What's God Got To Do With It? With Leanne Ellington: Born and raised in a quintessential “country music family”, as the oldest daughter of country music super star Alan Jackson, Mattie Jackson is as down-to-earth and open-hearted as they come. But that doesn't mean she's immune to tragedy and a curveball that could never have been predicted.
Three weeks before her first wedding anniversary, Mattie experienced an unimaginable tragedy and lost her husband to a sudden brain injury. She candidly shares how her life was suddenly turned upside down, and the intense emotional rollercoaster of hope, despair, and ultimately, unimaginable loss that followed. .
Mattie's raw emotions included everything from anger to disappointment to hopelessness, and the struggle to reconcile her prayers that she feared would be left unanswered. Amidst the heartbreak, she shares how she navigated through grief and the quest for meaning in the midst of so much chaos.
The answer was no other than: God.
She leaned on God and her faith to guide her through the darkest times.
Mattie courageously bares her soul and lays it all out for us to hear in this interview for The God Pod, and I have no doubt that this episode will inspire you to live life with more appreciation, courage, and purpose.
GUEST: @mattiejackson
Mattie's Website: https://www.mattiejackson.net/
Mattie's Podcast: In Joy Life Podcast
Mattie's Book: Lemons on Friday
HOST: Leanne Ellington // StresslessEating.com // @leanneellington
To learn more about Leanne, head over to www.LeanneEllington.com, and to share your thoughts, questions, feedback, or guest suggestions instantly, head on over to www.WhatsGodGotToDoWithIt.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
If you want to go on a journey.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
If you're skeptical, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now here to preach. I'm gonna keep it clean and
talk to me and recall where faith meets fars nature
and get in touch with your creator with a bacon,
love and jew She.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What's that, Ganzato?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
What's that? As well?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Sabosation?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You should talking transformation?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Don Satu?
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Well, Hello, and welcome back to What's God got to
do with It? I am so excited and grateful to
be sitting here with my dear friend Maddie Jackson, who
is an author, a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
She's a speaker.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
She's also co founder of Nashville, which is a women's
philanthropic or organization that serves orphans, widows, and victims of
human trafficking, doing a lot of great work out in
the world. But her personal testimony and the stories of
trials and tribulations and grief and the overcomings that have
come are just beyond anything I've really heard, especially.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
From somebody that I know.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
So that is especially why I want to have here
on the podcast. So first and foremost, Hello, Hey, I'm
so glad to be with you, Yuah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So happy to have you here.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
And you know, instead of me sharing what has brought
you to who you are and how you've come to be,
I'd love to just turn it over to you and just,
you know, share with us your story, your journey, what
has brought you into the woman that you are, all
the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, yeah, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I grew up in a home that was all about
the Lord, and so I'm thankful to have had that
foundation as a kid and as a young woman, and
that really.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Was always a part of my life.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
But I say that to then say that I think
I didn't realize how much richer a relationship with God
could be until.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
To be totally honest with you, I desperately needed it.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
And I think with everything that I've gone through, which
I'll share with the listeners, the big thing that I
kind of want to tee up is like, no matter
what you believe, or where you are, how long you've
had faith or not have faith, whatever, even growing up
in the church and having faith in God and believing
in God, it took a tragedy for me to really
(02:25):
want to live my life with God. If that makes sense,
and that came through desperation. And I think a lot
of times, you know, until your feet are to the fire,
you don't know how much you.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Believe or don't believe something. Actually. C. S.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Lewis says, you don't know if what you believe is
true until it's a matter of life and death.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Like I butchered that quote, but.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's something like that, ye.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So anyway, the big part of my story is when
I was twenty eight, just turned twenty eight, basically everything
in my life that I think I saw as making
me valuable ended basically in the span of two months.
So like I in my twenties, I'm as somolier, so
(03:07):
I'm like a wine professional. I worked in the wine
and hospitality industry for most of my twenties, and I
had a restaurant here, a wine bar here for a
couple of years that I ended up having to close
June of twenty eighteen after two years of operation, partly
because of financial issues, partly because honestly I was just
burnt out on it and I felt very led and
(03:27):
almost allowed by God to lay that season down like
that there was something more for me ahead, and so
that was kind of a really scary, I want to say,
leap of faith, but it also felt like a failure
in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
But I knew it was the right thing.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
And then honestly had a wonderful summer with my kind
of new husband.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We had been married about eight or nine months at
that point.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And then in August, really Labor Day weekend of that
same summer, been and I, my husband and I and
my two sisters and some friends went down to Florida
for the weekend. A lot of them had birthdays that
same week, so we were celebrating and we go down
there a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
My dad's a big fisherman.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
So he has a lovely boat down there, and we
went out on the boat for like a sunset cruise
and went to this little tiki bar that we grew
up going to after we'd go fishing, you know, with him,
and got dinner and drinks and they had a band dancing.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
It was just like a beautiful night. And so we
go to get back up.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
On the boat to ride back to our hotel, and
you're from Florida, you know, it's like ten minutes random thunderstorms.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then it's gone, and then it's over.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
So there had been a random thunderstorm, so those steps
to get back up on the boat were a little wet,
and Ben rushed over to sort of help some of
us get up on the boat, and his sandal hit
the steps and he just slipped and fell back and
hit his head on the dock, which was concrete, and
obviously alarmed, like he kind of went out for a second,
but he came back to you know, we rush over
(04:47):
to make sure, you know, he's okay, and really didn't
feel that panicked about it. Kind of looked like any
like football game you know you've gone to, and they
kind of shake it off and get up and and so, really,
by God's grace, the or two off duty EMTs there
at the marina and they saw him fall into the
rush over and kind of checked him out, and they said,
you know, this could be a lot more serious than
it looks. You need to probably go to the hospital.
(05:09):
And so they called an ambulance for me. Like, again,
I'm out of town. I have no idea what the
hospitals even are. So they told me like, this is
one you want to go to, and we went and
so I was like, no big deal, Like they're just
gonna watch him overnight. Long story short, the neurosurgeon comes in.
This is gosh, in the middle of the night. At
this point, I'm terrified. Everybody else's you know, taking two
hours to get back to hotels, and nobody's with me,
(05:30):
and Ben's kind of coming in and out of consciousness,
and he said, you know, we don't have to do
brain surgery yet, but we're it's very likely we're going
to have to in the next you know, twenty four hours,
and talk about like shocking you into reality. So from
there he was awake for the first twenty four hours,
again kind of in and out of consciousness, which was
a gift because he was able to kind of converse
(05:51):
with me and have that last little bit. And he
ended up being in the ICU there for twelve days
and multiple brain surgeries and toally induced coma, and on
the eleventh day they were gonna start pulling him out
of the coma. They said, you know, his brain swelling's
been stable, we're gonna wake him up. And meanwhile, you know,
(06:11):
my biggest fear at this point is is he gonna
wake up the same man that I married? Because there
was never even talk of this being a fatal injury.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Everything that they.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Were warning me of is that, hey, the parts of
his brain that are injured control personality and judgment and temper.
And so I'm thinking, like, please God, let this be
the same joyful man you know that I married, and
and if he's not, like, this is my life, you know,
ahead of me. And and so you know, death wasn't
even really on the radar. And so we're talking to
(06:44):
the to the neurosurgeon and she says, we're gonna wake
him up. And Ben's dad point blank asked her, like,
is this still fatal? And she said, I can't tell
you no, but from a neurological standpoint, it's very unlikely.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So we're like yes. So she says we have to do.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
One more MRI, like we're gonna check everything and then
we're gonna start waking him up. And she comes back
and she says he's had multiple strokes, like there's no
way for us to know because he was in a coma,
but like, he's brain dead. Here are your options, and
obviously you know the options aren't options. So at that point,
you know, it's late in the day, it's been eleven days.
(07:19):
We're exhausted, scared, and you know, I told his mom
and dad, who had been there the whole time, I said,
I think we need to just just go back like
he's fine, like his body is fine. I need to pray,
I need to sleep, like we can't. I'm not gonna
you know, we just I can't. I can't make that decision.
And so we went back and that was literally my
prayer was obviously, like Lord, save him, like make him
(07:41):
a miracle story. And I believed that. I believe that,
like with everything in me. But also my prayer was,
don't make me choose this, like, don't make me take
him off life support. And if you're gonna do it,
you have to do it. And so we went to
bed and the nurse has called me in the middle
of night and said, hey, his heart's failing. You know,
if y'all can get here, we can keep them alive.
(08:01):
And we got there and he was alive for about
ten or fifteen minutes. And you just don't, like, like,
even when I tell you that story, it's like it
feels like an out of body experience to be in
that room. And that was five years ago, actually last
week at the time, we're recording this, and it was
three weeks before our first wedding anniversary, so it was
(08:24):
just the most unexpected I mean, you never expect that
to be you, right, yeah, yeah, and yeah, so absolutely wow.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And I mean it's so interesting too that within this
time of the tumultuous grief that you were experiencing, in
the midst of it, afterwards, your first instinct was to pray.
Your first instinct was to ask God. And interestingly enough,
like there was a prayer that wasn't answered right, and
then there was a prayer that was where it's like, God,
I don't want to make this decision on my own.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And he really took that from you.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
But you know, this is the time when I feel
like people actually turn away from God. They get mad
at God, they get hurt, they get burned God, how
could you let this happen to me?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Why?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Me?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And then they fall back into stories of you know,
well maybe I'm not supposed to be happy, I'm not supposed.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
To have everything. Did that show up for you?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Was there like even a crossroads of that, and like,
what do you think pulled you back into your purful life?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And what was that first?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
You know, I'm curious, you know about the first week,
the first month that like, can you just kind of
walk us through that.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
I definitely felt all those things and definitely went through
seasons of dow like disappointment, anger, confusion, and honestly, the
way that I opened my book, I did write a
book about this whole experience of the grief of battling
with you know, these things that I'd believed and really
stood on all my life that felt like, to be
(09:39):
quite honest, they just like let me down. And I
kind of opened the book saying, like, after that happened,
after he passed and we went back that night, I
sat on the balcony of this hotel room looking at
the ocean that next morning, with the Bible clothes that
I had carried all over that hospital for twelve days,
you know, and like that had the scriptures I had
(10:01):
prayed over him, and had the hymns that we had
sung over him, and everything that we stood on and
fought with. Not because like you're supposed to to earn
God's yes to your prayer. Absolutely not, but that's our lifeblood,
that's what we believe. And the God that I trusted
could have saved Ben and I knew that, and so
it's almost harder to still know that he could have
(10:23):
spared him the slip, spared him the fall, like made
him the miracle story and know that he could and
also know that he didn't. And so that bible I
carried all over the hospital set next to me closed
because it had let me down and I didn't feel
comfort in it in that moment, and the immediate gift
of how did you come back to that? Was of course,
(10:45):
I was getting all these texts and calls that I
didn't even look at. And for some reason, one of
Ben's cousins, who is a pastor. He's really he's a dentist,
but he's also a pastor and he had done our
wedding he married us, called and I answered his call
and he just said, first of all, he just said.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Buddie, we love you like we've been praying all night.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
And he said, I just need you to remember that
when Ben took his last breath in your arms, he
took his first breath with Jesus, and that is the
only thing that gets you through those first moments. This
is this is not an alter call. I'm just telling you,
Like he reminded me of that. It wasn't even like
(11:26):
God's good enough to carry you through this. It was
like the person you love more than anything in this
world just one lottery man like, his pain is gone,
his worries are gone, his anxieties are gone. Man Like,
he's perfect. He's doing cartwheels like he's great. And when
you love somebody that much, I had to let feeling
(11:48):
joyful for Ben be more and have more weight than
how broken and mad I felt for me.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And that's what.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
I've told people is like, if my testimony and my
story had one message, it's like when you sit, you know,
at the front row and speak at eulogy at your
twenty eight year old husband's funeral, like the fact that
because of Jesus, he's good and I'll see him again,
Like that's the only thing that makes you survive.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, And that was a choice in that moment.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
To almost have that payoff of like listen, I'm here
and I'm in my grief and I'm present to that,
but I'm allowing right now to be so much more
present to the joy that I feel for my husband
that just passed away. And coming back to something full
circle that you said at the beginning of this where
you know, the desperation is what really it was almost
like a new relationship with God. So you know, when
(12:41):
we talk about that desperation for you, what was it like?
Was there a moment of awareness of like, God, I'm
only going to get through this with you. Was there
a were you able to even call it desperation? Is
that a hindsight thing like did what were those few
weeks looking like for you? Or when did you kind
of come back and reconnect with God as the new
discovery that in your heart itp it became? When did
(13:13):
you kind of come back and reconnect with God as
the new discovery that in your heart.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Itp it became.
Speaker 5 (13:20):
I don't know if it's hindsight recognizing desperation, but it's
definitely what it felt like for a long time. I
do remember saying to myself, as angry as I was,
that the answer to the safe Him prayer was not yes,
And as angry as I was that all I got
was eleven months with him. I remember thinking, like I
(13:43):
still have to deal with this, Like me being angry
is not going to bring Ben back. Me being angry
is not going to heal me, you know, it's not
going to fix what's broken. And so if I have
to deal with this, the God that I have known
my whole life is the only thing that's gonna equip
me to do it. Like I'm a very strong, hard
(14:05):
headed person, like I can do most things, Like I
don't look at much and be like, probably can't do that.
That's maybe a proa ites maybe a con. But this
was a thing that I was looking and I was like,
there's no way I can do this.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And I just knew.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
I was like, whether I feel happy with him or not,
the God that I know, who has been with me
my whole life is the actual only way I'm going
to survive this and be any sort of a human
living any sort of a life that I want. Wow,
I mean it really was desperation. It was like you
are the only tool. And I'm not thrilled about it.
I don't feel joyful about it, but I know in
(14:39):
my mind it's the only way that I'm ever going
to live a life that I want to live again.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, And how did you find what that looked like
for you?
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I know that Bible that you said you carried around
the hospital, it was this closed book.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It was almost like a reminder of the anger.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And so something shifted in you that made you go
back home to God and say, Okay, God, like this sucks.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
But You're the only thing that's going to get me
through this right now.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
And there was that level of awareness, right So then, like,
how did you start showing up? How did that look
like when you went to God in your desperation and
asked him to hold space for it and support you
and put his arms around you. And I don't know
if at what point in time you asked him to
redeem this, you know, but what did that look like
practically for you really coming out of this almost cocoon
(15:24):
of grief and really the shock and you know, not
even necessarily knowing how to respond to it, this whole
new life on your own without Ben. What did that
look like practically as you developed this new chapter of
a relationship with God.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Practically the things that help you stay connected to the Lord,
for him to pour into you, to give you energy
and resilience and hope and all those things that you
need to navigate something you know, heartbreaking, They're hard to
do at the beginning, is what I want to say, Like,
first of all, your mind is not clear, right, You're
(15:57):
emotionally exhausted, you're running on adrenaline, You're you feel drained
in every capacity, and so it's hard to read scripture,
it's hard to go to church. I couldn't go back
to church for a long time because I was so
emotional about it, like I just would have meltdowns. And
also I didn't want to go by myself, like that
was heartbreaking. So I just want to validate, like if
(16:19):
that's really hard for you, then that's fine, Like do
what you need to do, like listen to I think
I started by listening to worship music was like the
easiest thing for me to do because it put words
to words that I couldn't find, and so I think
I started there, and then I was able to really
just go to scripture and read stories in the Bible.
(16:43):
And the reason being I needed to see hope in
other people's story, Like I didn't see hope in my story.
I don't know that I trusted the redemption for me
yet at that point, and so where I started to
seek God was really trying to see hope in other
people's stories like mine. And I mean that realistically, in
(17:05):
like women that I met right off the bat. That
was a gift that were had been widowed young who
were five, ten, fifteen years down the road. So I
could see hope in their story and think, Okay, maybe
this could happen for me. And then I could see
hope in people's stories in the Bible, like Job and
David and.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You people like you open the Bible.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Yeah, it's hard stuff, man, Like you see people suffering,
You see people be frustrated with God and all of
the things that we feel as humans that we think, oh,
you're not being a good Christian. I feel the no,
Like these guys struggled, they suffered, they questioned, they didn't
get the answers, you know, and you see God be
kind to them, and you see him restore and bring
(17:46):
goodness in ways that doesn't make sense. And when you
see that in other people's stories, in scripture or in life,
it gave me the energy to keep hoping that it
could be true for me.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah, when you were saying that, I was wondering if
it was. Job Joe was one of the first Old
Testament stories I read, and it was one of those
things for me, I'm like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I don't know how I feel about this Old testament
stif there's job, no, thank you exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
But it did show me like, even on my most
hard days and heart is all subjective to each person
and individualized, and not to minimize anyone else's pain, because
pain is pain.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
But it was a depiction of like, Okay, if job,
can you stay faithful in this?
Speaker 4 (18:24):
But that being said, you said there was you know,
you met other widows that had been kind of further
down the road and their grief and their journey and
the restoration process, and you called that a gift.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Did you go seek that out?
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Or was that gifts from God that people place, that
He placed people in your life?
Speaker 5 (18:39):
No, I mean it was truly gifts from God. I
will say that between I mentioned closing my restaurant. Between
the point of closing that in June of twenty eighteen
and been passing away in September of twenty eighteen, I
had been approached by a friend of a friend who
was wanting to start now she vill you mentioned the
(19:00):
beginning just a women's philanthropic organization. So I had been
working with her on that over the course of the summer,
which was really cool. I didn't really know, I didn't
seek it out. She was an adoptive mom, and so
that was sort of her heart behind it. She wanted
to serve foster care, adoption, that sort of thing. And
so over the course of kind of building that up
with her, we had decided, this is so crazy. We
(19:21):
had decided strictly because scripture says it, we wanted more
than one mission to get back to, and so over
and over in the Bible it says take care of
orphans and widows, take care of orphans and widows, and
we both growing up the church kind of knew that
and we were like, man, I guess, like, I guess
that's a second group that we need to serve. Like again,
(19:42):
at this point, I'm twenty eight, she's thirty, like I'm
a newlywed. And we're like literally said, we'll just put
that on the back burner, like I feel like we
need to do it, but we have no idea what
that means or looks like. And then we ended up
working with trafficking victims and survivors as well because that
been worked with them actually as an attorney here in Nashville.
But so because of that, in hindsight, I see the
(20:03):
kindness of God setting up this organization where Okay, we
think we're gonna come in as young women and serve
what eighty year old widows at the nursing home is
probably like what we had in our head. And God
was setting up a platform for me to not only
have prepared access to these groups that we now work
(20:25):
with that serve widows, but also he was setting me
up to walk it in real time in front of people.
And I only say that because my biggest one of
my biggest fears was and this was a prayer I pray,
an angry prayer, angry prayer, I pray a lot was God,
this has to have purpose Like this, I'm not doing
(20:47):
this and it's not gonna help people. Like that's the
only way that I can feel okay about the fact
that you made me do this.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And that may be entitled and that is probably not
on it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I think it is very human of you, but it was.
And I was like, you have to make this.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
No, I don't want to say worth, it is not
the right word, but you have to bring purpose from
this for me to like forgive you, to be honest,
not that God needs our forgiveness, but I needed to
know like there is good that's going to come from this,
from our marriage, from Ben's death, from my pain, and
so for him to have prepared that organization and that
(21:22):
space for me to feel purposeful immediately in my pain,
and for me to have access to these these groups
that we work with, and these older women who I
would have never known how to find step into my
life and just immediately start walking it with me, like
it's just unreal, Like I tell it to you and
I'm like, this is a made up story, but.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It's all that happened.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, And it's such a beautiful picture of you know,
you just being you're also humaning your way through this
in this in this spiritual space and giving yourself permission
to be like, you know what, God, I know, I
don't air quotes, you don't need my forgiveness, but like
I feel like I need to go through this process
of forgiveness and there's anger and just letting yourself be
human about it. I think a lot of people think like, no,
I'm not supposed to be mad at God or need
(22:07):
forgiveness or whatever, and it's.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Like no, you're You're human. You're human, you know, and
giving yourself that space.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So for anybody who's listening and they have been through
the depths of hell and they've had their own experiences
of loss and grief and you know, transition and just
so unexpected curveballs that can give us this gamut of emotions.
You know, I'm curious to know what would you say
to anybody who just doesn't feel like getting out of
bed some days, or feels like maybe they've lost that
connection with God?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
You know, what would you say to them?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And what did that look like practically for you rebuilding
your life? What would you say to anybody who just
doesn't feel like getting out of bed some days, or
feels like maybe they've lost that connection with God?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
You know, what would you say to them?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
And what did that look like practically for you rebuilding
your life?
Speaker 5 (22:58):
I think the big thing that I would tell people
practically is literally, try as hard as you can to
just do twenty four hours at a time. It's very
easy in the depths to spiral into Okay, but what
about that thing that for us even it was like
what about that thing we had planned?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Like what about the kids we wanted?
Speaker 5 (23:20):
What about you know, and you spiral into the future
and there is a moment to at least in a
situation like this, grieve. You have to grieve the future
you imagined, but you don't have to do it today,
you know, Like twenty four hours is hard enough, like spiritually, emotionally, physically,
if you can't get up out of that bed. And
I say that from experience, and I also say it
(23:42):
because God says it. He says, my mercies are new
every single morning, and like they really are. Talk about
something else I still don't understand. But it's like if
you get up and you literally ask God whether you
have a good relationship or any relationship, he still made you.
He's still listening no matter how you feel and say, God,
you say your mercies new every morning, you say, you
(24:03):
have enough for us for twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Give me what I need for twenty four hours.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
It is a miracle that happens, Like you can survive
twenty four hours and at the end of the day,
like your tank's probably shot and you're like, there's no
way I can do this again tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
But you can't.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And so that would be the practical thing is.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Like just ask, like no matter what you believe or
how you feel, like He made you he loves you
like he wants to help you survive like and so
it is a twenty four hour thing. And that's what
I would do practically. And then whatever you can do,
however small, even if it feels minuscular, meaningless, to give
(24:38):
a little I don't even want to say joy, but
that is what it is.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It's not going to feel like joy.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
It's just going to feel like a tiny burst of energy,
like whatever your practical things are. So for me, I
have always loved cooking, and after been diet, you know,
people are so kind they bring you food. You don't
you have any energy, your motivation to do anything. But
I realized if I can even once week take two
minutes to google a recipe or find something, even if
(25:04):
it's five ingredients and make it, it gave me a
little burst because I was being creative and and it
just gave me something to choose joy. That's I have
a podcast now called Enjoy Life, and that's really where
it came from, because I never realized the agency we
have to choose tiny joys and how powerful that is
(25:26):
in the good seasons, but especially in the hard seasons.
Because nothing I wasn't happy about anything, you know, I
wasn't happy about my life, but I could choose tiny
things songs, taking a walk, cooking, watching something stupid on TV.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Like, just do tiny things that give you a.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Burst of energy, a burst of joy, because you don't,
you know, you have to start small.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I mean that seems silly. I don't feel like that's
super found.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
But two really important distinctions, you know. The first one was,
you know, there's a big difference between telling ourselves what
we think we know versus asking, right, And so the
first first part that you shared, you know, instead of
telling yourself like I can't get through another day, I
can't do this, I can't get out of bed, you're
asking for God. Hey, God, help me meet me here
in this twenty four hour show me what I can't,
what I don't know, show me what I can't do
(26:12):
you know, and show me how to do it, you know,
through your strength, not my own. So the big distinction
of like telling yourself what you think you already know
versus asking.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
It's so powerful. Yeah, your words are so powerful one
thousand percent.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And then the intention that you in that concept of
just choosing small, minuscule moments of joy because we find
whatever we're looking for if we if we are looking
for more misery or more you know, finding ways to
argue with reality or wish it hadn't happen, or go
back in the past, or try to retrace steps or
all the things that.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
We can't change.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
It keeps us present and it shows us that even
in the midst of chaos or tragedy, we can find
small little things to focus our attention on. And it
really is just a choice. And sometimes it doesn't feel
like a choice when you're so bogged down with that heavy,
heavy grief, right, but.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It really is.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
And I think you said it sounds so simple, but
the but you know, the elegance is in its simplicity,
as da Vinci said, and I probably just butchered that quote,
but it really is these small things that you need.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
To grasp onto.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Before we wrap up, you and I met about three
three and a half years ago. When I met you,
you had already found the purpose in a way, you know,
through Nasheville and through your your you know, your podcasting,
and you're you're authoring a book.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And so we're gonna.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Dive into what has transpired in the past few years.
But like, when did you know that you were on
and I know grief never ends.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
It comes in waves.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
You know, even you can still feel joy in the
grief as well, you know, but and celebrate his life.
But when did you feel the wavelift? When did you
feel a shift and know that you were back? And
what do you think was like the magic recipe for you? Like,
what was your spiritual recipe? What were some things that
you think really moved the needle for you to feel like, Okay,
I'm back and I'm different, I'm forever changed, yeah, you know,
(27:54):
but like I feel like I'm coming back to myself again.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
When was that shift and what did that feel like
for you?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
I think that that shift happened. I can't like pinpoint
exactly what you know, how many years in or whatever
it was, But there was a very specific moment you
mentioned Job earlier, which is funny because and I remember
so clearly this moment reading the beginning of that book
of Job. And if people don't know that story, it's
(28:21):
in the Old Testament, and it's this guy named Job
and he is called like the most faithful man on earth,
like he's he's crushing it with God like perfect church
attendants everything, and the story opens, and this is what
I was reading in this moment. We were going through
it in this girl's Bible City group that I've had forever.
We were reading it so I was preparing for our meeting.
And it opens with a conversation literally between God and Satan,
(28:45):
and Satan's coming to God and saying like, your dude,
job is only like super faithful because he's had an
easy life, like nothing has obviously I'm paraphrasing us, nothing
bad has happened, Like, of course he loves you, like
you've just give him blessing on blessing. He's rich, he
has a huge farm and family and you know, like
he's got a cush life. Of course he loves you.
And God says to Satan like, Okay, you can test him.
(29:08):
You can do anything you want to him except kill him.
He will be faithful to me. And that's what happens
in the story. He takes everything. Every one of his
ten kids dies, his wife dies, he gets sick and
all these ailments and diseases, and he loses his whole
all his money and his whole farm and business, and
the whole story is him grappling with that and grieving
and being angry and saying prayers like I said, but
(29:30):
also never not trusting God to restore it. And so
when I was reading this opening, I mean that was
like that was like I was red hot, angry, crying, yelling,
because when I read that, I was like, is this
what happened to me?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Like was this me?
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Did Satan come to you and say, yeah, of course
she loves you, She's had a cush life, Like watch this?
And I was so mad and reeling and crying and
going this whole tirade God in my kitchen. And when
I finally just sort of like ran out of steam.
It was and this will sound weird to people who
don't haven't had this experience, but it was I it
(30:10):
was like he spoke to me, not audibly, but it's
like when thoughts come up in your head and you
know that that's not your thoughts. And it was so clear,
and the message was Maddie, whose are you? And I
was like what it was like, whose are you?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Your mind?
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Like you are my child, you are my daughter, like
I made you, I chose you, I died for you,
I fight for you. I'm gonna redeem you. I'm gonna
make your life what it's supposed to be. And what
you need to remember is that you are mine. That
is your only identity. It is the only thing that
brings you value. It is the only thing in your
life that cannot be taken away. And for me, I
(30:48):
don't That was such a profound moment because I think
it showed me like, obviously I was grieving been his
actual person, right. I was grieving our future, I was
grieving our marriage. I was grieving all this stuff. But
I think what at the core, what I was hurting
me so much and what was keeping me so lost,
was that I lost the things that I thought made
(31:10):
me who I was.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Wow, And for God to be there in that story
and say like, look, I get you feel like job,
like you've lost all these things that define you. But
I'm the only person who can define you. I'm the
only person who can heal you. All you have to
remember for the rest of your life, no matter what
you gain or what you lose, is that your mind,
like I've got you. And that really changed everything for
(31:34):
me because in that moment, like I know I'm always secure,
Like he's always gonna I'm always gonna come out on
the other side and I may not like it, and
it may take longer than I want, and I may
have scars that I hate.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I'm his and he's got me.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
And and so I don't know why that was it
for me, but it came down to, like everything that
we grieve, everything that we lose, everything that really hurts us,
is in some part because we feel like it's the
core of our identity and it's not.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Yeah, So it's such a beautiful lesson for all of
us because all of us are identified by something something worldly,
whether it's you know, gene size, bank, balanced relationship status.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
In your case, I mean, you were a missus of Ben,
you know.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
And just to brag on you for just a minute,
because you know, part of it is like when anybody
meets you, they wouldn't know your upbringing, like you grew
up in a famous family, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And one of the things I'm most proud of you
about and what I love about.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
You is you've always been your own person, you know,
before Ben and in the midst of and now after.
And it is one of those things like it would
be easy for anybody to be like, oh, she's had
a cushy life or she's had an easy upbringing, and
it's like, no, first of all, everything that you're saying
is was a choice, Like you chose to become who
you've become, you know, and in the midst of tragedy,
(32:50):
you've chosen to lean in and create purpose and serve others.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
You know, when a lot of.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Times grief it can be an all consuming thing where
you don't want to think about anybody else. And one
of the first things you did is you started serving
widows and orphans. Like what I mean, it's just a
testimony to who you are, right But despite that, like
in the midst of all the things that you could
have identified with, you have created your own identity. And
this was just the next layer of you becoming God's
(33:16):
beautiful daughter and stripping of any other roles or labels
or identity that you could have maybe misconstrued as as
the thing that gave you value and worth and you
put that and here's the thing you heard that call.
Do you know how many people maybe hear air quotes,
hear these things, and they just ignore it and they
pursue other worldly idols that they're chasing after, whether it's money,
(33:38):
skinny relationship likes on Facebook, whatever it is, and these
are choices that you've made, and so it's just such
a beautiful testimony. And again, the people that don't know
you don't like the heart of who you are. The
essence of who you are and who you've become in
the midst of this tragedy is just truly it's remarkable
and profound and admirable.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And I just I wanted to brag on you.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
From me, Yeah, well you're kind and to more probably
accurately and properly answer your original question. That was the
moment that the whole mind shift kind of changed for me.
It was like it reset the foundation. And I think
you asked, when did you feel like you had really
moved into a place of healing or stability.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Those weren't your words, but that's what it felt like.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
It felt like.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Once I had that realization, I was like, Okay, the
focus is now obviously grieving properly, healing properly, but the
focus is how do I now build the foundation the
only foundation that is secure, which is who am I
because of who God says I am?
Speaker 3 (34:43):
And so moving.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Forward in my life, whether I do get married again
or not, which spoiler I did.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Thank you God, he's amazing.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
But I had to get to a place where I
could genuinely say, and I think this is where I
was working toward when we met. If this is it,
If that was my love story that lasted eleven months,
really we're together three years. But if that's my love
story and that's it, then I'm okay. Like I'm okay
with my relationship with the Lord, I'm okay with the
(35:15):
purpose for my life. And you really can only have
that security when that is your number one source of worth, value, security, hope, everything,
because it is your source of everything. And I want
people to hear me say like, I'm not okay now
because I got remarried. I was okay because I know
(35:36):
forever now who I am in Christ, and like I'm
gonna get great blessings and I'm also gonna lose stuff
and people, and that I'll survive and it won't change
my value, it won't rob my joy. And so that
is the turning point when you realize there is one
firm foundation, there is one truth about who I am,
(35:57):
and it's unshakable because then you can add things to it.
I've told people now like I've had a freaking great
couple of years, you know, but everything is a bonus. Yeah,
Like after finding that identity, after finding that security with
the God who will always carry me through, everything else
is a bonus.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
And if it comes from this place of desire, not
require where you know who you are, You know who
you are and where you stand in your own value,
your own worth, your own desire to be who you
want to be, and then everything else just gets added
added to that. And then you're coming from a place
of being able to receive it and feeling gratitude and
feeling worthy of receiving it.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
So that is the perfect segue.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
We are going to come back with part two of
Maddie's amazing transformational story.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Really, what we just.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
Shared is you know, kind of the survive you know,
and just getting into the thrive side of it. But
really there were some literal and metaphorical lemon lemonade.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
That was made from these lemons.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
So we will be back to share the rest of
her amazing story in the meantime, Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Follow you, learn more about you?
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Yeah, I'm just Mattie Jackson on Instagram and Facebook, but
I'm not super active there.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
But you also see everything yeah, Maddie.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Jackson dot net has everything there, like links to my book,
links to my podcast is again called Enjoy Life, It's
I in jo Why Not Be injureds play Onwards, and
that's anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Beautiful.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Well, we will link that in the show notes for sure,
and we will be back with part two of this
amazing ride.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Talk to you then.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Bye, We'll be back with more What's God Got to
Do with It? But in the meantime, I would definitely
love to hear from you, so just tell me where
you are in your story or maybe what questions you have,
like where do you feel you need clarity or support
or wisdom in your own journey. I definitely want to
(37:50):
hear from you, So head on over to What's God
Got to Do with It?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Dot com and.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Scroll down to the form to share your thoughts, your questions,
your feedback, and you can do that instantly.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So What's God goot to Do with It? Dot com?
You'll find all the ways to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
And if you like this podcast and want to hear more,
go ahead and follow, like and subscribe wherever you listen
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Speaker 2 (38:14):
Of What's God Got to Do with It?
Speaker 4 (38:16):
New episodes drop every single Tuesday, and while you're there.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Be sure to rate and review to show your support.
It really means so much.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
What's God Got to Do With It Is an iHeartRadio
podcast on the Amy Brown Podcast Network. It's written and
hosted by me Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
post production and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music
written by Cheryl Stark and produced by Adam Stark
If you want to go on a journey.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
If you're skeptical, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now here to preach. I'm gonna keep it clean and
talk to me and recall where faith meets fars nature
and get in touch with your creator with a bacon,
love and jew She.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What's that, Ganzato?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
What's that? As well?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Sabosation?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You should talking transformation?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Don Satu?
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Well, Hello, and welcome back to What's God got to
do with It? I am so excited and grateful to
be sitting here with my dear friend Maddie Jackson, who
is an author, a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
She's a speaker.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
She's also co founder of Nashville, which is a women's
philanthropic or organization that serves orphans, widows, and victims of
human trafficking, doing a lot of great work out in
the world. But her personal testimony and the stories of
trials and tribulations and grief and the overcomings that have
come are just beyond anything I've really heard, especially.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
From somebody that I know.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
So that is especially why I want to have here
on the podcast. So first and foremost, Hello, Hey, I'm
so glad to be with you, Yuah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So happy to have you here.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
And you know, instead of me sharing what has brought
you to who you are and how you've come to be,
I'd love to just turn it over to you and just,
you know, share with us your story, your journey, what
has brought you into the woman that you are, all
the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, yeah, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I grew up in a home that was all about
the Lord, and so I'm thankful to have had that
foundation as a kid and as a young woman, and
that really.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Was always a part of my life.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
But I say that to then say that I think
I didn't realize how much richer a relationship with God
could be until.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
To be totally honest with you, I desperately needed it.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
And I think with everything that I've gone through, which
I'll share with the listeners, the big thing that I
kind of want to tee up is like, no matter
what you believe, or where you are, how long you've
had faith or not have faith, whatever, even growing up
in the church and having faith in God and believing
in God, it took a tragedy for me to really
(02:25):
want to live my life with God. If that makes sense,
and that came through desperation. And I think a lot
of times, you know, until your feet are to the fire,
you don't know how much you.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Believe or don't believe something. Actually. C. S.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Lewis says, you don't know if what you believe is
true until it's a matter of life and death.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Like I butchered that quote, but.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's something like that, ye.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So anyway, the big part of my story is when
I was twenty eight, just turned twenty eight, basically everything
in my life that I think I saw as making
me valuable ended basically in the span of two months.
So like I in my twenties, I'm as somolier, so
(03:07):
I'm like a wine professional. I worked in the wine
and hospitality industry for most of my twenties, and I
had a restaurant here, a wine bar here for a
couple of years that I ended up having to close
June of twenty eighteen after two years of operation, partly
because of financial issues, partly because honestly I was just
burnt out on it and I felt very led and
(03:27):
almost allowed by God to lay that season down like
that there was something more for me ahead, and so
that was kind of a really scary, I want to say,
leap of faith, but it also felt like a failure
in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
But I knew it was the right thing.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
And then honestly had a wonderful summer with my kind
of new husband.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We had been married about eight or nine months at
that point.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And then in August, really Labor Day weekend of that
same summer, been and I, my husband and I and
my two sisters and some friends went down to Florida
for the weekend. A lot of them had birthdays that
same week, so we were celebrating and we go down
there a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
My dad's a big fisherman.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
So he has a lovely boat down there, and we
went out on the boat for like a sunset cruise
and went to this little tiki bar that we grew
up going to after we'd go fishing, you know, with him,
and got dinner and drinks and they had a band dancing.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
It was just like a beautiful night. And so we
go to get back up.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
On the boat to ride back to our hotel, and
you're from Florida, you know, it's like ten minutes random thunderstorms.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then it's gone, and then it's over.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
So there had been a random thunderstorm, so those steps
to get back up on the boat were a little wet,
and Ben rushed over to sort of help some of
us get up on the boat, and his sandal hit
the steps and he just slipped and fell back and
hit his head on the dock, which was concrete, and
obviously alarmed, like he kind of went out for a second,
but he came back to you know, we rush over
(04:47):
to make sure, you know, he's okay, and really didn't
feel that panicked about it. Kind of looked like any
like football game you know you've gone to, and they
kind of shake it off and get up and and so, really,
by God's grace, the or two off duty EMTs there
at the marina and they saw him fall into the
rush over and kind of checked him out, and they said,
you know, this could be a lot more serious than
it looks. You need to probably go to the hospital.
(05:09):
And so they called an ambulance for me. Like, again,
I'm out of town. I have no idea what the
hospitals even are. So they told me like, this is
one you want to go to, and we went and
so I was like, no big deal, Like they're just
gonna watch him overnight. Long story short, the neurosurgeon comes in.
This is gosh, in the middle of the night. At
this point, I'm terrified. Everybody else's you know, taking two
hours to get back to hotels, and nobody's with me,
(05:30):
and Ben's kind of coming in and out of consciousness,
and he said, you know, we don't have to do
brain surgery yet, but we're it's very likely we're going
to have to in the next you know, twenty four hours,
and talk about like shocking you into reality. So from
there he was awake for the first twenty four hours,
again kind of in and out of consciousness, which was
a gift because he was able to kind of converse
(05:51):
with me and have that last little bit. And he
ended up being in the ICU there for twelve days
and multiple brain surgeries and toally induced coma, and on
the eleventh day they were gonna start pulling him out
of the coma. They said, you know, his brain swelling's
been stable, we're gonna wake him up. And meanwhile, you know,
(06:11):
my biggest fear at this point is is he gonna
wake up the same man that I married? Because there
was never even talk of this being a fatal injury.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Everything that they.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Were warning me of is that, hey, the parts of
his brain that are injured control personality and judgment and temper.
And so I'm thinking, like, please God, let this be
the same joyful man you know that I married, and
and if he's not, like, this is my life, you know,
ahead of me. And and so you know, death wasn't
even really on the radar. And so we're talking to
(06:44):
the to the neurosurgeon and she says, we're gonna wake
him up. And Ben's dad point blank asked her, like,
is this still fatal? And she said, I can't tell
you no, but from a neurological standpoint, it's very unlikely.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So we're like yes. So she says we have to do.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
One more MRI, like we're gonna check everything and then
we're gonna start waking him up. And she comes back
and she says he's had multiple strokes, like there's no
way for us to know because he was in a coma,
but like, he's brain dead. Here are your options, and
obviously you know the options aren't options. So at that point,
you know, it's late in the day, it's been eleven days.
(07:19):
We're exhausted, scared, and you know, I told his mom
and dad, who had been there the whole time, I said,
I think we need to just just go back like
he's fine, like his body is fine. I need to pray,
I need to sleep, like we can't. I'm not gonna
you know, we just I can't. I can't make that decision.
And so we went back and that was literally my
prayer was obviously, like Lord, save him, like make him
(07:41):
a miracle story. And I believed that. I believe that,
like with everything in me. But also my prayer was,
don't make me choose this, like, don't make me take
him off life support. And if you're gonna do it,
you have to do it. And so we went to
bed and the nurse has called me in the middle
of night and said, hey, his heart's failing. You know,
if y'all can get here, we can keep them alive.
(08:01):
And we got there and he was alive for about
ten or fifteen minutes. And you just don't, like, like,
even when I tell you that story, it's like it
feels like an out of body experience to be in
that room. And that was five years ago, actually last
week at the time, we're recording this, and it was
three weeks before our first wedding anniversary, so it was
(08:24):
just the most unexpected I mean, you never expect that
to be you, right, yeah, yeah, and yeah, so absolutely wow.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And I mean it's so interesting too that within this
time of the tumultuous grief that you were experiencing, in
the midst of it, afterwards, your first instinct was to pray.
Your first instinct was to ask God. And interestingly enough,
like there was a prayer that wasn't answered right, and
then there was a prayer that was where it's like, God,
I don't want to make this decision on my own.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And he really took that from you.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
But you know, this is the time when I feel
like people actually turn away from God. They get mad
at God, they get hurt, they get burned God, how
could you let this happen to me?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Why?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Me?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And then they fall back into stories of you know,
well maybe I'm not supposed to be happy, I'm not supposed.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
To have everything. Did that show up for you?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Was there like even a crossroads of that, and like,
what do you think pulled you back into your purful life?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And what was that first?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
You know, I'm curious, you know about the first week,
the first month that like, can you just kind of
walk us through that.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
I definitely felt all those things and definitely went through
seasons of dow like disappointment, anger, confusion, and honestly, the
way that I opened my book, I did write a
book about this whole experience of the grief of battling
with you know, these things that I'd believed and really
stood on all my life that felt like, to be
(09:39):
quite honest, they just like let me down. And I
kind of opened the book saying, like, after that happened,
after he passed and we went back that night, I
sat on the balcony of this hotel room looking at
the ocean that next morning, with the Bible clothes that
I had carried all over that hospital for twelve days,
you know, and like that had the scriptures I had
(10:01):
prayed over him, and had the hymns that we had
sung over him, and everything that we stood on and
fought with. Not because like you're supposed to to earn
God's yes to your prayer. Absolutely not, but that's our lifeblood,
that's what we believe. And the God that I trusted
could have saved Ben and I knew that, and so
it's almost harder to still know that he could have
(10:23):
spared him the slip, spared him the fall, like made
him the miracle story and know that he could and
also know that he didn't. And so that bible I
carried all over the hospital set next to me closed
because it had let me down and I didn't feel
comfort in it in that moment, and the immediate gift
of how did you come back to that? Was of course,
(10:45):
I was getting all these texts and calls that I
didn't even look at. And for some reason, one of
Ben's cousins, who is a pastor. He's really he's a dentist,
but he's also a pastor and he had done our
wedding he married us, called and I answered his call
and he just said, first of all, he just said.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Buddie, we love you like we've been praying all night.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
And he said, I just need you to remember that
when Ben took his last breath in your arms, he
took his first breath with Jesus, and that is the
only thing that gets you through those first moments. This
is this is not an alter call. I'm just telling you,
Like he reminded me of that. It wasn't even like
(11:26):
God's good enough to carry you through this. It was
like the person you love more than anything in this
world just one lottery man like, his pain is gone,
his worries are gone, his anxieties are gone. Man Like,
he's perfect. He's doing cartwheels like he's great. And when
you love somebody that much, I had to let feeling
(11:48):
joyful for Ben be more and have more weight than
how broken and mad I felt for me.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And that's what.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
I've told people is like, if my testimony and my
story had one message, it's like when you sit, you know,
at the front row and speak at eulogy at your
twenty eight year old husband's funeral, like the fact that
because of Jesus, he's good and I'll see him again,
Like that's the only thing that makes you survive.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, And that was a choice in that moment.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
To almost have that payoff of like listen, I'm here
and I'm in my grief and I'm present to that,
but I'm allowing right now to be so much more
present to the joy that I feel for my husband
that just passed away. And coming back to something full
circle that you said at the beginning of this where
you know, the desperation is what really it was almost
like a new relationship with God. So you know, when
(12:41):
we talk about that desperation for you, what was it like?
Was there a moment of awareness of like, God, I'm
only going to get through this with you. Was there
a were you able to even call it desperation? Is
that a hindsight thing like did what were those few
weeks looking like for you? Or when did you kind
of come back and reconnect with God as the new
discovery that in your heart itp it became? When did
(13:13):
you kind of come back and reconnect with God as
the new discovery that in your heart.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Itp it became.
Speaker 5 (13:20):
I don't know if it's hindsight recognizing desperation, but it's
definitely what it felt like for a long time. I
do remember saying to myself, as angry as I was,
that the answer to the safe Him prayer was not yes,
And as angry as I was that all I got
was eleven months with him. I remember thinking, like I
(13:43):
still have to deal with this, Like me being angry
is not going to bring Ben back. Me being angry
is not going to heal me, you know, it's not
going to fix what's broken. And so if I have
to deal with this, the God that I have known
my whole life is the only thing that's gonna equip
me to do it. Like I'm a very strong, hard
(14:05):
headed person, like I can do most things, Like I
don't look at much and be like, probably can't do that.
That's maybe a proa ites maybe a con. But this
was a thing that I was looking and I was like,
there's no way I can do this.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And I just knew.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
I was like, whether I feel happy with him or not,
the God that I know, who has been with me
my whole life is the actual only way I'm going
to survive this and be any sort of a human
living any sort of a life that I want. Wow,
I mean it really was desperation. It was like you
are the only tool. And I'm not thrilled about it.
I don't feel joyful about it, but I know in
(14:39):
my mind it's the only way that I'm ever going
to live a life that I want to live again.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, And how did you find what that looked like
for you?
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I know that Bible that you said you carried around
the hospital, it was this closed book.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It was almost like a reminder of the anger.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And so something shifted in you that made you go
back home to God and say, Okay, God, like this sucks.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
But You're the only thing that's going to get me
through this right now.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
And there was that level of awareness, right So then, like,
how did you start showing up? How did that look
like when you went to God in your desperation and
asked him to hold space for it and support you
and put his arms around you. And I don't know
if at what point in time you asked him to
redeem this, you know, but what did that look like
practically for you really coming out of this almost cocoon
(15:24):
of grief and really the shock and you know, not
even necessarily knowing how to respond to it, this whole
new life on your own without Ben. What did that
look like practically as you developed this new chapter of
a relationship with God.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Practically the things that help you stay connected to the Lord,
for him to pour into you, to give you energy
and resilience and hope and all those things that you
need to navigate something you know, heartbreaking, They're hard to
do at the beginning, is what I want to say, Like,
first of all, your mind is not clear, right, You're
(15:57):
emotionally exhausted, you're running on adrenaline, You're you feel drained
in every capacity, and so it's hard to read scripture,
it's hard to go to church. I couldn't go back
to church for a long time because I was so
emotional about it, like I just would have meltdowns. And
also I didn't want to go by myself, like that
was heartbreaking. So I just want to validate, like if
(16:19):
that's really hard for you, then that's fine, Like do
what you need to do, like listen to I think
I started by listening to worship music was like the
easiest thing for me to do because it put words
to words that I couldn't find, and so I think
I started there, and then I was able to really
just go to scripture and read stories in the Bible.
(16:43):
And the reason being I needed to see hope in
other people's story, Like I didn't see hope in my story.
I don't know that I trusted the redemption for me
yet at that point, and so where I started to
seek God was really trying to see hope in other
people's stories like mine. And I mean that realistically, in
(17:05):
like women that I met right off the bat. That
was a gift that were had been widowed young who
were five, ten, fifteen years down the road. So I
could see hope in their story and think, Okay, maybe
this could happen for me. And then I could see
hope in people's stories in the Bible, like Job and
David and.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You people like you open the Bible.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
Yeah, it's hard stuff, man, Like you see people suffering,
You see people be frustrated with God and all of
the things that we feel as humans that we think, oh,
you're not being a good Christian. I feel the no,
Like these guys struggled, they suffered, they questioned, they didn't
get the answers, you know, and you see God be
kind to them, and you see him restore and bring
(17:46):
goodness in ways that doesn't make sense. And when you
see that in other people's stories, in scripture or in life,
it gave me the energy to keep hoping that it
could be true for me.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah, when you were saying that, I was wondering if
it was. Job Joe was one of the first Old
Testament stories I read, and it was one of those
things for me, I'm like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I don't know how I feel about this Old testament
stif there's job, no, thank you exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
But it did show me like, even on my most
hard days and heart is all subjective to each person
and individualized, and not to minimize anyone else's pain, because
pain is pain.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
But it was a depiction of like, Okay, if job,
can you stay faithful in this?
Speaker 4 (18:24):
But that being said, you said there was you know,
you met other widows that had been kind of further
down the road and their grief and their journey and
the restoration process, and you called that a gift.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Did you go seek that out?
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Or was that gifts from God that people place, that
He placed people in your life?
Speaker 5 (18:39):
No, I mean it was truly gifts from God. I
will say that between I mentioned closing my restaurant. Between
the point of closing that in June of twenty eighteen
and been passing away in September of twenty eighteen, I
had been approached by a friend of a friend who
was wanting to start now she vill you mentioned the
(19:00):
beginning just a women's philanthropic organization. So I had been
working with her on that over the course of the summer,
which was really cool. I didn't really know, I didn't
seek it out. She was an adoptive mom, and so
that was sort of her heart behind it. She wanted
to serve foster care, adoption, that sort of thing. And
so over the course of kind of building that up
with her, we had decided, this is so crazy. We
(19:21):
had decided strictly because scripture says it, we wanted more
than one mission to get back to, and so over
and over in the Bible it says take care of
orphans and widows, take care of orphans and widows, and
we both growing up the church kind of knew that
and we were like, man, I guess, like, I guess
that's a second group that we need to serve. Like again,
(19:42):
at this point, I'm twenty eight, she's thirty, like I'm
a newlywed. And we're like literally said, we'll just put
that on the back burner, like I feel like we
need to do it, but we have no idea what
that means or looks like. And then we ended up
working with trafficking victims and survivors as well because that
been worked with them actually as an attorney here in Nashville.
But so because of that, in hindsight, I see the
(20:03):
kindness of God setting up this organization where Okay, we
think we're gonna come in as young women and serve
what eighty year old widows at the nursing home is
probably like what we had in our head. And God
was setting up a platform for me to not only
have prepared access to these groups that we now work
(20:25):
with that serve widows, but also he was setting me
up to walk it in real time in front of people.
And I only say that because my biggest one of
my biggest fears was and this was a prayer I pray,
an angry prayer, angry prayer, I pray a lot was God,
this has to have purpose Like this, I'm not doing
(20:47):
this and it's not gonna help people. Like that's the
only way that I can feel okay about the fact
that you made me do this.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And that may be entitled and that is probably not
on it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
I think it is very human of you, but it was.
And I was like, you have to make this.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
No, I don't want to say worth, it is not
the right word, but you have to bring purpose from
this for me to like forgive you, to be honest,
not that God needs our forgiveness, but I needed to
know like there is good that's going to come from this,
from our marriage, from Ben's death, from my pain, and
so for him to have prepared that organization and that
(21:22):
space for me to feel purposeful immediately in my pain,
and for me to have access to these these groups
that we work with, and these older women who I
would have never known how to find step into my
life and just immediately start walking it with me, like
it's just unreal, Like I tell it to you and
I'm like, this is a made up story, but.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It's all that happened.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, And it's such a beautiful picture of you know,
you just being you're also humaning your way through this
in this in this spiritual space and giving yourself permission
to be like, you know what, God, I know, I
don't air quotes, you don't need my forgiveness, but like
I feel like I need to go through this process
of forgiveness and there's anger and just letting yourself be
human about it. I think a lot of people think like, no,
I'm not supposed to be mad at God or need
(22:07):
forgiveness or whatever, and it's.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Like no, you're You're human. You're human, you know, and
giving yourself that space.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
So for anybody who's listening and they have been through
the depths of hell and they've had their own experiences
of loss and grief and you know, transition and just
so unexpected curveballs that can give us this gamut of emotions.
You know, I'm curious to know what would you say
to anybody who just doesn't feel like getting out of
bed some days, or feels like maybe they've lost that
connection with God?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
You know, what would you say to them?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And what did that look like practically for you rebuilding
your life? What would you say to anybody who just
doesn't feel like getting out of bed some days, or
feels like maybe they've lost that connection with God?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
You know, what would you say to them?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
And what did that look like practically for you rebuilding
your life?
Speaker 5 (22:58):
I think the big thing that I would tell people
practically is literally, try as hard as you can to
just do twenty four hours at a time. It's very
easy in the depths to spiral into Okay, but what
about that thing that for us even it was like
what about that thing we had planned?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Like what about the kids we wanted?
Speaker 5 (23:20):
What about you know, and you spiral into the future
and there is a moment to at least in a
situation like this, grieve. You have to grieve the future
you imagined, but you don't have to do it today,
you know, Like twenty four hours is hard enough, like spiritually, emotionally, physically,
if you can't get up out of that bed. And
I say that from experience, and I also say it
(23:42):
because God says it. He says, my mercies are new
every single morning, and like they really are. Talk about
something else I still don't understand. But it's like if
you get up and you literally ask God whether you
have a good relationship or any relationship, he still made you.
He's still listening no matter how you feel and say, God,
you say your mercies new every morning, you say, you
(24:03):
have enough for us for twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Give me what I need for twenty four hours.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
It is a miracle that happens, Like you can survive
twenty four hours and at the end of the day,
like your tank's probably shot and you're like, there's no
way I can do this again tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
But you can't.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And so that would be the practical thing is.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Like just ask, like no matter what you believe or
how you feel, like He made you he loves you
like he wants to help you survive like and so
it is a twenty four hour thing. And that's what
I would do practically. And then whatever you can do,
however small, even if it feels minuscular, meaningless, to give
(24:38):
a little I don't even want to say joy, but
that is what it is.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It's not going to feel like joy.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
It's just going to feel like a tiny burst of energy,
like whatever your practical things are. So for me, I
have always loved cooking, and after been diet, you know,
people are so kind they bring you food. You don't
you have any energy, your motivation to do anything. But
I realized if I can even once week take two
minutes to google a recipe or find something, even if
(25:04):
it's five ingredients and make it, it gave me a
little burst because I was being creative and and it
just gave me something to choose joy. That's I have
a podcast now called Enjoy Life, and that's really where
it came from, because I never realized the agency we
have to choose tiny joys and how powerful that is
(25:26):
in the good seasons, but especially in the hard seasons.
Because nothing I wasn't happy about anything, you know, I
wasn't happy about my life, but I could choose tiny
things songs, taking a walk, cooking, watching something stupid on TV.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Like, just do tiny things that give you a.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Burst of energy, a burst of joy, because you don't,
you know, you have to start small.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I mean that seems silly. I don't feel like that's
super found.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
But two really important distinctions, you know. The first one was,
you know, there's a big difference between telling ourselves what
we think we know versus asking, right, And so the
first first part that you shared, you know, instead of
telling yourself like I can't get through another day, I
can't do this, I can't get out of bed, you're
asking for God. Hey, God, help me meet me here
in this twenty four hour show me what I can't,
what I don't know, show me what I can't do
(26:12):
you know, and show me how to do it, you know,
through your strength, not my own. So the big distinction
of like telling yourself what you think you already know
versus asking.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
It's so powerful. Yeah, your words are so powerful one
thousand percent.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And then the intention that you in that concept of
just choosing small, minuscule moments of joy because we find
whatever we're looking for if we if we are looking
for more misery or more you know, finding ways to
argue with reality or wish it hadn't happen, or go
back in the past, or try to retrace steps or
all the things that.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
We can't change.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
It keeps us present and it shows us that even
in the midst of chaos or tragedy, we can find
small little things to focus our attention on. And it
really is just a choice. And sometimes it doesn't feel
like a choice when you're so bogged down with that heavy,
heavy grief, right, but.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It really is.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
And I think you said it sounds so simple, but
the but you know, the elegance is in its simplicity,
as da Vinci said, and I probably just butchered that quote,
but it really is these small things that you need.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
To grasp onto.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Before we wrap up, you and I met about three
three and a half years ago. When I met you,
you had already found the purpose in a way, you know,
through Nasheville and through your your you know, your podcasting,
and you're you're authoring a book.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And so we're gonna.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Dive into what has transpired in the past few years.
But like, when did you know that you were on
and I know grief never ends.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
It comes in waves.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
You know, even you can still feel joy in the
grief as well, you know, but and celebrate his life.
But when did you feel the wavelift? When did you
feel a shift and know that you were back? And
what do you think was like the magic recipe for you? Like,
what was your spiritual recipe? What were some things that
you think really moved the needle for you to feel like, Okay,
I'm back and I'm different, I'm forever changed, yeah, you know,
(27:54):
but like I feel like I'm coming back to myself again.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
When was that shift and what did that feel like
for you?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
I think that that shift happened. I can't like pinpoint
exactly what you know, how many years in or whatever
it was, But there was a very specific moment you
mentioned Job earlier, which is funny because and I remember
so clearly this moment reading the beginning of that book
of Job. And if people don't know that story, it's
(28:21):
in the Old Testament, and it's this guy named Job
and he is called like the most faithful man on earth,
like he's he's crushing it with God like perfect church
attendants everything, and the story opens, and this is what
I was reading in this moment. We were going through
it in this girl's Bible City group that I've had forever.
We were reading it so I was preparing for our meeting.
And it opens with a conversation literally between God and Satan,
(28:45):
and Satan's coming to God and saying like, your dude,
job is only like super faithful because he's had an
easy life, like nothing has obviously I'm paraphrasing us, nothing
bad has happened, Like, of course he loves you, like
you've just give him blessing on blessing. He's rich, he
has a huge farm and family and you know, like
he's got a cush life. Of course he loves you.
And God says to Satan like, Okay, you can test him.
(29:08):
You can do anything you want to him except kill him.
He will be faithful to me. And that's what happens
in the story. He takes everything. Every one of his
ten kids dies, his wife dies, he gets sick and
all these ailments and diseases, and he loses his whole
all his money and his whole farm and business, and
the whole story is him grappling with that and grieving
and being angry and saying prayers like I said, but
(29:30):
also never not trusting God to restore it. And so
when I was reading this opening, I mean that was
like that was like I was red hot, angry, crying, yelling,
because when I read that, I was like, is this
what happened to me?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Like was this me?
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Did Satan come to you and say, yeah, of course
she loves you, She's had a cush life, Like watch this?
And I was so mad and reeling and crying and
going this whole tirade God in my kitchen. And when
I finally just sort of like ran out of steam.
It was and this will sound weird to people who
don't haven't had this experience, but it was I it
(30:10):
was like he spoke to me, not audibly, but it's
like when thoughts come up in your head and you
know that that's not your thoughts. And it was so clear,
and the message was Maddie, whose are you? And I
was like what it was like, whose are you?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Your mind?
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Like you are my child, you are my daughter, like
I made you, I chose you, I died for you,
I fight for you. I'm gonna redeem you. I'm gonna
make your life what it's supposed to be. And what
you need to remember is that you are mine. That
is your only identity. It is the only thing that
brings you value. It is the only thing in your
life that cannot be taken away. And for me, I
(30:48):
don't That was such a profound moment because I think
it showed me like, obviously I was grieving been his
actual person, right. I was grieving our future, I was
grieving our marriage. I was grieving all this stuff. But
I think what at the core, what I was hurting
me so much and what was keeping me so lost,
was that I lost the things that I thought made
(31:10):
me who I was.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Wow, And for God to be there in that story
and say like, look, I get you feel like job,
like you've lost all these things that define you. But
I'm the only person who can define you. I'm the
only person who can heal you. All you have to
remember for the rest of your life, no matter what
you gain or what you lose, is that your mind,
like I've got you. And that really changed everything for
(31:34):
me because in that moment, like I know I'm always secure,
Like he's always gonna I'm always gonna come out on
the other side and I may not like it, and
it may take longer than I want, and I may
have scars that I hate.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I'm his and he's got me.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
And and so I don't know why that was it
for me, but it came down to, like everything that
we grieve, everything that we lose, everything that really hurts us,
is in some part because we feel like it's the
core of our identity and it's not.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Yeah, So it's such a beautiful lesson for all of
us because all of us are identified by something something worldly,
whether it's you know, gene size, bank, balanced relationship status.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
In your case, I mean, you were a missus of Ben,
you know.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
And just to brag on you for just a minute,
because you know, part of it is like when anybody
meets you, they wouldn't know your upbringing, like you grew
up in a famous family, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And one of the things I'm most proud of you
about and what I love about.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
You is you've always been your own person, you know,
before Ben and in the midst of and now after.
And it is one of those things like it would
be easy for anybody to be like, oh, she's had
a cushy life or she's had an easy upbringing, and
it's like, no, first of all, everything that you're saying
is was a choice, Like you chose to become who
you've become, you know, and in the midst of tragedy,
(32:50):
you've chosen to lean in and create purpose and serve others.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
You know, when a lot of.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Times grief it can be an all consuming thing where
you don't want to think about anybody else. And one
of the first things you did is you started serving
widows and orphans. Like what I mean, it's just a
testimony to who you are, right But despite that, like
in the midst of all the things that you could
have identified with, you have created your own identity. And
this was just the next layer of you becoming God's
(33:16):
beautiful daughter and stripping of any other roles or labels
or identity that you could have maybe misconstrued as as
the thing that gave you value and worth and you
put that and here's the thing you heard that call.
Do you know how many people maybe hear air quotes,
hear these things, and they just ignore it and they
pursue other worldly idols that they're chasing after, whether it's money,
(33:38):
skinny relationship likes on Facebook, whatever it is, and these
are choices that you've made, and so it's just such
a beautiful testimony. And again, the people that don't know
you don't like the heart of who you are. The
essence of who you are and who you've become in
the midst of this tragedy is just truly it's remarkable
and profound and admirable.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And I just I wanted to brag on you.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
From me, Yeah, well you're kind and to more probably
accurately and properly answer your original question. That was the
moment that the whole mind shift kind of changed for me.
It was like it reset the foundation. And I think
you asked, when did you feel like you had really
moved into a place of healing or stability.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Those weren't your words, but that's what it felt like.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
It felt like.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Once I had that realization, I was like, Okay, the
focus is now obviously grieving properly, healing properly, but the
focus is how do I now build the foundation the
only foundation that is secure, which is who am I
because of who God says I am?
Speaker 3 (34:43):
And so moving.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
Forward in my life, whether I do get married again
or not, which spoiler I did.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Thank you God, he's amazing.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
But I had to get to a place where I
could genuinely say, and I think this is where I
was working toward when we met. If this is it,
If that was my love story that lasted eleven months,
really we're together three years. But if that's my love
story and that's it, then I'm okay. Like I'm okay
with my relationship with the Lord, I'm okay with the
(35:15):
purpose for my life. And you really can only have
that security when that is your number one source of worth, value, security, hope, everything,
because it is your source of everything. And I want
people to hear me say like, I'm not okay now
because I got remarried. I was okay because I know
(35:36):
forever now who I am in Christ, and like I'm
gonna get great blessings and I'm also gonna lose stuff
and people, and that I'll survive and it won't change
my value, it won't rob my joy. And so that
is the turning point when you realize there is one
firm foundation, there is one truth about who I am,
(35:57):
and it's unshakable because then you can add things to it.
I've told people now like I've had a freaking great
couple of years, you know, but everything is a bonus. Yeah,
Like after finding that identity, after finding that security with
the God who will always carry me through, everything else
is a bonus.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
And if it comes from this place of desire, not
require where you know who you are, You know who
you are and where you stand in your own value,
your own worth, your own desire to be who you
want to be, and then everything else just gets added
added to that. And then you're coming from a place
of being able to receive it and feeling gratitude and
feeling worthy of receiving it.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
So that is the perfect segue.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
We are going to come back with part two of
Maddie's amazing transformational story.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Really, what we just.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
Shared is you know, kind of the survive you know,
and just getting into the thrive side of it. But
really there were some literal and metaphorical lemon lemonade.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
That was made from these lemons.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
So we will be back to share the rest of
her amazing story in the meantime, Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Follow you, learn more about you?
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Yeah, I'm just Mattie Jackson on Instagram and Facebook, but
I'm not super active there.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
But you also see everything yeah, Maddie.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Jackson dot net has everything there, like links to my book,
links to my podcast is again called Enjoy Life, It's
I in jo Why Not Be injureds play Onwards, and
that's anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Beautiful.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Well, we will link that in the show notes for sure,
and we will be back with part two of this
amazing ride.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Talk to you then.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Bye, We'll be back with more What's God Got to
Do with It? But in the meantime, I would definitely
love to hear from you, so just tell me where
you are in your story or maybe what questions you have,
like where do you feel you need clarity or support
or wisdom in your own journey. I definitely want to
(37:50):
hear from you, So head on over to What's God
Got to Do with It?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Dot com and.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Scroll down to the form to share your thoughts, your questions,
your feedback, and you can do that instantly.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So What's God goot to Do with It? Dot com?
You'll find all the ways to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
And if you like this podcast and want to hear more,
go ahead and follow, like and subscribe wherever you listen
to podcasts to get your weekly dose.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Of What's God Got to Do with It?
Speaker 4 (38:16):
New episodes drop every single Tuesday, and while you're there.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Be sure to rate and review to show your support.
It really means so much.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
What's God Got to Do With It Is an iHeartRadio
podcast on the Amy Brown Podcast Network. It's written and
hosted by me Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
post production and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music
written by Cheryl Stark and produced by Adam Stark
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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