October 14, 2024 • 56 mins
At times we all wonder “where is God?” But He is always with us. Cindy Caravas knows. Like many of us, she has suffered life's losses and challenges. Yet through it all, she has experienced God's gentle guidance and presence. Her story reminds us that God never abandons us, even in hardships. It also encourages intentional faith, prayer, and trust, especially when life's path becomes difficult. Join Cindy and host Jodie Chiricosta as they highlight the importance of trusting in God's goodness, regardless of life's circumstances. And discover how by trusting and surrendering to Him, even in your difficult seasons, you will know God’s gentle care and guidance too!
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Welcome to the Her God Story podcast. Hey friends, on your host, Jodie Chiricosta,
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ministry leader at Somebody Cares America International, author and traveler on this
journey with Jesus. I am so glad you have tuned in for this episode. I know you're going to be
encouraged and inspired today in your walk with the Lord. Have you downloaded your free six-week
devotional on Women of the Bible at hergodstory.org? Make sure to get it. God will use it to minister
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to you in so many ways. We also have a 12-week devotional on Women of the Bible that you can
purchase for just $12 and all the proceeds will go to our Widow and Orphan Fund, so check them out.
If this is your first time listening, welcome. I hope you'll enjoy it and check out other inspiring
episodes. Every one of them has a powerful message of how God is working in lives of people just like
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you. And please tell your friends about her God story so they can be encouraged in their faith.
Also, as I look back over my life, I clearly see the fingerprints of God leading me, guiding me
through good times and bad, comforting me, strengthening me. I bet if you look closely,
you'll see the same thing in your life. King David sure did. In Psalm 124, David recognizes how his
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life could have gone if God was not with him, if God had not helped him. The new international
version reads, If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say, if the Lord had not been on our
side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against
us. The flood would have engulfed us. The torrent would have swept us away. The raging waters would
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have swept over us. Praise be to the Lord who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped
like a bird from the fowler snare. The snare has been broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the
name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. I shudder to think what my life would have looked
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like without God. I'm so grateful that he has always been with me. My guest, Cindy Caravas,
knows that too. She experienced some major loss in her life, but God has seen her through it all.
In her career, Cindy has served as a social worker, director of a day school, a school counselor,
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and for the past 12 years, appointed special advocate for the Virginia Beach Juvenile domestic
courts. Married for almost 30 years, Cindy is the mother of three adult children and is involved
with a variety of prayer outreach and discipleship activities. I've known Cindy for many years and
am always encouraged by her bright outlook and joyful spirit. It's infectious. As you listen
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to her story, I pray you recognize how God has been with you over your life and that it will
bring joy to your soul. Welcome, Cindy. Thanks for having me, Jody, and thank you for sharing that
beautiful passage of scripture. Cindy, if God had not been on your side, you could have been swallowed
up and swept away by the raging waters of your young life. Share about your early years and how
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you see that God was with you even before you really knew him. Well, he definitely was, Jody.
I was the youngest of four children. I was living with my family in Connecticut. On a family vacation
when I was 15 months old, my parents and us were hit head on by a drunk driver. My parents were both
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killed. Miraculously, no one else was severely injured. God was totally with me because I was
in the front seat in the years before baby carriers or car seats. And I was found outside the car
and really just had one little scratch on my nose. It was believed that my mother threw me down on
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the floor when she saw the car coming towards us. So he really spared my life for a purpose.
My parents did not have a will because they were in their early 30s and so the four of us were
adopted by different relatives but separated geographically and obviously through different
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families. I went to my maternal aunt and my uncle was moved to Florida from Connecticut.
I didn't see my siblings, my biological siblings again until I was 12 years old, all of us together.
We did have a couple visits maybe in those years but that was at a family funeral that we were
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together. First of all, I want to honor my adoptive parents. There was never a time in my life that I
didn't feel that they loved didn't love me. I know they loved me. They did the best that they could
but they were broken people just like all of us. They were broken and as a result of that brokenness
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there was a lot of domestic upheaval in our home including domestic violence and it was just a
difficult difficult home life. But you know God was with me and he just gave me many many many.
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I can't emphasize this enough. Good times they were good parents but it was difficult. As a result
of a lot of difficult things in both of their lives my mother became an alcoholic. Those were some
very hard years for her because back then there weren't rehab centers. Alcoholics were usually
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sent to mental health institutions and so for a lot of my formative years my mom was in and out
of the hospital. She became very resentful of that fact that she was hospitalized many times
and I think because she realized that she was going to lose her four children if things continued
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she totally stopped drinking and from the time I was seven until I was in college she did not drink
at all but a lot of damage had been done in their in their marriage and during that time my dad who
both of them really had been raised going to church but that was not a part of their life when we
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were young kids and I think the Lord just convicted my dad about that and so he ended up putting the
four kids in the car and taking us to a local Baptist church and dropping us off at the curb.
It seems so funny to me now but God used that and so we went and we went to Sunday school and we went
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to church the four of us by ourselves and during that time my oldest sister had a Sunday school
teacher who really led her to the Lord and that changed the spiritual trajectory of our lives
all of our lives. My dad became convicted that he was just dropping us off and he started going
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to church and so that was just a great start of my spiritual journey. Yeah so that did put those
seeds in your life that God used to eventually draw you to himself but it wasn't immediate so tell us
tell us what happened how did you finally put your faith right in Jesus. Even though I did not
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really become understand the gospel fully until I was in college those seeds you're right Jody those
seeds were there and one of the first seeds I can tell you about is that my sister did a banner
to hang in our room we shared a room and that banner had a Psalm 9419 in it and in Psalm 9419
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it says the word says this so sweetly in Psalm 9419 it says when anxious thoughts multiply within me
by consolations delight my soul. Such a beautiful verse. Also that same sister started taking me
she was in high school she started taking me to another church for Sunday evenings and it was
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we grew up in the Washington DC area and at this church a pastor called Richard Halverson
he was the chaplain of the US Senate. At the end of every service he would sing a song from Isaiah
263 and it said thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee and those two
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scriptures were significant to me because when things were really rough at home I would remember
those obviously I remember I memorized them you know from the time I was a very young child
and they really were the seeds that kind of started things going for me. Yeah and so your
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sister eventually went off to college and you were a few years behind her how did that play into
your faith walk? Yeah well she went to a Christian college up north of Boston Gordon College and
when it came time for me to go to college my parents gave me the option of staying at home
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or going to this nice Christian college 500 miles away they had a lot of rules and even though I was
not really walking with the Lord then I wanted to get out of dodge. I'm not proud to say it but I
lied on my application for the Christian college and talked about my personal faith in Jesus. I used
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a lot of the buzzwords that I had heard. Don't a lot of us do that anyway we use the buzzwords
and anyway the Lord had a plan because I got in that college and it was during my freshman year
and I was taking some Bible classes and just other classes for my social work degree. God
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just really bowled me over with the fact that the resurrection was real and I had two choices. I could
just be a bystander or a personal pan pizza person and just pick and choose the spiritual
things that I wanted to justify my life with or I could put my full faith in Jesus and I'm so happy
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that I did. Yeah so after you committed your life to Christ you know some of us think that life's
going to be smooth sailing after that right? Yeah well that didn't happen. No no you had some hard
times that you had to walk through. So explain what happened over those next few years and how
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you knew the Lord's presence was with you. I mean he never abandoned you through all of this
but even though it was hard so just share about that. While I was in college my parents separated
and during that time my mom started drinking again and she moved north to the Boston area where I was
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and I graduated from college and stayed in the Boston area and worked as a child of
you social worker. My other siblings were either out of the state or my youngest brother was still
in college at the time and so I would often go and check on her because she was not doing well at all
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and things just progressed and got worse and worse and unfortunately they got to the point
where I knew that she was not going to physically survive so I called her and I told her that
that very thing that I was afraid that she was going to die if she didn't have more help and that
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I wanted her to go on her own to rehab but if she didn't I would take the steps that were
necessary in order to get her the help she need and so she agreed and so I finished my work day
and I was ready to go and help her. She lived about an hour and a half away from me and so I
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called her to tell her I was on my way and a strange man answered the phone and so I asked
who are you and he said I am a firefighter and I said oh what happened and he said well
there's been a fire who are you and I explained who I was and so I immediately said okay well
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I'm getting in the car now I'll come and will you still be there and he said ma'am your mother is
deceased and so at that point I realized that she had completed suicide by setting her home on fire.
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Wow and you were the one who had to tell the rest of the family. I was I had to call my dad
and let him know and call my siblings. I don't really remember talking to my siblings about it
but I do remember calling my dad and even though my parents had such a rocky marriage
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they loved each other very much and so that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do
in my life and at Jodi as a result of that I just shut down. Yeah I did not want to talk about it.
I remember my dad and my siblings going to the funeral home. I didn't even want to go in the
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funeral home. I just shut down. I took the opportunity to move to the west coast thinking okay I'll get
a fresh start there and I have to say I knew that God was with me and I'll give you a tangible
way of how he was just so precious and gentle with me. As soon as I got off the phone with
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the firefighter I was just I remember walking into my living room and I had a record player
back in the day and I turned on just the album I put on the album that was already there
and it was a song that was singing straight from scripture about God caring us like Eagle's wings
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and a soaring like Eagle's wings and it just ministered so much to me. It just gave me so
much peace an unexplicable, unexplicable peace and so you know in hindsight I saw even from that very
moment where I got that devastating news he was there his presence was there with me. You know you
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mentioned that you sense his presence then and you did at some other hard things because when
you were in your early 20s you experienced several other significant losses in your life.
What were they? I did Jody. So I'll start with the loss of my brother. I was number four of four
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children in my biological family. My oldest brother Kenny when my parents were killed my
siblings were eight, ten, eight, six and I was 15 months old but my brother Kenny I reconnected with
when I was living in Boston area and the Boston area. He developed AIDS. As timing would permit
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it was a time when I had gotten out of college and I was able to spend a lot of time with him.
That was really a gift because we didn't get to spend much time together even as biological
siblings so I was able to just walk through a couple of years of that illness with him.
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He ended up passing away but a cousin of mine my only cousin to my knowledge on that side of
the family that was a believer witnessed to him and she was able to share with me that
Kenny had accepted Jesus as his savior before he died. What a comfort that was. What a comfort.
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Another really difficult thing that happened in my 20s is a guy that I had been
dating for almost five years in and out of during college a little bit after college.
I was convinced that he was God's man for me and we broke up and it was devastating to me.
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I so overreacted not outwardly but inwardly like I just thought my life is over. It was another
loss. It was another loss and so I just carried that with me for a long time.
I ended up moving to this area where we are now and I got in another relationship,
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got engaged very quickly. That engagement was broken off. I was like, okay Lord what in the
world is happening here? I'm still in my 20s and then maybe about four or five years later
through a blind date with a friend I was able to have another relationship that was
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very serious as well. What do you think happened Jody?
I hesitate to say but I'm thinking you broke up. Yes we broke up. That was hard. At that point I
was 30 years old. That seems to be a, at least for our generations, Cindy. I won't say what
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generation we are but at least for our generation age of 30 was the age where we all kind of felt
like we should definitely be married by then. Well I think there was a Time Magazine article
at some point that said you had a better chance of being attacked by a terrorist than you did
of getting married by 30. I think that's in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Oh yeah maybe it is.
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You had this one serious loss after another. How were you even functioning? Because I mean I know
I had a couple of serious relationships break up and they were difficult.
You know and but nothing like what you had experienced just one after another after another.
How are you functioning? Well I wasn't functioning very well. I thought I was.
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I was pulling myself up by my own bootstraps and pressing you know pressing on the best I could.
At one point shortly after my brother died and I'd had at least one the first serious break up
I called in sick from work and a friend called and checked on me and because she knew that there
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had been the break up and obviously she knew about my brother's death she just came she showed up.
She just pulled up a rocking chair I had in my bedroom pulled it up next to my bed and she just
was present and it was such a beautiful demonstration of what
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Christ does for us. Sometimes he's not you know there aren't firecrackers going off
to show his presence but in that very still way you just know he's with you and when you
don't sense that he's with you we can know just because scripture tells us that he's with us and so
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I just remember telling my friend this is just too much it's too much I can't carry this
anymore all this trauma all this loss because really with with loss and trauma it's cumulative
it's not like oh there's one loss okay let's put that in a box and move it away and then there's
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another loss they just build on each other and at that point it had been just too much too much loss
for me to handle on my own. How did the Lord carry you through that how did you begin processing
because you had been stuffing all of these losses down yeah I think a big part of it just personally
is just surrendering surrendering and just saying God I don't know how I got here I don't know what
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in the heck you're doing but I trust you I know I can trust you even when I don't sense your presence
I know I can trust you and so that was a watershed moment for me and I'll say the other big watershed
moment for me was it had been at that point 10 years since my mother died and I went to professional
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counseling and that was really significant for me for the sole fact that my therapist told me
you know Cindy you've been through a lot this is a lot and basically was giving me permission to be
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gentle to myself because of all that yeah and she was validating that it had been a lot that I
didn't have to be superwoman I didn't have to pull myself up by my bootstraps so that those two things
together mostly the surrender to the Lord but also just getting some good help really changed my life
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yeah so you have said that the Lord was with you through it all give us a few examples of
where he was in the midst of the loss yeah well I I can give you several examples Jody
um the first one that comes to my mind is the fact that it was a miracle that after my mother died
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I did not have one moment where I felt crushing guilt over the fact that I was the one that made
that phone call to her that prompted her to complete suicide to this day I don't know
how that happened but I can tell you I have never felt guilty about it part of that I think is because
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you know the Lord wants us to serve each other and it's it's for a lot of reasons but one of
the biggest reasons is it's helped us when we serve others yeah it does and I I think I knew I had
honored my mom and I had served her in her illness the best I knew how as a young woman in my early
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20s and and so that was a miracle that's a huge way that God met me in that loss the second was
just letting me know that Kenny was with him yeah huge yeah I know when we lose someone we love and we
love and we we don't know if they have received the Lord to receive news like that is such peace
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to our souls such peace you're right the third way Jody would be that God sent friends to me to
surround me and speak truth into my life and um you know I read this devotional on time that said
um that a lot of times there's two kinds of people they one type of person walks in a room
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and says see me see me you know look at here I am here I am see me another type of person is the one
that walks in a room and says I see you there are others focus that's the way Jesus is you know he
says to our souls I see you I see where you're going through and those physical friends that did
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that that said I see you and serve me it was amazing the last thing I would say is when I just look
back I realized how gentle the Lord was with me um he you know provided me with that counselor that
helped me accept that while the losses were hard and tragic um you know I was gonna be okay you
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know it was everything was gonna be all right and I just take that as the gentleness of the word yeah
well we can wallow in our pain um and we have we have to process pain yeah I mean that's a normal
way that God designed us to process pain Jesus processed pain he cried he grieved but then he
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moved on in the strength of the Lord exactly and God was gracious to help you do that and by this
point you know you're 30 years old still single you needed to start getting practical about life
and future so how did God lead you in that well at the time I was the director of a Christian day
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school and I love that job because I had always been drawn to children and I have some administrative
gifting and it was a good fit for me but I was thinking at that point that I was going to be on
my own um here on out and so um I decided to while I was working full time to go back to grad
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school and I got a degree in counseling that way I could work for public schools and so I got a job
as an elementary school guidance counselor which I loved um while working um you know the other job
and then going to grad school and starting a new job um it was just a way that God opened doors for
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me and he led me of course I was praying or what do you want me to do and it's just like doors flung
open for me it was really amazing and you didn't date for another seven or eight years but then
things changed this is a great story I love so just tell us the story okay well you're
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right I had a dating drought as they say and um I uh had the the chance to change dentist because
my dentist had retired and so through um a lot of the single activities in our area I had met a
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lot of different people I knew that one of the guys in the singles groups um that I attended um
was a dentist and so and I knew him very casually so I went uh and changed dentists and went to him
and uh actually we don't ever remember meeting so there's that yeah we're just like oh how did you
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met me oh we have no idea but anyway while I was getting my teeth cleaned he asked me if I wanted
to have dinner and so I did and we had a lovely time and uh about a week later he asked me again
to go out and my family was visiting and so I had to turn down that uh date and he didn't call me back
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again I'm like okay well that was short lived um but then um a couple years later we went out again
and um we dated um for six months he was also my same age and he had never been married I had never
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been married and uh he was smitten with me buddy he just he thought I was great well then he became
unsmitten and you would think I would say oh here we go again yeah but this time it was different Jody
it was different and so I just I don't know why but I think because God had given me those experiences
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before with those other broken relationships I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do
to make something work and more importantly I didn't ever want to have to make something work
and I I think unfortunately a lot of single women you know kind of try to push the envelope a little
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bit um but I knew that God had prepared me that that was not the way to do so um my dear now husband
is a very analytical person and um so I just was patient and um I'm not gonna lie and say oh it was
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absolutely fine I had no anxiety whatsoever because I did um God really helped me through that time and
and we uh ended up you know dating for six months and then we got engaged and I was like on board
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well he started putting on the brakes as soon as we got engaged almost and he was having so much
I wouldn't say he was having anxiety about it but he just again he's a very analytical person I am
not I'm a feeler all the way and he is he's not that way we're very very different so he
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because he knows and loves the Lord he reached out for help I know you know and hopefully many
of your viewers know um pastor Tim Kevlar who was a pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York
City just a wonderful author speaker um wonderful pastor well my husband called and got an appointment
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with Tim Keller he had to wait a couple months when he got the appointment Tim uh Keller affirmed
reaffirmed that marriage was a good thing and he encouraged Jerry that for many analytical people
like himself it was harder to make emotional attachments at we age but that marriage was a
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blessing from God and that from everything Jerry had told him it sounded like it was going to be a
good thing so my lovely husband said well how bad could it possibly be and so we ended up getting
married and you know Jody in America most people have like um just fairytale engagements and then
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unfortunately sometimes rocky marriages we had the opposite we had the rocky engagement but we have
had a really wonderful marriage it hasn't been without ups and downs sure that would not be real
but while we were on our honeymoon my husband confessed he said I don't know I had any doubts
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at all yeah that's what you want to hear that is what you want to hear yes it's been that way ever
since almost 30 years later so you know after those three broken engagements and near engagements
it really must have been a battle I mean you said it was a battle not to keep your walls up
but how did you stay open to that relationship I mean you said you know there was some anxiety but
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I mean many of us when we've been hurt those when we see hurt coming right we put those walls right
back up right and how did you prevent yourself from doing that I mean what were some practical
things that you did well I knew that both of us were praying that was a you know huge thing I knew
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he knew the Lord I knew the Lord could speak to him comfort him and his anxiety just like he'd done
for me my whole life other thing was that I knew from my previous relationships that even though
they all looked really good on paper you know we're equally yoked all you know they were kind men
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and my purpose in life was to trust that Jesus knew what was best for me more importantly what
was best for his kingdom you know like what what was the plan you know that he had in mind from
the foundations of the earth for how he was going to use little me and Jerry as well so
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we just kept communication open we talked about it we saw wise counselor and then we just trusted
God to work it out or not work it out you know open the door close the door and that is so key
many of us want to trust God when things are going good but when the road gets a little bumpy we
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want to take that control back thinking that we can steer around the potholes when that's the time
when we need him the most right I mean we need him the most all the time but trusting him that he
is a good God you know we know in our heads that he's a good God but when when it gets into our
spirit that he's a good God and that everything he does is good even if doesn't look good to us that
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changes the way we can move forward in life you know in the Old Testament a lot of the people of
faith were told by God to build Ebenezer's the stones yeah you know the tower of stones where
God met them and I would say for me those Ebenezer's were some of the trauma some of the hard things
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those you know those caused God to show up in a big way and so I don't I don't shy away from giving
my testimony of hard things at all because it's not about those hard things that's not my story my
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story is that God met me there and his presence was with me yeah yeah so life changed dramatically
after you got married children came pretty soon after that you gave birth to the first two and
then you had a desire to adopt but you're married to a very analytical man so share how God led you
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how God led you through that journey we were in our 40s when we started our family we got married
both of us were 39 and so um 10 months later our first born came and um and then 16 months after
that our second born son came and God had put in my heart almost my entire life a desire to adopt
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obviously I had been adopted and um I just I had always hoped that I would be able to have a lot
of children and so about three weeks after our second son was born I threw out the idea to my
analytical husband and his response was just what I thought it was going to be are you crazy
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we're old parents and we have a newborn and a one-year-old and so I I said okay
but I still had it you know how the scriptures talking about Mary pondered all these things
in her heart well I was still pondering in my heart but I also knew that there were this
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practical wisdom of what he was saying and so I I just I kept praying about it not constantly but
often I would say um and so we ended up going out on a date night and out of the blue my husband said
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um I want to talk to you about something um and I'll back up a little bit there we had just bought
some property to build a house on and um the the property closed and a few months went by and he
came to me and he said you know um I'm really struggling with building a house here there's
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you know our our current house is fine and for us and um you know just the four of us and um
so I just want to put a pause button on building a house um my husband has a real heart for the poor
and he just um couldn't justify you know that expense because of the the conviction that he had
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it was like that's fine um and so um a couple months later is when we had this date night and he said
you know God has spoken to me and this is not something you hear out of the mouth of analytical
believers very often but he said I think we're supposed to adopt an international child and so
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um I was of course on board and within 24 hours I had all the paperwork done
we ended up deciding to adopt from Russia and that was during the time that Yeltsin was still
in power but shortly afterwards Putin came in power and so it was difficult we had to make two
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10-day trips and the first trip we ended up meeting who was a baby that was to become our daughter and
it was just amazing just to meet her and we later I'll tell you this amazing part of the story is
that my husband looked back in his calendar his day timer and we realized that that night that he
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told me that he felt called for us to adopt internationally was the week that our daughter
was born in Russia so far away so far away so we really um felt just that the Lord was leading us
to Russia um what happens to children that come out of most third world orphanages is a very bleak
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existence and so we're very grateful to um to have her she was born full term um
seven seven pounds seven and a half pounds around when we met her when she was 10 months old
she weighed nine pounds and couldn't hold her head up wow and so we left formula there for her
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but we couldn't get back for three months we didn't honestly we didn't think she was even
maybe going to survive the winter she was right on the cusp of Siberia and the winners were really
harsh she had been really ill she was obviously severely malnourished but we went back when she
was 13 months um and brought her home she was 11 pounds at that time still couldn't hold her head up
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um but we had a year of a lot of intervention with her otm pt in our home multiple times a week
for that first year in the meantime i had um at home two little boys uh two and three and so uh it
was crazy they turned three and four shortly before she got home actually but it was wild yeah
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i imagine some of those years were a blur if you look back yes so now your kids are all adults
and you survive the crazy years when we're in the middle of them we wonder if we're gonna survive but
you did and we don't have time to go back through all the things that god did during those years
but summarize a few of the lessons that you've learned in raising your children uh the lord
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showed me and continues to show me that having adult children is the best lesson on earth to teach
us that we really never had control to begin with and all the women with adultery said amen yes we um
we also hopefully know that god knows our children better than we do and he loves them more than we
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do his plan might not be um the plan we have for them and they're gonna struggle sometimes but his
plan is good and so we pray for them um daily you know we just walk through life with them
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the the best that we can i would say for me one of the biggest things is prayer i pray um every
monday morning with other moms of adult children and we pray for those kids and i love that because
it forces you into a pattern of prayer and um i also would highly recommend um some books that
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have helped me through parenting um a local art uh author jody burnt um she's internationally known
with her books she started out with praying the scriptures for your children if uh any of you
the listeners have adult children i highly encourage you to get her book um praying the
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scriptures for your adult children um there's just some great resources out there but prayer
i do also want to add one thing jody is that you know more is caught than taught sometimes
with our kids and one precious conversation i had with our daughter who the our child who is adopted
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which by the way sometimes i forget which one is adopted which ones aren't but anyway she said to
me when she was a little girl she said mom don't you feel sorry for people who aren't adopted
and i said uh well where you going with this girl she gets well um they really don't know what it's
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like to be adopted and become a child of god people who aren't adopted don't understand that and this
is from the mouth of babes i mean she was young and so i just know that you know the things that we
we teach our children about the lord um they're in there yeah i love the scripture in proverbs
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this is train up a child in the way you should go and when he's old he won't depart from it and i
i'm uh thankful that it says when he's old he won't depart from me he doesn't say in the meantime
there won't be some right rocky roads right but we can trust god with all of it we can that's it's
an act of trust yeah and that act of trust includes some of the disciplines of our faith of prayer and
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just um seeking god on behalf of our children whether they're doing great or whether they're in
the depths um it doesn't matter it's that same rhythm of life so you and i were both in our late
30s when we got married um i know that the lord has put a soft spot in your heart for single women
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tell us about that and in other ways the lord's using you now that you're an empty nester you
know you and i put both have been poster child for single women who want to get married yes
because and i don't know if you remember this book but way back in the 80s there's a book called i
gave god time oh yeah and it was do you remember that and it was i can't remember the author but
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i don't agree theologically with the the title of it because he doesn't need us to give him anything
but um i re uh paraphrase that book into i gave god a hard time yeah so i but i do know i mean it's
hard being single it is difficult being single whether you're male or female when your heart's
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desire is to have a life partner yeah and um and if your life's desire is to be a parent um
it's very hard but so because of that um i do have a huge heart for single women and um so currently
i'm mentoring four single women in their 30s um who all want to be married and the important part
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about that is it's not that it's like a pity party for single women we talk a little bit about
singleness but only how it interacts with our faith journey because the focus needs to be on our
growing our faith i mean and growing our knowledge and understanding of the lord and and so that's
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that's kind of what we um we focus on also um just love to volunteer i volunteer every week at a
local elementary school um still love that age group um i love doing things for with our church
some outreach stuff and i mentioned moms and prayers a wonderful international organization
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there's chapters almost anywhere uh in the nation if you want to get together with some other moms
to pray and um and then also i'm involved with bible study fellowship bsf which i think has been the
biggest instrumental tool for me over the past 10 years of just really coming to love god's word
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it's easy to talk about our things of faith but unless we really are intentional about knowing
god's word and learning more about him it's his it's his love letter to us it is and that's how
we live out our faith by getting into his word and knowing what our faith is about so send you've
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lived a very full life what message or truth would you like to our listeners to take away from your
story well you know jody one of the saddest things to me is that so many young believers punt their
faith when they think god has dealt them a bad hand and the truth i want your listeners to hear
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is that through the holy spirit god is with you multiple times in his word he says i will never
leave you i will never forsake you his presence is everything it's everything and we we often don't
have him as a guest at our table in our mind but he's there but just acknowledging his presence
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and um i would say always remember that even if your life isn't shaping into what you think
you want or deserve we still we serve a good god and he is our reward he's our reward not
not all the checklists that we might have a what our life should be like he's our reward
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um i know that god doesn't waste anything he desires to help us he desires to bless us and so
um just surrendering to him submitting to him um and i i do want to circle back to the song that you
read in the beginning yeah uh just that song 124 i just encourage your listeners to to meditate on
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this song but in verse seven it says we have escaped like a bird from the fowler snare the
snare has been broken and we have escaped and and i would say just based on that verse even though
the lord has blessed me in so many amazing ways um he's blessed me in my life so many tangible ways
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that i i only had the iceberg today but my real story is that i have escaped eternal separation
from him because of jesus his life death and resurrection as we close cindy um i ask all my
guess would you share about a woman of the bible whose story has inspired encouraged or taught you
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something the old testament which is the first part of the bible if you go into the eighth book
it's a little four chapter book called ruth and uh it's hard to separate ruth who is a widow
who was a widow and she was um not well thought of because she was a moabite um woman and but she
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had a mother-in-law Naomi and it's hard to separate the two of them because their story is so intertwined
but Naomi was just a beautiful witness to who the god of israel was and their relationships at the
core of just such a beautiful example that in times of crisis or despair god's willing to use
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anyone who's open to be used and in in ruth's case uh she became the great grandmother of king
david who is the line to our beautiful savior jesus and so i think you know her her life didn't
look like it was gonna amount to much and there was a lot of hardship but god just wove it into
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something so beautiful for his purposes yeah he really did yeah well in matthew 28 20 when jesus
was about to leave his disciples and return to heaven he promised them surely i am with you always
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to the very end of the age in her most difficult seasons god was with Cindy comforting her
providing what she needed in her joyful seasons too god gave her strength the godly partner
children and so much more god has been with her through it all and god is with you too dear listener
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never doubt that romans 8 verses 38 and 39 the writers tell us for i am convinced that neither
life nor death nor angels nor demons neither the present nor the future nor any powers neither height
nor death nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of god that
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is in christ jesus our lord nothing can separate us from him god loves you and wants to bless you
so like Cindy did surrender everything to him and watch what he will do
Cindy would you take a moment and pray for our listeners absolutely lord we praise you and
(54:49):
thank you for who you are you are an amazing creator redeemer and friend we thank you for
your son jesus and for his life death and resurrection we thank you jesus that for those
of us who have accepted and trusted you for our lives you willingly have freed us from the snare
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and the grip of the enemy lord i pray for any listener who has not yet seen the beauty of
your redeeming love that they would come into a personal relationship with you draw them to
yourself lord father i also pray for any listener who's been traumatized by the events of this broken
(55:33):
world guide them lord give them complete healing in ways that only you can provide
guide them with a faith that you are always always with them in your son's precious and holy name
jesus we pray amen amen thank you for tuning in check out our show notes at her god story
(55:59):
dot org for scriptures and links to other information we talked about and remember to
get your free six week devotional on women of the bible there we'd also love to pray with you
on our 24 7 prayer and text line so give us a call or text anytime at 855459 care or you can email us
(56:20):
at prayer at somebody cares dot org and now dear friends i leave you with a blessing adapted from
first chronicles 2211 may the lord be with you and may you have success her god story is a ministry
of somebody cares america and international to find out more about or support the ministry go to
somebodycares dot org
Welcome to the Her God Story podcast. Hey friends, on your host, Jodie Chiricosta,
(00:04):
ministry leader at Somebody Cares America International, author and traveler on this
journey with Jesus. I am so glad you have tuned in for this episode. I know you're going to be
encouraged and inspired today in your walk with the Lord. Have you downloaded your free six-week
devotional on Women of the Bible at hergodstory.org? Make sure to get it. God will use it to minister
(00:27):
to you in so many ways. We also have a 12-week devotional on Women of the Bible that you can
purchase for just $12 and all the proceeds will go to our Widow and Orphan Fund, so check them out.
If this is your first time listening, welcome. I hope you'll enjoy it and check out other inspiring
episodes. Every one of them has a powerful message of how God is working in lives of people just like
(00:52):
you. And please tell your friends about her God story so they can be encouraged in their faith.
Also, as I look back over my life, I clearly see the fingerprints of God leading me, guiding me
through good times and bad, comforting me, strengthening me. I bet if you look closely,
you'll see the same thing in your life. King David sure did. In Psalm 124, David recognizes how his
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life could have gone if God was not with him, if God had not helped him. The new international
version reads, If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say, if the Lord had not been on our
side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against
us. The flood would have engulfed us. The torrent would have swept us away. The raging waters would
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have swept over us. Praise be to the Lord who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped
like a bird from the fowler snare. The snare has been broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the
name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. I shudder to think what my life would have looked
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like without God. I'm so grateful that he has always been with me. My guest, Cindy Caravas,
knows that too. She experienced some major loss in her life, but God has seen her through it all.
In her career, Cindy has served as a social worker, director of a day school, a school counselor,
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and for the past 12 years, appointed special advocate for the Virginia Beach Juvenile domestic
courts. Married for almost 30 years, Cindy is the mother of three adult children and is involved
with a variety of prayer outreach and discipleship activities. I've known Cindy for many years and
am always encouraged by her bright outlook and joyful spirit. It's infectious. As you listen
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to her story, I pray you recognize how God has been with you over your life and that it will
bring joy to your soul. Welcome, Cindy. Thanks for having me, Jody, and thank you for sharing that
beautiful passage of scripture. Cindy, if God had not been on your side, you could have been swallowed
up and swept away by the raging waters of your young life. Share about your early years and how
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you see that God was with you even before you really knew him. Well, he definitely was, Jody.
I was the youngest of four children. I was living with my family in Connecticut. On a family vacation
when I was 15 months old, my parents and us were hit head on by a drunk driver. My parents were both
(03:32):
killed. Miraculously, no one else was severely injured. God was totally with me because I was
in the front seat in the years before baby carriers or car seats. And I was found outside the car
and really just had one little scratch on my nose. It was believed that my mother threw me down on
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the floor when she saw the car coming towards us. So he really spared my life for a purpose.
My parents did not have a will because they were in their early 30s and so the four of us were
adopted by different relatives but separated geographically and obviously through different
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families. I went to my maternal aunt and my uncle was moved to Florida from Connecticut.
I didn't see my siblings, my biological siblings again until I was 12 years old, all of us together.
We did have a couple visits maybe in those years but that was at a family funeral that we were
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together. First of all, I want to honor my adoptive parents. There was never a time in my life that I
didn't feel that they loved didn't love me. I know they loved me. They did the best that they could
but they were broken people just like all of us. They were broken and as a result of that brokenness
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there was a lot of domestic upheaval in our home including domestic violence and it was just a
difficult difficult home life. But you know God was with me and he just gave me many many many.
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I can't emphasize this enough. Good times they were good parents but it was difficult. As a result
of a lot of difficult things in both of their lives my mother became an alcoholic. Those were some
very hard years for her because back then there weren't rehab centers. Alcoholics were usually
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sent to mental health institutions and so for a lot of my formative years my mom was in and out
of the hospital. She became very resentful of that fact that she was hospitalized many times
and I think because she realized that she was going to lose her four children if things continued
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she totally stopped drinking and from the time I was seven until I was in college she did not drink
at all but a lot of damage had been done in their in their marriage and during that time my dad who
both of them really had been raised going to church but that was not a part of their life when we
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were young kids and I think the Lord just convicted my dad about that and so he ended up putting the
four kids in the car and taking us to a local Baptist church and dropping us off at the curb.
It seems so funny to me now but God used that and so we went and we went to Sunday school and we went
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to church the four of us by ourselves and during that time my oldest sister had a Sunday school
teacher who really led her to the Lord and that changed the spiritual trajectory of our lives
all of our lives. My dad became convicted that he was just dropping us off and he started going
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to church and so that was just a great start of my spiritual journey. Yeah so that did put those
seeds in your life that God used to eventually draw you to himself but it wasn't immediate so tell us
tell us what happened how did you finally put your faith right in Jesus. Even though I did not
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really become understand the gospel fully until I was in college those seeds you're right Jody those
seeds were there and one of the first seeds I can tell you about is that my sister did a banner
to hang in our room we shared a room and that banner had a Psalm 9419 in it and in Psalm 9419
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it says the word says this so sweetly in Psalm 9419 it says when anxious thoughts multiply within me
by consolations delight my soul. Such a beautiful verse. Also that same sister started taking me
she was in high school she started taking me to another church for Sunday evenings and it was
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we grew up in the Washington DC area and at this church a pastor called Richard Halverson
he was the chaplain of the US Senate. At the end of every service he would sing a song from Isaiah
263 and it said thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee and those two
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scriptures were significant to me because when things were really rough at home I would remember
those obviously I remember I memorized them you know from the time I was a very young child
and they really were the seeds that kind of started things going for me. Yeah and so your
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sister eventually went off to college and you were a few years behind her how did that play into
your faith walk? Yeah well she went to a Christian college up north of Boston Gordon College and
when it came time for me to go to college my parents gave me the option of staying at home
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or going to this nice Christian college 500 miles away they had a lot of rules and even though I was
not really walking with the Lord then I wanted to get out of dodge. I'm not proud to say it but I
lied on my application for the Christian college and talked about my personal faith in Jesus. I used
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a lot of the buzzwords that I had heard. Don't a lot of us do that anyway we use the buzzwords
and anyway the Lord had a plan because I got in that college and it was during my freshman year
and I was taking some Bible classes and just other classes for my social work degree. God
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just really bowled me over with the fact that the resurrection was real and I had two choices. I could
just be a bystander or a personal pan pizza person and just pick and choose the spiritual
things that I wanted to justify my life with or I could put my full faith in Jesus and I'm so happy
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that I did. Yeah so after you committed your life to Christ you know some of us think that life's
going to be smooth sailing after that right? Yeah well that didn't happen. No no you had some hard
times that you had to walk through. So explain what happened over those next few years and how
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you knew the Lord's presence was with you. I mean he never abandoned you through all of this
but even though it was hard so just share about that. While I was in college my parents separated
and during that time my mom started drinking again and she moved north to the Boston area where I was
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and I graduated from college and stayed in the Boston area and worked as a child of
you social worker. My other siblings were either out of the state or my youngest brother was still
in college at the time and so I would often go and check on her because she was not doing well at all
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and things just progressed and got worse and worse and unfortunately they got to the point
where I knew that she was not going to physically survive so I called her and I told her that
that very thing that I was afraid that she was going to die if she didn't have more help and that
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I wanted her to go on her own to rehab but if she didn't I would take the steps that were
necessary in order to get her the help she need and so she agreed and so I finished my work day
and I was ready to go and help her. She lived about an hour and a half away from me and so I
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called her to tell her I was on my way and a strange man answered the phone and so I asked
who are you and he said I am a firefighter and I said oh what happened and he said well
there's been a fire who are you and I explained who I was and so I immediately said okay well
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I'm getting in the car now I'll come and will you still be there and he said ma'am your mother is
deceased and so at that point I realized that she had completed suicide by setting her home on fire.
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Wow and you were the one who had to tell the rest of the family. I was I had to call my dad
and let him know and call my siblings. I don't really remember talking to my siblings about it
but I do remember calling my dad and even though my parents had such a rocky marriage
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they loved each other very much and so that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do
in my life and at Jodi as a result of that I just shut down. Yeah I did not want to talk about it.
I remember my dad and my siblings going to the funeral home. I didn't even want to go in the
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funeral home. I just shut down. I took the opportunity to move to the west coast thinking okay I'll get
a fresh start there and I have to say I knew that God was with me and I'll give you a tangible
way of how he was just so precious and gentle with me. As soon as I got off the phone with
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the firefighter I was just I remember walking into my living room and I had a record player
back in the day and I turned on just the album I put on the album that was already there
and it was a song that was singing straight from scripture about God caring us like Eagle's wings
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and a soaring like Eagle's wings and it just ministered so much to me. It just gave me so
much peace an unexplicable, unexplicable peace and so you know in hindsight I saw even from that very
moment where I got that devastating news he was there his presence was there with me. You know you
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mentioned that you sense his presence then and you did at some other hard things because when
you were in your early 20s you experienced several other significant losses in your life.
What were they? I did Jody. So I'll start with the loss of my brother. I was number four of four
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children in my biological family. My oldest brother Kenny when my parents were killed my
siblings were eight, ten, eight, six and I was 15 months old but my brother Kenny I reconnected with
when I was living in Boston area and the Boston area. He developed AIDS. As timing would permit
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it was a time when I had gotten out of college and I was able to spend a lot of time with him.
That was really a gift because we didn't get to spend much time together even as biological
siblings so I was able to just walk through a couple of years of that illness with him.
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He ended up passing away but a cousin of mine my only cousin to my knowledge on that side of
the family that was a believer witnessed to him and she was able to share with me that
Kenny had accepted Jesus as his savior before he died. What a comfort that was. What a comfort.
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Another really difficult thing that happened in my 20s is a guy that I had been
dating for almost five years in and out of during college a little bit after college.
I was convinced that he was God's man for me and we broke up and it was devastating to me.
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I so overreacted not outwardly but inwardly like I just thought my life is over. It was another
loss. It was another loss and so I just carried that with me for a long time.
I ended up moving to this area where we are now and I got in another relationship,
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got engaged very quickly. That engagement was broken off. I was like, okay Lord what in the
world is happening here? I'm still in my 20s and then maybe about four or five years later
through a blind date with a friend I was able to have another relationship that was
(18:47):
very serious as well. What do you think happened Jody?
I hesitate to say but I'm thinking you broke up. Yes we broke up. That was hard. At that point I
was 30 years old. That seems to be a, at least for our generations, Cindy. I won't say what
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generation we are but at least for our generation age of 30 was the age where we all kind of felt
like we should definitely be married by then. Well I think there was a Time Magazine article
at some point that said you had a better chance of being attacked by a terrorist than you did
of getting married by 30. I think that's in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Oh yeah maybe it is.
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You had this one serious loss after another. How were you even functioning? Because I mean I know
I had a couple of serious relationships break up and they were difficult.
You know and but nothing like what you had experienced just one after another after another.
How are you functioning? Well I wasn't functioning very well. I thought I was.
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I was pulling myself up by my own bootstraps and pressing you know pressing on the best I could.
At one point shortly after my brother died and I'd had at least one the first serious break up
I called in sick from work and a friend called and checked on me and because she knew that there
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had been the break up and obviously she knew about my brother's death she just came she showed up.
She just pulled up a rocking chair I had in my bedroom pulled it up next to my bed and she just
was present and it was such a beautiful demonstration of what
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Christ does for us. Sometimes he's not you know there aren't firecrackers going off
to show his presence but in that very still way you just know he's with you and when you
don't sense that he's with you we can know just because scripture tells us that he's with us and so
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I just remember telling my friend this is just too much it's too much I can't carry this
anymore all this trauma all this loss because really with with loss and trauma it's cumulative
it's not like oh there's one loss okay let's put that in a box and move it away and then there's
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another loss they just build on each other and at that point it had been just too much too much loss
for me to handle on my own. How did the Lord carry you through that how did you begin processing
because you had been stuffing all of these losses down yeah I think a big part of it just personally
is just surrendering surrendering and just saying God I don't know how I got here I don't know what
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in the heck you're doing but I trust you I know I can trust you even when I don't sense your presence
I know I can trust you and so that was a watershed moment for me and I'll say the other big watershed
moment for me was it had been at that point 10 years since my mother died and I went to professional
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counseling and that was really significant for me for the sole fact that my therapist told me
you know Cindy you've been through a lot this is a lot and basically was giving me permission to be
(22:56):
gentle to myself because of all that yeah and she was validating that it had been a lot that I
didn't have to be superwoman I didn't have to pull myself up by my bootstraps so that those two things
together mostly the surrender to the Lord but also just getting some good help really changed my life
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yeah so you have said that the Lord was with you through it all give us a few examples of
where he was in the midst of the loss yeah well I I can give you several examples Jody
um the first one that comes to my mind is the fact that it was a miracle that after my mother died
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I did not have one moment where I felt crushing guilt over the fact that I was the one that made
that phone call to her that prompted her to complete suicide to this day I don't know
how that happened but I can tell you I have never felt guilty about it part of that I think is because
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you know the Lord wants us to serve each other and it's it's for a lot of reasons but one of
the biggest reasons is it's helped us when we serve others yeah it does and I I think I knew I had
honored my mom and I had served her in her illness the best I knew how as a young woman in my early
(24:34):
20s and and so that was a miracle that's a huge way that God met me in that loss the second was
just letting me know that Kenny was with him yeah huge yeah I know when we lose someone we love and we
love and we we don't know if they have received the Lord to receive news like that is such peace
(25:02):
to our souls such peace you're right the third way Jody would be that God sent friends to me to
surround me and speak truth into my life and um you know I read this devotional on time that said
um that a lot of times there's two kinds of people they one type of person walks in a room
(25:29):
and says see me see me you know look at here I am here I am see me another type of person is the one
that walks in a room and says I see you there are others focus that's the way Jesus is you know he
says to our souls I see you I see where you're going through and those physical friends that did
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that that said I see you and serve me it was amazing the last thing I would say is when I just look
back I realized how gentle the Lord was with me um he you know provided me with that counselor that
helped me accept that while the losses were hard and tragic um you know I was gonna be okay you
(26:24):
know it was everything was gonna be all right and I just take that as the gentleness of the word yeah
well we can wallow in our pain um and we have we have to process pain yeah I mean that's a normal
way that God designed us to process pain Jesus processed pain he cried he grieved but then he
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moved on in the strength of the Lord exactly and God was gracious to help you do that and by this
point you know you're 30 years old still single you needed to start getting practical about life
and future so how did God lead you in that well at the time I was the director of a Christian day
(27:12):
school and I love that job because I had always been drawn to children and I have some administrative
gifting and it was a good fit for me but I was thinking at that point that I was going to be on
my own um here on out and so um I decided to while I was working full time to go back to grad
(27:39):
school and I got a degree in counseling that way I could work for public schools and so I got a job
as an elementary school guidance counselor which I loved um while working um you know the other job
and then going to grad school and starting a new job um it was just a way that God opened doors for
(28:03):
me and he led me of course I was praying or what do you want me to do and it's just like doors flung
open for me it was really amazing and you didn't date for another seven or eight years but then
things changed this is a great story I love so just tell us the story okay well you're
(28:25):
right I had a dating drought as they say and um I uh had the the chance to change dentist because
my dentist had retired and so through um a lot of the single activities in our area I had met a
(28:48):
lot of different people I knew that one of the guys in the singles groups um that I attended um
was a dentist and so and I knew him very casually so I went uh and changed dentists and went to him
and uh actually we don't ever remember meeting so there's that yeah we're just like oh how did you
(29:15):
met me oh we have no idea but anyway while I was getting my teeth cleaned he asked me if I wanted
to have dinner and so I did and we had a lovely time and uh about a week later he asked me again
to go out and my family was visiting and so I had to turn down that uh date and he didn't call me back
(29:42):
again I'm like okay well that was short lived um but then um a couple years later we went out again
and um we dated um for six months he was also my same age and he had never been married I had never
(30:04):
been married and uh he was smitten with me buddy he just he thought I was great well then he became
unsmitten and you would think I would say oh here we go again yeah but this time it was different Jody
it was different and so I just I don't know why but I think because God had given me those experiences
(30:28):
before with those other broken relationships I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do
to make something work and more importantly I didn't ever want to have to make something work
and I I think unfortunately a lot of single women you know kind of try to push the envelope a little
(30:52):
bit um but I knew that God had prepared me that that was not the way to do so um my dear now husband
is a very analytical person and um so I just was patient and um I'm not gonna lie and say oh it was
(31:17):
absolutely fine I had no anxiety whatsoever because I did um God really helped me through that time and
and we uh ended up you know dating for six months and then we got engaged and I was like on board
(31:38):
well he started putting on the brakes as soon as we got engaged almost and he was having so much
I wouldn't say he was having anxiety about it but he just again he's a very analytical person I am
not I'm a feeler all the way and he is he's not that way we're very very different so he
(32:01):
because he knows and loves the Lord he reached out for help I know you know and hopefully many
of your viewers know um pastor Tim Kevlar who was a pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York
City just a wonderful author speaker um wonderful pastor well my husband called and got an appointment
(32:24):
with Tim Keller he had to wait a couple months when he got the appointment Tim uh Keller affirmed
reaffirmed that marriage was a good thing and he encouraged Jerry that for many analytical people
like himself it was harder to make emotional attachments at we age but that marriage was a
(32:45):
blessing from God and that from everything Jerry had told him it sounded like it was going to be a
good thing so my lovely husband said well how bad could it possibly be and so we ended up getting
married and you know Jody in America most people have like um just fairytale engagements and then
(33:13):
unfortunately sometimes rocky marriages we had the opposite we had the rocky engagement but we have
had a really wonderful marriage it hasn't been without ups and downs sure that would not be real
but while we were on our honeymoon my husband confessed he said I don't know I had any doubts
(33:34):
at all yeah that's what you want to hear that is what you want to hear yes it's been that way ever
since almost 30 years later so you know after those three broken engagements and near engagements
it really must have been a battle I mean you said it was a battle not to keep your walls up
but how did you stay open to that relationship I mean you said you know there was some anxiety but
(34:00):
I mean many of us when we've been hurt those when we see hurt coming right we put those walls right
back up right and how did you prevent yourself from doing that I mean what were some practical
things that you did well I knew that both of us were praying that was a you know huge thing I knew
(34:20):
he knew the Lord I knew the Lord could speak to him comfort him and his anxiety just like he'd done
for me my whole life other thing was that I knew from my previous relationships that even though
they all looked really good on paper you know we're equally yoked all you know they were kind men
(34:41):
and my purpose in life was to trust that Jesus knew what was best for me more importantly what
was best for his kingdom you know like what what was the plan you know that he had in mind from
the foundations of the earth for how he was going to use little me and Jerry as well so
(35:05):
we just kept communication open we talked about it we saw wise counselor and then we just trusted
God to work it out or not work it out you know open the door close the door and that is so key
many of us want to trust God when things are going good but when the road gets a little bumpy we
(35:26):
want to take that control back thinking that we can steer around the potholes when that's the time
when we need him the most right I mean we need him the most all the time but trusting him that he
is a good God you know we know in our heads that he's a good God but when when it gets into our
spirit that he's a good God and that everything he does is good even if doesn't look good to us that
(35:51):
changes the way we can move forward in life you know in the Old Testament a lot of the people of
faith were told by God to build Ebenezer's the stones yeah you know the tower of stones where
God met them and I would say for me those Ebenezer's were some of the trauma some of the hard things
(36:16):
those you know those caused God to show up in a big way and so I don't I don't shy away from giving
my testimony of hard things at all because it's not about those hard things that's not my story my
(36:36):
story is that God met me there and his presence was with me yeah yeah so life changed dramatically
after you got married children came pretty soon after that you gave birth to the first two and
then you had a desire to adopt but you're married to a very analytical man so share how God led you
(36:58):
how God led you through that journey we were in our 40s when we started our family we got married
both of us were 39 and so um 10 months later our first born came and um and then 16 months after
that our second born son came and God had put in my heart almost my entire life a desire to adopt
(37:28):
obviously I had been adopted and um I just I had always hoped that I would be able to have a lot
of children and so about three weeks after our second son was born I threw out the idea to my
analytical husband and his response was just what I thought it was going to be are you crazy
(37:55):
we're old parents and we have a newborn and a one-year-old and so I I said okay
but I still had it you know how the scriptures talking about Mary pondered all these things
in her heart well I was still pondering in my heart but I also knew that there were this
(38:22):
practical wisdom of what he was saying and so I I just I kept praying about it not constantly but
often I would say um and so we ended up going out on a date night and out of the blue my husband said
(38:46):
um I want to talk to you about something um and I'll back up a little bit there we had just bought
some property to build a house on and um the the property closed and a few months went by and he
came to me and he said you know um I'm really struggling with building a house here there's
(39:11):
you know our our current house is fine and for us and um you know just the four of us and um
so I just want to put a pause button on building a house um my husband has a real heart for the poor
and he just um couldn't justify you know that expense because of the the conviction that he had
(39:38):
it was like that's fine um and so um a couple months later is when we had this date night and he said
you know God has spoken to me and this is not something you hear out of the mouth of analytical
believers very often but he said I think we're supposed to adopt an international child and so
(40:04):
um I was of course on board and within 24 hours I had all the paperwork done
we ended up deciding to adopt from Russia and that was during the time that Yeltsin was still
in power but shortly afterwards Putin came in power and so it was difficult we had to make two
(40:29):
10-day trips and the first trip we ended up meeting who was a baby that was to become our daughter and
it was just amazing just to meet her and we later I'll tell you this amazing part of the story is
that my husband looked back in his calendar his day timer and we realized that that night that he
(40:57):
told me that he felt called for us to adopt internationally was the week that our daughter
was born in Russia so far away so far away so we really um felt just that the Lord was leading us
to Russia um what happens to children that come out of most third world orphanages is a very bleak
(41:23):
existence and so we're very grateful to um to have her she was born full term um
seven seven pounds seven and a half pounds around when we met her when she was 10 months old
she weighed nine pounds and couldn't hold her head up wow and so we left formula there for her
(41:49):
but we couldn't get back for three months we didn't honestly we didn't think she was even
maybe going to survive the winter she was right on the cusp of Siberia and the winners were really
harsh she had been really ill she was obviously severely malnourished but we went back when she
was 13 months um and brought her home she was 11 pounds at that time still couldn't hold her head up
(42:14):
um but we had a year of a lot of intervention with her otm pt in our home multiple times a week
for that first year in the meantime i had um at home two little boys uh two and three and so uh it
was crazy they turned three and four shortly before she got home actually but it was wild yeah
(42:40):
i imagine some of those years were a blur if you look back yes so now your kids are all adults
and you survive the crazy years when we're in the middle of them we wonder if we're gonna survive but
you did and we don't have time to go back through all the things that god did during those years
but summarize a few of the lessons that you've learned in raising your children uh the lord
(43:06):
showed me and continues to show me that having adult children is the best lesson on earth to teach
us that we really never had control to begin with and all the women with adultery said amen yes we um
we also hopefully know that god knows our children better than we do and he loves them more than we
(43:28):
do his plan might not be um the plan we have for them and they're gonna struggle sometimes but his
plan is good and so we pray for them um daily you know we just walk through life with them
(43:48):
the the best that we can i would say for me one of the biggest things is prayer i pray um every
monday morning with other moms of adult children and we pray for those kids and i love that because
it forces you into a pattern of prayer and um i also would highly recommend um some books that
(44:14):
have helped me through parenting um a local art uh author jody burnt um she's internationally known
with her books she started out with praying the scriptures for your children if uh any of you
the listeners have adult children i highly encourage you to get her book um praying the
(44:38):
scriptures for your adult children um there's just some great resources out there but prayer
i do also want to add one thing jody is that you know more is caught than taught sometimes
with our kids and one precious conversation i had with our daughter who the our child who is adopted
(45:02):
which by the way sometimes i forget which one is adopted which ones aren't but anyway she said to
me when she was a little girl she said mom don't you feel sorry for people who aren't adopted
and i said uh well where you going with this girl she gets well um they really don't know what it's
(45:25):
like to be adopted and become a child of god people who aren't adopted don't understand that and this
is from the mouth of babes i mean she was young and so i just know that you know the things that we
we teach our children about the lord um they're in there yeah i love the scripture in proverbs
(45:53):
this is train up a child in the way you should go and when he's old he won't depart from it and i
i'm uh thankful that it says when he's old he won't depart from me he doesn't say in the meantime
there won't be some right rocky roads right but we can trust god with all of it we can that's it's
an act of trust yeah and that act of trust includes some of the disciplines of our faith of prayer and
(46:20):
just um seeking god on behalf of our children whether they're doing great or whether they're in
the depths um it doesn't matter it's that same rhythm of life so you and i were both in our late
30s when we got married um i know that the lord has put a soft spot in your heart for single women
(46:43):
tell us about that and in other ways the lord's using you now that you're an empty nester you
know you and i put both have been poster child for single women who want to get married yes
because and i don't know if you remember this book but way back in the 80s there's a book called i
gave god time oh yeah and it was do you remember that and it was i can't remember the author but
(47:08):
i don't agree theologically with the the title of it because he doesn't need us to give him anything
but um i re uh paraphrase that book into i gave god a hard time yeah so i but i do know i mean it's
hard being single it is difficult being single whether you're male or female when your heart's
(47:31):
desire is to have a life partner yeah and um and if your life's desire is to be a parent um
it's very hard but so because of that um i do have a huge heart for single women and um so currently
i'm mentoring four single women in their 30s um who all want to be married and the important part
(48:00):
about that is it's not that it's like a pity party for single women we talk a little bit about
singleness but only how it interacts with our faith journey because the focus needs to be on our
growing our faith i mean and growing our knowledge and understanding of the lord and and so that's
(48:23):
that's kind of what we um we focus on also um just love to volunteer i volunteer every week at a
local elementary school um still love that age group um i love doing things for with our church
some outreach stuff and i mentioned moms and prayers a wonderful international organization
(48:47):
there's chapters almost anywhere uh in the nation if you want to get together with some other moms
to pray and um and then also i'm involved with bible study fellowship bsf which i think has been the
biggest instrumental tool for me over the past 10 years of just really coming to love god's word
(49:12):
it's easy to talk about our things of faith but unless we really are intentional about knowing
god's word and learning more about him it's his it's his love letter to us it is and that's how
we live out our faith by getting into his word and knowing what our faith is about so send you've
(49:38):
lived a very full life what message or truth would you like to our listeners to take away from your
story well you know jody one of the saddest things to me is that so many young believers punt their
faith when they think god has dealt them a bad hand and the truth i want your listeners to hear
(49:59):
is that through the holy spirit god is with you multiple times in his word he says i will never
leave you i will never forsake you his presence is everything it's everything and we we often don't
have him as a guest at our table in our mind but he's there but just acknowledging his presence
(50:27):
and um i would say always remember that even if your life isn't shaping into what you think
you want or deserve we still we serve a good god and he is our reward he's our reward not
not all the checklists that we might have a what our life should be like he's our reward
(50:48):
um i know that god doesn't waste anything he desires to help us he desires to bless us and so
um just surrendering to him submitting to him um and i i do want to circle back to the song that you
read in the beginning yeah uh just that song 124 i just encourage your listeners to to meditate on
(51:16):
this song but in verse seven it says we have escaped like a bird from the fowler snare the
snare has been broken and we have escaped and and i would say just based on that verse even though
the lord has blessed me in so many amazing ways um he's blessed me in my life so many tangible ways
(51:43):
that i i only had the iceberg today but my real story is that i have escaped eternal separation
from him because of jesus his life death and resurrection as we close cindy um i ask all my
guess would you share about a woman of the bible whose story has inspired encouraged or taught you
(52:09):
something the old testament which is the first part of the bible if you go into the eighth book
it's a little four chapter book called ruth and uh it's hard to separate ruth who is a widow
who was a widow and she was um not well thought of because she was a moabite um woman and but she
(52:35):
had a mother-in-law Naomi and it's hard to separate the two of them because their story is so intertwined
but Naomi was just a beautiful witness to who the god of israel was and their relationships at the
core of just such a beautiful example that in times of crisis or despair god's willing to use
(52:57):
anyone who's open to be used and in in ruth's case uh she became the great grandmother of king
david who is the line to our beautiful savior jesus and so i think you know her her life didn't
look like it was gonna amount to much and there was a lot of hardship but god just wove it into
(53:22):
something so beautiful for his purposes yeah he really did yeah well in matthew 28 20 when jesus
was about to leave his disciples and return to heaven he promised them surely i am with you always
(53:42):
to the very end of the age in her most difficult seasons god was with Cindy comforting her
providing what she needed in her joyful seasons too god gave her strength the godly partner
children and so much more god has been with her through it all and god is with you too dear listener
(54:03):
never doubt that romans 8 verses 38 and 39 the writers tell us for i am convinced that neither
life nor death nor angels nor demons neither the present nor the future nor any powers neither height
nor death nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of god that
(54:27):
is in christ jesus our lord nothing can separate us from him god loves you and wants to bless you
so like Cindy did surrender everything to him and watch what he will do
Cindy would you take a moment and pray for our listeners absolutely lord we praise you and
(54:49):
thank you for who you are you are an amazing creator redeemer and friend we thank you for
your son jesus and for his life death and resurrection we thank you jesus that for those
of us who have accepted and trusted you for our lives you willingly have freed us from the snare
(55:12):
and the grip of the enemy lord i pray for any listener who has not yet seen the beauty of
your redeeming love that they would come into a personal relationship with you draw them to
yourself lord father i also pray for any listener who's been traumatized by the events of this broken
(55:33):
world guide them lord give them complete healing in ways that only you can provide
guide them with a faith that you are always always with them in your son's precious and holy name
jesus we pray amen amen thank you for tuning in check out our show notes at her god story
(55:59):
dot org for scriptures and links to other information we talked about and remember to
get your free six week devotional on women of the bible there we'd also love to pray with you
on our 24 7 prayer and text line so give us a call or text anytime at 855459 care or you can email us
(56:20):
at prayer at somebody cares dot org and now dear friends i leave you with a blessing adapted from
first chronicles 2211 may the lord be with you and may you have success her god story is a ministry
of somebody cares america and international to find out more about or support the ministry go to
somebodycares dot org
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