SPEAKER_04 0:07

Everybody goes away. Everybody goes away. Everybody goes away.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Everybody goes to me.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome home, where healing and restoration are celebrated in stories from those who have walked through fire and come out the other side. Welcome to the Pursuing Redemption Podcast with Heather Shore.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Well, Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the Pursuing Redemption Show. We're super excited to have you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Sweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yeah. We would love to hop right in and have you tell us, you know, some of your upbringing and family dynamics and your early story of you in this world.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

My early story. I wasn't much taller than this. I've never been tall. My early story, I was not tall. I have uh three brothers. I'm number three uh in a group of four four kids. Um actually, my brothers are tall. I just never was tall. Uh we I'm a native to Texas, born in Mahia, Texas, the famous Mahia. And uh we just kind of lived all over the state growing up. My father uh changed jobs a lot, and we just moved around a lot, so we got a lot of West Texas exposure. Probably the first 10 years was uh West Texas, where everything smells like crude oil and cotton is the name of the game, and farming, uh ranching. And so then when I was about 10, we moved to the Rio Grande Valley and uh complete change of atmosphere. You had grapefruit and palm trees and a beach at South Pottery Island, so that was a good time, and then came up to the Dallas Fort Worth area where I did uh junior high, high school, went to college, and uh just kind of raised in a house where we went through phases of we would go through phases. My mother always wanted us to go to church, and my father would have years that he wanted to go to church and years that he didn't want to go to church. Uh and so we would, if we went with my mother, that made Sunday very hard because Raymond, my father, was upset that we had gone, left him alone, not home doing chores. And so by the time we got home, he was pretty wound up. And then in those phases where he did want to go to church, it honestly did not become less uh, it didn't become predictable in any way. Um, it just had the name of God planted on it or a prayer at the table planted on it, and so we were survivors, all the brothers and I were survivors. We learned to read the room and and try to avoid getting hit as much and not really know from time to time what it was that was going to warrant uh you know his his rages and his tempers. And they would, when he started, it would go on probably two or three days at a time, nonstop. He wouldn't sleep, and so it would just it would just stay, we would just stay in that environment. Then you would have to go leave town, traveled a lot, and so sadly we were great, you know, just so relieved when he would leave town. Uh my mother was uh raised just like you think, she was born in 1930, maybe 31, and so she was raised, you know, in the middle of the depression, and um appearances were everything. She was raised a good Baptist girl, and so she always uh dotted her I's crossed her T's on on every level, um just uh how you appear, where you go to church, where your children go to school, what car you drive. So we lived in this real dichotomous land of on the outside, everybody needs to see this, but inside those doors, it it spilled out into our front yard often. Uh, but um people in those days didn't um you know that was somebody else's business. We only had one uh incident where a neighbor called child protective services. That only happened one time, and it was early 70s, and so it was a very um pretty young system, I think. And so they came to the house and interviewed us in the room with my parents. And so you're not gonna get any disclosure whatsoever. We were just we played the denial card and no, no, it's a great house, and you know, look how clean our furniture is, and look how nice our clothes are, and um so that was the only real attempt that somebody in the neighborhood made to rescue us out of that, really. Um for the most part, people didn't know, yeah. Because it was behind closed doors. Sorry, it was behind closed doors, so it was all behind closed doors, and that was the way. I mean, that was the 70s, and people hadn't really gotten to the place of hold on, something something is running amok, you know. And so as soon as uh the brothers, my older brothers, the minute they got finished with high school, they moved out, moved on. Um, I finished high school with a plan to go to go away to college. And my mother just begged me. She said, please stay home and go to college, because I I really believe that that Raymond will kill me if you're not here. And my role in the family had been established a long time ago, that if he got upset, then everybody ran for the hills, and I would deal directly with him, stay up with him, try to soothe him, try to listen to him, talk to him. And so she had gotten into a routine of kind of thinking that way, that she, if I'm gone and she just goes in the room and closes the door, he'll just break down the door and find her. And he had, he'd been terrible to her. He'd there wasn't like a life with no broken bones for her either. And so um I understood, and of course, I just did the responsible thing. But my senior year of college, I met a bagpipe playing scotch whiskey drinking, kilt wearing uh guy from Glasgow, Scotland. And I married and moved 5,000 miles away. And she did, she did live. And by then my younger brother had moved out, so it kind of left uh my folks to figure out you know how they were how they were gonna do that. But it also meant that the brothers and I were um what would what would you say a lot of stranged, but when we got together, we had been played against each other all of our lives, pitted against each other. Um, and so we never had that. Sometimes you hear that phrase trauma bonding. We didn't get the bonding because he would kind of separate us out and play us against each other. And so this day, uh, relationships between us are still kind of um they can be dodgy because there's things we just don't know about each other because we spent the first two decades trying to figure out how do you stay alive, and our priorities weren't how do we be brothers and sisters, right? So but because we were all in a church and this was how the home went, and this is how church said, then the minute we got out, we were just like you know, hard no. Uh I guess for me personally, the hard no was okay, we have a God who who calls himself Abba Father, and I'm sorry, but I'm waving the bullshit flag because I don't want anything to do with without these two uh marry up, and I was pretty scrappy, probably still Elm, truth be told. And so I just determined I was gonna make my way without I wasn't gonna need a God, I wasn't gonna need something to make a prey to. I did like Jesus. Okay, I always liked Jesus. Yeah, I didn't understand why he didn't um kind of call his dad on the carpet, you know. If you guys are so close, you and why are you not telling him he sort of sucks at being a dad? But yeah, we didn't ever have that conversation, but um so I spent, you know, those kind of childhood years got made a whole lot of difference on whether I was gonna have any interest in, you know, yeah, a life with a God, you know. Yeah, absolutely. There was one. There was one. I I didn't have a doubt that there was a God. I never went down the atheist trail.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

I just went down the it was just more or less like you had to reconcile what that really meant. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so for sure. So maybe then sort of parlay that you met the Scottish man wearing a kilt and everything in college, and then you run off halfway across the world and and you go into some business stuff.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I did, yeah. I got there. Um yeah, they um had a huge unemployment rate, uh, like 40%. Oh. So I moved I moved to the west of Scotland, and there are no jobs available, and so um I just kind of started exporting things that were unique to Scotland that might be interesting in the US. And uh had some friends that owned uh uh like retail clothing and retail gift wares and stuff like that. So I would find stuff and bring it back, and I was shipping small amounts, and a guy approaches me about Scottish smoked salmon, which I kind of knew was really famous. It's like the best, apparently, smoked salmon in the world. Um, and so he's like, oh hi, take my Scottish smoked salmon and and they'll sell it, they'll do great. And so I'm like, okay. So I brought it with me one flight and went to a restaurant in Dallas that at the time was the restaurant to go to. And I'm, you know, 21 years old, 22, chapping on the back door of this this kitchen going, hey, can I talk to the chef? And and they let me in, you know, they let me in. That was the biggest shock of the day. Cool, I'm in. So I took in my smoked salmon, and the chef was like, Oh my gosh, this is genuinely Scottish looked salmon. This is so good. And so he's but I want my friend to try it. And so his friends somewhere in the kitchen, he goes, Hey, Wolfgang, come here. So Wolfgang Puck, who was a well-known chef at the time, may still be a well-known chef uh from your chuckle. But he comes over and he's like, he's like, Oh my gosh, you know, in his gorgeous French accent. So they took me that day, they we got in my car, they took me to see three more chefs. And so it just like within two weeks, and 5,000 sides a week of Scotch smoked salmon to this country. And um then it became, you know, oh, you know, can you get me Dover Sol, you know, because they could there were certain fish that they had cooked with on the continent that they couldn't get in the States. And so I just kept saying, yes, yes, I can get you Dover Sol. As soon as I get home and find out what it is, I will start finding out how to ship you fresh Dover Sol. So I just kind of had to figure out the boxing and the airfree container because if you're gonna ship it fresh, you have to put it on ice and it's gonna melt something. Yeah, so there are all these logistics that I didn't know anything about. And then I'm buying stuff. There was no European currency, so I still had to know all of the daily currency rates. Where's the dollar? Where's the pound? Where's the crone? Where's you know, the all of the is a frank? What's a frank doing today, you know? And so uh, and then I had to learn about export laws and I had to learn about paperwork to get document, get stuff into the country, how to get it out of the country. And um, so it was just like a giant, you know, fascinating learning curve. And math was never my forte, so I was like, but we can learn it, you know. So I just had a great time and it um turned into some other fun stuff. Um, I started a company in Nigeria with two guys, and we were buying they love uh mackerel, which is not a fish you see in the States much, but the Russians fish mackerel. So I started buying fish at sea uh from the Russians, just boat to boat, taking it to Lagos. Um, and then um somebody got word that we exported anything, and I get a call. Hey, do you have your own label whiskey? Yes, I do. So, which was a I do not, but um, but I can and I will. So I went to uh a distillery, a local distillery, and said, Hey, here's the skinny. Uh these guys in Baghdad want me to have a label of whiskey, and there's they were like, Yep, perfect. We can do any label, try these. I'm like, no, I don't, I don't even like whiskey. And so I don't like smoke, smoked salmon, I don't like dead fish, and I don't like whiskey. So here we are. So um got a label, started shipping it to the Middle East because the government sold it to the engineering patriot camps. They the locals don't drink it, but they had so many British and American engineers for the oil industry that they could sell it. So we started selling you know whiskey. And so it just got to be a lot of fun. Um, and we just I I had a great time. It was a great time until the late 80s, when in this country the savings and loan, which you're too young to know, uh, crashed. Everybody started going belly up and scrambling, you know, where's my bank? Where's my money? So all my American customers filed bankruptcy. And so I, you know, so I'm left with you know seven and eight figures of debt. So I'm like, okay, okay, I've got factories, got trucks, you know. So I just sold, you know, kind of what we had. Bob Richardson, uh, my husband, uh, at the time was we were both just like scrambling, what do we do, you know, and how do what do we do with these employees? But we got it, you know, got things, and we just kind of broke even on the business side, certainly not on the personal side. And um so I was kind of like, now I'm like probably 29 years old, right? And maybe 30. And so for me, I was kind of like that was fun, we'll figure something out. He was 11 years my senior, so now he's at 40, which is a very different picture. So he this is like a midlife crisis to him because he thought we were gonna have this lifestyle, and I'm like, nope, we're not gonna have it for a while. So that kind of eroded hard on the marriage. Um and so we ended up, I only stayed in that marriage 12 years, and um, along the way, when I was and you have a son from them, yes, I do have a son, and I had uh one miscarriage and I had twin girls that were born that that didn't stay. So there were these other things going on in our personal lives that played into, you know, grief is hard, loss is hard, uh to take a financial scramble like that is hard, uh, a marriage that isn't waiting. It all got hard. And so I kind of came back to the States for a little while. And then he rang uh from London. He said, I've moved to London, and he was doing a deal with a guy in uh Byrne, Prince in Bayrain that we'd done business with before. And he's like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do, fresh start, London's neutral, it's not Texas, it's not Scotland. So I take J Mac, my son. We moved to London, and it was it was a disaster because he didn't actually have a deal or a job. And so I want to say maybe nine or ten months in, uh we got evicted. So yeah, and so now it's kind of like, all right, here we go again. So I ended up at that point about once I got our passports, uh, I ended up coming back to, we were without our passports for a while, so I couldn't leave the country, which is a super awkward feeling. It's a great country, everyone speaks English, but the idea that you're trapped on this island is a little claustrophobic for my personality. And J Max uh born in Scotland, so his citizenship is different than mine, right? And so got a squared away, got back to Texas, and um we had a home here, but it was being foreclosed on. Um, but I made a deal with all these people that I owed money to, and I just made a whole list of everybody I owed money to, and called them all and said, here's the situation, and I will pay you this much every month, and I'll keep the current current. And so they all worked with me. Some of it took 10 years to pay it all off. But um started mowing lawns in the daytime, and I know, right? And uh then at night I waited tables, and nobody wants to hire, you know, a 30, I guess I'd have been 32 by then, right? Who has never waited tables? Nobody's looking for you, right? They're looking for a college kid that's been bartending, you know, and so I had to kind of beg my way into that, and then my brother owns a jewelry store, so I was working as a bench jeweler. Uh, if it was raining, I was a bench jeweler. If it wasn't raining, I was doing yard work, and so kind of did that for two years, and then I had to hire some guys because it got got out of hand, I got too much work, couldn't keep up with it all. And so here we are 30, maybe five years later. I'm still a landscaper, never meant to be a landscaper. I have fabulous guys, they run crews. We do, we don't do mowing anymore because I was like, this is a killer. So we do uh new construction uh and have for probably the 15, 20 years, uh last 15 or 20 years. Uh we just do the designs for irrigation designs for landscape, and then we install it all. And and you drive up and it's dirt, and you drive off, and it's gorgeous, and you're like, Yeah, we did that. So it turned out all of that from my my college degree plan was radio television. So I always like to tell people your college degree plan has nothing to do with your whole life. You it's a crock. Don't believe that. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah, it's so true. That is amazing. It's an amazing story of just all the twists and turns that God had you on.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I know, right? In the meantime, I'm not even talking to him. Yeah, I'm just like, bless your heart. You're so cute, but I don't like you.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

I mean, well, speaking of that, at some point during this whole thing, you meet your current husband, you get remarried. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

I did, yeah. Yeah, I was single for about probably 10, 11, 12 years, and so um I got on when it first uh became available, there was a thing called um match.com. So match.com was probably the OG of you know, now they do this swipe stuff, and I'm like, swiping that anyway, I have opinions about swiping, but I also have opinions about online dating and using that to find someone because I was on there for over a year and um I enjoyed, I had a great time because if you're my friend and you fix me up, then I because I'm responsible, feel some obligation to stay for the whole date, even if it's just like terrible. Uh, but if I fix myself up on a date and I get there and I'm like, yeah, this I don't want to do this. And so I could just say, you know, here's money for your martini. I'm going, I'm gonna go watch mash reruns. I use that line so much. Um, and so uh along the way, I met uh this guy. Tank and our first date was on a night that a ice storm blew in out of nowhere. You're from Oklahoma, you get it. We don't get a lot of snow down here, but all of a sudden you'll get these ice storms from hell, and you're just like, you can't move because you can't put it. Well, I could. I had a F 250 with a six-inch lift and 38-inch tires. I could go anywhere. So I show up for the date because you didn't give anyone your phone. And not everybody had cell phones anyway. And so I just go to where we had arranged on that site to meet. And he did show up. The restaurant we pitched was closed because all the power was down. And um, but we went to the restaurant next door, and I had put on my uh profile. I had put that I liked peanut Demon M's. He shows up with a bag of peanut Dems. So I was like, okay, got potential. So then a few days later, we went to a hamburger joint, uh, just one of those dives, and um J Mac, my son, shows up because I was telling him where I would be. Um, because you know, you still there's a little tiny, tiny, tiny risk that you know, some mass murderer at the restaurant, right? And so he shows up and he's like, you know, starch jeans and starch shirt and a cowboy hat, and he's comes into the restaurant and flips a chair backwards and sits at the end of the table and kind of giving this guy this you know, 40 questions. He was probably 16. I would say he was 16. It was so cute. And uh so he leaves, I don't, you know, eventually goes, and and Tank handled it really well. And now this is our second date. And so when he leaves, he goes, Do you want to do something? That was a Tuesday. He says, You want to do something Friday? And I said, Well, that kid you just met, um, I said, if you want to do something Friday, I'm taking him and some of his friends to uh France. We're going to Paris, and uh, you're welcome to come because I'm staying in the room with the girls, but I have nobody to stay with those guys and keep an eye on them. So if you want to go somewhere Friday, you'd have to go to France. And so he goes, Well, my passport's not current. So in my mind, I'm like, passport not current last date. And so I go, I get home that night and I'm like back on MatchICon seeing who I'd like to meet because I've right I've taken this guy off the list, right? You you don't have a passport? This isn't gonna work. I love travel. Well, I get one of those messages because you didn't reach out, you just put messages on that website, right? I get one of those messages that said, I assume you're on flight 52 on Friday. What's your return date? Is the offer for real? So I'm like, you don't have a passport, and he's like, No, I found an expediter, passport will be here Friday morning. If the offer's real, I'll go. Now, this guy's an engineer, right? Engineers are famous for spontaneity. So I'm like, okay, smart, good job, and spontaneous and resourceful. Another chance, right? So he goes to France with us for over a week, and so I just got to observe him, and you know, on a whole different level. And these kids, the boys in particular, like kind of like testing him the whole time, poking the bear. Yeah, we just I was like, okay, this is good. So we got married about a year later, uh, a year after we met. We got married in London because he when he's like, Hey, I really want to marry you, and I'm like, Okay, I have some questions like, what is your whole name? And so uh his middle name was Martin. And JMAC and I used to sit in this church and stay there called St. Martin in the Fields, right there on Trafalgar Square. And so I was like, okay, that's where uh that place saved us, and in the crypt, there is a chapel, a tiny chapel. Let's go there and we'll take our friends. Because it was a we'd both been married before, right? So we didn't need a wedding, wedding. So we did, we got married in London. It was great. We were there about five days, we had a great time. So we've been married 20, I think 20 or 25 years, something in that range. Yeah. Um more than 20, less than 25. So uh and Tank uh has five kids, and I have J Max. So we have six married kids. We have 15 grandkids, uh, and all of the grandkids live in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Uh, we have one daughter that lives in California, living her best life. They are hilarious, the California couple. Uh, so they're living large right now, and I you know, I have no idea when they're gonna have kids or if they're gonna have kids, they haven't said. But I don't think 15 is our final number.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

So that's a full joyful family right there. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

That's a full house, yeah. Christmas is like a second mortgage every year. I love it because everybody's like, oh, everybody always says it, you know, you don't have to buy everybody a present, really. I know you better than that. So awesome.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Well, let's talk a little bit about you and Tank get married, but you're not Christians, and so no, we're not. Jesus and Papa God start to woo you.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, um, Tank's a recovering Roman Catholic, I'm a recovering Southern Baptist. We don't have a ton of interest really in changing, you know, anything. Our lives, our lives are okay, you know, and okay is kind of a death trap to keep you away from from something like that. It wasn't that we didn't have hurdles or difficulties, we were just both resourceful, pretty independent, sort of need-free. We both operate that way. But uh in my business, because it's in the Fort Worth area, Dallas Fort Worth, this is a this is a church area. Everybody has a church or a country club, and at that time I kind of thought they were the same thing. So we would from time to time go to somebody's uh church, you know, and in particular, this one customer would go to his church, and uh because church people give business to church people, and so it was a capitalist move. And I didn't really hate it, but it did bring up more, probably more angry and more questions than it did bring peace to to attend a church, and so um even our hurdles that we were going through with different kids or different health issues, church didn't help any of that. So it was it was probably largely a I want my customer to see me, you know, as a church lady. I want to be seen as a church lady, and so one customer uh and his wife, his name is Brian, I call him Brian Daniel and his wife Golden. They spent three years knowing that we were not believer people, and they had each gone to a Camp Jesus, I call it Jesus Jail, that changed their lives. And they're like, you know, you should go, it changed my life. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah, not out loud, but in my brain, I'm going, hard no, church ladies, for a week. Uh no, ah, shoot me, you know, and so uh about when I was 51 or 52, I got a little maxed on things and I ran away from home. And uh on that runaway, I accidentally or providentially um ended up in two of the towns that I had been raised in in West Texas. And so, and I was tiny, I was six weeks old when I moved to West Texas, and so some of it I actually had to reach out to my oldest brother and find out, you know, I'm looking for that house, and and he's like, Well, don't look for the first one, you would have been too little, but here's where the second one was, and and I found it, and I sat in front of that house, that house in particular, for several hours, and it was raining, and nobody came out and asked, What are you doing? you know, and I I I got out and I stood a couple of places where some real horrible things had happened, and then I got back in the Jeep and ended up. I thought, as long as I'm here, I'm gonna drive to Leveland, which is a little more west. And and I stayed there for about four or five days, just going to all the places, the church that we had to go to, the country club where I had uh learned to swim, um, the school that we had attended to. I I had a paper route when I was eight, and I just redrove my whole route. I could remember how I rode it on my bicycle. And so, and it just kind of sat in front of that house. Uh, we lived in two houses in that town, and I I went to both of those houses and and and sat and considered and fell apart and regathered. And at that swimming pool, um, my father had been embarrassed that I didn't know how to swim. And um it was a very ugly day trying to learn how to swim, and I wasn't getting it right. I could swim underwater, but the brothers could all swim, you know, in any dynamic. But I could I could swim like a dream as long as I was underwater, which doesn't work for very long. So um I went to the place where he had literally gotten so frustrated with me that he just held me under uh for too long in my mind, and um it just freaked me out. And I to this day I have to think about it before I just jump into water, you know. And so um I the pool was empty because it was November and I drained it for the winter. And so I got into the pool and walked down and stood in that spot and said all the things and felt all the things, and I just spent the whole uh four or five days doing stuff like that. Just it was Thanksgiving week, so the school was closed, but I found a way in and I went to all the classrooms, and school is a very um safe place, I don't think just for me, but for the brothers, because we got out of the house, and so even if you didn't do well in school, you're out of the house. And and teachers, even if they did know they didn't say anything, but uh it was kinder. School was just kinder for me, and so to go into those to those rooms was um, I don't know, was it facing down demons or was it finding and remembering kindness? I don't could it have been both, absolutely, but nothing on my mind was where where is God in all of this? Um we broke up years ago, me and the father. So um, you know, you don't go back to bad relationships, you know, and so um, but on the drive, I I know this sounds I don't know how this sounds. I was aware that he was riding in the Jeep with me in the back seat. And um so he had I had him there, but he he didn't interrupt me, didn't talk to me, didn't remind me, hey, I'm God and I like you, or hey, I'm God and why don't you like me? None of that happened. I just knew he was there. And um I don't know if I was to this day, I don't know, was I comforted by that? I don't know, but there was when I moved to Scotland, even though my um scrimmage marriage husband didn't like me, his dad adored me. And so that father-in-law's name was Joe, which is why my son's first name is Joseph. Um that man just started, he didn't know what he was doing because he was a pagan. He went to church for an odd christening, maybe a wedding. That was it, right? Heavy drinking, hard working, just what you picture in Glasgow, right? And uh, and so, but he just loved me, and so it it started a some kind of new process in my brain that to be loved without a performance, without a result, without a condition, this is possible, you know, and but none of that happened between me and God on that trip, right? As far as I'm concerned, your name is God, you made the world, I like the world. I guess I can give thanks for that. But the rest of it, dude, you suck with a jumbo straw. And so um when I took this journey and I realized he was in the backseat, it began to kind of dawn on me, yeah, he's not really a pushy guy. He's not gonna like rain down sulfur stuff if I don't like him. And I didn't know the language to know to say to like him back. It hadn't crossed my mind that he loved me, in spite of all the things I'd said and how I treated him and how I regarded him. So after that runaway trip, and I journaled the whole thing. I have this fabulous journal, I still have it. It's it's about this thick and about this wide, and it's from the 1920s, and I've been writing in it for years and years, and I took that journal with me. So I'm writing this whole journal, journal, everybody I met, every place I went, how it smelled. And so uh I got back and uh it was right at Thanksgiving. So we I mean, I got Thanksgiving dinner, I got the family, we got everything back on back in line, back on order. Lisa has given up for rogueness, not really, but and that that couple, Brian, Daniel, and Golden, are like, hey, we signed you up in January to go on Camp Jesus Jail Kool-Aid, and I'm which they didn't call it. Yeah, they gave it its proper name, which is Quest, and uh and I'm like, Oh yeah, thank you. I just hadn't gotten around to it. So in my mind, I'm like, I gotta figure a way out of this. I never did figure out a way out. This is a customer, we're risking millions of dollars of gross revenue, you know, and so I'm like, all right, I'll go. Well, my whole life, no matter what I did, I've been an all-inner. Okay, if this is if this is terrible, I'm gonna give it every chance. Uh, so I'm in just an all-inner, period. So I go to this church lady thing, and I have determined, first of all, you had to get a bus with all these women and their Bibles in Bible covers. And so I'm like, and I'm looking at this customer and I blurted out. I'm just like, I effing hate you, I hate you, I don't want to go, I hate you, I hate you. And so his wife's like, and Brian Daniels is laughing, he's laughing out loud at me. He's laughing out loud. And Golden's like, Do you think she means it? And he's like, Oh, yeah, she's terrified. And so I was, and so I go on this trip, and um with the determination, I'm gonna do everything they tell me to do, mostly so I can just keep building my case against the boys of heaven. Yep. Well, on day two, um they have this starvation day and um fasting, right? And so you go out, and it's a horse ranch, it's probably five or six hundred acres. They give you a little manual, great, another church lady manual, you know, and I'm trudging out, you're supposed to go where God tells you to go, really. I'll go where I want to go because I'm not asking you. We're not speaking, and so I find a spot, and the very first thing in this manual talks about salvation. And I had been baptized. In fact, I'd been baptized twice, once when I was 16, because I determined if that it would be harder to stay alive after the two older brothers left. And so, and once when I was 10, because my father got baptized, and I thought he'd like me if I got baptized. Both had been a fail. But when I got baptized at 16, I told him, hey, I'll get baptized so I don't go to hell, but I'm only gonna get baptized if you promise me that when I get to heaven someday, I don't actually have to meet you. That's what I told God walking down that Baptist aisle to get baptized. And so obviously my heart wasn't in it. So on this starvation, on this starvation day, they're talking about salvation, and I'm like, okay, this actually makes sense. It was written very word picture, they used um analogies like Beauty and the Beast and some word stories, and I'm like, this makes so much sense, and then I'm mad. I'm mad because no one ever told me this. I'm 52 now, and no one ever said, Why would you not tell me this? With dirty withholders, of course you wouldn't, you're just church ladies, right? So I'm just building my argument, and um, so I'm cussing and squaring and crying and kicking stuff, and I'm just telling this guy God everything I've ever thought about him, and holding no punches, and then I realized he's like standing there, and it's not the son, it's the dad, it's the father, the god, the big cheese. And I'm like, I don't know why you're here. Why would you be here? You know, I don't like you. If you're a god, you've heard everything I said, and he's just wearing overalls, which I wear everywhere, and he just has his hands in his pockets, cool as a cucumber, and he's like, No, bring it. I I can take it like a man. Tell me everything. So I did. I just laid it all out, you know. And then that probably took me two hours, three, I don't know, time went away, and so now I've cried and kicked more and cussed more, and and he's still there. And so I said, Finally, I just said, Okay, I think I'm I think I'm done. So you can leave. And he goes, I just need you to know that nothing, nothing that you've said has made me love you less. And I couldn't believe that. I didn't know what to do with that. It's like, I love you, you basically you can't make me you think you're all that in a bag of chips, little sunshine, but you can't make me not love you. And I didn't know what to do, so I just laid down and you know, just cried. I said, I got some questions. Because okay, I mean, if I make a prey, big on if, but if I make a prey, who do I send it to? Who am I talking to? You know, there's there's you and there's a son and there's a ghost, and and he goes, I said, I don't know how to reconcile it. And so my twins were identical, they were matching twins. And he said, just consider us like identical triplets, which made perfect sense to me. Yeah, that I could do, and so from that day I've called them the triplets, uh, because I know what to do with that in my mind, in my heart, and so, and sometimes, you know, sometimes I need a uh a Holy Ghost. I need because I I picture the Holy Ghost as kind of nurturing and comforting, and so sometimes I just need a mom, didn't have one, so sometimes I need a mom, so I treat the holy holy ghost that way. I called them the holding spirit because when they were talking about in that Jesus jail, they were talking about it, and I heard holding spirit, but they were saying holy spirit, and so it stuck. Holding spirit stuck, and brilliant boy Jesus and the Lord Real Dad became his name. So it was Lord Real Dad, Brilliant Boy Jesus, and the Holding Spirit. They were the triplets, they are the triplets.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

I love how he makes everything so individual.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Yeah, it's so cute that way, right? The overalls, hey, you yeah, you know what matching kids are. That just let's go with us, go with matching triplets, you know. And yeah, he does it just drills it down to exactly me, exactly. Exactly you um does that you create the world and you do that. So it is amazing. It's just kind of been, you know, and then uh I got home, so the week had like three or four more days, and so you know, gobs are stuff, and I'm trying to take it all in, and uh I get home and you ride that bus in, so everybody's there to greet you, and I get off the bus, and Tank sees me, and he's like, Oh, uh-uh, no, good for you, no. So it took uh about 14-15 months before, and then he went on on the the quest for for uh after that changed his life. A lot of our kids have been on it now and changed, you know, it's just changed our whole family dynamic hugely, big times.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Now, do you still speak to the customer that changed?

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Yeah, we're yes, absolutely. Yes, they have remained kind of mentors in our lives, you know, and there's things that we're like, okay, what does that mean? You know, uh so much fun. There's some of our closest, closest friends, travel with them, do time, you know, dinner, and we just love, love, love them. Uh their whole family is still, they have a legendary family. So they're they've been very good to kind of, you know, because there's things we were just out of touch with, we didn't know. And so when we don't know, we both had to say, I have no idea what that scripture means. I do not know what that word means. So the Hebrew lexicon, you know, if you just Hebrew lexicon words and find out what they meant in the original, uh, it fixes everything. And having people around that will teach uh changes everything.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Speaking of holding spirit, which I absolutely love, I think that's just because he is our comforter, right? Like, what would you why do you feel like Christians don't want to get to know him as comforter and they just want to be comfortable?

SPEAKER_01 46:24

I think we'd we'd it we've become unsafe to each other, um, and particularly maybe in the church lady world where I somebody might say something to somebody, and that bare-naked lady moment isn't vaulted, isn't treated, you're like treated like a treasure. Um we're not we're not great at holding each other's secrets well, and I don't mean secrets in a negative way, but that's that when when Simeon and Anna told Mary about her son, the scripture says she kept those those treasures. And at some point she did say them out loud because we know, but there was a time that that those secrets were to be kept as treasures, and when people aren't safe, then we parlay our experience onto uh the royals, onto the Lord, onto that moment of is this my redeemer? Can he be trusted? Uh I love him for salvation, I love the ticket I have to forever in paradise. But do I love him as Lord? And if I do love him as Lord, then am I willing to trust the people that he sent to me or trust him with the darkest, uh, most chaotic feelings that I'm having or a tragedy that came. And um the trust factor, and I do think Sharona Corona has affected it, is just that we're not as good anymore at talking to each other face to face. Um, millennials that millennials freak out if you like make a phone call, they just want text, and so you call and they're like, Is everybody okay? Uh yeah, just telling them tacos. Well, don't call me, you scare me to death. We've we found ways to not have to communicate one-on-one, eye to eye, heart to heart, and we in some in some way we kind of wanted it because we're not proving trustworthy as humans, and we forget that how we behave as a believer people human affects somebody's view of the original holy land, and uh is the holding spirit trustworthy? Holy cow, of course, of course, of course. Is my experience with people who say they love the holding spirit trustworthy? No, and so we're not big risk takers anymore. I'm born-again risk taker, I love risk. If you want a heroin, give me a risk, right? And so we're not we're not big risk takers, and so this these last six or seven years have really put the kibosh on taking a chance, but we weren't great at it before. But if I trust something to you, and you and I say, Hey, don't I don't want this anything said for a little while, but I need I need a safe place to to kind of share the space, and then I find out you said to somebody else, and you come back with something bizarre, like, well, I I told them so they could also be praying about it. Now somebody just yeah, no, and so hard notes, and that all we have to do in that moment is I am so sorry I did that. I can see where what the breach was, but we don't do sorry well, we don't do trust will. So when somebody's really in dire straits, I understand them going to church, going to work, going to the PTA, and somebody says, How are you? And they say, Fine, I get it. I get it. But I also wonder if maybe sometimes I will walk away and go, Well, they're type that's what they're gonna say, it's nothing I can do, instead of me going, Hey, I I'm not sure you're okay. So I sometimes we just let things let somebody say they're fine because it's easier for us, one, and we've got to the place where everyone is kind of quasi-easy to offend, and we don't want to offend somewhere. We have to we have to get brave again. It takes courage to apologize, it takes courage to to seek help, it takes courage to say this sucks. It takes courage to say, I know you can't do anything, but I also know I'm not supposed to keep this to myself. I'm dying over here. I have a diagnosis that I haven't told anybody. Uh, my son's marriage, my daughter's friend. Can you just carry this with me a little way? And and then we don't always follow up with the update either, right? But we also forget the very cool thing of being in the human condition is such a cool. We got picked to put on an earth suit and do the human race. Angels never get to do this. It just fascinates me to no end. An angel never gets to do a forgive, an angel never gets to feel the weight of burden, so that angel never gets to feel that particular weight of glory. An angel never gets to do a grieve, an angel never gets to do a disappointment, an angel. What a dead cool thing that we got picked to do a one-time kick at the ball, we'll never get to do this again. But if we pick the beat all the way alive, we should be sliding into the home plate called Gates of Pearly Heaven, going, score, score. I I because here's my other thing. I have wondered intensely, do we get to take it with us? What I mean by that is if there's an angel and he's got somebody he takes care of on earth, and he's supposed to be the interceder, and he's only known glory, and he's only known worship, and he's only known the perfection of heaven, when he comes across a 25-year-old mom that's burying kids, and her first gift to her children is pick a coffin. Does he know anything about making a pray for that mom? And does he get to call heaven and earth together when there's a mom that's made it to heaven that got to do that, had to do that? And she says, Angel, let me tell you what's happening, and I'm gonna bring what I know to what you know, and our prayer will be multiplied for that soul, for that being, for this moment, and then to live exactly that way because I'm right now in the earth soon. Lord, real dad, this is happening for somebody. I don't know. Glory, I don't know worship 24-7, I don't know that kind of perfection. If I give you my experience, send me something that looks like perfection. So I'm bringing heaven and earth to the mad prey that I want to make in this moment. And so when we get to the place that we don't want to trust somebody, or we don't want to be bare-naked lady, or we don't want to be vulnerable. My pal Tim Ross described it this way: he said, transparent is you open the blinds to your house, and people walking down your block can see you. They see you're watching TV, they see you're having vulnerable is I invite you into my house, even if there's laundry on the couch, dishes are not in the dishwasher. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 54:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Right? Yep. And and hope that you still want me when you come into my home. And that I didn't need to have the kettle on or the bourbon poured or drink of your choice, that you will want to just come in and see me at my not quite best and still stay. Will you stay? Will you stay when my laundry's on the couch? And so we we've gotten we've gotten away from it, and I do think it affects our relationship with heaven. If we're not if we're not walking around together in community, it's gonna affect heaven.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

So speaking of all of that and being so incredibly transparent, and that that's a good thing, right? When people can carry our burdens well. Yes. As a fellow abuse survivor, as we've both gone through all of that, what sort of words of encouragement would you give to somebody around healing and what that looks like to walk through?

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Uh abuse is a weird thing. It's the I mean, it's uh an overused word sometimes. Um it's a very intimate word. Yeah. It's an intimate word. I was sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally, definitely spiritually, which I didn't know could happen until I became a believer, people. Um but that word uh abuse is it's a it's a big thing. You've you've been somebody tried to crush you to their own means, and crush is a big deal. And so um I think absolutely I'm a big believer in counseling because there's things that uh you know, I can make your yard look great, but do not come to me for wise counsel. I am gonna tell you that I will bury the body and no one will find it. That's probably not wise counsel, and so um that community of going to someone who that is what they want to do, they want to help bring a heal. And the goal isn't to get where I can tolerate the past or where I can uh put the past in a box. The idea is to be healed, touch the hem of the robe, and be healed with a mustard seed of faith that that's that that's impossible. Believing it is possible to be healed, I think is a big part of that journey because sometimes it feels like I still, you know, like I said, yeah, water, I can't see the bottom of the lake, you know. I'm like, I'll ski, but you better pick me up super fast, right? Um, so there's things that kind of linger. Can I cope? Can I go in the lake? Can I go with my grandkids? Can I, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Do I still have moments that I go, uh that one, that one, that one makes me remember something. But he also says in scripture 353 times, remember, it's a commandment, remember, because without the remember, I have no testify. It is the blood of the Lamb, and it is the word of my testify. And the goal with heal is not just so I have a testify, the goal of heal for heaven is to heal. Think how many times that the Jesus healed somebody, just don't you don't actually have to tell anybody? Plus, don't tell anybody. So the goal wasn't for a testify in that moment, the goal was the heal. That's how big the love is. And to get to and and in that processing through uh abuse, the big thing is am I lovable? Why was it so easy for someone to do that to me? What about me gave them permission? I may not be a person that can be loved, and so that question becomes a big deal for you. And if the abuse is from a spouse, but you go to your, say you go to your mom and you're like, hey, this is going on. But mom's like, Well, toughen up, buttercup. You wanted to be married, this is the price of marriage, it's not gonna be perfect, life's not fair. Those things are not untrue, but in that moment, hey, you're saying, I am in pain, I need comfort. So, in the process of heal, the the finding of somebody who can actually bring comfort. The comfort is gonna come better from someone who actually knows what you're talking about, to someone that is foreign, they're gonna have to get over what they're hearing for the first time and trying to picture it and try to reconcile it. So I would encourage anybody to go to someone that not just has been through abuse, but is pursuing heal. And heal is possible. We forget heal is possible. We're not supposed to be covered in band-aids, we're supposed to be covered in sight, we're supposed to not have leprosy anymore. We're supposed to not sit by a pool because our legs are shriveled up. Heal means I walk again, heal means my skin has has been returned from being a leper. So the pursuit of heal and finding finding places, and sure. Finding places that are safe. Yes, we're gonna make mistakes in that pursuit, but we can't quit because somebody was horrible to us in that pursuit. They haven't gotten there, bless their heart. Good Southern saying, bless their little pee-picking heart. But I can't give up because somebody else wasn't the right person to be my sniper on the wall. Somebody else wasn't my person in that moment to be my be my helper. And some people are trained to give me exercises and words of wisdom. Uh, yeah. First go. I gotta go to the triplets. Which which triplet is gonna help right now, right? Do I need a dad? Do I need the Lord's real dad? Do I need do I need the nurture? Do I need the Christ to remind me? Hey, here's here's what we're doing here. Touch the row. That's the row. Make eye contact. Let me raise your chin. I will spit on mud and make you see again. We're going to be, which, as I know them in personalities, what do I need in that moment? The the rest of us of his person isn't offended because in that moment I pictured the savior. It doesn't offend the rest of the of the triune. I think heal is so possible, and sometimes we don't want heal. We you know that thing in Luke where that guy goes, he can see uh Lazarus uh in heaven next to Abraham, right? And he was the rich guy, right? And he's in apparently hell, and so he's like, he's like, oh man, Abe, let Lazarus touch water and touch my tongue. I'm in hell. I'm asking, can you send me five gallons of really cold Ozark water in a jug? I'm not asking somebody to touch water and touch my tongue. That rich guy had lived his life one hit at a time. One hit at a time, never experienced a heel, never experienced a wholeness, never knew what generosity was. And so when we start going to a heel, we realize you don't, you don't. He says, she says, the the one with the will says, Hey, you don't even have a bucket, man. He'd send the boys down to McDonald's to get lunch, right? And he's like, hey, I can give you water, and she's like, Where's your bucket? I don't even believe you. And he goes, I'm water forever. I'm water forever. So his goal is the heel. We don't know enough about actual heel. And sometimes we get what we need from people feeling sorry for us. Sometimes we get what we need from Pat compassion, sometimes we get what we need from empathy. That's a hit, as a temporary thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

It's so good. And I'm just like taking it all in as you're talking. I'm like, this is so, so good. But I guess, sort of like in closing, as we as we talk about all of this, if as we're speaking looking for that heel, which is possible, the side of heaven, if you could tell somebody to chase after Jesus and pursue redemption, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:34

Uh, first order of business is make my confess. I'm mad at you, I don't like you. This is not going well, and trust that um he's okay with that. He actually wants that. He he wanted Pete to deny, and he kept Judas in the dozen, knowing who Judas was. In fact, his last word, he called him friend and gave him a kiss. He's not able to not love. And in that, um, if if there's anything that will get me back where I need to be with the triplets, it is a confess. But a confess doesn't mean a crime. I think we also believe a confess means a crime. Christ was in the garden about it, it was D-Day. Gig is up, he's gonna have to be the sacrificial lamb. So the Christ was in the he was in the garden, right? And he's got the buddies, and the buddies keep hitting the snooze button, and he goes and he makes a confess. And we think the Christ never had to confess anything because he had no crimes, but he had to confess this is gonna be hard. Maybe he said, was this was this the whole plan? Was there a plan B? Because now that I'm here and I'm in this or suit and I've stubbed my toe. Do you know what it's like to stub your pinky in the middle of the night? You know, and so he's like, I get this pain thing, and holy cow! And these so you we don't we think that if we make a confess, we've made a crime. But a confess is this doesn't feel good. Where are you? I need just you, I need proximity to you. I don't need your salvation right now, I don't need your plan for the Roman road, I don't need uh to be sure I'm going to heaven. I don't know, I don't even need to know my purpose in my life right now. I just need proximity. Can I sit at your feet? And the minute I sit at his feet, I can literally know his hands are on my face, and I can feel him raise my chin. And he'll wait until I can. Medium eye to eye and that proximity that closeness is so gnawing at the core of us as human beings because we got built like hell and all he wants is that from us. So the math would be at the at the bottom of everything I am. That's all I really want from hell. If there was no heaven, would I still pick in? Yes. Yes. Not because he can heal me, not because he's gonna make the stories go away, not because he's gonna, you know, keep the bank account alive, not because he's gonna make my kids great and have perfect lives, and my grandkids are all gonna live to tell you know a war story. Just because to be loved like that. Should knock me off my feet every day. To be loved like that should bring me to my knees. It should be the ultimate awe. The fear of the Lord. We talk about the fear of the Lord and we say, well, it means to have reverence, it means to have respect, it means to have regard. The Lord real dad says in Revelation Revelation, it says that He had awe for His Son on the kingdom to have awe. It's His fear, yeah, it's His joy. Yeah, His joy is my strong, his fear, his awe. What is His awe? His awe is His Awesome. Yeah, it's each of me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

Oh, this was such a joy. Thank you so much. Just for all the wisdom and the words, and I just apologize for the internet gremlins and all this craziness that's been going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

I do Friends of Hell are after us this morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

I think so. I am trying not to be frustrated at my computer. But if you could just tell everyone where can they get your book? When I last saw it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:21

The book is called uh what is the book called?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:26

Uh it's called me.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:29

Yeah, it's called When I Last Saw Me. Uh, and it's my name uh it looks like the book was written by Sammy Bass because I had to change the names for my brothers, but it's written by Lisa Jeanette. My last name is Jeanette, and it's on Amazon. Um I think you can still get it uh by order on Barnes and Noble and Walmart and Toyota, but I know for sure you can get it on Amazon.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:57

That's awesome. Well, Lisa, thank you so much. We're just excited to get this amazing message out into the world, and I can't say thank you enough.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Here I am closer in the straw. Here I am glushing in the straw Jackson to the rhythm of the big battery closure, here I am, but in the straw, Jason to the rhythm of the