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Today we have the privilege of having Jennifer Beckham with us. Jennifer has lived a lifetime and a half of experiences, from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows: from literally being a Disney Princess to losing the love of her life, her husband Anthony to COVID-19. We are excited to hear her God story and how He has carried her through it all. https://jenniferbeckham.org/
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Today we have the privilege of having Jennifer Beckham with us. Jennifer has lived a lifetime and a half of experiences, from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows: from literally being a Disney Princess to losing the love of her life, her husband Anthony to COVID-19. We are excited to hear her God story and how He has carried her through it all. https://jenniferbeckham.org/
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Learn moreListen to Dealing With Grief - Jennifer Beckham on Faith Moving Forward Podcast by Faith Moving Forward MP3 song. Dealing With Grief - Jennifer Beckham on Faith Moving Forward Podcast song from Faith Moving Forward is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 01:20:57. This high-quality MP3 track has 1536 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 8 Feb 2025. Stream and download Dealing With Grief - Jennifer Beckham on Faith Moving Forward Podcast by Faith Moving Forward for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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Today's episode is brought to you from The Russell, a historic East Nashville church transformed into a one-of-a-kind boutique hotel. The Russell's mission is to give back to the Nashville community through their Rooms for Rooms program by donating a portion of your stay to local organizations who provide a safe haven for those experiencing homelessness in the Nashville community. Visit www.RussellNashville.com to book your stay today. Hello, my name is Kevin and I'm with my co-host Beth. I'm Amy. And you are listening to the Faith Moving Forward podcast. Today we have the privilege of having Jennifer Beckham with us. Jennifer has lived a lifetime and a half of experiences, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, from literally being a Disney princess to losing the love of her life, her husband Anthony, to COVID-19. We are excited to hear her God story and how he has carried her through it all. Thanks for being on the podcast today, Jennifer. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. We're so excited. We've heard bits and pieces, but I can hardly wait to hear from you. I know every little girl's dream is to be a princess, and you actually made that happen. Can you bring us back? Yeah. Can you bring us back and share with us now how that happened? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I live in Florida. I was born and raised one of the few that's in the state that's actually from the state, right? But we would frequent Disney, and I'll take you back to when the dream started. I don't think we can appreciate it without that. At the age of seven, I stood along the Walt Disney World Parade route with my family. One evening, like we normally would, go out to the park during the day, and then in the evening, they would have the Main Street Electrical Parade. I'm turning 50, so Main Street Electrical Parade has not been there at Disney for a little bit. But when I was a kid, that's the nighttime parade that they would have, and it was my favorite. So we would line up along the parade route, and in one of the last floats is a Cinderella float. And, of course, Cinderella is the only one sitting inside of that little carriage, if you will. And she turned to her right side, and I was along the parade route, and when she waved, she waved directly at me. I swear our eyes met, and it was like I was the only one there on this parade route. And she waved, and I waved back at her, and I looked up at my mom, and I said, Mom, that's what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a Disney princess. I think a lot of little girls probably say that, but by the grace of God, I had the actual opportunity to do that. And, in fact, I was hired by Disney to work there in Orlando at MGM Studios, but it wasn't until I worked for Tokyo Disneyland, obviously many, many years later, so I was seven when I said that. And if you fast forward to when I was 18, I had actually been hired by Tokyo Disneyland to go over for a nine-month contract. And when I got over there, lo and behold, it was their 10th anniversary, and so their special parade that they were just launching for their 10th anniversary was the Main Street Electrical Parade from the States. So I truly, actually got to sit in the same float that I pointed at when I was seven years old. Wow. Wow. Boy, that's crazy. You would have never thought that when you were sitting on the curb and watching at seven years old. No, you know. You'd be the one riding in that carriage. No. Yeah. It was pretty neat. In fact, when we were going through training, I looked over at my trainer there at Disney in Tokyo Disneyland, and I said, so wait a second, so this float actually was the one used in Orlando? And he said, yeah, the same one. And I said, so if I pointed at the same one, it's the same one when I was seven? He says, yes. I said, oh my goodness, that's amazing. Wow. Yeah. That is wild. Full circle there for your dream of being a girl. Right. Right. Sure. So you grew up in Jacksonville, is that right? I grew up in South Florida, actually. I grew up in Palm Beach County. I do live now in Jacksonville, correct? But I was born and raised in South Florida. Okay. So was your household a Christian, or did you go to church, or how did that all play out? Yeah. I was raised Catholic. Parents, you know, still just a very close-knit family. I'm the fourth of five children, and we were raised Catholic, and, you know, we were there on the church queue every Sunday, and we were raised actually in Catholic school up until high school, up until high school. So we all went to Catholic school. So you have like a knowledge of God, a fear of God, but not a relationship with Jesus. Correct. And I would actually say I did have a fear of God, but not the healthy type of fear, not the fear that we as Christians are to have, the fear that is in awe of Him. It was more, when I was a kid, my thought of God was a fear of bothering Him. I had an uncle, I had an Uncle Joe. I think everybody has an Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe, I remember him telling me at a young age not to bother God with the little things. Only bring Him the big things. That He's busy, and it really gave me an idea that, you know, God was there, and I was here, and, you know, He tolerated me, not celebrated me by any measure, and that He was the God. When I would picture Him, He was the God in heaven, this being that was kind of sitting up on His throne, shaking His head at me, throwing up His hands, frustrated with me like I was with myself. And that's kind of the picture that I had of Him. I had head knowledge, and it never really dropped down those 18 inches to my heart until I got to Disney there in Orlando, I'm sorry, in Tokyo, actually. It was when I was in Tokyo that I met Him in a very real way. Really? How did that come about? Well, so, you know, I shared my experience of going to Tokyo Disneyland and being there and being hired and seeing the float, and, you know, from the time that I was seven and had the dream to the time that I was 18 standing on that float, life had taken a whole lot of turns, like for most of us, and there were several tragedies in our family between that time, a lot of mental illness. My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was 12, and when he was 14, I was a freshman in high school, and he passed away of cancer. And from that point, I, yeah, I would love to say that our close-knit family, you know, came together, and, you know, I think that, you know, Mom had a four-year-old at the time, and so there were five of us kids, and she's an amazing mom. She did everything she could to, you know, keep us together and to keep us strong. The way that I saw it was that I didn't want to bother her with my feelings, with my emotions. I didn't want to, I knew she had a lot on her plate. So, from my perspective, I think we all kind of found a corner to breathe in, and the corner that I found was I was just, I was escaping, and I was just kind of looking for love in wrong places, and as a 14-year-old girl, I, you know, got the attention of some boy, and then from that point, I just kind of escaped into the things of this world. And so, from the time that I was 14 and lost my dad to the time I was 18 and standing there at that float at Disney, life had just taken a turn to where I was just, I don't know, a bulimic looking for love in all the wrong places, honestly. I had an eating disorder by the time I got to Disney, and of course, being in the entertainment industry didn't make it any better, and I was just, I was grieving my dad and some choices that I had made and some things that had happened in our family with mental illness, and by the time I got there, I was a broken little girl, princess by day, but a broken little girl by night. Wow. So, that's where you actually got saved, huh? In Tokyo? Right, yeah. So, I was, you know, as I said, I was a bulimic looking for love in the wrong places. I remember standing up on that float for the first time and kind of looking around and thinking, wow, this is it. Like, I'm still the same person. I remember very, very just disappointed at my core that I thought that maybe getting to that dream would fulfill me, and you know, I was fulfilling the dream, but it wasn't fulfilling me, and I was just at the lowest of lows, so I was working in contract. There was about, let's see, there was, I think, 12 of us girls that were there on contract, and two of them were these Baptist girls that were just on fire for Jesus, Christian and Allie, and you know, they, we would go to the commissary on our breaks, and we weren't always on the same shift, but when we were, we would go down to the commissary together on breaks, and they would just talk about church and Jesus, and they talked about him in such a different way than I had ever known him. Like, he was tangible. Like, he was a friend, and it was confusing to me, but it was also, it was compelling. It was drawing me in, and the morning that I came into work, and these two girls were on task with me, they saw me walk through the door. I had just had a bulimic fit the night before, and I looked awful, apparently, because they said, what's wrong with you? I said, oh, I didn't have a good night, and they said, well, then you're going with us, and I said, where are we going? They said, well, we get off early, so when we go, we're going right after work to the Tokyo Dome, where Billy Graham is, and I said, isn't he a preacher? They just kind of looked and said, you were raised in church all your life, and you don't And so, yeah, and so I said, okay, and honestly, I didn't say okay, because I had something inside of me that said, yes, I want to get saved and change my life. If I'm being honest, completely honest, I went with them that night, because I knew that if I didn't, that my alternative was to end up like I was the night before, having a bulimic fit and probably falling asleep on the bathroom floor, and so I went with them, but then when I got there to the Tokyo Dome, and Billy Graham was sharing this message of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, about a God that loved us so much, that knew us, that knew every hair upon our head and loved us that much to send his son to die for our sins, it was almost like the first time I'd ever heard about God, and in fact, it was that God, because that's not the God that I knew all of my life, and then when that altar call for salvation came, I looked at the girls, and I said, I think I need to go down there, and I did. I walked down slides and slides of stairs in the massive Tokyo Dome so that I could get to the platform area, and obviously, because I was an English-speaking person in Japan, I had to find a post in the ground with the word English written on it so that somebody in my own language could lead me to Jesus, and that's where I got saved. Yeah, that's where I got saved. Beautiful. Cool story. Nobody can quite tell the salvation message like Billy Graham did over all those years. He draws you in with the love of Jesus that just comes out of Billy Graham, and when he shared Jesus, he just was so full of love, and I'm sure for you, having been a knowledge of God, but not necessarily a healthy fear of God, and knowing about a relationship with Jesus, you're probably so compelled by the love that you had been probably seeking after. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I had always known about the cross. I had always known about Jesus, but they gave me one of those little pamphlets that showed God as a holy God on one side and us as sinners on the right, and this chasm in the middle that we could not cross, and what bridged the gap between a holy God and us as sinners in need of a Savior was that cross, and that's what bridged that gap, and it was like I got it for the first time in my life, which was crazy because I had sat on a church pew all of my life, and it for some reason never really hit me until then that it was for me, and it felt so intentional. It felt like God just knew exactly where to find me, and that's why as I minister today, I always remind parents that, listen, no matter where your kid is, God knows exactly where to find them. Wow. That's really good. Yeah. Well, I suppose after that, everything was perfect, right? Well, don't let it wait. Yes, yes, yes. Isn't that where most of our testimony even comes from, even after we meet Jesus? Right. So I would say that if I had leaned in and gotten involved in the gospel in church with a Bible study, you know, rolling up my sleeves and getting to know Jesus and building a relationship with Him, I imagine it all would have gone a little bit different, but it didn't. I got back to the States, and because I wasn't plugged in and because nobody back in the States that I had hung out with before I left was in that place either, I just fell back into my old ways, and I actually started working for a marketing company in the summer between when I got back to the time I was going to go back to college, because I had already finished a year of college before I, you know, deferred to go to Disney, and I came back with the intention to go back to college, and over that summer, I got hired at a marketing company doing training for them and opening offices, and that's what I did. I was the youngest in the company. I started, you know, succeeding with the company, and they started, you know, kind of flying me all over, you know. Every three months, I would end up being in a different city opening an office and doing their training, which was actually perfect, because it took me about three months to mess up my life in each city, and almost like clockwork, almost like clockwork, I would look down and go, oh, three months, yes, about time to go, and I was. I was still looking for love in wrong places. I knew Jesus, but because our relationship with Jesus is like any relationship on earth, it takes time, effort, and energy, you know, to build that relationship, to get to know them, and I was introduced to Jesus, and he, you know, was there with me, and my eyes were opened, and he, you know, entered my heart, and there was that knowing of him, but there really wasn't any relationship built, and so I went looking for other things to fill that void, and it wasn't really until I was at the end of myself. It was probably about a year and a half, I would say, that I found myself in a borrowed bed in Tampa, and I say a borrowed bed because I had left home. I had really been estranged from my family, made some choices they didn't agree with, and because they didn't agree with them, I just decided to kind of just separate myself from contact, and my mom was at home praying for me, and I found myself kind of hopping from home to home with friends or, you know, friends' parents staying on their extra bed or their couch, and I was at a borrowed bed in Tampa, and I was at the end of myself, and with tears, I looked up towards the ceiling, and I said, God, I don't know if you remember me, but I met you in Japan, and if you remember me, I need you, and I didn't even know how to pray. It was, I prayed for an angel. I said, I need an angel to come into my life and to change my business, and that's what I was praying. I was praying to change my business, and he certainly did change my business. Two weeks later, I met this boy named Anthony who was on his way to Bible college, and we got married eight weeks later, and boy, did it change my business. It took me completely out of the business and into ministry because then I married a guy who was called to evangelism, and I was still completely clueless, and I'm so glad I was clueless because I had a clean slate that God could work with and a very patient man. So yeah, we met September 18th. We were engaged October 17th and married November 16th of the same year. Truly. So strangers to married in eight weeks. Never having seen him before, we were walking down an aisle eight weeks later, and then we had our first revival two weeks after we were married because he had already been licensed and ordained. He had already gone through his ministerial training, and yeah. Yep, so there I was. I was all of a sudden a preacher's wife. Wowee. So what years would that have been? We married in 96. 96, okay. We're talking the 90s here. Okay, wow. You went from no real fellowship with the believers after you came back from Tokyo. That's probably, you didn't sound like you were surrounded with a church family or any in the body to help you with accountability and growing in this new faith until you met Anthony, and then all of a sudden it sounds like you were probably with him and his group of friends and his involvement in ministry calling. All of a sudden you had a whole lot of Christian family surrounding you that probably really helped you get grounded in the things of the Lord and Anthony himself. Is that right? Well, yeah, and honestly it was mostly Anthony himself if I'm being honest. He was raised in kind of a junkyard. I mean, he was, you know, I was raised in Palm Beach County and, you know, where, you know. Everybody had everything down there. Yeah, everybody had anything down there, and then I met Anthony and, you know, his dad was an alcoholic. You know, his brothers honestly ran drugs out of their home. Oh, wow. He was raised truly in front of a junkyard. Like where his front yard ended, there was a little gravel road, and then there started the junkyard, and he said crawl in between the fence posts and go in and go through the cars and, you know, mess around in there, and yeah, as a kid. And so we came from two different worlds truly, and he was the youngest child of eight children, two different marriages. And when I met him, it was just, yeah, it was, I'm not going to say it was love at first sight. If he was here, he would tell you that it was for him. For me, I was just a basket case if I'm being honest. But when I met him, he was so full of the Word and so full of the Lord and such a man of integrity that every conversation that we had was about Scripture. I was full of questions. Every time we talked, all we did was talk about the Lord. And if I'm being honest, I was trying to recruit him into the marketing company that I was working for because he was trying to look for a little side gig where he could, you know, kind of sell product while he was at school so that he can make some money for ministry. So I was trying to recruit him into the marketing company, and he was trying to recruit me back to Jesus, and apparently he's a much better salesman because he won. And yeah, and so I'll be honest. I mean, it wasn't even that we dove in with his friends and his community. It was, you know, in eight weeks, it was basically just me and him getting to know each other, but more than that, me getting to know the Lord. And it was, I can honestly say that I went to bed one night saying, you know, I'm not interested and woke up the next morning, and God just kind of tricked me. And I woke up in love, and I'm like, yep, let's go. And I don't know. I don't know what that switch was aside from possibly feeling and hoping that maybe hanging around him would rub off on me and I could be changed. And I'm not going to say that it all happened, you know, perfectly the way it should have. I mean, people look at him and say, why were you even entertaining this girl because she clearly was not serving the Lord beside you. Right. Yeah. And for all intents and purposes, it would have looked like we were unequally yoked. But if you asked him, he said that from the moment that he saw me do a presentation in his heart, and he did say this in words, he said, you would make an incredible Bible teacher. I was like, okay. And that didn't, I mean, like that didn't resonate with me. I'm like, okay, whatever that means. And so he saw my hunger for the Lord. And every time we talked, it was, I just wanted more. I wanted more answers. I wanted stories. It's like everything that we talked about, I was hungry. And he said, you know, you may have not been where I was, but you wanted to get there. And that was all the difference. What a God story. It was God having your paths crossed at the right time in answer to that prayer, whispered prayer. Sometimes I think those whispered prayers that we can't really get words to, I'm fine. Holy Spirit like takes those and brings them to the Lord and just answer. He knew exactly what you were crying out for and brought Anthony along. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And because I was so hungry, I dove into the word in such a way that I knew full well what my issues were, what my strongholds were. And, you know, we were called to evangelism and, you know, we got married so quickly, I think, because I knew that I wanted to go on the road with him. And I knew that no pastor would want to have an evangelist tagging along his girlfriend, you know. So we were married. And because I was in ministry, it was, I hate to say it this way, but it was really a have to for me. It was, you know, and I guess that's how I operate. I've always operated that way. And being in ministry and knowing the weight of that, I studied constantly. I was in the word. I even studied all his ministry training books. I mean, I was like ready to go. And the way that it worked out, I thought that I was going to go to work during the day so that he could do ministry. And the way that it worked out, because we were in a very small town, he was from a one red light town. And because of that, I didn't actually find work. He already had a very solid job doing paint and body for one man. It was a private organization. So he kept working for him and I was at home all day and I'm like, Lord, what am I supposed to do here? There's like one red light. There's nowhere to shop. There's nowhere to do anything. And I found myself in the home and he's like, read my word, get to know me. And that's exactly what I did. And so Anthony would come home all sweaty at the end of the day and I would take his shoes off and get him a drink and get him to just sit down long enough, you know, and he's drinking his sweet tea while I'm just sitting on his lap going, do you know that there's a man in the Bible that was swallowed by a whale? And he would just sit there laughing at me. And it was, it was just very, yeah. So that's how we began. And, you know, I, as he says, I played catch up pretty quickly. And we were very much on the same page to the point where we could pretty much finish each other's sentences. And then we traveled and ministered together for the first 17 and a half years as evangelists. And then the last eight years we pastored a church and, you know, planted it and pastored it together. And every Sunday we were on, we were at the pulpit together. We literally sat at the same table finishing each other's sentences. And that's how we ministered for the last eight years. Yeah. You know, he was right when he said that you would catch up. You know, he wasn't, did you say that he wasn't concerned? But that spiritually you would catch up? No. Well, it's like I can see, like Paul the Apostle, when God called him, it's like he pulled him aside and there was a season where he was just, God wanted to reveal himself to Paul and to completely change the trajectory of his, where he was headed to where God put him on a new path. And that sounds like with your life, you didn't, your plan was to work and support Anthony. And God's plan was to say, okay, you're like at home and there's nothing to do and there's no jobs for you. So he, but it was like a God plan to get you all alone to himself and say, like, immerse yourself in my word. So he didn't do it. He didn't. Yeah. Yeah. My husband used to, my husband was the cliche king. I mean, honestly, our church people would just laugh at him, but he used to say, you know, the word work, you have to work it. And if you, you know, if you put the word inside of you, it does, it changes you. And I think that that, you know, right now with the ministry that I'm doing, so, so many are struggling in their mind, you know, and then they're hard and they're so bogged down and, you know, you say, get in the word, get in the word. And it almost sounds like something that we preachers just say, but it works, you know, it really works. I don't know how it works, but it's like putting a seed in the dirt. I don't know how it becomes this massive harvest. It's like the dirt knows what to do with it. When we put Jesus in our heart and we put the word in there as that seed and we water it, it grows and, and it changes us. And it's just phenomenal. I don't know how it works, but it works. So you had, during this time you had two kids, right? Yeah. So we, yep. So we started in ministry traveling and then four years, almost five years in, we had our son Cole. And then about two and a half years after that, we had Jordan. So we have two children with Anthony and they're now 24 and almost 21. And yeah, so we had two kids on the road with us traveling and there was a time and a season, you know, we, we evangelized, but we, we not only evangelized churches, but, you know, revivals became a thing of the past. You know, when we got started in ministry together, it was Sunday through Friday revivals, you know, and then it became Sunday through Wednesday revivals. And then it kind of became Sunday revivals, you know, and that was kind of became, you know, a thing of the past. And, and as churches, you know, as churches shifted, God shifted our ministry and we ended up in the school system actually. My husband had a power team called Power Unlimited and it got us, it got us into public schools. And, you know, to date we've been at over 600 public schools doing character education for, for students and for the faculty going in elementary school all the way up to the college level and going in and he had a power team. So it was himself and a couple other guys that would roll up frying pans and break blocks and blow up hot water bottles and do all those crazy pieces of strength. And then of course I was on, yeah, I was on stage with them. And, you know, it became where I was the MC and then also I would share the word and we would go in, you know, during the daytime and do assemblies. And then at nighttime we would do a full gospel presentation. We saw thousands and thousands of students and families come to the altar. It was phenomenal. Yeah. And then, you know, as schools and money began being tight in, in both churches and also the school system, the other teammates kind of dropped off and it was Anthony and myself traveling together to these schools and then they introduced us as Beauty and the Beast, you know, because he was still doing the same piece of strength that I, you know, would come out as, you know, as a former Disney princess. So God always, yeah, God always just made a way for us to always be standing next to each other in ministry. There's, there's never a time that we didn't stand next to each other and do ministry. You know, I did women's ministry, so I would fly out, you know, here and there and do women's ministry. And, but other than that, I mean, he would even come with me and he would work my book table in the back. He loved that. So we were always together in ministry. That's great. Wow. So you started pastoring a church and then, is that just, were you pastoring the church when COVID hit? Yeah. Was that 2020? Yes, sir. Yep. So, so we were on the road for 17 and a half years and then both of us just had such a longing to, to stay planted and to do life with people. And we planted the church there in Jacksonville. We started in hotels and we were in a different hotel every weekend. Our joke was, you know, if you can find us, you can come worship with us because we would hop around so much. But we built it out of, you know, being a mobile church for the first year and then year and a half, another, another half year, I think we were in school or the schools, you know, like on a Sunday at an elementary school. And then from there we were in a building and it was in our seventh year, just towards our, the end of our sixth year going into our seventh that COVID hit. And yeah, and at that point, you know, every, like every pastor, we were struggling to figure out how to do this thing and how to keep building a church when you couldn't meet. And, you know, so we were doing that. And if I'm being honest, I mean, this, this whole, you know, coronavirus, this COVID-19, it was almost laughable. I mean, we, and I say that just being honest because it was just like, come on, you know, all the, all the rules and laws were so hokey and silly and, you know, didn't make sense to us that, you know, wear a mask for this, you know, it was just, and it just, we did everything we were supposed to as pastors. We kept every, all the guidelines. We did all the things. We, we went mobile or I'm sorry, not mobile, but we went on the internet and started doing our services where our people could find us from their own home. So we did everything we were supposed to do and just try to keep it all together. And, you know, most of our church got COVID at some point and then our family got it. And my son had it, I don't know, maybe three different times. So it really wasn't something that we were overly concerned with when we got it. Cole came home from college and, you know, he was on a college football team, so they passed it around several times. And he said, Oh, it's just, it's like a bad cold, you know, type of thing. And then my daughter got it and my husband got it. And at that point I needed to get my daughter back down to Miami because she's a model and she was working down in Miami. So I, you know, got in the Jeep, which was my daughter's Jeep, had to get her home to Miami and she needed the Jeep. So the plan was to go down there, deliver her and the Jeep back to her home and then fly back to Jacksonville. And Anthony was sick. So it kind of worked out where he was at home, quarantined. And my son was also in Miami. So Anthony was quarantined by himself in Jacksonville. I drove her back. And by the time I got there, six hours later, I had already been running a fever. So at that point, I, yeah. So I, when I left, I didn't feel anything. And then those six hours, I don't know what happened, but it started kicking in. By the time I got her back down to Miami, I thought, okay, it's, I've obviously got it now. And so I dropped her off at her apartment, gave her her Jeep, went over, you know, to a hotel, quarantined myself in a hotel in Miami. And I was there for six days, could not leave. I was so violently sick. And he was at home violently sick. So we were quarantined separately. But I could hear when I did talk to him on the phone that he was not getting better. He had gone to the doctor. You know, we had some church members that were nurses that would come by and check on him and he wasn't getting any better. And after 10 days, I said, honey, you need to go back to the, to the doctor. And he said there, I've already called them. They said that I need to finish what I'm on. Otherwise they're not going to see me. And so, you know, I could hear how he was wheezing and it didn't sound good. So my fever finally broke and I thought, well, everybody on that plane is going to have to pray because I got to get home. And I, you know, doubly masked and put on gloves and got on that plane and got home to him. And when I walked through the door, he was, it was a Sunday and he was like a purplish, his skin was like a purplish color. He was so extremely sick and was not really able to breathe very well. And I said, get in the car. We're going straight to the hospital. So I took him up to the hospital and there were 32 people in the waiting room. They would not let me in. It was on lockdown and they wouldn't let me in. So they just, you know, wanted him to go in and look, he can't even walk. Like he physically can't even shuffle his feet without needing to fall over. And so I kind of got in there anyways and sat him down on a chair and, you know, filled out whatever paperwork and they made me go out and wait in the car. And he was in there for, I don't know, maybe six hours. They would not admit him. Yeah, they wouldn't admit him. There were 32 people in the waiting room and no beds and they wouldn't admit him. And before I knew it, he, you know, comes out the front door and I'm like, what are you doing? And he said, I'm going home. I can't breathe. Just get me back to my bed. And I said, well, what do you have? Did they give you another prescription? Do they have something? And he said, no, this is what they gave me. And he handed it to me. And it was a prescription for Pestid AC, which you can buy over the counter. Wow. And I was like, what is this? And he said, I said, I'm going in there. And he goes, Jen, just take me home, please. Just take me home. So I did take him home. It was a Sunday. And by Thursday of that week, he was so, I can't even describe it. I just can't even describe how he looked. And I said, you're getting in the car and I'm going to take you to my doctor and we're going to see if I can get in there and see if he can do anything for you. So we drove and he could barely get inside the door. And when he was inside the door, he was wheezing so badly that the doctor came around the corner and said, what is that noise? And I said, it's my husband. Can you help me? And, you know, he just looked at me and actually, you know, threw out some words at me, like, why didn't you get him to the hospital? I said, I did four days ago. They wouldn't take him. And they locked the front door. They got everybody out of his office. They locked the front door and started working on him immediately. His pulse box was 65, which if you know anything about that, if you're under 90, you get admitted. So he was pretty much walking death at that point. And they called the ambulance. They, you know, had done what they could there at the doctor's office until the ambulance got there. They put him on a gurney. And because of COVID, they would not let me in the ambulance with him. And they said, ma'am, step back. I wanted to say goodbye to Anthony. I was like, I'll meet you at the hospital. And they wouldn't let me even kiss him goodbye. And I was like, I have COVID too. You know, it was one of those situations where it's just like, come on. And yeah, they took him in the ambulance and I got in the car behind them and I followed them. They went through a detour and I could not. So by the time they got to the hospital, they had already, by the time I got to the hospital, they had already loaded him out and into the hospital. And I never saw him again. I literally, I never saw him. From the time that he got on the gurney in the doctor's office, I said, I'll be right behind you. I had no idea that when I got there, they wouldn't let me in. So I never saw him again. So he was admitted. He was admitted to the hospital July 29th. And by August 16th, he was gone. Are you serious? No. So we couldn't advocate for him. So you or your kids, none of you could go in there and do anything? Nothing. Couldn't advocate for him. Couldn't. No. I mean, I would call the nurse's station three times a day. They didn't like that. But I did whatever I could to advocate for him from the outside. And, you know, I know that this is a lot of people's story. A lot of people's story. I mean, he was, he was sick during the Delta variant, which was the most deadly of the variants. And, yeah, there was the most casualties during that time. And I was basically just on the outside praying for him and waiting for him and trusting that he was coming out. And we did not give him permission to vent him, but they did anyways. I was on the phone with a doctor saying, please don't vent him. He doesn't want to be vented. You know, he messaged me and said, don't let them vent me. And he said, okay, well, we'll see what we can do. And by the time I got off the phone with that doctor, another doctor had said it was an emergency and vented him. And, you know, I had always heard that that was kind of the end. And so we just began to pray and just believe that he was going to get better. And, in fact, they did call me on the Friday before he passed. He died on a Monday, very early Monday morning. And they called me on a Friday, that Friday before, and said he had taken a turn for the better. And I said, okay. And they said, yeah, I understand that you were going to go out of town with your daughter. But you're more than welcome to do that because, you know, he took a turn for the better and we're expecting him to, you know, make some gains. And then we didn't go out of town. I'm so thankful for that. And Sunday morning we got up for church and I was going in to preach and to announce to the church that he was, you know, turned a corner. And by the time I was walking out the door to go preach, they called me and said he's not going to make it until the end of the day. Get your kids together. And they weren't going to let us in, you know, anyways, but they wanted us to get the kids together and have the family know that he wasn't going to make it. And, in fact, he didn't. He died at 447 the next morning and just called me to tell me. Oh, my word. I am so sorry, Jennifer. Thank you. I cannot even hardly comprehend what you have been through. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was, you know, and no need to get into this, but for me, I feel like it was almost criminal. You know, I don't think anybody should ever die in that type of a situation. He was very much a person that, you know, just to give you an idea of kind of who he was and how he was as a person, his celebration of life service has been viewed online over 17,000 times. Oh, wow. I mean, he was a very loved man. I mean, of course, we had an evangelistic ministry, you know, all over the country and into Canada for, what, you know, 20 years. But, you know, yeah, he was a very loved man. He loved well and he was loved well, for sure. How old was Anthony when this happened? He was 48. All I can fathom here is I can't relate, but I know Holy Spirit goes to the deep recesses of the place of our heart and he's the only, I can't imagine going through something like this without the Lord Jesus and the comfort that only Holy Spirit can bring in those darkest moments and those lonely of times. I'm just really so sorry you ever had to experience such a thing. And I know you're right. Many have. Yeah. Walk our listeners through what life looked like and how you walked through this. Well, you know, I would love to tell you. All I know how to do is be real and honest and open. Yeah, please do. I would love to tell you that the 25 years of pastoral ministry and pastoral counseling that I did and being there at the darkest of times for other people, that somehow I did well giving it to myself. I did not. I did not. I look back and I know now not to do the shoulda, woulda, coulda. I call it shitting yourself to death. We literally walk through life. I should have done this. I should have done that. And that does nothing but put shame on ourselves. And so I know better. But at the time, I honestly thought that I would have just rolled with those punches a whole lot easier. I don't know if it's the way that I lost him and the constant feeling that I could have done something different. I should have done something different. Maybe it was because his last text that he sent me said, I want to come home. Just bring me home. And I couldn't. There's so much of that, just the doubts and all of those things. But also, when I went in to claim his body and fill out the paperwork, seeing him that way brought back seeing my dad that way. My dad died when I was 14 and he died in our home with hospice. So it was very forefront of my mind and it brought it all back. So that was proof positive for me. Today, I do grief recovery work and I'm a grief recovery specialist or grief recovery counselor. And one of the reasons is I know that when we don't grieve properly, when we don't handle things and we don't process through our grief, that it gets stored up somewhere. And it's kind of like putting these bricks in our backpack and we kind of just trudge through life. And then all of a sudden we hit one really big event and then it kind of lights it all on fire, so to speak. And so, yeah, I would love to tell you that I dealt well with it. But I think for me as a pastor, one of the things that kept me from healing quicker like I would have loved to, now mind you, there is no timetable on grief ever. But I think the thing that I didn't recognize was you have to feel it to heal it. And as a pastor, I was not able to do that. And what I mean by that is I still have a church family that was grieving the loss of their pastor and their friend. He was such an amazing man that he had everybody in the church, all the men were his friends, his true friends. And then I could look at my children and recognize where they were because I had been the kid in this situation and I knew what they had need of. And so my initial was a three-month sabbatical. The church gave me a three-month sabbatical so I could attend to the kids. And then I was to make a choice of what I was going to do. Was I going to continue to pastor or were we going to close the doors of the church? The church had been at 30% because of COVID. We lost like 70% of our congregation and we were just in the rebuilding stages, not to mention we were going to have to get a new building because our lease was up. And so it would have been me truly rebuilding the church. And I knew because of where I was and where my children were that I was not able to carry the church as well as start from scratch. Start from finding a new building and starting from scratch. And so we decided to close the doors of the church. I preached for another three months. It was a total of six months that our congregation had to grieve and to say their goodbyes. And for people who once were part of the church to come back in and to get the closure that they needed, all of that, we wanted to make sure everybody had somewhere to go rather than just locking the doors. And then we had like a celebration. We had a celebration at the end of it where we just really celebrated everything that God did in those eight years and celebrated Anthony's life. And so we did all of that together. And I think that it was the loss of him going back, having everything from my dad come back up and also, you know, closing the doors to the church so I no longer had a pulpit. I no longer was active in ministry. You know, my income was tied to that. My church family was tied to that. My friends were tied to that. And my children were also, have already left home because they just became adults. They were 20 and almost 18. And so I also empty nested at the same time. So I went from a very full, chaotically, wonderfully chaotic life to crickets, to literally standing in the middle of my home with nothing and nobody. And that was, that silence was deafening. And it really felt like everything from, you know, from a very full life to, okay, what now? And yeah, I would love to tell you that I was able to just roll with it, but I didn't do well. I stayed down. I isolated a lot for a long time. And that's a lot of times what grieving people will do because being around people often hurts because we don't know how to mourn with those who mourn. I've been a pastor. I've been an evangelist to churches for, you know, I've been in ministry for 28 years. And while I love the local church, we have to get better at mourning with those who mourn. It is scripture. It is the word. And we are to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. And we do it very poorly because we don't know what to say. Grief is that word. You know, I always say that grief is the thing that everybody has, nobody wants. And just bringing it up will clear a room in two seconds. You know, you start talking about grief and all of a sudden everybody's gone. And that's because they don't understand what grief is. They don't understand that grief comes as a result of loss or change of any kind. It's not just burying somebody. There's 44 different types of grief. And I was not aware, all of my pastoral ministry, on the right things to say, the wrong things to say. But I will tell you this, that the first time that I looked to my pastoral team, I'm sorry, my prayer team, to say, hey, I need to talk this through. Like, I need you to sit with me and I need to work through this. Anthony was still in the hospital at the time. Of course, I had a lot of decisions to make. I had no way in to help him and I just needed somebody to sit with me. I needed somebody to just be with me, to be, as I call it now, a heart with ears and no mouth, to sit here with me while I process through this thing. And somebody came to me and said, how can I pray for you? And I said, I just need somebody to talk to. I need to work out if Anthony doesn't come out of it. I need some help to figure out what's next. And the next thing out of that person's mouth, and it was with good intention, was no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to talk about that. Pastor Anthony's coming out and we're going to stand in faith. And I was like, yep, okay, you're right, you're right, I'm going to stand in faith. Then I picked up the phone later on that evening and I called another pastor friend of mine. I said, hey, I just need to work through some things. I said, I'm standing in faith, but I'm human, and I need to talk things through, and I need you to just hear me and just be here with me. And the words out of that pastor's mouth was no, no, no, nope, nope, nope, nope, we are standing in faith and we are not going to talk about that. We are believing he's coming out. So every time that I turned, I was not able to process what was going on in me. And if I could say it this way, I feel like we, if we're not careful, we can gaslight people with Scripture and with prayer. And it's not to say that Scripture and prayer is not exactly what we need, but I will tell you that there is a good reason why Jesus, we see in Scripture that when he went to the tomb of Lazarus to raise him from the dead, instead of going straight and looking at Lazarus' sisters and saying, stop crying, I'm going to raise him from the dead, he stopped and he wept with them. And that tells me that God's not afraid of our emotions, that Jesus is totally okay with us being human with our human emotions. It doesn't mean we're not in faith, and it doesn't mean that we're carnal. It means that we're human and that we were given emotions, and we are able to process them, and we are able to mourn with those who mourn. And Scripture tells us that we're supposed to bear each other's burdens, and we don't do that very well. And that is what I found. And so my isolation came from that, because every time I would turn to share my heart, to just kind of process my grief, I was met with, God has a plan, or at least you had 25 years with him. And those things are not helpful. They're not helpful. They may be intellectually true or spiritually true, but they're not emotionally helpful. And we're doing a disservice to a griever when we don't know how to be with them and allow them to mourn as they mourn, and to mourn with them. And so that was the thing that I think that entire journey, having it not be an easy tiptoe through the tulips and an easy plan through, because I knew it as a pastoral counselor. I knew how to get through it. I believe that God allowed me to hit those hiccups so that I could learn and I could be where I am today, because I believe that we really, as a church, we have to do a better job of meeting people in their pain and not constantly meeting them with things that we think are helpful that are actually damaging. Right. I love what you shared. It brings to my mind my dad's first wife. My dad's first wife died at 39, and I remember my dad had married my mom. She was a missionary, and he not much, maybe once or twice, said the hardest thing he heard with three children, and they just lost their mom, is when people come up to him and say, I understand how you feel, Clint. And my dad said that was so hard because they didn't know how he felt. And they didn't give him any. It'll get better, Clint. And he felt so isolated. So I know what you're saying is I heard that as a little girl growing up, how that was so hard, and nobody really understood how deep the grieving and how he needed to just be like somebody to sit with him and just be there and not necessarily have any answers. He didn't need answers. He just needed to know somebody loved him and cared. And I've oftentimes, and I've had different ones go through something so deep, I say tears are a gift from the Lord. Sometimes there's no other way to heal the soul but just cry. And I think there's so many deep emotions that a lot of, you know, like you said, the church is really poor at helping the grieving. I totally can see that because sometimes they don't want to touch that area. It's like, no, no, no, we don't want to bring, because they themselves have hidden secret areas that they have never dealt with in grieving. There is a way Holy Spirit can bring us in. I think one of the entry points is through tears, and there can be a healing in that. And I love what you're sharing. Yeah, yeah. You know, I often make the comparison that it would be the equivalent of us walking up to maybe someone that's homeless, and they haven't eaten, they haven't had any water, they haven't had a bath, they haven't had a shower, you know, they haven't had a bed, they're exhausted. And we oftentimes as Christians just want to walk up to them and just start sharing the Word with them without first meeting their physical needs and meeting their emotional needs. And give me a steak and a drink and a shower and a bed, and I'll listen to you all day long, and I will truly hear how much Jesus loves me through your actions. And that's what we do as grievers is we walk up to them and we throw out these, you know, at-least statements. We throw out these, you know, just keep busy or, you know, be strong. And I finally began asking people, be strong for who? And I found myself being very upset that why do we do this to one another? Why are we gaslighting each other with this? We don't know what to do. And I recognize that it's because we're a society that just we're not trained. We're trained on how to get things and receive things and have things, just not how to lose things. And there's 44 different types of grief. So if the church doesn't figure it out, we're in trouble, and here's why. Because it's not just about burying somebody. There are people going through this divorce that are in grief. They buried their marriage. They buried the life that they thought they would have. There's hope, dreams, and expectations. You know, so there's that. There's miscarriages. There are people walking through those doors that they made a choice about their body, about something that they would do, let's say an abortion. And guess what? We don't know how to meet them in that either. That's still a loss. It's something that Jesus would not have, you know, been okay with. But what we know is that he definitely will meet them in that, and he wants to heal them. We have people that are sitting on church pews, and, you know, maybe their grief that they're experiencing is from a loss of a business or a loss of a dream. How about betrayal and estrangement from family members or loss of hope? Loss of faith is a huge one. And if we don't learn to grieve with people, mourn with those who mourn, and to bear one another's burden, to confess your sins and your grievances one to another, that we might be healed. We need each other. We do need Jesus, but we need each other, too. That is the New Testament model for how we heal is with other people. And you're exactly right that your dad said that. My son said to me, Mom, if one more person asked me how I'm doing, and I said, I know, because we know that answer, right? And you almost feel obligated to say, I'm fine, because you know that the person really doesn't want to know. Or if you did tell them, they don't know what to say after that. And so we just have to get better with that. We have a lot of churches that are doing grief share now, which is good, which is a great start because it gives us an opportunity. But we have to recognize that it's more than just losing someone and burying them in the ground. How many other ways are people grieving, and how many other things are people grieving? Did you know that grief even occurs when we do something good, like when we move? Let's say we move from state to state because we got a promotion. That's a good move. That's a promotion. That's a happy event. But some people reach another location or kids going off to college. That's an exciting time in their life, but they often get to college and they feel something weird. It's like this grief, like why am I sad? That's because we're leaving something behind. We're moving up in the world, so to speak. We're moving up. We're getting a new promotion. We're moving houses. But there is still something we leave behind. And that grief may not last and linger as long, but there is still a We have to know that that feeling, that grief, leaving something behind, even though a relationship is over or a season of our life is over or a phase of our life is over, it is over. But sometimes there's unfinished business. There's things back there that we would have done different, better, or more. There are hopes, dreams, and expectations that didn't get met, and now here we are. And so we just have to recognize that if we can have this grief word be something that we talk about as more than just a funeral, then I think that people would understand what's going on on the inside of them. Because what oftentimes happens is we don't know what's wrong with us. We don't know why we're feeling what we're feeling. We don't know why all of a sudden I'm in a – I call it a funk. And we oftentimes don't know what that is. And then what happens is we end up reaching for something to fill the void, and that's where addictions come from. Jennifer, you're so good. That's where affairs come from. Because affairs are rarely about finding another person. It's about finding a new you. And so when you don't like where you are and what you're feeling on the inside, and we can't find anybody to talk to us about it. Why? Because our grieving time is up. Like that event happened four years ago. Why are you not over that thing? And so we don't feel the opportunity to raise our hand and say, hey, you know what happened to me four years ago? I'm still not over that, and I don't know why, but I need some help. People will literally look at you and say, that happened so long ago. Are you still not over that? And there are so many walking around who are not over what happened. Time has moved on, but they have not. Oh, my, Jennifer, what a powerful testimony and what a powerful thing God's moving you into. And I think there's probably way more in the body of Christ that can relate, that are sitting in the churches, in the pews next to us, that understand and walking and living around us, you know, that have so much that they bottle up. And they have no idea how to get it out or have stuffed it for so long. And for healthy mind, for state of being, you know, how they need to have this kind of freedom to share. And that somebody cares. I mean, this is such a huge ministry that you're – is this an area God's leading you into? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I got certified and trained in grief recovery work through the Grief Recovery Institute, and that was just in the last year because I was stuck, you know. I really was stuck. I mean, for all of these same purposes, you know, time has moved on and people were expecting me to have been over this by now, and I was still hurting. And honestly, you know, it's not that difficult as far as, you know, who I get beyond this. And, you know, grief never goes away. We still carry it. We just get stronger to carry it. And all that it takes, honestly, is for somebody to be seen, heard, and validated. That's it. Just seen, heard, and validated. So we always say just become a heart with ears and no mouth. And the no mouth part almost sounds rude, but it actually is. I get it. Actually, it should be, for somebody listening today, it actually takes the pressure off of you when you realize you don't have to come up with something to say. You know, I think that all of us, we've been in a situation where something happens to a friend of ours and we don't know what to say. The good thing is, is now I'm letting you know, according to grief recovery, you don't have to have anything to say because we don't fix grief. We have to feel grief. And so we don't have to come up with anything. We just, a big hug, a big I'm there for you. You know, there's a Jewish tradition of, you know, sitting with family who's grieving and we don't have to talk. You know, and that's what we should be doing is being with somebody. So if somebody's listening today and they're like, okay, so how do I do that with somebody? Because I know somebody going through something. Picture in your mind, just go and be a heart with ears and no mouth. You don't have to have answers. You don't have to have scripture for them. They know the scriptures. I knew the scripture. I just needed somebody to sit with me. I had somebody, I had somebody that even called me, a Christian that even called me 10 months in. My husband was already in the ground for 10 months. And she called and said, God told me to call you and to tell you to muster up every ounce of faith and go raise your husband from the dead. And I was like, wow, why do we do that? Why do we, why do we feel, why do we feel like we have to have answers and to talk for God? How about we just be there for one another? How about we just be a heart with ears? And I think that if we can let ourselves off the hook and just know that that's all that's required of us, I think it actually makes it easier for us. And that's what the griever needs. And that's what begins helping them to heal because they're being seen, heard, and validated in their pain. And we don't have to have anything intellectual to say. We don't even have anything spiritual to say. We just have to be emotionally helpful for them. And what is emotionally helpful? It's just helping them to be heard. Helping them to feel it so that they can heal it. That's it. You know, that's actually a biblical principle in James. It says, be quick to hear and slow to speak. In James chapter 1. I mean, you're James. Be a heart with ears. I love that. That's another way. That's a very practical way to paint a picture of what we need to do. James puts it in, you know, Bible terms. But that's a principle that you're talking about here that, yeah, we all have ears. We all can hear somebody. Oh, and they're grieving that they're going through. Yeah, and despite that feeling of that itch, like I have to come up with something to say or I have to let them know that God has a plan, just in saying that, it is spiritually true. But in that moment, it's actually not necessary. Because if we can allow somebody to process through emotionally, the spiritual things take care of themselves. Once we are able to heal emotionally and to be heard, seen, and validated, then it's kind of like that, remember that homeless person, you know, to feed them, give them what they need, meet their needs, then they'll receive all the Scripture. It really is true that then, now that I know that I've been seen, heard, and validated, now when you're sharing gospel with me, I can see God's plan now. But I wasn't able to because I was so busy fighting back the emotion that kept trying to rise up and I was kept trying to push it down. And so it's just beautiful. So, yeah, you asked the question, am I doing that now? And I am. I'm still doing ministry. I'm still traveling. I'm still preaching as I always have. But my heart really is to help the church as well as just the average everybody that needs to be seen, heard, and validated, whatever it is, whether they buried somebody or they buried a hope or a dream or, you know, they've been betrayed or estranged. There's so many families nowadays that are estranged from family members and they're grieving just the same. And so I do grief recovery work. I do one-on-one work, you know, where I do Zoom calls with people all over the country. And I do that as well as, you know, travel. And I don't just talk about grief, but as you pointed out, these are all just biblical principles. We need to just learn how to create a safe place and a safe space for people to heal and let them know that it's okay truly to not be okay. We say it, but we really have to believe it. We really have to show people that we mean it. It's okay to not be okay. Well, that's really good. You're working on a book too, aren't you, a new book? Well, so I wrote Get Over Yourself back in, and it became a Bible study, back in 2009, 2010. And if you, you know, you ask the question, I have about four books on my computer, half written. And I can hear my husband from heaven saying, Jennifer, get to work. But, yes, I am. I am. I am working on one. I've settled on the one that I know that this is in that season. And it is. It's to help people to get up. But how do we get up when life takes our legs out from under us? And it's the principles that God gave me, finally, when I recognized that I've been here way too long, Lord. Like, help me. And I've been saying it all along, but I just didn't have, and I couldn't find a safe place. And he put me in a safe place where I was able to finally let all of those things go and speak about all those things that I would have done better, different, or more of, you know. And once I was able to process through those, I was able to get up. And now, as I'm using it as my testimony, you know, we're made overcomers by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. I'm still overcoming every time I open my mouth to help somebody else. And I think that that's the goal, right? It is for freedom that we've been set free, not only our freedom, but for the freedom of others. And I think that that's what we're called to do. And, you know, in doing this, you're literally seeing Jesus' hands and feet here on the earth. We have five kids, and I've always told them, you don't work for the Lord. For an employer, you work for the Lord. So when you go to your job, you are literally his hands and feet and represent him well. And with being a heart with ears, that is being the ears and the heart of love of the Lord. Literally, like when you feel the embrace, or you embracing someone that's going through grieving and loving on them, it's literally I am, if I was that person on the other end, I'm sure they literally feel like the Lord Jesus himself is hugging them because that's how he meets us is through each other here on earth. And I just love your heart. I love the ministry God's put on you, this new direction that came kind of broadsided. You came from left field, and yet you're allowing the Lord to do this new work that you don't want, but here it is, and you're willing. And the other beautiful thing is, Jennifer, you haven't allowed bitterness. There's no bitterness or anger, which totally would be justified and validated in the world's eyes. And you haven't given place to the enemy into your heart of hearts through that. Not that it probably wasn't something you had to struggle or work or push back or whatever, but there's no bitterness here. You just want to allow the Lord to use you so when others go through what you've experienced. And thank you for taking and using that experience that you're losing your beloved, and allowing the Lord to do that healing. And I have a feeling that as you share, it heals your heart a little more and a little more. It does. It certainly does. So thank you so much. Thank you. So I'm a better person now having heard your story and also made aware how much I need to be even more about being a heart with ears. I love that. Thank you. My pleasure. I wish I had learned it. I've been in ministry for 28 years, and I can think back to being a pastor, being a pastor's wife. We co-pastored and being in ministry. And I remember standing there with phone in hand, knowing that one of my members had just gone through something, and looking at my phone to call and thinking, okay, what scripture can I give them? What can I say to them to make this better? And I know now that nothing would have made it better to just be there with them and for them, that I didn't have to work that hard to figure out how to fix it, because it's not fixable. It's just something to be felt. And I'm so grateful that now I can get that right. And thank you for allowing me to share it with others, because I know there's so many out there that are hurting. It may be isolating right now, because just being around people and being hurt unintentionally, by the words of others who don't know, we just don't know. We just have not been trained. But I'm grateful that people are hearing that right now, and that maybe we can all just make it more of a conversation, or at least the knowledge that we might be able to be there for one another. And if there's anybody that's listening today that's hurting, they need to know that Jesus is right there with them hurting. Scripture says that he bottles up every tear. And oftentimes when we go through things like this, we wonder, God, where were you? Did you not care? Why did you not answer? And when we're able to properly grieve, and somebody is there to be there in it with us, we do feel the arms of Jesus wrapped around us, and we do know that, oh, wait, he was there with us all along. We were not left alone. And he does have a plan, but right now he wants to sit here with me in this, because Psalms 34 and 18 says that he is near. He is near the brokenhearted, and he is with us when we are crushed in spirit. And it's okay to be there. It's okay to be there. If it's okay for Jesus to weep with Lazarus' sisters before he raised them from the dead, then that gives us permission to do the same. Wow. So if people want to follow you or learn more about you, is your website the best option for that? Yeah. JenniferBeckham.org is the website, and it's Beckham, like David Beckham, just not related, B-E-C-K-H-A-M. So it's JenniferBeckham.org. And, yeah, I'm on Instagram and TikTok. Actually, I'm doing now, which is so crazy to think of, I'm doing a live every evening for three hours at 10 p.m. to 1 o'clock in the morning, because that's where most people who can't sleep, who are hurting, who are going through things in their life, they're normally scrolling through the Internet because they are most likely running away from pain. And they're mindlessly scrolling. And so, yeah, seven weeks ago last night, literally seven weeks ago, it was December 13th, and I was going through the holidays, going through Christmas, and my heart was hurting. I was without Anthony. My kids have their own homes and their own relationships. My son is married. And so there was nobody home for the holidays with me. And I was hurting one night, and I desperately needed to connect with the world. I could feel myself isolating again. I could feel myself kind of going into that spiral if I wasn't careful. And so I said, I need to get out of the house, but I don't want to leave the house. I don't want to be around people, but I need connection. What do I do? And I picked up my phone, and I hit, you know, on TikTok, I hit the live button. And I thought, I wonder if there's anybody out there who's grieving and hurting through the holidays, too. And 6,500 people showed up that first night. Then the second night, about 12,000. And seven weeks later, we've reached 1.2 million people, and we have an amazing community of thousands that show up every night. And we're just there. I always say, just like our church, our church was called Restore Church where everyone's a work in progress. And we say that this is a place that you can be a work in progress, no matter where you are. We talk about life, love, relationships, loss, and we found it all in Scripture. So anytime any question comes up, I'm not just sharing my, you know, my opinion. I'm sharing what Gospel says. And so I absolutely love it. Never in a million years would I have thought that that would be a platform for me to do ministry in a live-type atmosphere. But that's what God has me doing right now at night. So, yeah, I'm on five nights a week. The only nights we take off is Tuesday and Wednesday. But five nights a week at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to 1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, you can find us on there. And it's just an open forum. It's a community of amazing people who all call me Pastor Jennifer and who all say it's their church. So it's kind of neat. They're like, this is our church, and it's just so sweet, you know. And, yeah. So just help me pray about that because I don't know how long I'll be on there, but it's definitely something I never, never would have thought. So it's really, you know, people are coming across it every night, and they didn't have anybody to tell or talk to. And, you know, it's a beautiful thing. You know, I actually, I'm just wowed by that. And I just think, I don't know, that it's going to decrease. I think it's going to grow because the season we're moving into is exciting. It's like both. It's the best of times, the worst of times. It's, you know, such tragedy. And I can see your ministry being scooping up lots of people to give them a safe place to grieve and to find they're not alone. And there's people that will hear and listen to them and love on them. Wow, thank you. It's beautiful. The ministry does glean to you now. Yeah, I'm so grateful. And, you know, we should never, you know, count even our dips and our valleys, you know. I mean, God works all those things together for good as well. And, you know, I didn't get up nearly as quickly as I thought that I would have, but I'm actually thankful because it was being in those really, really dark times. And being there feeling like, Lord, I know you, I love you, I trust you, but why can't I get up? And that in itself taught me so much. And I'm grateful because I have a heart. I've always had a heart for this thing called grief. It's very strange. My first book had a chapter dedicated on grieving. So it's always been a part of my life. I just didn't know how much it would be a part of my life now. And so I'm grateful. And I thank you for having me on today to talk about it. Yeah, well, it's been great. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Thank you so much for being willing to come on. We just really appreciate you and just some amazing things. Thank you, and God bless your ministry as well. Yeah, God bless your ministry as well. You're reaching so many, and there's a place for all of us. Great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, Jennifer. We hope to be in touch with you again. This has just been a wonderful conversation. Yeah, we'll be following you for sure. Just love you and the Lord so much. Love you too. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the Faith Moving Forward podcast. Please consider subscribing to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you currently listen to.
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