatever I’m looking for and need. I talk to Jesus all day.

I really believe that when I made Jesus my friend, that was a turning point in my life. Jesus led me on this path of how to fix things. But it’s a relationship. You know, you’ve got to find your relationship with God. I stopped identifying with my dad, the abused girl, and my dad’s abuser. I just stopped identifying with that and identified with Jesus. I’m now in Christ. I am a new creature. I abide with Him. He’s with me. And I started to shift my whole mindset, shift my thoughts, everything, to what God says. Not what my dad said about me—You’re nothing. You’ll never be anything. You’re a waste of time. God said that He knew us right from the moment we were in the womb. And then I thought, “Well, my dad and mother might not have wanted me, but God does because He says in scripture, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5) When I read this scripture, I learned He wanted to know me. God knew me, and I was worthy. Whereas with my father, I felt so ashamed and so rejected. But with God, he wanted to know me. And He knew me from the moment of my conception. So that made me feel bigger than. It made me feel worthy of being alive, worthy of being a person. Suddenly, that mentality of “I’m not worth anything, and I’m a worm, and I’m full of shame, and I should never have been born, and why did this happen to me?" God knows me; changed that mentality. And that mind shift was so huge. It totally healed my rejection and my self-confidence. It healed everything and changed my legacy–I’ve been married for forty-nine years. I have two children, both married to beautiful Christian girls. I've got grandchildren who love Jesus, and all this changed because Jesus came into my life.

You went from being a victim to becoming victorious in Christ, replacing the enemy’s lies with God’s truth. 

That's right. You can't go forward with your stinky thinking. If I'm going to go with the mindset of my dad, all I'm going to do is become another version of my father. I'm not saying it's easy because it isn’t, but anything worthwhile is difficult, from making sure you are eating right and taking care of yourself, to working at a job, having a long and successful marriage–everything is hard. Good things are hard to do, but they're worth the reward. Here I am now, years down the road, and it's not as hard anymore. It's become my everyday routine and lifestyle. I have developed my routines around my godly habits. 

In my book, My Journey to Enjoying My Life, I give the 12 life-changing steps of how I went from abuse to being a woman of God. I take 12 steps that God showed me. Each step is a journey, and then I even tell you in the final chapters how to put all these categories together, apply them, and make them a routine. They are definite and reliable. These steps are not just theoretical; they are practical tools designed to help you transform your life. By embracing each step in faith and dedication, you can cultivate a deeper relationship with God and find true fulfillment. If you commit to these 12 steps throughout your life, you will grow into a strong Christian and have success in your life. These are the steps that I did, and they changed my world. I gradually took these actions, and they remain fixed today. I still do all these every day because life is full of routines. Everything is routine. Christian life has to become a routine. Reading your Bible, praying, making your own confessions, and doing the things that we need to do to keep our faith built up is a routine. If we don’t do it for five days, we’re going to go backwards, just as if we don’t eat right for five days, we’re going to put on weight. It’s the same process.

I couldn’t understand why he could be so cruel to a little girl who all she wanted to do was love her daddy. It's upsetting. However, I now understand he lacked what I needed. He was a very troubled man and had a lot of his own problems, and unfortunately, he didn’t seek help. So he just took them out on everybody else. But as I went through the journey of healing, as I let God minister to me and change me over the years, it was very effective. Now, I’m on the other side and can share what I’ve learned and encourage others to take this journey. 

A beautiful testimony from an 86-year-old woman who read Karin's book, My Journey to Enjoying My Life.

If someone watching this is struggling with emotional wounds or feeling hopeless, what would you want them to reflect on about God’s plan for their life?

I want to encourage people that they don’t have to be stuck. You don’t have to live in the history of your abuser. You can’t change your past, but you can change your future. The future is yours. Choose what kind of future you want. Do you want your future to be based on what happened to you and woe is me, and you're the victim? Or are you going to say that’s enough of that? Yes, this happened to me, but I’m done with it. Now I’m going to start living my life. God will heal the hurt. He will help you reframe your mind. He will help you change and take the pain away if you let Him; He will. Then, you will embark on a new life, the one you would live—the life God intended for you. 

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Tabitha Yates

Bestselling author of Jesus and Therapy: Bridging the Gap Between Faith and Mental Health 

These are Tabitha's favorite scriptures...

Tabitha, you speak openly about surviving physical and spiritual abuse. How did you find the courage to break the silence and share your story, and how did your own journey with faith and mental health shape its message?

First, unfortunately, there are a lot of systems in place to protect people in power who are abusive. So when you’re talking about church and spiritual abuse and those things that I went through, that was very scary to talk about, and then when you’re talking about family abuse, nobody wants you to bring that into the light, of course. 

And so I had to walk so closely with Jesus through this process because I needed to know that I knew that He was in it, that He was commanding me to do this, that He was giving me the words because there was so much fear interjected into the whole process, and what if someone sues you, and what if your ex-pastor comes after you, and what if your father comes after you, and all these things where I was like, “Okay, like those are some legitimate fears,” and to be able to open up, that was one of the most significant parts of my healing. I realized that my silence was not protecting me; it was protecting them, and the people who have wounded and hurt me have been avoiding accountability for decades. Therefore, it was a type of reckoning, like I wasn’t going to cover for them anymore, I wasn’t going to hide, and I wasn’t trying to drag them through the middle or bash, and I made sure to change their real names. I was very respectful, but I am going to tell the truth and talk about what I experienced because it doesn’t matter—it did happen. 

And so it was a raw, you know, third, fourth, and fifth healing process for me because I had to get to a place on my own healing journey where it wasn’t triggering to talk about. I wanted to be speaking from a place of healing, not from a place of wounding, because I didn’t want that to be filtered through which I was, you know, saying things to people, and that was really important to me. So, throughout the blessing before the Lord, there were a lot of bathroom floors and sob sessions as I continually surrendered to God, letting Him wash over me and heal me, and letting Him use my story to hopefully go out and heal others. 

I think the book is very much a companion guide because I’m never coming at it from the angle that I’m healed, mainly because of how complex my trauma was—my healing is going to be a lifelong process. So the book is very much like, “Let me come alongside of you and show you what I’ve learned in the last 20 years of healing,” so maybe it will give you a little of a roadmap in areas where it’s still really foggy for you, and that was my hope because I didn’t have the church or parental leadership—I didn’t have anyone walking me through healing, just Jesus, myself and my counselor, so I feel like I was going through this jungle with a machete and clearing a path that did not exist. I’m like, “My goodness, if I can go to someone a few miles back and be like, ‘Here, you know, I cleared a little of the way. Like, here are a few ideas.” Here are a few tips. Here are a few things that got me through and made their healing journey a little easier. That was my heart. There was so much to do, and that was to illuminate a path that had been so hard to carve out, and for other survivors to do it with just a little bit more of a roadmap than I had.

My abuse was spiritual, verbal, emotional, and narcissistic. Every safe adult in my life subjected me to every type of abuse imaginable, so I was incredibly confused and believed, “I guess this is just how grown-ups are, and there’s no safe place.” It led me to become severely suicidal because I’m like, “There’s no way out,” and I couldn’t escape the abuse anywhere I went. 

How did you start your healing process? Can you share a couple of steps you took? Was there anyone in your family or at your church you could go to, or a friend who came along with you, who could share what you were going through?

I unfortunately needed to break before I rebuilt—part of my journey was that my church did not believe mental illness was a legitimate thing at all, so everything was overspiritualized. I was not allowed to go to counseling. Even in the beginning, from having childhood abuse and parents who divorced dramatically, and all the things I’d gone through, where counseling would have been beneficial, I was not allowed to do that. Then it got to the point that it literally led to me overdosing and attempting suicide before I could see a counselor, so it took getting that bad because again, that was the only escape from the abuse and the hell I was in that I could see, and that was the only way out. After that act, I got locked down in a psych ward on suicide watch by the time I was 16 years old.

I was able to start seeing a Christian psychologist, and it took a lot of healing and years to unravel myself from toxic systems and relationships. It also took me growing older and finally being able to make choices for myself—saying, “Okay, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to listen to this person anymore. I’m not going to go to this church anymore.”It took a complete shattering of my faith, because for so long my faith had been placed more in people than in God. I had lived in such a spiritually abusive environment where the message was always, “We speak for God; you don’t hear from Him yourself.” Everything spoken to me in that system was damaging and wounding. I had to completely separate people from God and realize that everything I had been told about Him was not true and not biblical. I had to burn it all down to the ground and start over—rebuild my faith and find the truth for myself. There were two women in my church who would still say hurtful things, though not intentionally—they meant well, but they didn’t understand depression or suicidality. Still, a few people tried to show up for me and love me during that period. But they weren’t the ones who should have been protecting me, sheltering me, or helping me at that point. 

It took a long time to unravel everything I thought I knew about Jesus—what He felt like, what He felt about me—and to rebuild my understanding of His love. I wrestled with believing that He could still love me after all I’d been through. I wondered if I was some disgrace to Christianity because I was depressed and traumatized. I remember pastors and elders telling me things like, “God’s done with you. You’re beyond saving. You’re not even worth saving.” They said God had washed His hands of me—and that permitted them to do the same. I truly believed I was worthless, beyond saving, and that even if God could save me, He didn’t want to. The level of damage that was done to my faith, my psyche, and my sense of self was enormous. It’s taken a lifetime to undo all of that and to rebuild a foundation that actually comes from the truth of Scripture.

My earthly father’s abuse deeply distorted my view of God. On top of that, many of the church leaders I grew up around also abused me, and I ended up projecting all of that brokenness onto Jesus. It took time—and a lot of healing—to finally develop a healthy, personal relationship with Him that wasn’t shaped by my past pain.I reached a point where I had to step away from those people and toxic environments. Everything they poured into me was rooted in lies, not truth. Setting healthy boundaries became necessary for my healing. And I’ve learned that boundaries are not unkind—they’re actually a loving and wise way to protect the heart God gave you.

Many Christians struggle with the idea of seeking therapy and think that it shows a lack of faith. In your book, Jesus and Therapy, you share six false beliefs to help Christians know and understand that faith and therapy work together. Please share about these beliefs.

What encouragement would you give to someone watching who loves Jesus but is quietly battling anxiety, depression, or burnout—and doesn’t know where to start? 

I think there’s no reason for churches not to be trauma-informed, not to have a care team, and not to have people who understand mental health. I think this even extends to awareness training for people with special needs, to make sure we don’t further wound them. Because again, there’s another level of harm when we wound people in God’s name. 

We need to be the safest place. We need to be a place where people can go to heal. And we need to stop being uncomfortable or put off by pain. We also need to stop rushing people through the healing process. So much of what happens is spiritual bypassing—just slapping a verse on someone’s pain and pushing them past actually sitting with what they’ve been through. There is a difference between ruminating for years and actually walking through your trauma. Real healing requires sitting with it. It requires feeling it. And we can’t heal what we won’t name. 

As Christians, we need to become okay with discomfort. We need to be willing to hold space for people—their journeys, their grief, their pain—without feeling like we have the right to tell them how to grieve or how to heal. Of course, we can always point them to the arms of a loving Savior who is walking with them. But we need to be careful and guard our hearts so we don’t inflict more damage on someone who is already at their weakest and most vulnerable. I don’t think there’s any excuse anymore for pastors not to be trauma-informed or to avoid training. There’s so much excellent training available.

When we come to the end of ourselves, God is just beginning. Healing involves both Jesus and therapy. Some healing only Jesus can do. But some healing requires the tools available to us—counseling, support, boundaries, and sometimes medication. God doesn’t require you to suffer alone. He doesn’t call it “more spiritual” to stay silent or avoid help. He wants you to step into the light and seek resources. If Christians have made you feel like you have to silently carry your anxiety or depression as your cross to bear, you don’t. You’re allowed to heal. You’re allowed to address the real trauma in your life. It doesn’t have to be that heavy forever. I didn’t want to carry it for the rest of my life—and for my children’s sake, I wouldn’t. So I chased healing. And now it has become my life’s mission.

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Tom Snow

Founder of the Just to Be Clear Teaching Series, author of The Daily Stand and Set the Captives Free, engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, fisherman, husband, father of five, and grandfather of eight.

 These are Tom's favorite scriptures...

About 50 years ago, you were diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Can you take us back to that season of your life? What was going on? Was it at the same time that you lost your mom, too? 

Yes, this is all involved. This is in the mid-to-late 1960s. And I will make it a little shorter than usual. If I were to tell you the entire story of what happened here, it was both challenging and wonderful when God intervened. This part of my testimony is chapter one of the first book. But in the late 60s, I was a teenager in high school. God gifted me with a good brain, and I loved math and science. I also had an ego, and the way to have my father’s approval was to be an engineer and excel in math and science. My two older brothers didn’t care, but I managed to get his attention. My father didn’t fish or play ball, which I wanted to do. He just wanted to do math and science, and I knew trigonometry by the time I was in the sixth grade; I would sit at the table and learn from my father. I was winning state science fairs in junior high and high school, and one year, I wanted to create a new invention. Manufacturers used asbestos to make car brakes from the time cars were invented, likely until the 1970s and 1980s, because it could withstand high temperatures. Medical studies revealed the dangers of asbestos and the lung diseases that caused cancer and heart disease, but people were mostly unaware of this. It wasn’t like nowadays when we have a ceiling tile break and we go in a hazmat suit because there might be one fiber of asbestos. Well, I did some research; back then, there wasn’t the internet, so I went to the library. My studies revealed that brake shoes worldwide released 60 million tons of asbestos dust into the air annually. Think about that. We worry about one little fiber, and yet here we are, breathing it in and out, wondering why the world has so much sickness. This is one reason I wanted to create an invention to help address that issue. Ego was involved, but I wanted to create an invention to prove to my father what I could do. 

So, I built a device designed to encapsulate every brake system of each wheel. And as you drove down the road, the wind would blow through it, capture it, and put it into a bag in the back that you could dispose of. There was a good intention, but to create the invention, I collected asbestos dust by going to the brake shops, where they had brake dust lying all over the floor. Piles and piles of it because nobody worried about asbestos back then. I would get bags and bags of it, and they would let me sweep it up, bring it home, put it into my invention in the basement, and let it run through the system because you can’t blow it like sawdust; it doesn’t weigh the same. It was heavy and dense because I needed to prove that the wind in my invention could pick it all up and put it in the bag. Initially, it’s not completely sealed, and mounds of dust are flying through the air. Not safe. God gave me brains, but I didn’t have common sense, at least not when I was a teenager. And I already knew the problem with asbestos, even though it wasn’t popular, so I created this invention. My mother, father, and I were the only ones living at home at the time because my two older brothers were away in college and the military, and my parents worked long hours. My mother was the only source of love for me and was my cheerleader. She would come down to the basement with mounds of asbestos dust flying and cheer me on as a good mother would. Fathers in that day were really tough—he disciplined with the belt and the fist. He belonged to a different generation. You didn’t want to be on his bad side.  The following year, I won my state science fair—big deal. And the year following that, my mother got cancer that spread throughout her whole body. The double mastectomy and hysterectomy went into her lymph system, settled in her liver, and killed her. I was devastated because she was the only source of love I had, and now I didn’t care that my invention was patentable or that I won the state science fair. I don’t care about anything because I just killed my mother. That’s the guilt I was carrying as a 14- to 15-year-old boy. Nothing mattered anymore. Thankfully, my mother wasn’t afraid of dying, and she had met the Lord, and He was gracious to show me that later, after I came to know Him. One month after my mom’s passing, I noticed a rock-hard tumor in the middle of my gut that was about the size of a walnut. I knew that was cancer, and I decided I wasn’t going to tell anybody because with the guilt I had, I believed that I deserved to die.

Then, God began to give me this vision day in and day out, and it would make me understand eternity was there and that the world didn’t evolve around me, and I was going to die, and the world wasn’t going to stop when I stopped. One day, as I was sitting home alone, not knowing what to do and afraid of eternity, and hoping that God, who’s way out there, would accept me for what I did to my mother, God spoke to me audibly. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard the audible voice of God in this way. We all can hear the still, small, quiet voice that His word promises us. When He spoke, the entire room filled with sound, like it was roaring thunder, with rivers of living water flowing all around me. And yet so full of love, which dwarfed any love I’d known before. My entire body and being felt that love. His love surrounded me, and the presence of God was so fabulous. I’ve seen and felt his presence in the charismatic movement, but never to this level—it was just beyond anything you can imagine. His presence was there—the God of the universe, who I thought was out there somewhere. I didn’t know if He accepted me for how I had mistreated my mother and for all the guilt I had, but I wanted to get there. When He spoke to me at that moment, He said two things. He said, “I love you,” and "Someday, I’ll provide your perfect mate for you." Now, the first part, He has just proven with the love that surrounded me. There’s no question in the world that this was the love of God, and I was thinking, “The God of the universe took a moment out to talk to me,” and I was astounded. The second part made no sense because God didn’t get the memo that I had a tumor and was going to die—it initially was a walnut. Now it’s about the size of a softball. I thought, “God, don’t you understand? Did you miss the message? I’m out of here soon. I’m doomed to be six feet under. So someday provide a perfect mate for me—yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. No sense at all.” But let’s set that one aside. Maybe He’s been too busy taking care of the world. At the time, that’s all I can think of. Now, I know that He has every hair numbered on my head, but I didn’t know that at the moment. All I knew in that moment was that the God of the universe spoke to me. How do I reach Him? How do I get to meet the God of the universe? Because I’m leaving soon. How, how, how? 

About a month later, my brother Bruce came home from college, walked in the door, and told my father and me a story. He said that he was on an LSD trip, and he called out to the Lord, and the Lord saved him and took him down off the trip. As he tells this story, my father and I's jaws hit the ground. Now, around 1970, our upper-middle-class family didn’t joke about drugs because people considered them as taboo as anything in the world. Nothing more than an aspirin. And my father probably thought Bruce drank with his buddies in college, but that was a wink-wink because he wasn’t even going to accept that. So when Bruce told us he wouldn’t have if it were just a joke, because if my father knew or found out he was doing drugs, he would’ve beaten him within an inch of his life, Bruce took a big chance when he told us this and said that he called out to the Lord. He said that he was on an LSD trip a year prior and had flashbacks for nine months, and he was never going to do it again, but his friends talked him into it. And this time, when he began to trip, he freaked out, but he’d recently heard the gospel and called out to the Lord, and He saved him and instantly sobered him. Bruce had a star-spangled banner and a fireworks encounter with the Lord. As I was listening to his story, I was putting two and two together. The God of the universe talked to me and said He loved me. How do I reach him? And here’s my brother saying that he just reached him. So, for the next day and a half, I asked Bruce, “How do you meet the Lord?” Bruce told me the scriptures and what to do. Well, I repented. I asked the Lord to come into my life, and I didn’t feel squat. Now Bruce got the Star-Spangled Banner, and I got a zero—goose eggs—and I’m like, “I don’t understand.” Now, the scripture is true, and every man is a liar, but in this moment, the lie of the man and the little demon on the shoulder is going, “You know what? God isn’t there. And what you thought happened a month ago, I bet that was just a dream. It probably didn’t happen. There’s no God of the universe who’s going to come down and talk to you, and all of this is baloney.” Suddenly, I go from guilt and grieving my mother to having hope, and the liar of liars now dashes that hope, the God of lies, Satan, and he’s speaking in my ear, going, “That wasn’t really God.” Now, I became angry at God because it seemed like He wasn’t real—He wasn’t available—He was still the God of the universe, far away—and all of a sudden, I went into major rebellion, and I became the worst of the worst.

I left being a brainiac at school, not to do drugs, but to drink, and became a teenage alcoholic at 16 years old. I would drink a fifth of whiskey in two hours and then be proud of it. So now I’m just going to live my worst life before I die, and I would literally wake up on the other side of the road four lanes away, and then wake up, and someone would push me back four lanes to the other side. At this point in my life, I felt I deserved to die because I thought, “The God of the universe doesn’t really love me—I’m nothing good.” There are a lot of badly bruised angels, by the grace of God, who were watching over me. Don’t ever knock praying relatives. 

Eventually, I sold everything I had and persuaded my father to buy me this little motorcycle, but to do that, I had to get a job and obtain a food handler’s permit, which was the only job available to a 16-year-old in 1970. Well, to get the license, I had to go to the county clinic and get an X-ray and a blood test, and I knew that this was going to give up my secret that I’ve been holding onto for six months, and then my father would know. He doesn’t show love, but maybe he could put his arm around me and somehow comfort me. I don’t care if he doesn’t find me medical help because I thought that I deserved to die. I wanted that little motorcycle so bad, so I got the blood test and X-ray, and in a few days, I got my permit in the mail. However, while walking home, I saw my dad’s car, which was strange because he usually worked long hours. And as I came up to the door, I knew because I knew. After all, I knew he had gotten the letter that day from the county clinic showing the tumor inside my abdomen and, probably, if they did an extensive blood test, could see it coursing through my veins. When I walked in the front door, I saw my father building a fire on an 85-degree day in April. He loves fire, but you don’t need one on this day. When I saw him, he looked at me and immediately threw the letter into the fire. I have a really sarcastic side to me, and I asked him, “What are you doing? He replied, “Nothing.” I preceded by saying, “Why did you build a fire?” And he said, “I’m just burning trash.” I continued by saying, “Really? Hey, what did you throw in the fire? That looks like a letter. Was that a letter?” And my father denied it by saying, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s just trash.” And I’m like, “Sure you are.” I decided to back off and give him some space so he could process what was happening, as he had recently lost his wife and would soon lose his son as well. I knew I was going to die for seven months, and he just found out. 

About a week later, I come walking in from high school again, and his car and another car are in the driveway. When I walk in the house, two insurance agents are sitting in the living room with my father, and he says to me, “Tommy, come on in. Why don’t you talk to these guys?” My father was taking out a life insurance policy on me, and inside, I was burning up with anger, and I felt like hitting the roof. So I’m thinking to myself, “Are you kidding me? Now, I understand you’re grieving my mother, your wife. I understand you just found out about me, but are you kidding? No medical attention or care for me, and he’s planning to take out a fraudulent life insurance policy on me. We’re an upper-middle-class family. Maybe he needs enough to bury me? Maybe it’s a small insurance policy to help pay the costs of burying me, so I played along as he sells them this song and dance. 

Remember, I have this mind that God gave me, and I’m calculating; what am I really going to do instead of just blowing it for him here? Let me think about how I can angle this for me now. Ultimately, the insurance agents said, “Tom, we’ll need to go get a clean bill of health; have him go see his doctor and get a clean bill of health, and we can grant it.” At that point, my father jumps in, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Tommy’s in sports. He’s been in sports and gets a physical every year. Didn’t you take one about six months ago, Tommy?” That part was the only truth he was saying. I replied, “Yeah, I did. Well, back when I went to school, a boy’s physical consisted of their height, weight, blood pressure, and ‘turn your head and cough’—it doesn’t check you for cancer. My father continued to tell them, “Hey, I could go get a copy from Tommy’s doctor and give it to you. Would that work? They said, “Oh, okay, that’s fine,” and they granted the policy. Well, if it had only been a few thousand dollars, even no more than 10,000, whatever, it would have been one thing. But by today’s standards, it would have been worth millions. My father was going to cash in on my death. Now my anger is no longer just at God—now I’m angry at my father too. We had a decent relationship in terms of math and science and got along fine, but now I hate my father and harbor deep wrath and unforgiveness. 

I went berserk and sold everything I had. With the money, I bought an old Harley—just boxes of parts—and built it into a chopper. Not only did I start drinking, but I also began riding with motorcycle gangs. If you remember the Hell’s Angels, I rode with them. At just sixteen years old, with hair halfway down my back, grease-stained clothes, and hands constantly rebuilding that bike, I looked like a complete scuzzball. For eight months after asking the Lord into my life, I was in total turmoil. The devil had his way with me, whispering in my ear, laughing as I ran deeper into destruction.Anger and unforgiveness consumed me, becoming strongholds that pushed me downhill fast. The devil played me like a fiddle. I thought I was independent and even claimed to be a “happy agnostic,” but Jesus said, “If you’re not with Me, you’re against Me.” There’s no middle ground. The path is narrow, and I wasn’t on it.During those eight months, I kept trying to get my motorcycle running right because I had a plan: to blackmail my father. Every time I rode to the city limits, the bike broke down. It was as if an angel stood in my way with a sword, making sure I never got far. I planned to tell my father I knew about the fraudulent life insurance policy he had taken out on me and demand thousands of dollars to fund one last ride across the country. Secretly, I intended to end that ride at the Grand Canyon—driving my Harley off the edge—but God had other plans. And He gave me a praying mother.Prayer is powerful. It doesn’t always get answered when or how we want, but it is heard. My mom’s prayers, even when I felt nothing, were protecting me. I thought I had asked Christ into my life and got nothing in return, while my friend Bruce had this dramatic experience. But I didn’t realize my guilt, hate, and unforgiveness were blocking everything.One night, sitting with my biker friends, drinking cheap wine, the conversation turned—strangely—to spiritual things. I told them about Bruce, expecting laughter and scoffing, but none came. So I told them about my own attempt at asking the Lord into my life, saying, “Nothing happened.” The moment the words left my mouth, conviction hit me. I knew I was wrong, and in an instant, the rivers of living water Jesus promised in John 7 broke through. His presence flowed from deep within me. Suddenly, I was sober. I looked at my biker friends and said, “I have to go.” I rode home that night fully sober, entirely changed, and fully aware of the true and living God who loved me and had been there all along.From that moment, everything shifted. I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore. I knew where I was going. To live is Christ, to die is gain. I was finally free to live in God’s love. My high school classmates couldn’t believe the transformation—from brainiac to biker to “Jesus freak.” But I didn’t care. I told everyone about the love of God.God led me to a church where I could grow. I devoured the Word daily, learning to hear His still, small voice. I learned to discern His voice from the others. And in those days of the Charismatic Movement, the power of God was everywhere—healings, hours of worship, and the tangible presence of the Spirit.Meanwhile, a tumor inside me that had started the size of a walnut had grown larger than a football, hard as a rock. I had lived with pain for years, but I didn’t care because I thought I’d soon be with my Heavenly Father. Then one night, while riding my motorcycle and talking to God, He spoke clearly: “Do you see in Isaiah where I said, ‘By His stripes you are healed’?” “Yes, Lord.” “Do you see in 1 Peter where I said, ‘By His wounds you were healed’?” “Yes.” He then said, “Isaiah was looking forward to the cross. Peter was looking back. I completed everything at the cross. Would you like that healing?” I halfheartedly said, “Sure, whatever.” But in that moment, something changed. Within 24 hours, the tumor that had consumed my body dissolved completely. It melted away, leaving no trace. God had saved my soul, rescued my life, and even healed my body. 

To hear more of Tom’s testimony shared on Truth, Talk & Testimonies, listen to the broadcast beginning at the 43:00-minute mark. In this segment, Tom explains, “We can’t walk in God’s authority without His anointing.” Like the Bereans in Acts 17, he encourages us to study the Word, pray, and dwell in God’s presence. What does it truly mean to be “in Christ” and fully yielded to Him? Tom also shares how God healed him from unforgiveness, along with insights into his ministry and books.

Tom's Ministry Site, Books, and Social Media Platforms

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Dawnita Fogleman

Award-Winning Journalist, Homestead and Preparedness Coach, Published Author, and Founder & Creator of Prairie Dust Trail

These are Dawnita's favorite scriptures...

Dawnita, you grew up in a house that practiced New Age and were actually raised to become a Native American medicine woman. How did that all come about? 

I have Native American on both sides of my family. Unfortunately, I did not inherit the lovely extra melanin. I’ve got very little, so I’m white as paper, but I was a teen pregnancy, and my mother left when I was around 18 months old. She was a hippie, and she went and hitchhiked across the country. It was a typical hippie thing. My dad was in the Navy. After that, he went back home to the farm and ranch, where he was a cowboy. He remarried when I was four. Nobody really attended church in my family. One of my great-grandmothers attended church, and that was about it. My stepmother would read the Bible, but my grandmother, with whom I lived a lot, took me to her medium. And then when I was about five or six years old, I was allowed to go to a vacation Bible school. We had a little country church on a hill out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s a good 30 minutes from any town. I was about five or six years old when I asked Jesus into my heart because I didn’t think I was going to survive to grow up.

How come you felt that you wouldn't survive to grow up?  

Because my father was abusing me in every way, but I didn’t know any different, because that was just life for me. Still, I really didn’t know if I would survive to grow up, so I wanted Jesus to help me be a good person while I was here, and I wanted to know that I was going to be with Him whenever I passed away. 

So anyway, when I was eight years old, I met my mother. And when I was ten, I moved in with her. She was a drug user, and she taught me tarot cards and other New Age things in addition to what my grandmother taught me. And I would have manifestations of evil spirits and the familiar spirits. 

I married a preacher’s son, and after we married, I realized the houses we lived in were haunted, so I needed deliverance. After we had our second child, an opportunity came up in the church we were attending to go to a ladies’ retreat. And up to that point, whenever people would come to visit our house, they would hear and see things. So it wasn’t just me who was noticing weird things going on. It would sound like bells tinkling, or things scurrying, or children playing, and you could even hear them on the nursery monitor. Thus, it was a physical thing that was audible. I was encouraged by the church ladies to join their retreat. When I asked my husband, he initially thought it was pricey, but the following day, he arrived home with a check covering the retreat’s cost. And he said, “I guess the Lord wants you to go.” And so I went. And it was a holy roller retreat, which, I love my full gospel friends, but I am so not. I had one preacher’s wife who said it’s kind of like the difference in flavors of ice cream. Some of us are chocolate, some of us are vanilla. And she said, “And I’m Rocky Road.” I decided that I’m chocolate almond; I’m a little nutty. While at the retreat, they didn’t do deliverance, but they did several things that were like object lessons. And one of them was that they gave us all little wooden crosses and nails, and we would talk about things and burdens that we needed to give to the Lord. We were encouraged to talk about what that burden was and then nail it on the cross. And there were several little things like that, and just being able to speak openly with other women about things that I had gone through that I had never been able to talk about before. My husband would tell you to this day that when I came home from the retreat, there was a considerable change.

I can’t tell you much about the conference itself, but I know the Lord worked on me, and that’s what we need to remember. Paul’s dad was a preacher and an evangelist, and he always would say, “God’s Word doesn’t return to Him void,” so it doesn’t matter who’s preaching God’s Word or who’s sharing God’s Word and where people are in their walk, but if they’re sharing it, then His Word can still touch, and it’s still powerful. After the retreat, I prayed for a spiritual mentor, because I wasn’t raised in the church and didn’t know a whole lot, but I wanted to raise our family in the Lord's ways. So I prayed for a mentor, and He sent me a holy roller homeschool mom who was very confident and got out there and got things done. She challenged me in so many ways. And she saw my crystal ball and my tarot cards that I still had, and she said, “Why do you still have these things in your house? I told her, “Well, they’re keepsakes.” And she said, “Well, are those really why you have them? Or is that what the spirits are trying to tell you?” And then she left. She didn’t push the issue or be judgmental or anything; she just asked a question to challenge me lovingly. And you know what? The second she walked out that door and went out of the driveway, I threw them all away. I got rid of it because I didn’t want to take a chance. I not only threw those away, but I also went through the house and got rid of anything mystical or magical that I had. I got rid of them, even the Disney princess movie with magic in it. The whole kit and caboodle—I just cleaned house and got rid of anything mystical, magical, or anything that could be in the least bit, and started focusing on God’s Word. This was huge and exactly what we needed to get grounded in my faith and solid in His Word, and once I did this, He started bringing things back into my life and showing me His creation and what He made, like the constellations, and then I wrote a book about the constellations and prophecy. I did it as a homeschool project for our family because I wanted to look into this. And I did coloring pages to go with it, and because so many of the pictures of the constellations are not modest, I made a coloring book so that we could have modest constellation images. So I did this with my children, and it’s based on a book written in the 1800s, giving the prophecy that’s in the stars—and God put the complete story of Jesus in the constellations for us. And it’s fascinating. I did this scrapbook project with my children for homeschooling and other moms. They encouraged me to put it in a curriculum for them because they wanted to do this with their children. The stars are being redeemed for their original purpose, biblically. It was because of the stars that everybody knew, or had the chance to know, that Jesus was coming, because all they had to do was look at the stars. It’s amazing! And then, the Lord started bringing me more, and on my YouTube channel, I wear this fabulous tinfoil hat.

Yes. Can you explain why you wear a tinfoil hat? 

Christians, who were raised in the church, have an attitude about some things, and they think, “Oh, this is New Age. We can’t touch that because it’s New Age. God created the heavens and the earth. He created crystals, herbs, and essential oils. And in the Bible, God explains to us ways to use some of these things. So you have Christians who will be afraid of crystals. In scripture, people used crystals and gemstones primarily for adornment and ritual purposes, most notably in the High Priest Aaron’s God-designed breastplate, which bore twelve gems representing the twelve tribes of Israel. And yet, we have Christians doing yoga in their churches, which is actually preparation for death. So my New Age background gives me a background that people who have been raised in the church don’t have, and it gives me a perception of some of the ancient things, along with an understanding of some of the cultural stuff in the Bible that other people may not understand. And I’m able to pull those together. So through Prairie Dust Trail, we’re able to explore historical topics and talk about Bigfoot, UFOs, and other topics on my channel. I talk to other believers about these things and how they fit into the Bible, what they really are, and how we stand against the evils that are in this world and protect our family and teach our family about these things so that they can have discernment.

A lot of people counterfeit what Christ has done, right? 

Right. That’s what the devil does. He camouflages things. A good example is the sage that witches will burn and have the smoke of sage around their house, but people don’t realize that hyssop in the Bible and sage are basically very closely related plants. The witches, pagans, and those in the New Age take things from the Bible because that’s the original source, and they take those things and twist them and do other things with them, so it’s not the sage that’s bad. It’s how they’re doing it. Hyssop was used for cleansing in the Bible. So if you go back to the Bible and see how it was used, you can realize that it’s okay to use hyssop, but we’re going to do it differently than the way the witches do it, with sage. There are a lot of fun things to think about, and God created the heavens and the earth with frequency. He spoke everything into existence.

You teach people things like preparedness and homesteading, but you also provide something equally important—a community. A place where people don’t feel isolated and can safely share the things they’re noticing in the world that just don’t make sense.

Right. And it’s this kind of uncertainty that often makes people fearful about the future. But the Bible repeatedly tells us to be prepared. Proverbs 31 is a perfect example: the virtuous woman wasn’t afraid of the winter because she had her household ready. Many passages show that if we are prepared—spiritually with God in our hearts and physically in our lives—we’re far less likely to panic. We live in a broken world. Catastrophes, both big and small, will happen, and traumatic experiences are inevitable. But panic comes from fear of the unknown—and God has not given us a spirit of fear. When we look at the strange, confusing events in the world through a biblical lens, we can prepare for the worst while still hoping for the best. I don’t teach self-sufficiency because I don’t believe in it. I believe in God-sufficiency. He is enough. Wherever He places us, it is sufficient. We are called to be Him-reliant, not self-reliant.

I also teach the importance of rest. Many churches today teach that the Old Testament doesn’t matter or that Jesus did away with the law—but He didn’t. He came to fulfill it—something as simple as Sabbath was designed for our benefit: our rest. Yet so many people are constantly overwhelmed and stressed because they’ve forgotten how to pause. I tell people, “I don’t care what day you take it—just take that one day of rest.” When you do, your life begins to change. We were never meant to work 24/7. Jeremiah 6:16 talks about “the ancient paths,” and then laments, “But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” It’s sad because God told us to follow His ways, but we often ignore them. Rest isn’t just a break—it’s a way to refill our cups. We don’t fill the cup ourselves; God does. And when our cup overflows, that blessing naturally spreads to others. Too often, especially as women, we try to pour from empty cups. But God designed it so that first He fills us, and then we overflow into the lives of others.

Watch how being prepared saved Dawnita's children's lives during a catastrophic Oklahoma wildfire.  

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Founder of The Christian Rebel YouTube Channel & Ministry

These are Bret's favorite scriptures...

Heavy responsibility and emotional pain marked your childhood. Please share about your childhood and the pressure you felt growing up. How did this affect you? 

Well, it started back in 1984. I was only 11 years old when my dad relocated his whole family to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to attend Bible college. The first year went okay. But when we moved right into town, to Colorado Springs, that’s when it started going downhill. I’m the youngest of three, and my oldest brother, Brian, had muscular dystrophy, so he couldn’t take care of himself. And my next-oldest brother, Pat, got involved in drugs, alcohol, and all kinds of stuff. So, at a young age, I had to take care of my oldest brother while my parents were away at Bible college. And my other brother was never home, so I was 11 years old, having to help my oldest brother use the bathroom, get him any food he needed, and just about anything. And there were times my other brother would come home so high that he couldn’t even take care of himself. He basically would stumble down the stairs and go to sleep. It was tough. And I felt the pressure at a young age to take care of my oldest brother because no one else did during the day. For years, I felt bitterness and resentment towards my mom, dad, and brothers. There were times even when my dad had to defend himself during fistfights between my brother Pat and him. One night, they ended up in my bedroom. My dad was holding my brother down, saying, “I love you.” And my brother would say, “I hate you.” So here I was at 10, 11, and 12, and all this was going on at home, and it was so hard at such a young age. Additionally, a doctor diagnosed me with an overactive thyroid. My heart was beating 175 times a minute when they discovered it, and at 12 years old, they told me that I might have thyroid cancer on top of everything else going on, but I thank God I didn’t have cancer, and the doctors could bring it under control with medication. My dad graduated from Bible college in 1987 or 1988, and we moved to Maine, where he got his first church. To me, this was the happiest time of my life because my brother Pat stayed in Colorado. I was glad to get away from him, so it was just me, my older brother, my mom, and my dad in Maine. The pressure was immense, but it was better, and I would take care of my oldest brother all over again if I could. 

What kind of things did you do during that hard time to try to cope? Did you use healthy coping mechanisms? How did you do that at that young age? 

I would go away and escape by going to my bedroom a lot and playing with my toys. My bedroom was my sanctuary. I would go in there and shut the door, and sometimes I would cry. I said, “God, please end this. I don’t want to be here anymore.” And, I thought about ending my life at a young age, but I didn’t dare to go through with it, thank God. You mentioned that a puppy played a surprising role in saving your life during that season of deep depression. Can you share more about that moment and how God used something so simple to bring hope?Yes. In 1989, my brother Brian, the one who had muscular dystrophy, passed away. So I was around 15 and I was in deep depression because there were times that I wasn’t nice to my brother Brian, which was wrong of me. I would look back on the past and feel sad that I didn’t do more for him, and I felt so awful when he passed that I wanted to end my life. The very day I was going to take my life, I got home from school, and there was this little puppy dog named Mason there. I ran down the hall and I said, “Mom, is this our dog?” And she said, “It’s your dog.” So I thought to myself, I have to take care of this animal now, and I couldn’t end my life. I think my mom knew how much I was struggling. The dog helped save my life, and we saved Mason’s life too because his former owner abused him. It was the owner’s wife who called my mom to ask her if she wanted a puppy. And she said, “Yes.” We saved each other’s lives. 

At one point, you had one foot in the world and one foot trying to follow Christ. How did you get to the point where you stayed solid in your walk with Jesus and completely surrendered and never looked back? 

I was flip-flopping back and forth, basically from when I graduated from high school in ‘92, for about five years. I would go to church on Sundays and then live like the rest of the world, drinking and doing some drugs. Thankfully, I didn’t get into the hard stuff because, even though I wasn’t a Christian, I knew I didn’t want to live like I was. In 1998, my dad scheduled a revival week at the church. Believe it or not, it was the same week as my birthday, and on August 13th, 1998, we had extraordinary ministers come in to share. I don’t remember the preacher’s name. I wish I did, but he preached a powerful service, and the message was about counting the cost from Luke 14. And it made me think, “Am I willing to follow Christ?” And that day, I made my first confession. I repented of my sins and began my journey with Christ, and it happened to be on my birthday. I experienced two births on my birthday. I was born and reborn. In Luke 14:26-27, it says that you must hate mother, father, brother, sister, and daughter, and even be willing to give up your own life. So that means you put Christ first. You count the cost and deny yourself. You take up your cross and follow him. Whatever that cross is, my cross was my childhood and what I went through, because I believe God can turn your mess into a message where you can help other people. And whatever that cross is, sometimes you have to embrace it because if I didn’t go through what I went through, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

What encouragement or practical steps would you offer to someone who wants to live boldly for Jesus, but they’re still feeling stuck? Can you give some advice or encouragement? 

Seeking guidance and help is number one. Especially over the past 5-10 years, I’ve been mentoring people and talking with them and saying, “Hey, if you need anything, give me a call.” Be a friend and an ally for them. If you’re fighting an addiction, go to someone you trust, like a friend, and say, “I need help.” And there are also recovery groups, like Celebrate Recovery. I used to go there with a friend as moral support when he was struggling with an addiction. So, seek help and guidance, and if you need to see a therapist, I recommend a Christian therapist and getting into God’s word. I use the verse Romans 12:2 for The Christian Rebel, which says, “Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Then you will be able to test and prove what God’s will is.” So when you do not conform, it means you stop doing what the rest of the world’s doing and you get into God’s word and renew your mind and pray. I came up with my channel’s name from this verse because what does a rebel do? They don’t conform, so I thought, okay, there are two ways to be a rebel. You can either rebel against God and conform to this world or rebel against this world and conform to Christ. I want people not to conform to this world anymore, but to follow Christ. And I hope that through our channels, we can help people deepen their walk with Christ.

You’re teaching and encouraging others now through The Christian Rebel YouTube channel. What is one message of truth that you believe the church and especially this next generation needs?

That you do not conform. You don’t live like the world. You deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. That’s the problem with this world—many people are conforming. You can search on the internet anywhere, and you can see other denominations and churches allowing sin into our churches, and they’re going along with the culture. They’re conforming to the patterns of this world, preaching false doctrines and gospels, and going along with the rest of the world. And now if the church would follow this one simple Scripture—"Do not conform"—I think it would be a whole different world because the outside world is seeing all these so-called Christians living like the world and thinking they’re a bunch of hypocrites. Now, am I perfect? No, I make mistakes. But with Christ’s help, I do my best because I want to follow Him. There’s that Scripture verse that says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways…” from 2 Chronicles 7:14. If we conform to Christ and follow His ways and Scripture, we will humble ourselves and repent of our sins—revival starts right here with me and with you. If we repent first and say, “God, I need your help.” I repent of my sins, and then that’s where revival starts, with us, and then we can share our message with other people—this is what Christ did for me, and He could do the same for you. 

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Kimberly Larsen

Coaching, Online Training, Counseling, and Author of Soul Set Free

These are Kimberly's favorite scriptures...

Kimberly, can you share a bit of your early life and how events like your parents' divorce and relocation impacted you and your emotional journey?

I was born into a Christian home, which provided an excellent upbringing in a small farming community. In my early childhood, I don't have any memories of ever feeling anything but loved, safe, and happy. When I was 9 years old, though, my parents divorced, and my world got a little shaken from that.

We moved off the farm and into town. So, that was a whole new world. And that is when I started to feel anxious and insecure. I knew I was loved, so nothing was terribly wrong, and yet my heart felt bruised—I had a hard time getting started again. And then as soon as I got comfortable in that place, we moved again. And I think it was like a double whammy where that pain I had already begun to feel was reinforced. And I didn't fully realize at the time that I had a broken heart because of that. I was trying to keep up with what was happening and do the best I could. And so there wasn't like one big accident or anything like that, but it was just this doubling up of the same type of pain happening twice. Kids are resilient, and so I think that, from a parent's perspective, they're doing pretty well. Even if you asked them, they would likely say, "I'm okay." I think a lot of what was going on was deeper than I understood, and it started to show up later on when I started hanging out with the wrong friends. So as a teenager, I began to walk away from my faith kind of—I never completely left my faith, as I always continued to believe in God, but I was looking for attention and friendship and love, and, you know, I didn't have a lot of parent supervision because my mom was a single mom working and my dad wasn't in the picture. We did a lot of things to keep ourselves entertained, and none of it seemed all that bad at the time. However, it eventually got worse.

You experienced an abusive relationship in your teen years that led to the beginning of spiritual battles. What were some of the doors that opened that may have caused demonic influence and oppression, and how did that affect your life?

For a long time, I thought that it was because of the abusive relationship as a young teen that the demonic oppression came, and that was the door that I had opened. Still, then, the Lord brought me back to some other memories and showed me that I started having these demonic nightmares right before the relationship began. And so that helped me to understand that it was probably a generational door that had been opened even before me. There was similar abuse in my mom's and grandmother's lives, so what happened is I started having attacks in my dreams, but then I would wake up, and I would still feel the attack. So I would feel choking happening, and this extreme, intense fear in the room. It happened over and over, almost nightly, where I was having terrifying dreams, and it went on for years and years. There were times when I woke up, and in the dream I was dreaming that somebody was banging my head, and I woke up and it was actually happening, and then I would have a headache the next day. So it was a dream, yet it was also becoming a reality. They were spiritual attacks in my sleep that are known as sleep paralysis. 

Were you able to talk to your mom about what was happening?

I kept a lot of this a secret because when I talked about it at all with people, I could sense right away that they were kind of like, What? And I just was afraid to talk about it. I didn't discuss it much. I would say to people that I was having nightmares, but I wouldn't explain to what extent. Sometimes I would have wild animals in my dreams that were chasing me. Those I would talk about. So, everybody knew that I had bad nightmares, but the actual experiences with the spirits—that part I wasn't sure how to talk about. It wasn't until later in my life, after I got married, that I started speaking up about it. And even then, people did not know what to say to me. And so, I thought it was just spiritual warfare and that this was one thing that Christians had to deal with. I learned that if I said the name of Jesus, it would stop, so I thought, 'Okay, this happens to people.' You speak Jesus' name, and then it stops. But I did not realize that I could get free of the nightmares. If you speak the name of Jesus, in that very moment, the evil one needs to flee from you. There’s a Bible verse that says… “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7. I always thought it was resist the devil and he will flee from you. And it was later that I realized I truly understood the beginning of the verse: 'Submit to the Lord.' And so your life needs to be submitted right to Him. And when you submit to Him in your everyday life, you will not receive the same attacks as if you're only using His name to ward off a nightmare. As I walked daily with Him, I learned that I was more in authority and dominion. I had to overcome a spirit of fear because I was terrified of these evil spirits, and I'm not afraid of them anymore. If I have even the smallest experience with them now, I'm ready to fight them, and I know my authority, and I know they have to flee in Jesus’ name, but it took years of building myself up to understanding my authority, and there was a lot that I didn't understand about Christianity—there were a lot of missing pieces for me, and as those pieces came together, the stronger I became. Now, I'm not just fighting my own battles. I'm helping other people fight theirs. And we can think we know who we are, but we need to study who God says we are in Him and truly know and understand it. And in fact, I realized that it was wrong of me to believe anything less than who God says I am. And I was pretty insecure, and God doesn’t want us to have a spirit of fear. He wants us to have a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. So if you’re somebody who is walking in timidity, you need to actually repent of that and then ask the Lord to help you grow into boldness and to be who you're called to be as a son or daughter in Christ. 

What was the turning point for you—when did you realize you needed to surrender to God fully, and what did that surrender look like?

There were a couple of turning points. One was that I got lost in addiction. I was drinking and partying all the time with my friends. I was smoking. I was even, I would say, even addicted to my friends because I felt I needed to be with them. I think I was looking for attention and love, and that's why I loved my friends so much - because I just felt like I was part of something. You know I could not stop on my own, and I got afraid and then rededicated my life to the Lord, and I was delivered from those addictions overnight. I'm so grateful that the Lord pulled me out of that. 

Secondly, when I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time—the first time was hard enough, and I prayed my way through that and survived. And then two years later, it had returned in a different area, and I kind of just gave up. And I just said, “I give up, Lord. If you want my life, take it.” I was tired of hoping and trying to stand on my faith, only to feel like it was when I received bad news. In that moment, I said to Him, "But if this is an evil attack on my life, I refuse to die early before my time." And that is when I started to experience deliverance, without even knowing what it was, because I began to cough and almost dry-heave. Then, I felt a beautiful presence come into my room. I couldn't see anything, but it was as if I were enveloped in a cloud of peace and joy. I had a beautiful experience, and the spirit of fear left me; I was no longer afraid of my situation. Even though it was still a terrifying diagnosis, I felt a presence from heaven. I just knew God was doing something, and that I needed to trust Him. So, I Googled… “Can Christians need deliverance?” Or something like that, and this YouTube channel came up that said how to be self-delivered. And as I followed through with that and prayed for renunciation, asking God to deliver me, I experienced even more deliverance. 

And for a week after that, I felt like I was walking on clouds. I was so excited—it was the most wonderful feeling, like nothing you could experience on earth, that is for sure, and so I had this self-deliverance. Then I became curious: I needed to understand what had happened to me more, and I wondered why nobody had told me about this before. I searched through the scriptures, and it's all in the Bible; Jesus performed many deliverances. Then I embarked on a longer journey, and I experienced many more significant and minor deliverances. After that, it set me on a path of inner healing because a lot of the places I needed deliverance were tied to emotional pain. And when I had that emotional pain healed, then that was when I no longer needed deliverance anymore.

Is there anything else you can encourage others about if they need deliverance, based on your experience? 

Yes. Deliverance is truth chasing away lies, just as it is when Jesus says, 'I came to set the captives free.' Much of our captivity lies within our minds, and even a tear rolling down someone's cheek who has just realized that when they thought they weren't loved, they are loved. I see that as deliverance. Some people are stuck in addiction like I was and they can't get out and when they truly ask God for help, and He makes a way for them, that's deliverance. Someone who is constantly emotionally triggered by people or circumstances. When they realize that there's a reason for the trigger that's causing them to feel angry, jealous, or insecure, if they can find out where their soul was hurt and go back to address it, they will find that they're set free and no longer triggered. And so I think a lot of deliverance has to do with emotional health. There are many things that deliverance is. God could deliver you from one place to another, or He could deliver you from believing a lie to understanding the truth. He could deliver you from a toxic relationship. Deliverance is vast, and it’s something that God has for us. He wants us delivered, set free, and walking in who we are meant to be. He wants the things that hold us back to come off of us so that we can then do the things that we are assigned to do on this earth and do His Kingdom work. And until we personally experience the deliverance we need, we are held back from reaching our full potential. Deliverance doesn't have to be scary. Some people are highly demonically oppressed, and they need serious deliverance. Others simply need to be guided through exercises using Scripture that help them with forgiveness and other aspects of their lives, because Scripture is truth. If we don’t fully understand scripture, we might need someone to help us unpack that truth. 

How is inner healing different from someone simply moving on, and what practical steps helped you walk it out?

Yeah, it's so different when you invite the Holy Spirit into a situation, like you can have freedom from a problem that you've been getting counseling for, for 20 years, in one second with the Holy Spirit. So, I would say that inner healing is about asking God to reveal the hurt places in your heart and to search your heart to find them. And you'd be surprised. They're not always the big, bad, scary things. A lot of it comes from when you're young because you don't yet have the capacity to cope emotionally. And you know, time does not heal you. In fact, it often buries and compounds issues. Jesus is what heals us. And so because He is not in time, He can go back to that place when you were a child, and you can invite Him now to come back there and have Him heal you. He can heal your memories and triggers—He’s in the business of healing people, and every time I work with someone, He shows up. So, I don't even feel like I'm doing a lot, other than facilitating an encounter that they're having with Him and encouraging them to know that, 'You think you can't hear Him, but you can.' And teaching them this is how you hear Him. And as soon as they're connected to hearing God's voice, they can move forward. When they need help with something, they simply go to Him and listen to Him. And then, so my program is actually only 3 months long. It's not a long program because we jump in and I connect them to the source, which is the Holy Spirit. And once they learn how to work with Him, they no longer need me, as they have exercises that they can use with the Holy Spirit and Scripture. 

Could you share how your ministry began, who it serves, and how you help people find freedom in Christ?

It's only been two years since this happened to me, when I experienced deliverance for the first time. Within those two years, I have taken a double degree program. I now hold degrees in business and ministry, and the Lord has also asked me to write a book. I couldn't believe God was asking me to do all He's having me do, and yet here I am, two years later, and the website is up and running. I am working with clients and getting seriously transformational results. I am always so surprised at how God shows up. 

For someone who feels stuck in pain, fear, or spiritual bondage, what word of hope would you share with them? 

Have faith in God. And if you feel that your faith is weakened or small, you need to find ways to stir it up, because it is real—the promises of God are real, so I would say, have faith and grow in your faith, your relationship with the Lord, and His Word. 

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Pastor Mark Sowersby

These are Pastor Mark's favorite scriptures...

Pastor Mark, I read your book, Forgiving The Nightmare. It’s wonderfully written. You have a remarkable healing that God has given you, and in Forgiving The Nightmare, you describe the nightmare of abuse and suffering that you have gone through for years. Can you please share what happened in your childhood?  

I’d be honored to share it with you. And again, thank you so much. When I reached out to you, I just wanted to find places where I could lift up the name of Jesus and share the testimony of where God has brought me through. Throughout my whole testimony, I don’t have the answers, but God does. So, my testimony, unfortunately, is an ugly one because it deals with abuse and neglect. Far too many people share that same testimony. At the age of seven, my mom would marry a man 20 years her junior. He came into our home, and he would abuse me in every way, shape, and form. He would emotionally, physically, sexually, and verbally abuse me and take everything from me from the ages of 7 to 14. And all those years living through that experience, I was held down and held back and just trapped in fear, insecurity, and pain. I didn’t know any other way in those seven years. The pain was the atmosphere and oxygen that I lived in. All around me was the abuse. I didn’t know any other way. And at 14 years old, I didn’t understand why I was 14 and not 13 or 12, but something clicked inside me, and I fought back. I fought back in two ways. First of all, it was a physical way. Now, it wasn’t a Rocky Balboa moment or a Mike Tyson moment, but I pushed my attacker off me, and I fought back physically. Still, at the same time, I found somebody in my family who would stick up for me, somebody who was strong enough and who believed me. I went to this loved one, and I told them about what was happening. It was a different time, as I was part of the late 1970s and early 1980s generation. People didn’t talk about things like this, even when they were happening. You didn’t tell anybody anything or deal with it or talk about it, but it was the underbelly of many people’s stories. So, from 1977 to 1984, I was being abused. And I went to this loved one, and they protected me with their might, with their power, and with their spirit. And because of those two events, at 14, I can tell you the abuse ended. And it never came back. I was never physically abused again after being 14. The abuse stopped because of those who protected me. Now, I wish I could tell you that was the end of the story. And I could say, you know, after 14, everything was peaceful and easy, but it was just the beginning of Forgiving The Nightmare. 

How did you first come to know Christ, and how did you go from just surviving to beginning to thrive? 

Well, I found myself back at my mom’s house, and I was that kind of kid who never wanted to be home and outstayed my welcome—that kid for whom they set another plate for dinner. At the time, we were living in an apartment complex, and I spent a lot of time at the pool. I was a 15-year-old kid, and I was at the pool in the middle of the courtyard. There was a lifeguard, and I think she was about 16 years old. She asked me to go to church with her, and to be honest, I would have gone anywhere that lifeguard asked me to go. She invited me to church on a Friday or midweek night, and I walked into the church, having never experienced the charismatic, evangelical, or Pentecostal expression. I never saw hands being lifted, drums being played, and guitars being strummed. And I went in there, and the youth pastor had a mullet. It was the 80s. They explained the gospel and spoke of God’s love. I knew I wanted and needed that love, but I wasn’t sure if God loved me because I didn’t like myself. The abuse stole not just a pound of flesh but also my dignity, value, importance, and so many things emotionally and psychologically. As much as it stole the flesh and took that away, I was also confused, broken, and kind of not understanding it all, but the church poured out its love for me. And on a Friday night, not too many weeks after my first visit, one of the youths was giving me a ride home. He was cool. He had a car, and I didn’t. He asked me right there in a parking lot if I wanted to make Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, and I said what we call the sinner’s prayer. Lord, come into my heart. Forgive me of my sins. I receive you as my Savior. I said that prayer, and I was probably too young or too immature to understand the depth of the prayer that I was saying. But thank God He knew what I was saying. And then there I was, the summer when I was 15 or 16 years old. There I was in the middle of that summer. I asked Christ to become my Savior. And there, the journey began to walk with Jesus. 

Did you yearn for the peace that you felt in church?

Of course, I craved the peace, grace, and mercy. All I knew was I felt a love and an acceptance like I had never felt before. For me, the church truly became a sanctuary, and I don’t just mean that in a holy sense; I mean that in a protective sense, like a bird sanctuary or an animal sanctuary. I was there every time the church doors opened. I was there for senior adult meetings. I was even there for some of the MOPS meetings. The church doors opening meant I was there; it was a safe, accepting place where I began to learn about God, God’s love for us, and the Holy Spirit. I started studying God’s Word and grew in my faith.

Was it soon after that you realized you were being called to be a pastor?

Well, you know, any time God has called me to something, I’ve wrestled because of my insecurities, my fears, and because the shackles that were holding the lies of my past were trying to steal the hope of my future. And there I was again. I was just a young man, about 16 or 17 years old. By this time, I had become a fixture in the youth group. I attended all the pizza parties, roller skating rinks, sleep-ins, and late nights with the camping group. I was a part of this youth group because it was a part of me. And I remember the first time I raised my hands in prayer. I thought the whole world was looking at me, but there I stood before the altar, and I felt God quicken my heart and say, “Mark, you’re going to go to Bible school.” I wrestled with that because I have dyslexia and was a special education student. I usually tell people I didn’t learn how to read; I learned how to duck. My parents didn’t raise me; I made it through. So, my skills were learning how to duck and how to become that chameleon, how to fit in by being the funny kid or sports jock. I did what I did to survive. So, there I was, about 17 years old, with this call in my heart and feeling so insecure, saying, “God, you know, I don’t have the ability. I can’t read well. I can’t write well. God, how can you call me?” But God was faithful, and He called me to Bible school. Now, I wish I could tell you again I got up from that place and said, Amen. But there lay the journey, and God had a quickening in my heart, and I found myself in my early 20s. It was a few years later that I found myself at Bible college. 

When did you surrender entirely to Christ? In the book, you discuss the importance of complete surrender and forgiveness, as well as surrendering at the altar.  

Amen. And you know that process wasn’t a one-time process. That was a process that took many times of coming to the altar and allowing God to begin to crack that shell, if you will, to start speaking into my life, to begin to soften that heart of stone. And I remember that I had some people who loved me the most. And you know, sometimes people who love us and want to help don’t always give the best advice. It’s not because they’re evil or mean. It’s because they want to say something. And I remember somebody said, “Mark, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain.” ⁣ And I thought to myself, at 16 or 17 years old, what does that mean? So there I was in my prayer closet, and I said to the Lord, "Lord, what does it mean to move a mountain? What does it mean to have faith the size of a mustard seed?" Now, today, I know it’s measured in size. But at that time, God spoke to my heart, and He said, “Mark, will you move a pebble? Can you move pebbles?” And I said, “Lord, I can move pebbles all day long. I’ll be the best pebble-moving Christian you’ve ever had, God.” I’ll move pebbles to and fro, and slowly, the pebble becomes a stone, the stone becomes a rock, the rock becomes a hill, the hill becomes a boulder, and the boulder becomes a mound, growing bigger precept by precept, inch by inch. So again, it wasn’t the first time that I ran to the altar. There were many times that I kept going to the altar and laying myself on it, saying, God, help me because I was angry—I wanted my pound of flesh—I didn’t walk on water or float in clouds. I wanted my abuser to suffer. When I thought of hell, I wanted my abuser to go there. Again, I wasn’t this perfect saint with little wings. I had feelings. I had emotion. I had things taken from me. I was angry. I had questions—Why? How? If? What? All those things were rising up in me, but at the same time, God would bring me on this journey of forgiveness. And in that journey of forgiveness, I often say I was like David. Even though I had to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Even though I had to walk out of this miracle, it still makes it a true miracle, just as much as one that happens suddenly, as much as one that unfolds over time. God helped me learn to forgive those who trespassed against me. God had to change me so that I could look at things differently. I didn’t start this journey saying, “I want to forgive the man who abused me.” I’m not that righteous or good. I started this journey by saying, “God, I want to know you. I wish to seek ye first and by knowing God, by seeking Him, He would bring me to forgiveness. I didn’t have the strength, the power, the knowledge, or probably even the heart at that time to forgive. I was angry. Someone stole something from me. There was an abuse given to me. I felt righteous in my anger. So God did. I didn’t say, “Okay, God, I’m such a good guy. Help me forgive those who abused me and raped me and stabbed me and beat me.” That’s not what I tried to do. This journey started with this kid going, “God, I want to know you. I want to know who you are. I want to know your Word. I want to know your Spirit. I want to be able to understand and grow.” And in that place, God would bring me. But again, it was seek ye first the kingdom of God. And that’s where it started. And even though I still wrestled with the flesh, and even though I still wrestled with the pain and the hurt, I was growing in God. As I grew closer to God, the things of this world began to seem strangely dim because God started to change my perspective. I saw Him first before I saw the hurt and the pain. God became louder. God became greater. His words became louder than hate. His love became sweeter than sorrow. However, it began by seeking God first. 

How do we know when we have truly forgiven and released the unforgiveness to Christ? 

Sure. And you know that’s a part of the journey, peeling the onion back one layer at a time. So, for me, it was just a straightforward step by going, “God, I’m giving it to you.” There are three things I want to share with you that I’ve learned about forgiveness. I always believed that forgiveness meant forgiving and forgetting, letting it go, and not making a mountain out of a molehill—let it go. The first thing I realized was that forgiveness is not the same as approval. Just because you say you forgive somebody doesn’t mean you’re approving of what they’ve done. You’re not accepting it; you’re not supporting it. You could still say, “What you’ve done was wrong, evil, and sinful against the law, and what happened is wrong.” I disapprove of it. I don’t accept it. I don’t want it. But yet, I can still forgive you for it. That’s the first thing I realized. The second thing I learned is that forgiveness isn’t a one-time event. God’s mercies are new every morning. And I realized that for me, forgiveness is that way. And the Lord’s Prayer says what? Help us forgive those who trespass against us. Before that, He says, Lord, give us this day our daily bread and help us forgive those who trespass against us. So, I believe that daily is for both things: the daily bread and daily forgiveness. And also the last thing I learned is a harder one. I learned I can have my boundaries. You know, those who have wounded me, I realized I could have boundaries to say, "You know what, I don’t have to have kumbaya moments." I could love them. I could give them to Christ. I could put them under the blood. I could say, Lord, they’re in your hands. I don’t have to put my head back in the lion’s mouth. You know, I can have healthy boundaries.

You shared in your book that unforgiveness not only affects us but also affects those around us because we often displace our anger and feelings onto them. Can you explain that?  

Sure. Let me unpack that with you for a few minutes. First of all, I’ll tell you one thing God had to do in my life was, again, as I said earlier, he had to change my perspective. And the way God did that is I’ll go back to when we were teenagers. When we were teenagers, we didn’t have a million channels to choose from. We didn’t have the phones in our hands. You know, I’m a Gen-Xer. So, you know, I drank water from a hose, and I came in when the streetlights were off. Mom didn’t know how to call you, but she always knew how to reach you. I remember being in high school in the early 80s; we only had PBS. And in our area, it was called Channel 2. And at Channel 2, our PBS station, Bob Ross, the painter. Everybody knows Bob Ross, and in half an hour, in my untrained eyes, he would paint a masterpiece. I’d be eating my bowl of cereal, coming home from school, and seeing the blank canvas become a masterpiece. At the end of almost every painting that Bob Ross did, he’d put a tree in front of the subject. So if he painted a lake or a cabin or a mountain or whatever he was painting, at almost the last two minutes of every show, he’d put a tree in front of the subject. And what he was doing, I found out years later by watching it, was changing our perspective. He was bringing the subject to life and giving it depth. He was saying the cabin is not as close as it looks now because there’s something in front of it. So it makes it look further away. And I thought about this all the time, like this old song that got caught in your head. I thought, "Lord, why am I thinking about this Bob Ross painting?" And one day, the Lord said to me, “Mark, if you put my cross in front of your hurts, if you put my cross of Calvary, my love, it’s going to put some depth. Sometimes, when we have pain and go through unforgiveness and sorrow, it’s so close that it pours out. It pours out to people, you know; it pours out to the people that we love. We think we have it hidden, but we usually have it buried under just that soft veneer, and as soon as it’s touched or we believe it’s going to get touched, we lash out, and usually, we lash out at the people who love us, but God is saying to put Him in front of that pain. Put me in front of that hurt. Put me in front of that sorrow. I’m so thankful that God has helped me change my perspective. I see Christ first. Oh, I don’t deny what I went through. I don’t deny that it’s a part of my story, a part of my narrative. It’s a part of my testimony, but it doesn’t define who I am. The worst part of my life does not have to define my life. God loves you, and he wants to set you free. He wants to give you freedom. 

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Samuel Johnson

Counselor, Coach, and Consultant 4C LTD

These are Samuel's favorite scriptures...

Samuel, you wanted to share the meaning of your name. 

Yeah, I was sharing this anecdote with Dawn-Marie earlier that I didn’t grow up a Samuel. I was a Sam in my childhood, and I grew up in a small town in the mid-1970s; Sam was not a popular name back then. There were more Samanthas than Samuels. I was speaking with a colleague a few years ago, and I asked him if he preferred Josh or Joshua. And he was describing how he would much rather be called Joshua than be a joke, as in “Josh” or “joshing around,” and it got me thinking about my name, which is incredibly powerful. It’s such a powerful name, and I’m glad my parents chose it for me instead of my brother’s. My brother’s name is Darin, and my parents named him after Bobby Darin, the singer of Splish Splash; I was taking a bath. So I got the biblical name, and he got the musical name. However, this connection to the name is that God hears Samuel, and I didn’t just want to be heard. Throughout my life, I struggled, believing that no one was listening to me. This struggle, rooted in my childhood experiences, has significantly shaped my identity and my journey of faith. So, this was a transformation for me, transitioning to the name Samuel. This was confusing for some of my friends, and even my wife would emphasize my name by saying ‘SamUEL,’ but I much prefer that God hear me and I am heard by Him. The name Samuel resonates with me in several ways, as he was the last of the judges before the time of the kings, and he anointed kings. What Samuel did was anoint not just one king but two. And he anointed the greatest king of the kingdom of Israel, King David. The few times that I’ve heard God’s voice, one time He said, “Get up. You are a king and a kingmaker.” God speaks to us; our identity is in Him, and it says in Revelation 2:17 that He will give us a new name.

When you were in fourth or fifth grade, you went through a hard season because of your parents’ struggling marriage. How did this season shape you and lead your path today? 

Yeah, there was a time when my parents were struggling in their marriage, and because I became a Christian as a child, I asked them if they would continue taking me to church because they weren’t going. I just wanted to be there, and they took me, and I went by myself. At the time, my older brother was not as connected to faith. There was this gentleman that I knew who lived in my small town, a community of around 4,000 people. Everybody knew everybody, so I knew this man, but he was my parents’ age, and when you’re in fourth and fifth grade, you’re intimidated by them. One day, he asked me to sit down and talk to him. He told me that I was so brave, and I had no idea what he meant by that. It was normal for me to be there, and it reminds me of Samuel in the Bible because he was raised in God’s house, and I wanted to be in His house, too. Today, my practice is even in the church that I attend. I have always felt very comfortable in God’s house. So it’s like my living room. 

You shared with me that, at one point, you wanted to be a technical writer. However, it was during your time as a resident advisor in college that something began to happen, which became a clear indication of your calling and gift. 

Yeah. So, first, for those who don’t know what a technical writer is, it’s like getting those manuals, and now, sadly, most of them you can’t understand because they’re written in a language other than English. A technical writer writes for scientists. I have a very scientific mind. My family gets tired of me talking about it because I won the biology, chemistry, and physics awards, and I’m this touchy-feely dude in therapy, too, so I can bridge these two worlds pretty well. I have an undergraduate degree in English and a master’s degree in counseling. I had planned to work in technical writing, but I became a resident assistant at the college I attended instead. My roommate was also a resident assistant, so we split up the hall and would have meetings like all the other RAs. At the meetings, we would gather and go around, and many of the guys would talk about winning their basketball games and their intramural competitions. Another would say that it was a great meeting because they had to work on different programs. The other RA would ask me, “Okay, Sam, so how are things with you?” And I’d say, “Well, this week, this one guy attempted suicide. I have one guy who’s strung out on pot, and he hasn’t gone to a class in four weeks. Another guy went to walk on the railroad tracks downtown, considering leaving school and just taking a train, you know, and then there was another gentleman who has a deep, affectionate place in my heart because he has a personality disorder and would pick up whatever personality or identity that suited him in the needs of the situation he was in. What became very clear to me was that God was leading me toward a profession in therapy where I could help people. I had those pieces in my background. In high school, I was part of a group called Peer Helpers. I was always doing things that helped my friends. In college, I was an English major, and I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?” I’ve wasted four years?" No offense to English majors out there, but I had packed my schedule, so my senior year, I was going to blow it off entirely. I had available time in my calendar. It was God’s gift because I started calling schools and said, “What do I need to do if I want to get in?” And they said, “Take this, this, this, this, and this class.” And all of them fit into my schedule. It was meant to be. So, I took all these introductory psychology classes as a senior with freshmen. Lastly, my roommate, remember, was an RA as well, and one of the things that solidified my decision about my giftedness and calling was when he said, “Sam, when the guys are looking to have fun, they’ll come and find me, but when they need help, they will wait for you."

You shared that you had trauma. What kind of trauma did you have and go through? 

Yes. Parts of my story I choose respectfully not to share because it also affects some other people, but certainly, I can add the experiences that my parents went through. They did remain married, but there was a lot of ugliness in their marriage. I remember looking into the mirror in fourth grade and saying, “I’m done with them. I’m done with them.” I swore them off and drew a line. Thankfully, that’s not where I stand with them today because I’ve had healing. I can share this bit, too. I also attended a Christian camp. As I mentioned earlier, the only place I wanted to be was in the house of God. If it weren’t for Craig, with whom we are Facebook friends to this day and stay connected, I shared with him and his sons that if it weren’t for their dad, I would not be here—I would have taken my life, as parts of my trauma left me suicidal. Craig, my camp counselor, was very influential and is now a pastor and missionary. We’ll never know the seeds we’re planting in people’s lives this side of heaven.

You specialize in anxiety and OCD, couples work, Internal Family Systems, EMDR, brainspotting, and EFT. Could you explain all of these methods? 

Sure. Part of the reason I specialize in many of those areas, not all of them, but many of them, is that it takes one to know one, right? I have anxiety, and a doctor would probably diagnose me with OCD. My wife certainly would think so, which is obsessive-compulsive disorder. Anxiety looks like being distressed or worried more than you ought to, and some people manage it just fine. Truth be told, a little anxiety is good for you because it helps you perform to the best of your abilities, but it can also incapacitate you if not managed. What I’d like to be clear about is because a lot of people will say, “Well, I don’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder because I don’t check the knobs of the stove when I leave the house, or you should see my desk.” That has nothing to do with what OCD is. You can have different behaviors, and if you have a messy desk or if you have some area in your life that you can’t control, it could be a sign that you do have OCD because what people do is say, “Well, I can’t manage that so I’m not even going to try.” So, my type of OCD is much more about the inability to stop thinking—You can’t shut it off. The obsessions are the thoughts. You can have compulsions of counting and checking, and that is where mine shows up.

For example, I will lie in bed and count, check, and go through mental lists over and over, prepping for the next day. There are a lot of ways you can have obsessive-compulsive disorder. You also asked about some of the ways that I provide treatment. One approach is called the Internal Family Systems. So, if you’ve seen the Disney movie Inside Out, the movie represents various parts of a girl’s brain as animated characters—there’s an angry part, a disgusted part, a happy part, and a sad part of the brain. What we do, in a sense, is anthropomorphize them or give them life. We apply Internal Family Systems to our system, meaning ourselves. In essence, we would engage in therapy with ourselves from a Christian perspective, guided by the Holy Spirit, a process designed to help individuals lead themselves more effectively. There’s also a way to do healing work with it as well that doesn’t look the same but takes you to the same result as EMDR, which is a trauma healing approach, and brainspotting is an offshoot of EMDR. Researchers discovered that EMDR involves eye movement—that’s what EMDR is—so the therapist moves their fingers back and forth. Then, the client watches them, and there’s a lot more that goes on. However, while that’s happening, it allows the brain to heal from what it was previously trying to keep away from or block out. Brainspotting is an offshoot of that. Whereas a gentleman named David Gran discovered that while he was moving his fingers, sometimes people’s eyes would wobble or stick, so instead of moving his hands back and forth, he found the spot where the distress “lives,” and you held it there, and the distress heals, so I use this approach as well. EFT is a couples therapy approach called emotionally focused therapy, and men tend to hate that name because they think they’re going to be required to cry. It’s not true. There are many emotions involved, but it’s one of the most researched and well-documented approaches to couples’ therapy. Couples therapy approaches tend not to have as much research behind them as individual approaches, so I wanted to learn a skill because when I was doing all of this trauma work with people and helping them heal, they would say, “Can you please tell my partner what you’re telling me and explain to them what’s going on?” I also do neurofeedback, which involves placing electrodes on your head. My wife, daughter, and I do it. It’s not therapy, but what it does is shift your brain from a state of distress or fight, flight, or freeze mode to a state of rest, moving it to rest, digest, and relax mode. 

What’s the difference between surviving and truly living? How do you help people reach a point of healing, freeing them from their struggles? 

I love these questions, and they’re so huge, but let’s see if I can encapsulate them. But first of all, the difference between surviving and thriving. And by the way, surviving is necessary. Surviving is a good thing. Surviving is a skill that humans have developed and need to possess. Parts of our brain help us survive. Survival almost always revolves around protection and keeping you safe. Protection is beneficial, but it often hinders healing because protective mechanisms resist addressing the issue. Until you’re ready to heal, protection is a good thing. For a time, surviving is necessary, and it’s perfect. I’m always telling my clients that they need to do what they’re doing. You needed your OCD. You needed your depression. You needed your anxiety to keep you alive. You needed your ADHD, etc. It’s very unshaming, right? Because people come in like they believe they’re bad or wrong for having this mental health concern. And my first line is, “No, it kept you alive.” Literally, in many instances, I’ve experienced my own suicidal experiences. In many cases, this depression, anxiety, etc., kept the person alive until they were ready and able to heal. And healing is literally that. So, let’s use an example. Let’s say you have a broken bone. And what you could do is you could wrap it up in gauze, and you could splint it, take some aspirin, and limp along. You could be okay, and your arm would probably heal, but it would probably heal deformed. However, if you visit a doctor, they can put it in a cast and use it, allowing you to return to your normal state, where it would be as good as new, if not stronger. When bones break, they heal—they’re stronger at the break. By the way, I believe that the same thing happens in these transformative healing approaches that I use. EMDR, brainspotting, and IFS were all accidental discoveries about trauma. All three experts, David Gran, Francine Shapiro, and Richard Schwarz, would say, “Well, I just found this serendipitously,” and it happened to work. I believe all of these serendipity experiences are God’s work. And they brought transformation to people. Other forms of therapy are excellent, necessary, and valuable because you might be in that place where you need to survive, and you’re not ready for healing yet. So, I don’t knock any other form of therapy. EMDR, as well as IFS and brainspotting, are approaches that help a person feel safe enough to allow that wall to come down so it doesn’t feel scary or threatening. It’s an approach that enables the wall to come down just enough, and then it can also go back up. 

How has your faith continued to influence your life and work today? 

I’ll throw in an anecdote about running here. For a season, I was a runner in high school. I’m not an athlete, and I don’t connect with those things. I’m a nerdy scientist type, but I’m currently in training and have just completed a 25K trail run, which is approximately 15.5 miles. Trail running differs from pavement running, and now I’m preparing for a Spartan Ultra, which will be 32 miles and feature 60 obstacles. The metaphor here is that we’re always in training, and when we permit ourselves to do hard things, God honors it and blesses it. God didn’t say things are going to be easy. No. God didn’t say your life is going to be a picnic. No. What God told me is that I experienced some complicated things in my life, and He allowed those things to be used for good. I received my healing. I got healing through EMDR, and after that happened, I said, “I have to bring this to other people.”My life verse is Genesis 50:20. “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.” I firmly believe that God wants me to do this work, and He allowed what happened to me. I don’t like saying, “He did it. That’s unfair and unreasonable. He certainly allowed it, and good came out of it. 

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Joe Woodley

Author, Success Coach, Leadership & Team Development Speaker

These are Joe's favorite scriptures...

Joe, you grew up in a Christian home, but there was a time in your life when you stepped away from your faith only to return to the Lord. Could you share about that time and what led you back to Christ?

Absolutely. First, I want to say that I’m very thankful for my childhood and for my mother for taking us to church. Some people say, “Well, they don’t want to go; I won’t make them.” Attending church certainly planted a seed in me, which was crucial to my eventual return. But when I was small, I think I was angry and confused. My father left when I was young, and it was at this point that life became tough, and I was searching for my identity. My grandfather, who stepped in like a surrogate father, passed away when I was eleven. He lived several streets away and was a pastor—we come from a family of pastors, and I think it had a greater impact on me than I realized. I was not the most outgoing individual to begin with. Still, I became much more of an introvert at that moment, and I questioned life, my purpose for being here, and pretty much everything, because I felt so alone and angry. Then, I had an uncle who returned to New York, and he stepped in, in a way, and then soon after my senior year of high school, he too passed away. So, there was so much hurt, angst, and disappointment in my life, and I didn’t have straightforward answers for why these different things were happening. Again, I had a wonderful family, and my mother prayed for us and with us daily—we were truly a Christ-centered home, but I had a lot of questions. Additionally, we were part of a smaller church, and as unfortunate as this may sound, I think larger churches in the community also looked down upon us. However, we had a dynamic choir and worship team, and the Spirit of God moved. But I saw the hurt that my grandmother went through because when you’re a pastoral family, you see the tears that other people don’t see or hear about. She didn’t talk about things that much. Still, you could see it on her, and so, in that anger and in that resentment for everything that was going on, and from the hurt of my father leaving. These men who had become father figures, and the hurt and disappointment I saw in how the people of God were treating one another, led me to leave and start withdrawing. I didn’t want anything to do with the church, to be quite honest. I was like, if church people treat each other this way, why would I want to be a part of that? Not having the maturity at that stage in my life to process all of those things, I went out into the world and was like a wild horse, doing just about anything and everything that I was big enough and bad enough to do, and my life headed downhill quickly. I eventually moved to Ohio when I was 23, after being born and raised in New York, to be with a woman with whom I had a long-distance relationship, and things continued to deteriorate in my life. Then, I began a relationship that resulted in my son’s conception. I didn’t want my son to go down the road that I was going down—I wanted to be the best father I could be because that was something that I didn’t have growing up, and I knew that the only one who could help me to do these things was God. I knew that I didn’t want to end up like so many people that I knew who had children all over the place without their fathers. So, the Lord brought me back into the church. I started attending a church that was perfect for me at the time because it was a heavily disciplinarian ministry, and that’s what I needed, as I was out in the world. Accountability, challenge, and forward momentum were what I needed to avoid wandering, and someone guided me. My mentors challenged me to grow and develop, and through that, the Lord began to work in my life. And I’m grateful because God saved my life, not just my soul. He saved my life through that ministry so I wouldn’t wind up as one of these men who are out there with children all over the place and have no idea who they are. Still, more importantly, so I would grow in the truth of who God is, the Word of God, and His character, integrity, purpose, and promises for my life. This needed to happen, so God placed me exactly where I needed to be and where I wanted to be. In contrast, I think many believers would be resistant to that type of discipline because they may feel that they can handle things on their own, and they told me that I couldn’t handle things on my own and they would be in my business, and that helped me to grow in the Word of God and the things of God. The Lord knows what I needed, and He knows what everyone needs. I would challenge you to submit to someone who is an authority. I challenge you to submit to an authority figure, allowing them to guide you so that God’s gifts can mature and be fully manifested in your life.

You minister now, correct?  Yes, I do.

When we spoke on the phone, you said that we are vessels to be used by God. How do you get your sermons? 

Well, number one, I’m always going before the Lord and praying, which is the first and foremost thing you’ve got to do. The Holy Spirit will speak to you. He speaks to us in different ways, but when He speaks to me, He’ll then show me things about the things I see happening around me. I see things that are happening in the spirit—everything is spiritual and has a spiritual core. Then, He’ll lead me into the scriptures. And not just like one scripture because we need to be careful about that—using one scripture can be taken entirely out of context, so He’ll show me scriptures, a chapter, a passage in the Bible and how it correlates with what’s going on and what His will is in correlation to that scripture and whether it lines up or is misaligned with the Word of God. And then, through that process, He’ll give me the message to share, and I fully yield to the Lord. Take this message however you want to take it. Yes, I research to understand the historical and cultural contexts of the scripture and its original meaning. Still, I also seek what the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish—what message He wants to communicate to people—through these scriptures. Mind you, the first ministry is happening to me. He’ll speak to me and get my heart right. So when He begins to minister to me, and I begin to research and study the scriptures, and He shows me how they correlate, then I say, “Lord, you have to get my heart right. I’ll then ask myself, “How is my heart in correlation to scripture?” So if it’s a word of correction, then, Lord, “You need to correct my heart.” If it is a word of inspiration, then, Lord, “Inspire my heart. If it’s a word that challenges people to come up in Christ, Lord, "Challenge me first." The Word says we must be the first partakers of the Word, so I am the first partaker. And through that process, God gives me a message for the sermons. I must say that over the years, as this has happened and I have yielded more to the Lord, allowing Him to work through this process, I believe that God is glorified. So when I get up and speak, I don’t want people looking and saying, “Man, Joe is just a fantastic speaker—Joe is this, Joe is that.” I want them to say, “Joe is a servant of the Lord, and he speaks truth according to the Word of God—not his truth, but the Word of God.” That’s imperative to me. So, God guides me through that process, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly, as He refines me so that I communicate His Word, not my own thoughts or ideas. Sometimes, I hear this from some preachers after they put a message together: they say, “I’m going to knock this out of the park,” and that’s not the point of a message—it’s for God to be glorified through ministering to the hearts and minds of people who are in your presence. So, if you’re looking to craft a message that knocks it out of the park, you’re in the wrong business because that’s not what it’s about. This is not about you being glorified—it’s not about you becoming famous or having your name on a billboard. It has nothing to do with you! We are vessels to be used by God for His glory, and that’s it. I’ve said this to many people: on my tombstone, what I want written is ‘Serving the Lord.’ All of this that God has allowed me to accomplish and be a part of comes down to being a servant of the Lord. And that’s what ministering is about; it has nothing to do with us. We’re vessels to be used by God. Yes, God uses people, but let’s not get twisted because the minute we begin to think it’s all about us, we’re going to fall.

Joe, you are also a success coach and a life coach. How do you weave your faith into that? 

Well, the story was interesting because, as I previously stated, I was one of those very shy children who didn’t want to be in front of anybody. My family can attest to that. There are videos somewhere of me in the choir, slowly drifting into the background. After my son was born, I became involved in a church, and they encouraged me to grow. I believe my son was in the first grade at the time, and the school was implementing a program called character education, which involved bringing in guest speakers or entertainment to talk to the kids, so he said to me, “Dad, you should come to my school and do the character education.” I responded, “What am I going to talk about?” And he replied, “Well, since you’re preaching to me at home all the time, you should come to school and talk to the kids.” So, I took him up on it and developed a character called The Hero, which stands for Healthy Emotions, Relationship, and Outlook. My son helped me create a costume and picked out the colors. We then did a test run at my church, and they loved it. Then, we took it to a school, and it was a hit. Through that, I began to weave biblical principles into the story of this character and present it to the students. There was even a hero pledge that they would recite at the end, emphasizing their commitment to serving their community and being selfless, so all of those principles were incorporated. And then, I was at an event at one of the largest malls in Columbus, Ohio, when a lady called me over and said, “Come here, young man.” Mind you, I was in my Spandex and cape, thinking, “Oh, boy, what does she want?” She proceeded to say, “I need to talk to you. I can see you doing that, in a suit and tie.” And I’m thinking, what? I’m talking to these kids. Anyway, some serious life events ended up happening, and I had to hang up the costume and cape for a bit. Then, I asked the Lord, “What do you want me to do now?” He began to show me that adults are basically like big kids and many times, they are individuals who never resolved a lot of their childhood issues and trauma, and they carry these things into adulthood. So, the Lord showed me how to apply the same biblical principles and values, repackage them, and present them to different organizations, which led me to speak at Fortune 500 companies. Mind you, the Lord helped me break it all down and had me do the Hero project so I could act like someone else, thus getting me accustomed to being in front of people. It’s not that I don’t get nervous; I rely on the Lord when it happens. So, I applied these principles to adults, corporations, businesses, and churches. People loved what was being shared and would come to me to ask, “How do you come up with this? Where are you getting this stuff from?” And I would say, “The Word of God.” Let me give you an example of when I got my first contract with a Fortune 500 company. The supervisors invited me to speak, and over two to three weeks, I developed the proposal. I had my folders, and everything was color-coded, and I went to sit down and heard God say to me, “Put it away.” I said, “What?” And He said it again, “Put it away.” So, I take the folders I spent two or three weeks on and put them away. I will tell you, don’t do this unless God tells you to do it. I said, “Okay, God—I have nothing because all my stuff is in that folder.” The supervisors came over, brought me some papers, put them in front of me, and sat down. And they say, “So what do you think?” And it was like the Lord put a puzzle in front of my face. It looked like a literal puzzle, and I could see everything. I could see where everything fit. And as I sat down, I looked, and I said, “Oh, that’s easy. All you have to do is this, this, this, and this.” The corporate heads are looking at each other and say, “How did you do that?” And I said, “Well, what do you mean? They responded, “No one has ever come in and done that before.” How did you do that?” I could see instantaneously precisely what needed to happen and what this company needed. And so they loved it. And brought me in and said, “We’re going to start you on a 6-month trial.” From that six-month trial, they gave me a full year. So the Lord was at work in that environment, and again, this was all Him. It wasn’t that because I’m so brilliant—that I’m so smart—that I’m so educated. This is the Lord, and the principles I taught within that group were all biblically based and Christ-inspired, so I was able to present them in that way. So, what does this all look like now? I’m able to help organizations do the sort of job now as a success coach, and working at the college is not so distant from what I was doing before and continue to do. People ask me, “How are you able to be as successful as you are with the students?” And the answer is that I’m not so much focused on their academics. The academic component is a symptom of what’s happening underneath, so we sit down and talk. Yes, I need to discuss the academics because they need to get their grades in order. Still, the primary focus of the talk is on who they are as an individual and their purpose in life, as well as what makes them who they are in their future. They open up and inevitably, everyone who buys into the system, everyone who begins to trust and follow through—every last one of them—sees an improvement in their grades, a dramatic turnaround. Still, it’s not being focused on the academic component because I think we put too much emphasis on the performance and not enough on the person. However, if I focus on the person God made, the performance will follow. Not because they feel like they have to do it, but because they have a desire to do it because God is working through them.

Based on your own experiences, what advice would you offer to those seeking to deepen their faith or embark on a path of personal development?

Based on my experience as a success coach, there are commonalities of success in our lives, whether they are spiritual or natural. The first thing to be aware of is that we must be mindful of them and how we spend our time. We need to be aware of how we spend our time. Many of us are mismanaging our time within the same 24 hours that we all have. It exists for every one of us. So I have to decide what I’m going to do within those 24 hours. Now, I understand that we have long days, and many of us face challenges throughout our days. But perhaps when I get home, instead of immediately turning on the TV or getting distracted by social media, I should invest some time in studying the Word of God and in worship and prayer. Many may say that they don’t have enough time to pray. Let me calculate this for you and your listeners. The average person in the United States of America—let’s say they spend 5 hours a day watching TV or on the Internet. We’re going to make it as little as possible, even though we know people do more. So let’s say 5 hours a day. That means we spend 35 hours a week on either television or social media. Okay, well, there’s your time right there that you could be investing in reading scripture. So, when people say they don’t have the time, we need to be aware of how we spend our time. The second thing I encourage for those of us who want to grow spiritually is that we need to learn to be humble before the Lord. And as we discussed earlier in this conversation, submit to someone who is in authority and can speak into our lives. I get it—there is church hurt—I get it; there is pain, but through the leading of the Holy Spirit, ask the Lord to lead you to someone who can disciple, mentor, or shepherd you so that you can grow in Christ, not just for your benefit, but for the benefit of the souls that God will lay before you. There are people that you’re going to minister to on your job, dare I say, in your own homes, at the grocery store—wherever—so we need people in our lives to do that. Be mindful of the time that you have. If you need to schedule it and write it out, do so. For example, from 7:00 to 8:00, this is my time for reading, studying the Word, and worship. You need to do this consistently until it becomes a part of your identity and feels automatic. And then what will happen is that the Bible says those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. So as I’m in the Word of God, as I’m worshipping, as I’m praying, as I’m doing those things, He’s going to give you a hunger and a thirst so that you won’t even feel right, not out of guilt. Still, you won’t feel right because it will become an integral part of who you are: prayer, worship, and studying the Word of God are just as essential as breathing air. You can’t go a day without it. That would be my encouragement to those who are listening and watching today.

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Angelo Liloc

Founder of Operation Redwood--Restore Manhood/Rescue Kids/Rebuild Families

These are Angelo's favorite scriptures...

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Angelo, can you take us back to when everything in your life began to unravel? What were you going through physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

Yeah. The crazy part is I’ve told this story plenty of times before, and every time I share it, a part of me feels it again. I used to think that was bad, but I realized it’s just a reminder of where God has taken me and taken me through. I used to be a police officer in California, so my background is in law enforcement. I come from a family of warriors—my grandpa and uncles have all served in some form of military, and even my dad was in the US Army, and my little brother was in the Navy. So, growing up, I was always around warriors, sharing stories of all the cool stuff they did. I couldn’t wait until I, too, could share and partake in those stories. When I got out of high school, I got injured, and that took me out of going to the Army, so I went into law enforcement, and it’s still something in the warrior community. So I was in law enforcement at the peak of my career and experienced a lot of darkness and violence day-to-day to the point I turned away from my faith because I was like, “God, how are you letting these crimes and violence happen to these good people?” As a police officer, you go from call to call, never knowing what you’ll encounter—sometimes it’s nothing, and other times it’s crazy, so you don’t see what you’ll step into next. You become desensitized to it because your hormones and adrenaline levels are always up and down. Each day, you arrive unsure if it will be your last, so you master suppressing the trauma you witness to remain fully present for the next call demanding your service or protection. My career took a dramatic turn when I received an invitation to try out for the Police Department SWAT team. This is what I lived for and wanted to do. At this point in my life, I have seen and experienced enough darkness that I have stopped going to church. Growing up, my family and I would attend church every Sunday, but after seeing everything, I got turned off, and everything I saw and experienced didn’t make sense. Preparation eliminates nervousness, as you’ve done everything possible to succeed. Coming up to the day of the SWAT test, I was in the best shape of my life. With all my training and trial runs, I was confident I would make the team. The morning of the SWAT test, I’m prepared and ready to tear it up and get on the team. I had breakfast and was leaving on time, but as I picked up my bags by the door and reached for the doorknob to open it, something didn’t feel right in my heart. I had this weird anxiety, so I shut the door, put my bags down, and did something I hadn’t done in years—I knelt to say a quick “insurance prayer,” and the last part of my prayer to God was, “Let your will be done.” When I got to the police department, I warmed up, and then it was my turn. I started to go through all the obstacles and was having a perfect time, and then I got to the part I had done hundreds of times in the last six months of training: jumping over a wall. I slipped on the grass and hit my knee into the wall, which dislocated my knee and messed up my hips and back. I remember screaming out in pain. All the police chiefs and the staff were there, and I was cursing every word that I could think of. The ambulance took me to the hospital, and I lay in my hospital bed, the pain medicine wearing off. I clicked the button for the nurses to help, and my body was shaking from the pain I was in. So, I called for help, but nobody was coming—I felt invisible. At this moment, I remember thinking, “What is going on? Why can’t I get some medicine?” I looked down in distress and then looked up into the light on the ceiling and started cursing God, “Why did you do this to me? Do you know what I had to sacrifice to get my career? I left my fiancé in Chicago and missed birthdays and other special celebrations. I missed everything, and you take it away like this??!!" Of all the scenarios I envisioned happening in my life and purpose, this was not one of them. And just like a parent reprimands their children, I heard God remind me, “Do you remember that prayer you said? What was the last part?" I was initially surprised, but then I remembered the last part of my morning prayer before the SWAT test: “Whatever happens, Lord, let your will be done.” 

All the best doctors in California treated me during my recovery in an attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. My healing wasn’t progressing as quickly as everyone had hoped—I had already injured my other knee. I was eager to return to the streets in uniform in six months. Four months after my accident, my good friend and mentor, Sergeant Scott, died in a shooting on the streets. Another one of my good friends called me, letting me know what happened. After this, my physical therapy and healing stopped progressing. I believe that my healing plateaued because I was hurting so much mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually—hurting in every way. Being in my mid-20s, I didn’t know how to cope. I grew up in a family where my dad told us to shake it off. Because what I was going through was an internal emotional and spiritual pain, it was tough. I much prefer to feel physical pain. From that point, my physical therapy progress plateaued and then declined, surprising my doctors. I believe that how most men deal with things is to drink or play video games, and that’s what I did, too. It was my coping mechanism to feel short-term goodness because I was hurting so much. A couple of months later, I got a call from a police department representative, and then they sent my buddy, Rick, to come and get my gear. This is the protocol they go through when they retire an officer. In my mind, I was thinking, “You’re not giving me up just yet, are you? After everything I’ve done for this city!” I remember my buddy coming to take my gun, badge, and radio, putting everything in a box, and then putting it in his trunk—I know it not only hurt me, but it hurt him, too. At that point, I felt my identity as a warrior was slipping away and being put in a box. This happened the same year, and I didn’t understand much about what was happening. 

I think many people forget that they may get some sign or message from God, and think everything will be a piece of cake. No, there will be wilderness parts of our lives because we don’t get to where we are overnight, and sometimes we’re asking God to add things to our lives—to give us things—but really, we need to have things taken away. We must remember that subtraction is equally as powerful and important as addition. We’re always praying for more: a better house, a better this, a better that,  gives me more. But how are we handling and stewarding the things that we already have? We don’t need to keep adding more. Sometimes, we need things taken away, and I think that’s what God was doing with me—He was taking things away. He let me experience my years in law enforcement and the tactical life, and He was teaching me to trust Him, that He would use everything I have done and learned. 

Can you share the Sunday morning you visited a high school parking lot? After this, things began to change. 

This was when the stripping away of everything started happening, and I lost my identity as a warrior. Now, I’m confused. What am I supposed to do? I have no degree. I’ve got two messed-up knees, a messed-up hip, and a messed-up back—now, what am I supposed to do? I can’t do the things I want to do. I can’t go to the military. What now? I didn’t want a desk job. I was in such a dark place. And like I said. What do many guys do when they are struggling? We drink and play video games. So, I started drinking, eating a lot, and gaining weight. My wife would come home after work and ask if I was okay. It came to a point where I almost took my life. My wife was at work, and the devil was whispering in my mind that I was nothing, I had no degree, and I was worthless, and how was I going to provide for my wife? So, when she went to work that day, I believed all the lies I could see around me were problems. No one knew I was hurting because I’m a goofy, funny dude who was good at masking things and diverting attention away from me by making people laugh. I fought the lies I was believing and hearing in my head and knew that I couldn’t do it, so I walked out of my apartment using my crutches, got in the car, and just drove. I didn’t know where I was going because I didn’t have a destination—I just kept moving, and then I ended up in this high school parking lot, and with the beautiful California weather, I had all the windows down. In the distance, I could hear music. I recognized this music because I grew up in church. I said, “That sounds like church music, but it’s a high school?” I got out of the car and saw a crowd walking, so I followed them into the gymnasium, a church that rented out the high school for Sunday services. I sat down in the back, and it felt weird but calm and comforting at the same time. The pastor’s name was Ryan, and he preached out of the book of Habakkuk and said to everyone, “Most of you have never heard of this book, and many preachers don’t speak from this book. It’s such a small book in the Bible. A lot of you probably have never even heard of it. When he goes on preaching, he talks about how Habakkuk continued to question God and why He was allowing all these things to happen. Why are you allowing all this violence to happen around me? And I felt he was speaking directly to me. Yeah. Then, Pastor Ryan shared a personal story. One summer, he took a sabbatical, a brief vacation to rest. On his sabbatical, he could spend every day with his daughter, who may have been around 3 or 4 years old. When the sabbatical was over and it was time for him to return to work, his daughter asked him, “Where are you going?” And he told her, “We’re not going to hang out today; I’m sorry, honey. I’ve got to get back to church.” She asked, Why? And he told her, “Well, I’m the pastor, and my sabbatical is over.” She asked, Why? Because, “It’s my responsibility. It’s how I get paid and how we pay the bills.” She kept asking why, and he tried to explain it to her. Then, at one point, his daughter ran away, returned with her piggy bank, gave it to him, and said, “Here you go, Daddy. Now, you don’t have to go back to work anymore.”

He shared that story to reference Habakkuk—sometimes we ask God, “Why this? Why that? Why, why, why?” Why did this happen to me? Why did you allow this? But even if God gave us the answer, we still wouldn’t be able to handle it or fully understand what He’s trying to do in our lives. So it’s like, “Why this, God, why that?” He’s like, no, you’re not going to get it. No, no, no, tell me. Just tell me. No, no, no, you’re not going to get it. Just tell me. I swear I’ll get it. And then He tells us, and we’re like, huh, and it makes no sense. And that’s exactly the feeling I got. I may not understand the darkness that I’m in—I may not understand the violence that’s around me—I may not understand the depression that is going on in my life right now. And I can continue to ask Him why, but even if He gave me the answer, would I be able to receive His answer and understand?

I remember breaking down crying when the praise and worship music started. I knew God had placed me at the perfect time and place with the ideal message to speak into my life. It was perfect. As I was crying with my eyes closed, I felt a cool, watery substance on the top of my head, behind my neck, and on my back, slowly dripping down to my feet. Initially, I thought someone behind me took a bottle of water and poured it on my head, and I almost switched into fight mode, but then I noticed that it didn’t feel like water because it was moving slowly and was cool. At that moment, God told me He loves me and He didn’t forget about me, and it was then that God got my attention.  

I shared earlier that my family was a big warrior type. So, I learned my identity as a warrior from my dad, which carried me on to the first half of my career. Still, I knew faith through my mom, and that’s what carried me on for life because when the world took my badge and gun—when the world took my gun, when the world gave me the identity of a warrior and then took it away—the only thing left was my identity as a son and child of God; that was the only thing. This reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures. It’s James 1:2-4 where it says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” So, instead of looking at the trials we go through as God hating us, not loving us, or forgetting about us, sometimes He uses opportunities to mold us. Remember when I was talking about adding versus taking away? Sometimes, this is Him taking away, and it’s that identity that people miss. When the world took my identity as a warrior, my identity in Christ carried me through.

So when we live in and by the world, have our confidence come from the world, have our identities be from the world, and have our faith be in the world, when that’s gone, what’s left? I speak confidently because I know what it did to me. When the world took everything away, and I didn’t have anything else, my faith was the last thing I turned to. And yet, you know what? That’s probably the first thing I should have been leaning into this whole time—faith and faith in God and my identity in Him.

What inspired you to start Operation Redwood, and what does the name mean?

I must shout out to my buddy Samuel because he asked me if I was born in Redwood City, California, and if I knew anything about redwood trees. Samuel said the redwood trees are massive, but their roots are shallow and intertwine, so you can’t pull one tree out without pulling all the others out. They can create a stable base because their roots are intertwined like a church community. Then he shared that when one of their seeds falls to the ground, it won’t open up unless there’s some stress put on it, such as fire or a flood—stress needs to be applied to that seed so it can open up and become another redwood tree. That’s like the James 1:2-4 verse. There’s a process in this. I thought Redwood’s idea and name were cool, but didn’t know what to do with it next—it was just a cool name. 

Then, I had this dream that my home office was burning. The only things left standing that were not burnt or touched by the fire were my desk and computer; when I talked to people that I trusted about it who are deeply rooted in faith and biblically based, all concluded, including myself, that God was asking me to burn all of this down and focus on Him. 

At the time, I had equity in a couple of different companies. And to be completely honest, I was still unhappy. When I left the police department and went into entrepreneurship and business, I thought it would make me happy, but again, it was just trying to fill in the void that the police department had stripped away. The difference now was that I had a daughter. And if you guys have kids, you know, they’re going to see the things that you’re doing, and they’re also going to see the things that you don’t want them to see or do. So, in my mind, I was depressed, and I couldn’t have her replicate that. I couldn’t have her see that this was how I lived. And then, suddenly, maybe she might blame herself. Why Dad’s unhappy, why he’s never satisfied, why he’s always short-tempered, why he’s never giving us grace—that’s not the type of man, husband, or dad that I want to be. It was a six-month battle of trying to figure out if God wanted me to release equity, and, in a sense, I had debt I had to pay off, so I surrendered. 

And then God brought that whole Redwood thing that I had spoken to Samuel about months ago up again. If you look at our logo, you’ll see the three spears. Yes, it also looks like trees, which is cool. It stands for restoring manhood, rescuing kids, and rebuilding families. At the core of what we’re trying to do is to restore manhood. I chose the word restore because the buzzword was redefine in the entrepreneurship world at the time—Everyone was redefining fitness, redefining this, and redefining that. But really, we’re not redefining anything. 

God already built it to be what it’s supposed to be. So we’re not here to redefine. We’re trying to restore the original blueprint of what God had intended men to be. We desire to restore manhood and rescue kids by donating between 30% and 40% to support companies and organizations that are rescuing and rehabilitating human trafficking victims. Rescuing these kids is just part of it; the second part is that these children experience so much trauma, darkness, and violence, and they need God to come in and fill that hole with light. These children need rehabilitation—these girls’ and women’s identities are going to change, and their understanding of what a man is supposed to be like and what a woman is supposed to be like will change. They need to be restored, and that’s what we’re passionate about. I believe that when a man is whole, he is coming alive; kids, too, will be rescued, homes will be rebuilt, and traditional family values will be restored. 

There needs to be a strong man to lead the homes. I’m not trying to take away from women because they have an equally important role. I’m just speaking directly to the men right now. Because that’s what God called us to be, right? There’s a reason He made Adam first and then Eve. There’s a calling for men to step up and be the protectors that they were called to be. I believe that if we’re able to restore manhood, reach the men, and reach the hearts of these men, we’ll be able to save more kids and rebuild family values so that the whole trafficking stuff starts to push that back because that is evil and satanic.

Imagine the generations impacted—these women and kids will eventually become parents, and if their foundation is already rooted in that darkness, what do you think their kids will experience? So, Redwood has a two-pronged approach. One, we’re approaching men because men are the main offenders. We’re trying to reach the hearts of men and bring Jesus into their world, meeting them where they’re at. Change their hearts. And then, hopefully, that will lead to rescuing more kids, and that will lead to rebuilding more families. If we stick to what we do at Redwood, and our specialty is working with men, you know, helping them find vision, helping them find clarity, and helping them rebuild. If God can trust us to be faithful in a few things, then He can trust us to be faithful with all the other things He will entrust us with all for His glory.

What encouraging last words can you share?

There’s a story in the Bible of the parable of the talents, and many people are familiar with it. There was a master who had three servants. He gave five talents to one servant, to another, he gave two, and to another, he gave one. The master left, but when he returned, the guy with five talents made it ten, the one given two made two more, and the one given one talent hid it because he was afraid. I want people to take away that God sometimes gives people five, sometimes two, and sometimes one, yes, but I want people to remember that God never made zero-talent people. God never made you with zero talents. At the very least, you have at least one. I believe you have many more. And if you look deeper into the scripture, they say that when the master gave his servant the five, two, and one talent, he gave it according to their ability. You have something hidden in you that maybe you haven’t fully discovered yet that God still wants to use. God still wants to take whatever talent and make it more of a blessing to other people, just like we discussed earlier. No matter how dark it may be for you, no matter how lost you feel, or maybe a lack of identity or lack of vision, you need to remember that you were made on purpose, with a purpose, and He never made zero-talent people—you still have a story to tell—you still have a gift to share with the world, so don’t give up. 

Operation Redwood YouTube Channel & Facebook Men's Group

Pastor Brian Graham

Founder of Beyond Walls Ministry & Beyond FM Radio

These are Pastor Brian's favorite scriptures...

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Can you share about your childhood, the progression of the addiction, going to prison, and how you came to Christ? 

I grew up in a home, living with my mom and dad, back and forth. My childhood wasn’t the best. My parents physically, mentally, and emotionally abused me. I remember times when my mom would grab me by my hair and drag me across the floor in our house, and my dad would beat us with extension cords and coaxial cables—he would use anything he could get his hands on. My childhood was not as good as it could have been, and it was very traumatic. Despite this, I’m grateful to God for my upbringing, as my parents always supported my regular church attendance. Still, the main reason I was going to church as a kid was to escape the abuse that was going on at home—it was a relief for me to get out of a demonic atmosphere. I always enjoyed worshiping God, being in the presence of church people, and being away from the house and the environment where I lived. I would attend church for this reason, but deep down, I sensed the Lord’s calling. When I went to church, I would look at the preachers who were preaching—I wanted to be like them—preach like them, talk like them, and dress like them, so I always knew in my heart that I was called to do something greater, but I didn’t know if I would ever make it to that point because of the abuse that I would suffer at my home. One thing, too, is when I was living with my mom, and when she would get tired of dealing with me, she would send me to my dad’s. And then, when my mom decided she would snatch me back out from my dad’s—I would have to go back and live with her. I hated it. I didn’t want to go live with my mom. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents because they, too, were another escape for me, like going to church was. Five different times while living at my dad's, someone molested me, so to escape, I either went to church or spent a lot of time at my grandma’s house—a way to get away and cope with what I was dealing with at home. 

When Did You Start Using Drugs?

As life went on, I slowly got into using drugs, and eventually, I started selling them too. I used to sell drugs all across the United States. We would load up U-Haul trucks with cocaine and marijuana and drive all over, distributing them. I became a full-blown alcoholic, drinking a fifth and a half of Jack Daniel’s daily. Back then, I didn’t realize it, but I now know I was trying to numb my pain and cope with the suffering I’d endured throughout my life. It took me years to understand why I was deeply involved in that lifestyle. Even while I was using and selling drugs and drinking heavily, I still felt drawn to church. I would go to church even when I was high and had drugs in my pocket. There was something about being in that place—it felt good. It was a feeling I never experienced at home. 

In February 1998, I got busted with seven pounds of marijuana and two eight balls of cocaine. They sent me to Harris County Jail in Texas and sentenced me to five years in prison. The judge’s sentence devastated me. I returned to my cell and called family members to tell them what happened. I told them I was going to prison for five years. In county jail, you typically wait about 45 days before being transferred to a state prison. While waiting, I unexpectedly received a letter saying the parole board wanted to see me. It was strange being called before the parole board before even setting foot in prison, but they granted me parole. I was so excited. I thought I was getting out and could start putting my life back together. I called my family—my mom, dad, aunts, and uncles—to let them know I’d made parole and ask if I could stay with them. One by one, they all hung up the phone. Nobody wanted me in their home. My family rejected me again. I was the black sheep of the family. Because I didn’t have a place to parole, I ended up serving the complete five-year sentence. The prison was no cakewalk. There’s a lot that goes on in there. While inside, I spent a lot of time thinking about my life. I knew I could’ve been out if I had just had an address. I started calling friends and acquaintances—anyone—and asked if I could use their addresses just to get released. I told them I didn’t need to stay with them to use the address. Every single person rejected me. One night, I was sitting on my bunk, devastated. I was 18 years old and scared. I began to pray and cry out to God. I poured out my pain and sorrow, and I repented. Then I heard God speak to me in a still, small voice: “If you are going to be healed, if you’re going to be set free and delivered, and if I’m going to use you, I need you to forgive the people in your life who have ever hurt you.”God told me to call out the name of every single person who had hurt me, abused me, misused me, or wounded me in any way. He gave me clear instructions: “Call them out by name. Say that you forgive them. Say that you love them. And release them into My hands.” It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. With every name I spoke, I cried like a baby. It got harder and harder, but I kept going. That night, I forgave everyone and truly surrendered my life to the Lord. And this time, it was real. Before, I had gone through the motions and did the “church” things, such as when the pastor said come to the altar, I went to the altar; when he said say a prayer, I said a prayer; and when he said get baptized, I got baptized, but nothing changed. There was no deliverance, no healing, no freedom. It wasn’t until I was completely alone, rejected by everyone else, that I realized I needed a Savior. That’s when everything started to change.

Did you get involved in prison ministry or Bible studies while you were in prison, and when did you get out? 

I did a lot of Bible studies through the mail, I signed up for a mentorship, and they assigned me a mentor, who paid for my Bible college. I went to a college in Louisiana and became a pastor and became what God called me to be, so I spent a lot of time studying God’s word, being involved in chaplaincy, and praying with other ministers and prison inmates. I’ve seen a lot of people give their lives to the Lord, and God used me in the prisons, and then I got out on May 9th, 2003. Upon release, I immediately visited my son; I had impregnated a woman before my imprisonment, and she gave birth while I was incarcerated. So when I got out, I traveled by bus from Houston to Oklahoma City to see him. When I arrived in downtown Oklahoma City near the Greyhound bus station, there was a ministry called Celebration of Life Church. They were having a men’s prayer gathering, and the leader of the men’s group had a short Bible study, so I went in and sat there and listened. On my bus ride back to Houston, I heard the Lord speak to me again… “I want you to sell everything you have, and I want you to move to Oklahoma.” So, when I got back, I put up a sign at my apartment to sell everything and quit my job. I was trying to sell everything at my apartment so I would have the money to get on a bus, go to Oklahoma, and have some extra cash to help me get through some things, find a place to live, and get settled. I gave myself a week, and in that entire week, nobody came by the house and bought anything. Well, the night before I was to leave to get on a bus, this little old lady who lived in a tiny traveling trailer came to my apartment and she bought everything and said, “I don’t know why I’m buying all this stuff.” And I don’t know where I’m going to put it.” She even bought my curtains! So I got on the bus and went to Oklahoma. I started attending the church where that Bible study was and was there for 4-5 years. I ended up becoming the associate pastor. It was a good time for me to train and practice discipleship. I’m grateful for the opportunity because it allowed me to get into ministry, see the ins and outs of running a church, and be part of praying for people, preaching, and ministering.  

Did you go back to Texas after having some ministry training? 

Yes, I ended up going back to Texas and got a job. I wasn’t involved in a lot of ministries for the first year. Then I felt I’ve always had a burden for homeless people, drug addicts, prostitutes, inmates, and ex-inmates because I understand them—I understand the addiction and struggle and know how it feels to be in their shoes. My wife and I started doing homeless ministry by making 40-60 plates of food, loading them up in our car with our two children, and going downtown, pulling up under a bridge, handing out food, praying for people, giving them clothes, and making up bags of personal care products—it was a blessing to be able to serve and be a light for Christ. We didn’t have much money, but we did what we could, and God always provided. God also used this time as ministry training. 

Through all that I went through in my past, I never quit dreaming. I never quit hoping. I never quit having faith in God. As I was healing, I continued to struggle and fall, but I continued to get back up, and I always held on to God. Maybe you too are in between, and you know what you should be doing—you know your purpose as I did, but you may not see it in the natural realm right now, but if you keep praying and believing, keep fasting, and keep seeking the Lord for whatever it is that He’s called and predestined and ordained for you to do—don’t ever give up because I know that what God has started in you, He is faithful and will complete it. He will be with you as you complete your mission and what God has called you to do. 

My heart is beyond the church walls because everything that we do is supposed to be—we’re to be servants for the people. Being in church and being behind the scenes and involved in it, I saw that there wasn’t a lot of outreaches or discipleship, and I didn’t want to stay cooped up in a building with the same 20, 30, 40, or 50 people for the next 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. I don’t believe that God designed the church to be there doing the same thing repeatedly. We’re supposed to go out into the highways and byways to compel the people to enter the church. That’s why I believe God gave me the name Beyond Walls. We would have worship at park events, pray for people, and baptize them in the parks; focus on community outreach; and follow up on evangelism. I would invite several churches to partner with us and help us put on the event so that when we go out into the community, there will be different churches, ministers, and people giving people options. We’re not there to get you to come to our church—they have options where they may like to attend and grow in their relationship with Jesus. Jesus himself was an evangelist and didn’t stay within the church walls, and I believe we are to follow in his footsteps and do the same.

Beyond Walls & Beyond FM Radio

Coach Lisa Pickart

Founder of the LifeBack System, Nutritionist, and Health Coach

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Truth, Talk & Testimonies

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Lisa, you have been on an incredible health journey because you lost 118 pounds—I can’t even imagine each step you took. But I know God was with you. What was your turning point? Because I know, from your bio you shared, that you had a lot of inflammation, thyroid disease, and fibromyalgia. What happened? 

I want to hit two separate sides here—one side is health, and the other side is spiritual. And then, of course, you have a mind that connects your body with the spirit, right? And sometimes, that can be a battle. We’re brought up one way: we hear certain things and come from different spiritual backgrounds and denominations. We have all of this pre-imprinting going on between birth and 18. During that timeframe, we also can have a lot of baggage, which I embrace—my baggage—and I’m thankful for it because I think it’s crucial to acknowledge God through it. For instance, I have molestation on my belt, failing and accelerating grades, being a tomboy and outgoing, then teachers and people in our lives who speak negative things to us. I even had a fifth-grade teacher tell me, “The way you smile and laugh all the time, you’re never going to amount to anything but a high school cheerleader.” So these voices go on; that’s just the external, but we have what was going on internally. Parents try their best. There are a lot of dysfunctional homes, and even functional homes can be dysfunctional.

So, I did a lot of yo-yo dieting and had a mom who also did the same. My mom was from the era of Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor and raised me with an extravagant approach to fashion, hair, and makeup. I was the youngest of three girls. And so, having two older brothers, I became pretty athletic, definitely more of a tomboy. There were a lot of words from my father, whom I adore, who will now be 93 next month and is my strength internally. I wouldn’t have had my current strength without my father raising me, but his approach could have been better.

Jumping into my 30s and 40s, signs of menopause started. At 36, I was told that I should have a hysterectomy because cancer cells were present with a Pap smear. Having a hysterectomy didn’t seem right to me. Why would we lose our uteruses and ovaries? Thankfully, I didn’t listen to the doctor’s recommendation because, at 46, I had a child—I did lose six children before her in miscarriages. Still, I didn’t know at 46, when I gave birth, that 12 years later, we would be faced with losing her father. The next day after Eliya was born, I got sick every day for months. I thought I had food poisoning because everything I ate made me ill. It escalated to where I was afraid to eat anything. Well, now we know that it was liver disease and gallbladder disease, which were feeding hyperthyroidism. I ended up with thyroid eye disease, in which my eyes popped out of my head.

The underlying cause was a lot of stress, having a child later in life, being on the road, traveling worldwide, and blowing up buildings for our business. The stress kept building inside me, but God always told me it was okay and that He would go before me. We had a child on the road and were living in a vehicle 12-14 hours a day—driving 4,000 miles in four days is pretty intense, and then stopping to breastfeed—it was a lot. I felt like I was Wonder Woman, but I was getting sicker, and the inflammation was getting worse, to the point where my blood circulation was horrible. I started getting blood clots and neuropathy in my feet, and my health was snowballing. The bigger picture wasn’t about me but God's plan. When Eliya was shy of 12, she woke up one day and told me she didn’t want to travel anymore. I responded to her by saying, “Well, you know what? You were born into this life, and God has given it to you.” She is the youngest of the first six, and the others already left the house. Also, we did ministry on the road—we spoke at churches, went to many places, and wore three crosses on our construction hard hats, sharing God’s Word with everyone. Eliya begged me and shared her heart that she wanted to be a normal child and be home on the ranch with her horses. 

So I went to my husband, Eric, before he passed away; he wasn’t even sick that we knew of. And I told him, “This is going to be difficult, but you’ll need to take the guys on the road. Then, I will fly in for the day of the blast and do the implosions. He was surprised, but I explained her importance: she’s deeply knowledgeable in Scripture, loves the Lord, has been baptized, and has baptized other children. I said, “She wants to be home for a reason.” I ended up taking on three grandchildren in full custody and raising them. Eliya and one of them are the same age, so we call them Irish twins because they were born six weeks apart, and then there’s one 18 months older and one 18 months younger. So, I was raising four, and we were on the road, just living life. There were a lot of undercurrents, like a riptide in the ocean, but the boat was still floating on top. Amid everything, I was still yo-yo dieting and would gorge and get sicker every day. When I started getting deeper into reading the Bible, the Lord showed me that gluttony and worry are sins. At this time, I was 57 and nearing 58, and we needed to go to two overbooked jobs, so Eric went to Atlanta and called me. He was coughing badly, and I said, “You don’t sound good. You need to go to an urgent care.” Urgent care told him he had walking pneumonia. We have our family Christmas time in Idaho, and nobody knows that Eric is dying of cancer—even Eric. This persistent cough wasn’t going away, so he went to the emergency room with some prompting. I noticed that he was getting weaker.

When they diagnosed Eric, I wasn’t with him, as I was in Washington with the girls, and he was in Idaho when he called me after he collapsed in the driveway. I told him to call 911, so he called them, and then they called me to tell me they had a man in my driveway. I told them, “Yes, that’s my husband… please get him to the emergency room.” They life-flighted him to the hospital and took out four gallons of fluid from his lungs. And he called me and said, “Yeah, I’m sick, but it’s a blessing and proceeded to tell me that he has cancer. I dropped to the ground and was crying and didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. He then told me that if he had come in six months earlier, he probably could have fought it, but there wouldn’t be a fight because he was surrendering. Eric gets restored either way, and he believes that God will heal him on this planet or in heaven. I was bawling, and it was hard talking without getting emotional. It was a blessing for Eric because he loved the Lord so much, but the news was excruciating for me. I told the kids to start packing up so we could head back home to Idaho and told Eric that I needed to be with him, but Eric interjected and said, “No, no, no… You don’t need to be with me. Jesus is with me. I’ve already been through the garden… It’s going to be fine. Please take care of the girls, enjoy the weekend, and then when you come back, stop by the hospital.”

I was feeling overwhelmed, and everything in my life started getting a hundred times worse, including my weight. I asked Eric why he felt like having cancer was good news, and he replied, “Because it’s mesothelioma. We need to tell the family immediately because both of my grandparents died from mesothelioma, and the odds are that because I was by them, I got it off of their clothes.” Mesothelioma is a tiny spur that gets in your lungs. I said, “Are you sure it’s not from work?” He says, “No, I’m positive I got it from my grandparents because it takes 40 years to rear its ugly head." So I was like, okay, “I’m going to try to find the blessing in this.”

Upon our arrival at the hospital, he was in a jolly mood and felt great, in contrast to my frazzled and absolute basket-case state. I was the woman; when we weren't near each other, I almost thought I couldn’t breathe—our lives were so intertwined and meshed. I knew I needed to trust the Lord wherever He took this. I needed to be strong and believe we’re going to make it, so every day, I would say to God, “God, your will over mine, your will over mine, your will over mine, whatever that looks like, Lord, but I’m going to ask you that you hold me and direct me because you know what it will take for me to process this because I’m a person who is a long thinker, I don’t make rash decisions, and I like to plan.” The oldest was 14, then there were double 12s and a 10, and they asked, “Mom, why do you feel like crying when Dad’s dying? And I said, Well, that’s an excellent question.” At that moment, God reminded me how we raise our children to trust the Lord. Suddenly, I doubted if I was fully trusting God, and I started to question my faith because I was asking myself, do I trust? One day, one of my daughters said, Mom, put your arms out. I’m going to jump to you," and at that moment, I knew the Lord was saying… “My arms are up… Jump.”  

On March 19th, the hospital said, “Go home and get your affairs in order. And my husband goes, “You don’t know my God; you don’t know what He has in store. Don’t tell me I’m dying,” but we all knew that the tumor had moved over on top of his aorta, and he could no longer breathe. His breath was getting shorter and shorter. And from that day, March 19th, to April 1st, it was the time that it took for his body to shut down and pass away. 

I was very ill during this time, but I had to put my health aside because caring for Eric and our children was the priority. It wasn’t about Mom; the children were quickly learning this new way of life. We had 200 acres to take care of, running the dozer and tractor, changing the oil, cutting wood, and taking care of the horses and cows, and the girls stepped in and took care of things. We all laugh about it because they learned so much in a short time that maybe they would have never learned had we not gone through this challenge.  

It was about three days before Eric passed that our youngest asked me while breaking down in tears, “I don’t understand why God is so mean.” I said, “He’s not, but one by one, He calls us home, and this is your goal to get yourself there one day too… It takes a lot of courage to have that faith, just like you do with me. You trust me every day, but I don’t want you to trust me—I want you to trust that God knows what’s best for our family.”

We turned our family room into an area for everybody to sleep, hang out, and spend those last hours together. We had a lot of visitors that week who came and prayed over him and said their goodbyes. Eric had been incoherent those previous days because of the morphine. The pain had gotten to where it was excruciating. You know that marriage isn’t always perfect—it doesn’t matter who you are because we’re all broken people. Eric looked at me and said, “I’m sorry for everything.” And I said, “Oh, we’re good. You are so forgiven. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good." And then, he told me, “I love you,” and his eyes never opened again or spoke another word. After he passed, I got the girls, and there was a lot of crying and hugs. 

The next night after Eric’s passing, we remained very quiet—we spoke few words but shared a few jokes and memories. When I woke up, four girls were in bed with me, which they never did before. I said good morning to them, and everyone said, “Are you ready? What are we going to do now?” In my head, I was wondering that I had no clue because I needed to shut my business down; I was facing losing the property and finding a new place to live, and suddenly, I replied in faith to the girls, “We’re going to live and love life and celebrate.” My favorite Scripture that came to mind about our day of death is more significant than our day of birth is Ecclesiastes 7:1. So I said, "You know what, we’re going to live, and we’re going to love life." I embraced all four of them and said, “All I can tell you is that when I had you guys and looked at you, that was the greatest moment of my life. Dad is in heaven in the arms of the Lord, and that is a time to rejoice. Now, it’s our books and chapters that we need to live for God.” To this day, they all serve God, and their goal is to get home to heaven, and we’ll all be reunited.

A couple of days went by, and I realized that I was getting sicker. And it scared me because I was the only surviving parent. It was a significant burden, and the stress was pretty high financially. Eight months went by without health insurance, and finally, I got some coverage through the state for myself and the girls for dental and essential health. I made a doctor’s appointment for myself and was informed that my liver wasn’t good, my thyroid had Graves disease, and my body was acting like an 88-year-old woman and getting closer to shutting down. Then, the sheriff notified me that they would be taking the property, and we didn’t have a place to live. In between everything, I had people stopping by to ask if they could start helping us pack or move the animals. The children became agitated, saying, “Do not touch my dad’s clothes. We’re not leaving this property. God’s going to save our house.” A lot of hope was going on amid everything else. I told the girls, “Maybe God has a bigger plan, and because we’re stuck in our chapter, we can’t even see the great gifts coming to us.” I noticed that as soon as I started seeing the picture in a different light, they, too, increased in hope and faith for our future. It was also at this time that I could hardly walk. 

The children were grocery shopping for me, which was usually my responsibility. I gave them the money and told them what to get on the cell phone, so we were a wreck. However, their willingness to take on this responsibility showed their maturity and understanding of our situation, which was a source of pride and inspiration for me. We had a feast on Thanksgiving Day, and on December 4th, we needed to surrender our home. Out of nowhere, this lady I don’t know told me they had some cabins—they didn’t have running water or a toilet. Still, if we wanted to put our horses on the back property and bring the girls, she would give them to me. Four minutes before the bank took the property, someone purchased it, which helped me pay off my debt to Medicare. One business debt was handled, and I was given a check for $25,000. So we had a little breathing room and had two weeks off the property, but we were packed up in four days. God closed the door; we were blessed to live there but needed to leave.

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated Christ, and New Year’s came; on January 7th, I received a call that my mother had only hours to live, and she passed on January 9th. It was overwhelming because I had one support system gone, and now another was, too. My thyroid had a considerable flare-up, and my eyes were now wholly extended from my head. It was a lot to deal with at one time with all the underlying pressure, but I heard God speak and say to me, “Are you trusting me?” All things are possible with God, according to Philippians 4:13. I needed to focus on the Lord and forget all things going on in my world—the stress, people, and anyone judging me—and it didn’t matter. 

When my mom passed away, she left me $40,000, and another friend carried a mortgage on a house, so we lived there to help. It was a double-wide house, and it was me and the girls. The move-in day was April 1st, the first anniversary of Eric’s passing. I felt like the Book of Job, losing everything and then everything being restored. When we were moving into that house on Facebook, our reunion group from high school was praying for Eric and me, the girls, and the family. My high school sweetheart, who went to the Air Force, asked if that was Lisa because he didn’t recognize the married last name. A good friend of ours said yes and told him that her husband was sick and passed. Kenneth gave me a call but hit the camera by accident. He had never used the camera for a video call before, but he was shocked and said, “Oh, my gosh, there you are!” And on my side of the phone, before I answered, I said, “Oh my gosh, this guy I know is calling on video chat—I can’t talk; I’m broken, and my life is a wreck.” I got the courage to answer, and he asked if I was OK. I told him, “No, I’m so broken and don’t know how the future looks, and I can’t even comprehend anything that’s happened over the last three years.” He told me he would come to see me and would like to help us in any way possible. Here, we lived in a 1,100-square-foot double-wide, and we used to have a 5,000-square-foot home. COVID was going around, and we just got over COVID ourselves. I knew, though, to take one step at a time—put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.  

Kenneth and I started a relationship about a year later, and then we made plans to get married. He said, “If you’re not busy in four years, will you marry me? I’ve waited 45 years to marry you. Would you please marry me?” And I was like, “No, I’m a broken mess; I’ve got kids and all this other stuff.” Well, we finally decided to get married on July 3rd of 2021, and on July 1st, he had three grand mal seizures and was in the hospital. I dropped to my knees for the second time and said to God, “Lord, I can’t do this again. There’s just no way. I don’t understand. We’re going to be a family. We’re moving.” Clearly, in a vision, God showed me a drawn line in the sand, speaking to my heart, saying, “Lisa, everything on this side of the earth means the world to you, but on this side, it doesn’t mean anything to me—not the house, not the car, not the job, not the money. I need you. I need your thoughts, your faith, and your eyes. It will be OK if you trust me.”

While Kenneth was in the hospital, I told him that I didn’t think we should get married, and he responded, “If it’s the last thing I do before I take my last breath, we’re getting married.” So, the next day, we got married, and we watched him for three months for seizures.

Meanwhile, I made a phone call, and this phone call didn’t go to the person I called. The person who answered told me how he helps people heal their livers, and one of the root causes of seizures is liver dysfunction. One of the significant symptoms is if you had hepatitis C and now have liver cirrhosis, which was where Kenneth was. So we started changing our diets and a program immediately. That was in July, and by September, he needed to go in for blood work at the Mayo Clinic to see if he could be a candidate for a liver transplant. The answer was no because, after the age of 60, it gets less likely because the average age for a man to pass away is 74, so they would rather give that healthy liver to a healthy person than to an older one. 

With this news, we quickly removed all chemicals from our house and stopped consuming carbohydrates and sugar—everything was gone—it was a struggle because you don’t realize how addicted to sugar you are. As a nutritionist, I went back, and I looked at every single scientific study and documentation from the beginning of time, moving all the way forward and searching for when fatty liver disease became the death of humans versus liver cirrhosis by alcohol. Like, when did that happen? So here I was, looking all this up. Big Pharma has been in bed with the FDA and the Food Administration. All the chemicals and stuff we’re getting in our system are the culprits of what’s destroying our liver. 

So, now I’m on fire—I have a spark of light and am on a new adventure—and God is showing me so much, and it was Holy Spirit-led on how to heal the liver. So we pursued what we have been applying to our lives, and in January, we both went in for blood work, and for me, it was the first time in 5 years since I had blood work. I am on the back burner again because I went from caring for myself to caring for someone else. And my words of wisdom for anybody are that taking care of yourself is not selfish. It’s selfish not to because people need you. They ran the blood work, called us back a week later, and said, “There’s something wrong here.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And they said, “The blood work of the man we have from July is a man with one leg in the grave, and this blood work is like a 32-year-old man’s blood work.” I then asked the doctor what my thyroid looked like, and he told me that I didn’t have a thyroid issue. I told him, “No, I do; check my records. I have hyperthyroidism, Graves disease, thyroid eye disease, and a list of 12 autoimmune diseases. And he said, “Well, you don’t have them now. And I was like, “What!” And he said, “You don’t have anything. You have somehow or another had bad blood work, or something happened, but this is all gone.” So Kenneth and I were on to something and continued to follow a carnivore diet because everything else was spiking insulin and causing liver issues and brain fog. Then, a friend of ours heard that Kenneth had liver cirrhosis. He asked how he was doing and told him, “You’re not going to believe this, but we are one month from celebrating one year of life after he was told 30 to 90 days to live—they didn’t even want to do treatment or to have any hope for him because he was under 10% functioning of his liver. So obviously, God has bigger plans, and it has been an absolute miracle moving forward to today, the LifeBack name came because we all want our lives back—everyone wants to go to heaven, but we don’t want to go today—we want to get to the Lord and go to heaven, but if you’re called home today, are you ready to surrender everything and go? 

When you are going through tough times, it seems you are stuck somewhere in the hallway, be steadfast about His business. Be faithful and immovable. 1 Corinthians 15:58. Even though he may not have opened the door or a window, and you don’t know where you’re going, you still need to be busy with His work. What does it mean to be about His business or work? Being a good disciple, having a sound mind, and following His lead. This is surrendering—literally every day, it was all about sweet surrender and trusting Him in the storm. He gives me an understanding that surpasses our own because He knows what’s best. We think that we know it all—that we’re brilliant—that we’ve got an education and degrees and experience and all this stuff, but He told me, “You’re just my child; you’re my child, and I’m your Father, and you need to listen to me.” 

Through all this, and coming to today, the LifeBack System was birthed by a high school guy who introduced me to another guy, who became my business partner. He said, “Your story is incredible, and the information on the liver is so powerful to help people get their life back.” This is where the name was born because when God takes us through the journey or the wilderness, it’s not to have us have pain and sorrow—it’s having us draw closer to Him, so when the time comes, we are ready to go home. God is so faithful. God gave me His peace, not my own, and He was so profound in helping me understand that I’m just dust to dust; it’s just a blink or moment in time, and the future of me is in His hands, and how I was going to show my children to have the strength and courage and have blind faith and put everything in His hands.

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