[COVID Crisis Series 21 of 25] Peace or Panic: Trusting God Through Tough Times

The following is a full transcript of a Facebook Live, where Susie is speaking extemporaneously – she is unscripted and unedited.

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Now it should be live well, setting up your meeting for Facebook live. Let’s see here. Thanks for your patience. The folks that are on the phone. Appreciate it. Live on Facebook. Okay. for those of you on Facebook, I can’t watch the live and do the questions at once, so I’ll try to look over there. I’m trying to follow this chat and all that stuff at the same time. You’re good on Facebook. I’m good on Facebook. Okay. I have the chat box open if you guys have questions about what you want to do or about what we talk about tonight or about what’s hard tonight is going to be a little more on the spiritual side of things. I was sharing with my couple’s Bible study just a few minutes ago and my husband was like, you know, do people know you’re gonna talk about God tonight?

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And I was like, I think people know I talk about God. So we’re going to talk about God tonight or faith or the things that, you know, get us through tough times. So we’re going to, do you want to stop? Cancel. It should be recording. Recording. Okay. So we’re gonna try this. Thanks for joining me for our third live discussion. And if you don’t want to be online and you don’t want to discuss, that’s okay. I, if you do, you can pop on and at the bottom of the screen, there’s a place for you to be on video or to be on audio and ask questions when it’s time. If you just want to type into the chatbox, that’s okay too. Because the reason I did this was to just help people have a place where they could be social if they wanted.

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This is my new mantra is physical distancing but social connecting. So, and if that’s not what you want, that’s okay. If you’re on via Facebook live, pop some questions in the chatbox or the chatbox? In the comments, chatbox on zoom, comments on Facebook live. And we are going to dive in because I wanted to share with you some things. So I don’t know if many of you know this, but last year was probably one of the tougher years for me being sick and really wrestling with waiting for God in an uncertain time. And so I’m kind of was joking with some friends of mine that I’ve been doing this social isolation thing for the last two months because I got some, I had to just be social isolated, so I didn’t get the flu. Doesn’t even matter why the doctors asked me in January or in January, please be isolated so that you don’t get the flu.

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And so I’ve kind of been practicing this alone thing a bit and my husband and I live in a RV tiny house. So we do this social physical distancing from the world. Lots of time together in a tiny little space. It will be going on three years now. And so not only do I have some mental, emotional, physical experience with all this well that’s not how I want to say it. I’ve thought a lot about what I’m gonna talk about tonight. I have experience in this personally, not just with my clients, not just lip service, but from my own personal life and my own personal experience. I have lived through this, not this Corona virus, but a level of uncertainty, a level of struggle, a level of pain, a level of trauma. So I really get it. And what I’m going to talk about tonight is not because I just learned it from a book, it’s really because I’ve lived it.

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One of the things my friend Sarah Beckman wrote a book called “Hope in Hard Places” and she invited me to write the forward for it. If you need some good advice, pick up this book, “Hope in Hard Places” by Sarah Beckman, and in the forward. I tell the story that I share when I speak about resilience or dealing with hard things. And I talk about how during this Christmas season, about four days before Christmas, and this was almost 18 years ago now, I remember walking into the sanctuary and what I really remember very vividly is the smell of the sanctuary that for the balsam fur, the evergreen candles, it just smelled like Christmas and it just made me so happy and to be in a place at Christmas time that it smelled like Christmas. My whole family kind of filed it in our Pew and the pastor started talking about struggle and difficulties and our perspective in those times.

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And he used the story of George Bailey from the movie. It’s a wonderful life and I’m not, I’m going to give you the short version. But basically he, at one point, he’s like, you know, it doesn’t matter if you struggled with, you know, cancer or the death of a child, loss of a parent, abuse, harm, life-threatening illness. You know, you went on to list eight or 10 things, I think 10 things that you could have struggled through or had to deal with that could have really wanted you to give up on life like George Bailey, his at that point was a financial crisis. And I remember looking at John at one point and as the pastor talked about how even if you’d been through these hard things, you could still shift your perspective cause and, and see what a wonderful life you had. Because when George Bailey kind of met with the angel, Clarence, it wasn’t a circumstances that changed.

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it was his perspective that changed. And I remember looking at John with tears in my eyes and saying to him, we have such a wonderful life. And in that moment, kind of as I’m having this sweet moment with my husband, I felt my teenage daughter elbow me in the side and she looks at me and she goes, mom, eight of those 10 things have happened to you, not us. You, how can you say it’s a wonderful life? How can you have faith in God? And I, I was trying to behave in church and so I lead you over to school. We’ll talk about this later. And when we got home, she had some really good questions for me as a teenager who believed in God. He was walking with God, but who didn’t understand a God that allows her to be hard times. And, and how you have a faith that, a trust in hard times.

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And I hate to tell you, I don’t have a lot of answers about why God does what he does or why God allows what he allows. But what I do know is that hope and faith and trust in God in the hard times is what gets us through. And so one of the things that if you’ve known me for long, you know that I’m the how girl, well, that sounds great, but how Susie, tell me how to do that. And so as I was thinking about this today and talking with a few friends and a few clients, one of the things that came up was this idea of the volatility. We’re all on this roller coaster. Sometimes we’re feeling, you know, hopeful and good, and we have enough toilet paper and, and food, and our kids are playing well. And then we hit this slope where we, we hear of more cases or a friend is struggling, or we have another personal crisis in our life of a whole another sort.

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Maybe a marriage, maybe financial, maybe no, my mother-in-law’s very ill will probably die in the next 24 hours because she’s, and she’s been dying. So congestive heart failure, but we got the news this morning that it’ll probably happen in the next 24 hours. And so there’s all these other emotions that we’re having on top of that, we’re turning on the TV and they’re saying, you know, coronavirus spreading and so-and-so is not isolating. And if such and such what happened? And it’s just a, you know, powder cake for anxiety, depression, hopelessness, sorrow, tears, you know, all the fields. And, it does feel like a roller coaster kind of volatility and vulnerability. And we feel out of control, not just of our world, but of ourselves. And I know for me in those times when I feel that out of control, the only place I find peace is in my relationship with God.

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I don’t know. I’m getting all emotional here except for there’s been a hard, a hard fought lesson for me. And so as I was thinking about our time tonight and really kind of asking God what I should share, I felt like I gave me this kind of three-fold framework. And I don’t say that to be over spiritual. I just say, Hey, this is like how do I help people learn to trust God in the panic? And what came to me were these few things and I hope they help you as you walk away from tonight just with a sense of not just, Oh yes, I should trust, but how do I trust? How do I trust God and find peace when everything in me wants to panic? That’s really what I want to talk about. And so the first thing I want to talk about is this idea of telling God.

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And I love the Psalms. If you are, if you have ever read the Bible, the Psalms are one of my favorite books because David is as real as real can be. And he tells God all the things he thinks, whatever they are not even polished. Like, you know, why are you leaving me alone? God, how long are you going to not show up? God, could you crush my enemies? God, you too. I’m thirsty in tears are my only constant companion. God. And he tells God all the things that we’re so afraid to tell God because we think they’re ugly or they’re not polished upright and they’re not. What we’re supposed to say is good. You know, believing people. And David says all of them and God in the Psalms and God causes calls the Psalms a book of worship. So as I began thinking about that, I was like, huh, it’s worship to talk to God about how I think it can feel.

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And sure enough, right smack in the middle of the Psalms, there’s a verse in Isaiah and Psalm 62 and it says, pour out your heart before me. Oh, people pour out your heart before me. Trust in him. God is our refuge and our help in time of need. And I thought, okay, so trusting God means pouring out my heart before him. All right, well I can do that. But what I love about what David does at the end of every time he tells God exactly what he thinks. No matter what David feels, every song that has this kind of tirade ends with some version. And this is my Susie version. Like there’s the message version, which is a really good version is you are God and I am not. And so I will trust you. And I love that because it says to me that trust is not a feeling.

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Trust is a willful ascent. It’s a position that I take when I realize I can, I can spew out and pour out my heart before God. But what I’ve got to do at the end of the day is believe that God is God and I am not, even though I tried to be in control thing, sometimes, you know, I’ve had people say to me, you’re not the Holy Spirit, Susie. I’ve tried to control and tell people what I think they should do. But at the end of the day, God has God and I am not. And that’s enough to just to know that truth and to, to, to know that pouring out my heart before God is actually trusting God. That’s a way we trust. We tell God what we think, what we feel, what we wish, what we don’t like, what we like, what we hope for all the fields.

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God says, tell them to me, pour them out before me because I call that worship. And I was like, okay, that kind of worship I can do, especially right now when I have so many thoughts and feelings. Because at the end of the time I’ve been in relationship with God and I think that’s why God says it. Just come to me. Reason with me. Tell me what you think and feel because that’s what I want more than anything is relationship with you. We sometimes put God in this far-away box. So tell God all the things, the first way to move from panic to peace is to tell God all the things. Okay. And he calls that worship and he says that’s a form of the way we trust him by pouring out our heart before him. The second thing I want to talk to you about is what I would say is take in, take in God’s love for you.

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Take in God’s love for you after you’ve poured out your heart to take in God’s love for you. And in one of my favorite verses in Psalm 46:10 and it says, be still and know that I am God and if you know anything about me, I’m not a real still person. I talk with my hands, I live big, I sit in the back of church when I used to go to church. We’re on the road now. So even when we go to church now, even if we know we don’t know anybody, I still sit in the back of church cause I move around all the time. So be still is a really interesting concept for me. Be still on the outside, be still on the inside and be still actually means in the Hebrew language. Cease striving. Let’s just pause with that for a minute.

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Cease striving. It’s also been translated. Let go. See striving and know with your, your mindset even if you don’t feel it in your heart, but no, choose to know that I am God. And I think that even that I am is a very present moment. Like I am here with you in this, in the midst of whatever you’re going through. Whatever’s going on. See striving and know that I am God. I am right here in the midst of this with you. And so whatever that hassle is, whatever that fear is, sink into that moment and sees a striving. Just, you know, sometimes I’ll do this, okay, you know, cease striving and be still whatever that stillness can look like in the moment after you’ve poured out your heart, she’s striving and know, take in this reality that I am God and I want to take that one step forward, one step more deeper because that’s a willful ascent of pausing.

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But another one of my favorite verses is in Zephaniah. And when I think about God and his love for me, I learned more about what that meant being a mom than any other place. But if you have for people in your life, you get it to you because you love something so unreasonably outside of yourself. And so we love in a way that’s very lavish in a way that delights in a way that takes care of. And, and just kind of muses at these, these, you know, I had a face time with my grandson, grandson the other day and it was just delighted his hair was sticking up and waffles were in it and he was baby babbling. And my heart was just so full. I just was just so delighted in him. And there’s a verse in Zephaniah this little book of profits that says, the Lord is with you, a mighty warrior to save.

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He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. And I just think about that taking in that love for God, that God has for us, that he rejoices over us, that he delights in us. And if we can take that in, in the moment, it kind of calms us down and lets us be at peace with being loved. And I think that that’s a, you know, just a really important place. And the thing to know about this little verse is it came in a time when God’s people were in a mess. They were in a foreign land with foreign rulers. They had no control over their life. Does that sound a little familiar? I mean, we’re not in a foreign land, but it seems like a little bit of a foreign country right now where we can’t go anywhere or do anything.

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We have no control over this coronavirus thing and maybe not overall a lot of things that are happening as a result of it. So that little verse came right in the middle of, of that time. And I think it’s a time for us now where God says, I see you, I delight in you. I’ll quiet you. And so I want to, I want to leave that with you as you take in God’s love for you. And then the third way that we trust God in the midst is literally to choose to trust God. It is a willful choice. I cannot tell you how many times I have said the words. I trust you, Jesus, out of a willful obedience when my feelings are as far away as over there like I don’t feel anything. Last year there was a time when I was so sick I was coughing up this junk that had settled in my lungs and I thought I literally was going to choke and die.

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I don’t say that to be dramatic, but I remember thinking this could be it, but as I’m coughing up in my head, in my mind, I was thinking, I trust you, Jesus. I trust you, Jesus. I want to live a long life. I got lots to do. I got a brand new grandbaby. I got a husband I love and kids in a ministry and people I want to talk to, but I trust you, Jesus. And it was a very willful choice to say those words because my feelings were not anywhere close to them. And I think we forget that trusting and choosing to trust God is about a choice. It’s a choice in the moment to say, I trust you. And, and I don’t even know what that means sometimes except for that. I’m going to let go and trust you. And one of the ways we do that is to what’s called take our thoughts captive to, to God, to Christ.

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In second Corinthians, there’s a verse where it talks about taking your thoughts captive to Christ. And I was thinking about like, okay, how do you explain how to do that? And what I came up with was this idea of a bunch of balloons. And there was this time when our daughter Emily, she was turning 16 and I had gone to the store and I had gotten a bunch of balloons, you know, the, not just the Mylar ones, but the bundle that comes with all the teens and the helium ones, that’s the word. And I was, I put them in the back of my van. I seatbelt them, I secure the knot and I drove on home and when I parked in my driveway, I opened up the side door of the band and they started flying out everywhere and I’m grabbing balloon strings as fast as I can to grab this bundle and capture this bundle of balloons.

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So I had some balloons for our daughter’s birthday and that was the image that came to me when I thought about taking thoughts captive to Christ. Sometimes I want to take the bundle of balloons, the bundle of thought to just give them to God and go, here, you’ve got to carry these. I got no idea what to do with these. Sometimes a random thought will come up and I grab it back and go, you know, I can’t handle this right now. I don’t know what to do with this right now. So here God, you’ve got to hold it, you’ve got to take care of it. Sometimes I can grab a thought and be like, this is a lie. This is based on fear. This isn’t based on what God says that’s true or this is based on my imagination running away with me. Because it can do that too sometimes in really good ways sometimes and not so good ways.

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And so taking that captive and saying to God, I don’t know what to do with this bundle of thought, so I’m giving them to you. I’m literally giving them to you. And I think if you can imagine that and literally picture that and then letting go open up your hands and let God handle them because that’s what he says to do. And that word captive in the Greek, it really means to take prisoner, which means once you give it up, you don’t get it back. So you’re going to give it to God, you’re going to let him handle it, let him carry it and you’re not going to take it back. And that is something that really helps us take our worrisome roller coaster, panicky thoughts and give them to God. The last thing I want to tell you is about a willful choice, and this is another one of my favorite verses.

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There’s a story in the gospel of Mark where this father comes to God, comes to Jesus and his son is possessed with demons and he wants them to be healed. And the disciples have tried to heal and nothing happens. And you know, this father looks at Jesus and says, you know, can you heal my son? And Jesus says, well, anything’s possible if you believe if you believe it’s possible for your son to be healed. And I love this father’s honesty because I think I would’ve gone, Oh yeah, I believe 110% Jesus heal my baby right now. That would’ve been me. But this father looks at Jesus and says, Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, that honesty and Jesus, I could just picture him smiling, looking at dad kind of nodding because he knew it anyway. I mean, God knows her unbelief anyway and he heals his son.

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And I think why I love that verse so much. One of many reasons is the honesty that says I can trust can mean I choose to say I trust and I can give you all the fields at the same time. And so when we come to God in this place of trusting God so we have peace and not panic or able to say, I’m trusting you. It’s almost like with, with all my work, I’m trusting you. You know I don’t have all the fields and that’s okay, but I do trust you because I choose to trust you because you say to trust you. And I’m trusting you by pouring out my heart before you, by coming to you and receiving what you say about me, and trusting you with a willful ascent in the moment that says, I’m not in control. I’m not in control of

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 a lot of things, but I am in control of what I choose to dwell on what I choose to let take up space in my mind. What I choose to do with my feelings. And what I choose to do with them is give them all to you and trust you, Jesus. And so one of the things that I have done as I told you last year, that idea when I was so sick was this, this mantra of I trust you, Jesus. And sometimes when things are so overwhelming and I can’t capture the thought and I don’t know what to do with all the feelings I just picture that bunch of balloons and giving them to God or you know, I sometimes think dumping my box and just like, here, you got to handle all this. Cause I can’t, what I say to myself in those moments is I trust you, Jesus.

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And just that willful ascent helps bring us peace of calm, helps bring a spirit of rest. Because one of the things God promises is that he’ll keep us in perfect peace. He’ll keep us peaceful and not in panic when we keep our minds and thoughts stayed on him because we choose to trust in him. So it’s kind of this whole circle of how do we trust what we trust by telling him, pouring and taking in and trusting. And so I hope that helps you in this piece or panic when you feel that roller coaster ride. Because sometimes we can’t get off it. Sometimes we just have to ride it out, hold onto that handlebar for dear life, and just say, I trust you, Jesus. So those are some thoughts about how to move from panic to peace. Tell God exactly what you think.

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He knows it anyway, tell him what you feel. Take in God’s love for you because that is what’s going to ground you. And then choose to willfully trust, to name your trust. Be like the dad who said, I trust you. Help me, Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief. So I hope that full circle gives you a little bit of tools to get you to a place where you find a little bit more peace if you use them this week, email me, message me. Let me know how I can be in this with you. My email is susiemillercoaching@gmail.com you can connect with me there. I’m going to open up for questions now if you have any, let me go to the chatbox. All right, here we go. And we’re going to go for like, you know, nine or 10 more minutes cause I really want to honor you guys that it’s a 30 minute little, little respite hopefully in the midst of your day.

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And I’m going to grab over here to Facebook and see if people have, okay, you are God and I am not. Yes ma’am and Marie, that is, that is my mantra when my feelings are nowhere near what my mindset says. Here’s a question right here. Let me read this question. Alright? Yeah. What do I do when my feelings are so far from what you’re telling me my mind should think? Oh, that’s such a sweet question and I live right there. Let me tell you the first thing you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, don’t should all over yourself. When you have these moments of, I should feel, I should think, I should be. I want you to hear my voice in your head. Susie said, don’t should all over yourself because that’s not going to help anybody. should’s, would’s, could’s never a good. What you can do is say, what do I want to do?

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Who do I want to be in this moment and honestly friends, there have been moments when that day when that is how I live. Moment to moment to moment where what I feel doesn’t get to govern me and I go back to the first thing I told you. Tell God I don’t feel like trusting you. I’m not feeling safe. I’m not feeling at peace. I’m feeling panic. I’m worried about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell it all. Sometimes it helps me to write it down in a journal just to get out of my head. This is why I love what David did because he said to God all this stuff and he took his feelings, gave them to God, and then what makes us different is our ability to have control of our minds, our mindset. I’m choosing to trust and that’s where that mantra comes.

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comes in for me, excuse me, where I can just say, I trust you, Jesus. That is not a feeling for me. More often than it’s a willful ascent. It is just a choice to say, I choose to trust that you are God and I am not. I choose to trust you in the midst of this moment, so I don’t think the feelings have to line up for us to be trusting children of God. I think there’s times when our kids were like, you got to just trust me. I know bigger than you and they don’t like it, but they’re, you know, they’re going to have to kind of lean in because we have authority over them. So I hope that helps. Another question. Okay. How do you stay in that place of surrender? Oh my goodness. One moment at a time. I am.

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If you know anything about being enneagram, I’m an eight on the Enneagram. I am a D on the disc. I am all things full speed ahead in control, make it happen. But kind of girl surrender is not my middle name. There’s a hymn called, I surrender all my version is I surrender some cause I’m always in that tug of war with surrender. So how do I stay surrendered sometimes? Actually, it is really moment by moment. It is this understanding and literally talking myself into who do I want to be. I want to be a woman who trusts God. I want to be a woman who brings peace. How do I do that? Well, if I don’t have any in me, I can’t give any. And so it’s almost like an exercise. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s like a muscle I’ve had to build and maybe I’m on a long slow flat and the curve learning curve, if there’s anybody who’s on a flat curve of learning, I’m not a quick learner in this realm.

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I am on the surrender slow lessons because I struggle with surrender. I think we all do. And that’s when I go back to David, where I think what helps me surrender the most, cause I’m brutally honest with God. I tell God exactly how I feel a lot, a lot. But there’s this great movie,  Fiddler on the roof. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an old movie, grab it on Netflix and it’s set in this Jewish town in Russia back in the time of the czars. And the main character is a devout Jewish father, and he’s a milkman delivering to the village and he’s headed home on the Sabbath as the movie opens. He’s headed home on the Sabbath after delivering milk and he’s trying to get all his milk delivered because in the Jewish times you had to be home and ceased work by Friday at sundown.

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And the movie opens with his,  he’s gotten kind of this rope over his shoulder with the milk cart behind him and the horse behind the milk cart. And he’s looking up at the sky. He’s going, God, did you really have to make my horse lame on the Sabbath? And it begins this whole movie of dialogue with God, or he’s just telling God what he thinks and feels good, bad, and different. And I think that is surrender and action because God says pour out your heart before me. And I’m like, all right, I’ll take you seriously. And that’s how I stay in that place of surrender. So I hope that answers your question right. There’s another one. Let me read this. How do I stop the tears?

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Oh my gosh, I’m reading this and it brings tears to my eyes. Sharon said it for everyone’s home. It’s not a secret. How do I stop the tears over the sadness of the reality of what my future holds? I trust him with all my heart, but I’m sad about what may happen to my business. Something I’ve put all my life into building. The emotions are holding me back from thinking clearly about what next steps to take. So first of all, I’m sorry, I get that. The travel industry is taken a huge hit. And so let’s pray for our friends in the travel industry. I think a lot of businesses are really taking huge hits. Reality sucks. Sometimes reality sucks. And I think, again, I’m going to go back to that. Why I love David. His reality sucked a lot. And so I would say in a very gentle and gracious way if you are with me, Sharon, I’d look at you and I’d say, take some time to turn off your brain and take care of yourself.

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Maybe for an hour, maybe for three hours, maybe for a whole day if, if you can, because nothing’s going to change in that short amount of time. Let’s just, let’s take two hours where you’re gonna stop. And I would,  I’ve got in the shower and told God everything I thought loudly. So, my kids, kiddos didn’t hear me. I journaled, I’ve written down all my thoughts and burned them to let God know there are an offering to him. Because I think what happens is we’re in this tension of trusting God to take care of us. And sometimes the way he takes care of us isn’t the way we want them to. Like I’ve prayed for years to be well, God taking care of me and God answer my prayers. Is it me being well, I’ve had to explain to my kids that sometimes trusting God doesn’t mean we get the answers we want.

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And so the feelings, I’m sorry, the feelings in this moment for you are really real and I think I want to invite you to say reality sucks people. My reality right now is really hard. And that doesn’t mean I don’t have faith. That doesn’t mean I don’t trust God, but I’m scared and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what my future holds, but I know who holds my future. And I don’t mean that as a cliche. I really don’t. I mean that as whatever comes, you’re not going to be alone in it.

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No. I’m going to pray that God gives you some good ideas for how to transition some of this tragedy into something good for your business. I know there’s a lot of people online talking about how to do that. And I’m not the expert. I’ve got to get a tissue here. Excuse me. Cause you’re not supposed to touch your face. Normally. I just wipe my nose with my head, which touches your face. I would just invite you to be honest. She said, I laughed my place of shout in the shower my place of worship. You know, I would really invite you to read the Psalms. Again, I’m not a Bible bandaid girl because I think people just plaster bandaid Bible verses on people and tell them to think about it this way. I think you just be really raw. But in the Psalms, I found David often in a place where you’re talking about where his reality sucks and he goes to God and he finds solace and sustenance and strength in that place of utter reality sucks. So that is not a fun answer. That’s probably not a clickbait or sellable answer, but that’s my answer to you. It just sucks and I’m sorry. And, and sometimes in those places we just have to be with the Lord in it. And I think that’s where we are like the dad, Lord I believe. Help me in my unbelief. So thanks for that question. All right, let’s see if there’s any other questions here we got.

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Okay.

(28:33):

All right. This is on everyone. No one is alone. Part of,

(28:41):

Sorry, I’m trying to read Facebook. I’m trying to be kind to both. Both. Both parties and the people joining us on Facebook. leaning into God is leading to his put-around. Okay. That is great. And I’ll, I think I’ll end soon if there’s no more questions coming up, but one of the hardest things, when we’re struggling, is to reach out to somebody and say, I’m struggling. And the way I would suggest you do this is like this. I need some friend time and I need you just to listen and to carry. I don’t want any advice and I don’t want you to help me fix it. Can you just listen and hopefully you have a friend like that. If not, you can email me and I’ll just listen to you. susiemillercoaching@gmail.com. Because sometimes we just need to pour out our hearts.

(29:23):

We need somebody to hear that we have reality sucks. Other times it might be, and I need your help. Could you help me? By last night we talked about naming our needs, the needs that we have. And sometimes I had a friend today who just needed to get off the phone. She’s like, I can’t talk anymore. It’s like, okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. And that was very loving and very much a sense of our friendship being strong because she said I needed off the phone, can’t talk anymore. My husband, the other night we were talking and I, and we got this news about his mom and I had to start in the middle of the day and he’s, you know, literally 15 feet from me all the time in our little tiny house. And I started talking and he was like, I can’t do this now. But he probably said it in that tone of voice cause we’re both a little stressed today.

(30:09):

And I was like, right, right, right, right. Okay. Tell me when you can. So again, looking at the people around us, who do we have that we can lean on? And again, we’re talking about physical distancing and socially connecting. Hop on a FaceTime call. Ask someone to look at your face, ask someone to sit with you and cry with you if you need that if you live alone. We meet with our little, I told our couples study and we’ve been on the road for three years and after a year I really missed that community. And at the end they pray and it’s so funny cause one of them always put their hand up to the, to the camera like work cause we stand in a circle and hold hands at the end and they’ll do that and it’s, it’s this kindness. And so I think remembering, you know, God has put community around us.

(30:49):

So thank you for that Michael. That’s a really good reminder. In the midst of all this week can get through this hard time together. It is not, it is just beginning. I don’t mean to be a doomsdayer. I’m hoping that these live discussions are helping you guys and I’m looking into some ideas for next week that might also meet needs. Maybe a summit, maybe a, a live talk show, maybe a, a weekly video, something that will really help. So if you have specific things that you’re like, Susie, please address this and you don’t want to post it in the chatbox or you don’t want to DM me, you can email me again at susiemillercoaching@gmail.com. I’m a little discombobulated today, friends. Sorry. and we’ll go from there. And we’ll see what we can do. Tomorrow night we’re going to talk about kid stuff.

(31:35):

We’re going to talk about I am not an expert, but I’ve gathered a bunch of stuff for kids and that is one thing. I’m going to figure out a way to bring some experts on next week about how to deal with kids stuff. And then probably Friday we’ll talk a little bit more about personal care and the ever-present spouse that, you know, are the people, the all the together time. Unless I get other specific questions from you. So thanks for joining me tonight. Thanks for being here. Please, please, please let me know how I can serve you. I can help you in this place and I will see you tomorrow night. Right. Let’s stop the recording and I’d love you to Pam. There we go.