Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1076: Building a Resiliant Life: Rebekah Lyons

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Rebekah Lyons is an author, speaker, mother of four, co-host of the Rythmns of Life podcast and co-founder of THINQ, both with her husband Gabe Lyons. Rebekah has written several books about mental health and the Christian faith that flow from her own raw journey. Her most recently book is Building a Resiliant Life: How Adversity Awakens Strengh, Hope, and Meaning. In this podcast conversation, Rebekah shares her life journey, which include various seasons where she has battled depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and has also experience God's victory in these areas. 

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is the one and only Rebecca Lyons. Rebecca is an author, a speaker, a mother of four kids, the wife to my good friend Gabe Lyons. So if you've been to the Q Ideas Cultural Summit, you have probably seen and heard Rebecca speak. Most of all, she's just an awesome Christian, a humble thinker, and she's very honest with how she talks about how the things she's gone through in life have really been poured out into several books that she's written. Her first book was called Free Fall to Fly, and she's written a few books since then. The one that recently was released is called Building a Resilient Life, How Advers adversity awakens strength, hope, and meaning. And so we actually talk about a lot of stuff related to her life, her journey, how that

has been kind of expressed in various books. And then toward the end, we talk about what it means to live a resilient life. So please welcome to the show for the first time. I can't believe it's the first time Rebecca's been on, but it is the first time. So please welcome to the show, one early Rebecca Williams. Rebecca, this is your first time at Theology of the Raw, which I feel like I want to apologize for that. There's certain people that I'm like, wait, I have not had them on yet. So I can't believe I haven't had you on, had your husband on, I think a couple of times. But anyway, welcome to the All General.

Well, when you're friends, when you're friends, you're not sure, like, did we talk in person or on a podcast? I don't remember. Well, so I'm so excited about this because you have written, I mean, a few books that are so deeply interwoven into your story and they're so raw and vulnerable. And I feel like you write from a place of honesty and vulnerability, having gone through life circumstances. I think a lot of people have gone through maybe something, I mean, maybe not exactly what you've gone through, but something maybe similar. And they, you know, when someone like you writes

about it, I think sometimes it can really put words to people's experience as well. So anyway, I want to go back and tell us who you are and what kind of brought you into this sphere of writing the kind of books that you've been writing on. Sure. Um, so goodness gracious, I started this mental health science and neuroscience and faith journey, quite frankly, in 2010, my husband, Gabe and and I, who you know, Gabe, and I, and our three kids moved to from like the South, the suburbs of the South to the middle of Manhattan in 2010. And it was the end of a decade of being home. My firstborn had special needs with Down syndrome diagnosis about six hours after birth, about

nine years prior to that. And so that was kind of my first freefall moment that I don't write about until a decade later when I developed panic disorder four months into my time in New York City. So what I know now is that the pressure cooker of New York pushed some things that were latent or buried or unresolved to the surface. And my panic attacks were rooted in claustrophobia, which is very much the metaphor for feeling trapped and powerless to escape or to shift or to change the circumstances. And I remember now, and I even write about it in this book that I think the root of those panic attacks were that day on the table. My son was born nine years prior where we had two quick emergency. I mean,

it was an emergency C-section failure to thrive at full term because he didn't grow the last trimester and he was four and a half pounds full term and there was no fluid. Like I basically, it was just a long, I was 26. I felt fine, but all of a sudden my, my face is swelling larger than my stomach and my stomach shrinking. And so that day on, while they're getting him out quickly, I had two epidurals in 20 minutes and basically it turned into paralysis in my lungs where I couldn't, I couldn't get a breath. And so as they're tugging Kate out, I'm like, uh, I'm starting to slur. And I I'm feeling like I'm dying. I can't get a breath.

But I don't even know what's normal, right? And so it's crazy, the story. And I write about it in my first book and call back to it in this book. But I just remember Gabe going to the doctor like, is this normal? And the doctor said, if you stop breathing, we can breathe for you. And it was kind of just very disconcerting, like wanting everyone to all eyes on Kate, but I'm, I'm, I'm being smothered over here. And so they did give me oxygen, but I did remember slurring. I couldn't speak. I said, and it was just this kind of

reality, like I might not make it. And so it took, they whisk Kate off to the ER or to the urgent care ICU, and then get him on feeding tube and breathing tube. And then they get me over to recovery. And then six hours later, say we see signs of Down syndrome in your baby. And it took about two days for me to actually be able to walk from that anesthesia. And I was in a wheelchair for a couple of days. And I think the panic attacks a decade later, kind of New York just became the setting for like all that unresolved trauma because quite frankly, our bodies act out

when there's buried unresolved grief or trauma. And I think it was both grief and trauma because then all of a sudden, it's not just that you had this crazy moment on the table, but you also got a diagnosis that was so jarring as I was a kid having a kid, right? At 26. And then all of a sudden, you're now navigating special needs.

And within eight months, having eight therapists throughout the days, helping you just figure out how to be a mom of a child with Down syndrome and how to enter that. And I didn't really have mentors in my life at that season. So I was just reading a lot and researching and seeking counsel where I could find it. So it just immediately you're thrust into something that you weren't really expecting or prepared for. And what do you say for the next 10 years? You just kind of, did you push it down or just didn't fully really deal with it until the 2010-ish season? Yeah, I would say I did cry a lot in that first year and just kind of just God, God got loud for me. Honestly, I, there was a lot of

like travail or lament, you would call it where just like a lot of on my knees praying and just asking for strength. And so God got really drew near and that was very good. And then we had Pierce two years later and Kennedy's two years after that. So we did have, and the boys walked within two weeks of each other. So I had like two newborns, you know, it just felt like I was always having twins or then adding Kennedy. And then I would say, I kind of, what I, what I had to grieve or maybe lay down in that season is my mom, I'd planned to work, you know, even like part-time or something. My mom had been a teacher my whole life and I had a job I loved, but about a year in, I just knew that I couldn't lead my team and also lead well at home. And I

had to choose. And so I resigned my role. And so I think there, I think what Gabe sometimes coins as the lost decade, it wasn't like lost in that my role as a mom, but it definitely felt a little unsettling as who was Rebecca before this and how are those gifts going to be exercised in the future or are they going to all go home? And there's not like one is right and one is wrong, but I really do believe that God calls us to serve inside our walls and also outside of our walls somehow, even if it's volunteer, just get outside the nuclear family and still look outward and go, what is it that we've been

given to steward outside of these walls? And, and so I just kind of let, I let go of that. I think I surrendered that and resigned that. And there was a grief in that. And had no anticipation of what that would look like other than co-founding our nonprofit with Gabe and wearing hats of whatever needed done. But as far as kind of what was in my heart, I didn't know where that was going. And God used pain 10 years later for me to find my voice. And then calling began out of that. I just realized the timing. Yeah. You, you, you just mentioned, I mean, I think it was around oh four or five or six, right. When Gabe and, uh, Kinnaman wrote unchristian, which became a run

of bestseller, I think, I mean, hundreds of thousands of copies. I remember everybody was talking about it when it came out and that and then launching q ideas and everything like that's had to have played a role too right all of a sudden you guys are thrust into this kind of national sphere i mean he already had gabe already had kind of a platform before that but i feel like that was like a big season on that that has to be not completely separated from even you having three kids boom boom boom one, boom, one down syndrome going through that, right? I mean, that's a lot for somebody to process. Well, and it was interesting

because Gabe still calls 2012 the year of Rebecca because it was 15 years into our marriage. And it was almost the first time in a decade that I was given even bandwidth to kind of explore vocation again. Any jokes, it's been the year of Rebecca ever since, which is not true at all, which is not true at all. And I think there's some, a lot, we go a totally different direction. There's a lot to be said about people who are married, who both have, you know, birthright gifts and have unique burdens

and passions and how to celebrate, not grow resentful, but how to celebrate each other's strength. And that's another conversation for another day. But I think we're now 26 years into marriage and getting a little more honest about those things that come in season. And for whatever reason, God had it for God used pain. And often he does use pain to catalyze calling because calling is where your talents and your burdens collide. And I don't think I was very clear on what my burdens were beyond I'm home with a special needs child. But I had also watched my dad, you know, have a mental breakdown when I was in high school, go in a psychiatric hospital when I was a freshman in college, have chronic depression in his adult life as a pastor.

Who had been a pastor before I was born as a like a faithful follower of God and then had a son you know with an IQ in the 40s and so I'm sandwiched between three generations of just mental struggle and then I start to have panic attacks and I think God even used the the burden of like the story of origin and family I was born into to become. And then kind of the birthright gift of communication, chronic oversharing, apparently, and writing to redeem the things that break my heart. And so I very much love Buechner's quote, like it's where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need. This idea of, you know, I was called Becca book as a kid when I was in fourth grade, I always read books. I learned about life through the

power of books. We didn't have a TV. God bless my parents who were teachers who wouldn't let us. So I just learned now later in life that readers make writers, but I wouldn't have had even in that decade at home, any concept that I would write something for public consumption. I always process pain in my journal with God, but it was never even a thought or a dream that I would be a writer or an author. I think that's the, I mean, that's, I feel like that contributes to good writing though, when it comes not from a place of, I desperately want to be a writer. Not that that, you know, some people are just from the very beginning writing, but for you, it flows out of, it's an outflow of just your, your, the complexities of a life journey rather than just a red hot passion to get a book out there or something, you know?

Yeah. Can you take us back to that time? Was it 2010, 2011 moved to New York, three kids, you have maybe unprocessed, you know, things you've gone through, and then you start having panic attacks. What it's, how would you describe this, like the cause of that? Is that just a body, your body that's born so much hasn't processed, and it just starts to kind of react or what it will help us understand what a panic attack even is and how to cope with that. Yeah. I go into that a lot in this new book of even the difference between panic attacks and anxiety, overall and generalized anxiety. And, um, but in general, your lower brain, so basically the primal base, your brainstem is the lower part of your brain and it can't tell

time. So it's why when you are faced with a similar situation that brings about the same emotions of powerlessness or trapped it takes you right back to that place and your body acts out as it did in that place in that moment of time so ptsd for war vets or kids who were traumatized as children that have buried it because they disassociated out of survival, which they should. That's actually a very healthy way to find resilience in your youth to keep going. The problem is you put it in a container and it's locked away and you don't revisit it. And then it starts to come out later in life when you encounter circumstances that create a similar reaction in your sensitized, your oversensitized stress systems, right? So because you're sensitive to feeling trapped

and powerless and almost smothered or restrained, then when you're in a circumstance where someone kind of overpowers you, or you're in a circumstance where you can't leave, like we had signed a two-year contract on our lease in New York City. And all of a sudden, you've got 8 million people in the span of 11 miles. So there is no such thing as personal space. And people would just keep just shoving into the subways or the elevators, the trains, the crowds. There was a sense of like, I can't get out of this. And not only can I not get out of this crowd or this elevator or the subway, I can't get out of this city. So there's two kinds of trauma. The first one would be

acute, like type A, right? Like an incident. And we know that's more familiar for people, a car accident, a school shooting, being raped or molested or abused, whatever, like acute trauma. Then there's also type B, which is chronic trauma, where it's basically almost a lifetime of a low hum of fragmented patternless caregiving is how I describe it in the book. It's this kind of where we're distracted. We're not really given the attunement from certain people at certain times when it was needed or necessary. And so there's a lack of attachment. And so we kind of create these protective systems and these coping mechanisms, which are truly our survival skills of our youth, but they don't serve us well as adults. They keep us at arm's length from people. They create walls. We don't really let people in or we overcompensate by performing for love. And that was kind of my mode, even in my childhood as a firstborn, it was my mode of getting what I would call affection or admiration.

And it was really this kind of hyper performance as a firstborn. And it wasn't, this is not to like throw parents under the bus or teachers or youth leaders or whoever. It's more like we just absorb an unspoken narrative as kids of like what our role is, what we contribute, what's affirmed in us, what's celebrated. And then we live into that. We just kind of like lean into that. And part of it is traumatizing because it's kind of saying me as I am is not quite enough. Me as I am fully is going to be too much or not enough in this relationship. So I'm going to need to buffer and adjust. Kids are really great at absorbing what's happening

and they're sensitive to it before they can even have words for it. And so I talk about in the book, even the first year in life where a newborn is looking for attachment by making eye contact with the parent. And if the parents distracted or not looking back, they will look for other ways to self-soothe. And so then all of a sudden that attachment begins to be broken. If a mom is nursing and she's looking at her phone like that, that's actually is injuring attachment in the first days of life. And so again, there's a lot of grace for this. God redeems it. But I wish I knew some of this stuff back 20 years ago when I was having kids. And I think about

the iPhone right now, you know, 16 years since the invention of the iPhone, which means my, my youngest daughter, Kennedy, 17. That means when she was one and a half, I got this really cool device in my hand that's created to make me addicted to it. And I had the greatest challenges with her in her preteen years as far as feeling secure, feeling our connection, because I know I played a role in our lack of attachment in those formational years that really last about up until six years old. That makes me really worried. Am I right to be worried about people raising kids in the phone generation? And I appreciate you saying, you know, we're not here to shame, but just to kind of, if there is a possible unforeseen issue that could have future consequences, I mean, that's something young mothers now need to hear. I mean, not just mothers, but parents. I mean,

because yeah, that more people than not, I don't know how to say it, you know, are probably looking at the phone way too much. And when that's in the home, it's in the family, especially you're saying with young kids that that can have a kind of a slow, negative effect towards how your kids are responding to you. Yeah. So it's trauma too. It's just this chronic low hum fragmented patternless caregiving. Like maybe we're like all in and then we react when they do something that's out of order, but then we kind of avoid or neglect when they're just going, hey, hey, can you do this? Or can you answer this question? Or can you read me this book?

Or I'll get to it. I'll get to it. So you're right. This is not a shame fest at all. This is me preaching to the choir. This is me actually having to grieve this myself as I wrote this chapter. But what it does do, which is good because information and awareness breeds action, is that we keep looking at our

kids. And I really did write this book initially for our kids because I felt like they were not prepared for what society had coming at them to just have the resilience that they need. Coming out of 2020, it was very eye-opening when suicidal ideation tripled in preteens within 12 weeks. So all of a sudden we're like, wow, we're all looking at our kids and going, well, it's because they're on their phones all the time and they're always distracted. And then I go, but what's the story behind the story? It's not just that the kids are the rookies growing up on screens. We're the rookie parents that raised kids on screen. And so it's twofold. It's going to kind of require a readjustment on

both sides. Our church is going through a tech detox right now where they're encouraging everyone to get off their phones for 30 days or smartphones or try to make your smartphone a dumb phone, which is great because I'm thinking the parents also need to understand the weight of kind of the genesis because our kids model what we do. They don't model what we say. And so if we want to raise kids that value being fully present and eye contact and full sentences and, you know, just the ability to talk vulnerably, then the parents must model that first.

And so it's just been good for me. And it's been helpful for our family now that we're through some of those harder middle school, high school years that we have come full circle. God is redeeming it all. We are that we love and we're so close to our kids now that are 18, 20, and 22. But it didn't come without a cost. How old is Joy, by the way, your youngest? She'll be 10 in June.

Now, with your two kids with Down syndrome, is the phone... I just never thought about this before. Is the addiction to a phone, is that an issue for them? I mean, is it case by case? Or do kids with Down syndrome typically not struggle with that? No, it's definitely the same. It's definitely the same because again, if they're not getting the attention from us, then, and again, every parent can't give a hundred percent attention, but it's more just being a little more thoughtful in what they engage,

when they engage and how long they engage. Cause they're not going to self-regulate. Like I've been on the phone for an hour. I should get off. And just like our teens aren't going to self-regulate. But I would say kids with Down syndrome or any kids with a limited ability to cognitively go, have an age of reason to go, this is actually too much, then it does require parent parental guidance and redirection, just like it would, if not more. Okay. Interesting. All right. So let's go back. So you moved in Manhattan. You had these panic

attacks. And how did you start processing that? Did you go to therapy? Was it a freak out moment, like what's going on? Or what are the next few years? What does that look like for you? Yeah, it was definitely freak out first and a lot of like confusion and fear of finding out like, no, I'm not actually having these heart attacks that the therapist told me in that season in New York that your body is fine. Like physically it's that it can no longer contain inside of it. The unresolved emotional pain that you've been carrying. And it just, again, like I said, just pushed it to the surface.

So I had to do some heart work and I had to really go get back and honest. And I think that's why I have these five rules in the book just to help people walk through the steps. Because if you can't name the pain, which is the first rule of resilience in the book, then you certainly can't find healing because you can't heal what is hidden. And so it was a good season for me to get honest with, am I mad at God? Is there any unresolved resentment or bitterness about Cade still struggling and being nonverbal at nine or being slower with than other kids with down syndrome as far as his cognition or struggling more am I you know do I have just some grief that I actually haven't allowed to come out and so it first had to get out of my body

and by talking out loud about it not just like in my brain spinning, but getting honest before God so that I could get more honest before Gabe and just even, and then my friends. And so as I did that in that first year and got more honest with like, wow, I don't, I think there's just stuff stored deep down that I just have not made provision to acknowledge. And I haven't felt permission. made provision to acknowledge and I haven't felt permission. And then also, but the gift of anxiety, which I talk about in the middle rule is like treat anxiety as a friend. It's because I now, 13 years later, I'm thankful. I think anxiety was a friend that taught me all is not well. And it was this barometer. It's like a check engine light in your car. And it's this idea of going like you're acting out physically because there's something under

the hood in your heart that is broken. And you have got to get real honest with God about what that is and ask the Holy Spirit to even show you, ask God to show you. There's times we bury things so deep. We don't understand why we're so anxious or so tense or so upright or so driven, but there's something behind that. And it takes some time to a great therapist will help you pull that to the surface. The Holy spirit will help you. He's the comforter counselor and advocate. Like he helped me pull those things to the surface,

a lot of writing and cathartic like like verbal processing, but in general, got it out. And then what happened next was I just said over a few more months journey, there was this one time I, about 18 months in, in New York, I was with some girlfriends and they prayed over me. And I was just like, that's fine. I didn't have any expectation of it changing, but I was always grateful for prayer. And that night I had a panic attack in the middle of the night coming out of a dream. And I woke and Gabe sat up with me and I'd never had one in my, the safety of my bedroom.

That started to feel like that was infringing upon like, like safe spaces. Like there was nowhere I could go to run from this at this point. And so he started praying over me and I finally found my voice. And just out of nowhere, I really believe God just kind of said it's time. And I just, I raised my left hand and I just said, rescue me, deliver me.

I can't do this without you. And in that moment, like my body broke on the bed and it was still, and I just felt in that moment, fully flooded with peace and it was gone. and I just felt in that moment, fully flooded with peace. And it was gone. It was like, it was like done. And I didn't have another panic attack for seven years. And, um, it was wild because what I know now is that God does become our ever present help.

And sometimes we just don't see it coming. And I wouldn't have called it healing at the time. And sometimes we just don't see it coming. And I wouldn't have called it healing at the time. But even when he does kind of pull us out of a place of fear or trauma, he still asks us on the other side of that to like take the steps. And so while I was kind of like, I didn't have another panic attack for seven years. And there was something, there was like truly a lift that was a grace.

I knew that from that moment forward, I would need to start putting in rhythms of rhythmic life, regulating rhythms that we know now rhythmic movement regulates the brain and calms it down. So I write about that in my third book about rhythms of renewal and inviting people in and having tight community and just being really mindful to historically over generations, the four ways we have always as a civilization healed from trauma. And that's primarily first through community, second through regulating rhythms, third through a higher power, a belief in something bigger.

And then four through some sort of like medicinal herbs or whatever we would have got in the ancient times. And so now what happens in 23, we flip it upside down and we begin with medication and then we go to therapy and then we might get out and like go for a walk in the woods. And if we're lucky, we might phone a friend that we're not paying for therapy. But unfortunately, we have, we flipped it so much. We're not actually valuing the greatest characteristics of resilience, which is community and a rhythmic life. Interesting. You know, you said something that's super helpful. I feel like you've had to become almost like an armchair psychologist.

You're not going to call yourself a psychologist, but I know you've done so much reading and thinking and speaking and talking to people. It just seems to be part of you now. Yeah, I am definitely going to go get certified somewhere because, yes, we've had this conversation lately. They're like, what are your credentials? I'm like, well, I have all the books you're reading in your grad school right now. I've already read those. So I should probably go do something i i really liked

um uh is it uh bessel van der kolk the body keeps the score it sounds like that's a lot of what you're talking about just how the your life circumstance your brain your trauma your body like everything's so interconnected and and so to have part of healing from trauma is even doing physical things. He's big in doing yoga or whatever, meditation or exercise. And that all does play a role. You mentioned in the past, I wanted to ask you something. So you said the back of your brain, the kind of brainstem, is it the amygdala?

Is that the part that... So the lower brain is the cortex. The part of the brain that processes pain is the amygdala is that the part that so the lower brain the lower brain is the cortex the like the part of the brain that it processes pain is the amygdala that's up in your brain but it's the lower brain first that that registers pain got it and and then the upper brain registers the regulation of pain but what what happens is when it's so deeply embedded in your body, right? Because it's in your subconscious because you buried it. It's staying back in that survival reactionary part, right? So the amygdala does trigger fight, flight, or freeze, but it's the cortex. It's basically what an infant has. It's the primal things of breathing. And that's why when you have a panic attack, you're breathing, you have rapid,

shallow breathing. You have your heart rate, just even your blood flow accelerates because you're acting as out as if you're being held at gunpoint. And so for whatever reason, your brain is encountering a circumstance that makes you feel exactly like you felt when you were terrified earlier in life. And it takes you back to that moment and reacts that same way without you being in that same exact place. But what it's doing is it's yielding, it's almost surfacing something that's unresolved from before that you never had language for perhaps, or that you never processed fully because you just put it in a compartmentalized bucket and said, we'll deal with that later. And kids, unfortunately, who have experienced childhood trauma have the hardest time with this

because they never really had the framework. Thankfully, we have a lot more child psychologists now, but they didn't have the framework back then. And then as adults, they're just asking their therapist, like fix my marriage or fix my rage problems or fix my eating disorders. But they don't have any framework for how it's connected to something long ago. And a real good book on this is called What Happened to You by Dr. George Perry and Oprah. It's more layman's turn than The Body Keeps the Score. And I cite it a lot throughout my book because I think it really does help us kind of get our hands on like what happened before where we are now. This explains why, you know, when you're in like a spousal dispute, not that you and Gabe ever have any of that, but you know, for those who do, or even a close friend or even anybody where they may do something that triggers some kind of traumatic episode,

you know, maybe they, they said something that the same tone of voice that your dad said when you're five years old, that really carved you up inside you know or or maybe there was maybe you resemble maybe the person who you know maybe you're involved in an abusive situation or something and that person even just the voice tone just they might be doing something that kind of triggers that traumatic memory and we you said it doesn't tell time that part of the brain so for So for them, it's not like, oh, hey, you're reminding me of something from 15 years ago. It's I'm reliving that. Your emotions are telling you this is that, right? I mean, is that?

And that explains so much of why when, you know, and again, fictitious spousal disputes, when somebody will say something and somebody else will be really hurt and said, well, you said like, I didn't say that or I I didn't mean, I didn't say anything like that. It's like, no, that's what you said. Or that, you know, and, and is it our prefrontal cortex, our rational part of our brain just kind of takes a backseat sometime to this. You go offline, you go completely offline and your kids do too. So a kid that's offline or a spouse that's offline, once you go offline and you're back in that moment, physiologically, you are unable to have a logical conversation at that point.

And I talk about a lot about this in the first rule of resilience of name, the pain it's one is understanding the weight of shame. You're actually having a shame response. In fact, shame and anxiety manifest very similarly in the body. Like the way we are physiological response to shame is like, we're again, being sent back to a place long ago that we felt not enough that we felt attacked and we had to hide. And so we almost retreat into our inner self.

And so very much so when we're feeling that we, we divert the eyes, we look down into the left. very much so when we're feeling that we divert the eyes, we look down into the left, we keep like yelling at one another, but we're kind of, we're emotionally withdrawing. And I'm noticed with Gabe and I, if we have a conflict, we both hide, but differently, I actually want to remove myself from the room and go sit in my closet and cry. Whereas he will stay in the room because he's better at like debate than i am but he'll look away and and i read the soul of shame i i describe in the book what a shame response feels like and it's very much what you're saying it's like you go offline and while you're actually having

the conversation you're you're going back to all the old memories of what this reminds you of when you were never enough and how your your character and your integrity and your personhood is being attacked meanwhile the person is not saying any of that at all but what it's doing is it's just bringing up something and and just a great way to think about it is if if if someone says something and you take it and react crazy it's not at all what they said. It's just it's reminding you of a prior relationship, a prior relationship or a prior circumstance where it was a similar kind of theme and you felt a certain way and you had to bury it and suppress it. And so because you buried it earlier on and you had to suppress it, maybe because you didn't have permission to have a voice that it will come out. And, and so now it's been so good through marriage to go, Hey, when you said this, I know it wasn't even your intention, but this is what I heard.

felt and but it take you can't say that in a logical moment like you have to get you have to come back online in the frontal prefrontal cortex the one that moderates the right and regulates pain and say now that i reflect this is why i did that you can never have it in the moment you have to take a pause and you can only even have like tools or even language for it through counseling or therapy because because what happens is people have conflicts and they come back and go I'm sorry I'm sorry I overreacted and then we feel a lot of shame for how we reacted and then the whole content of resolution is about the the overreaction and we never get to the root of going I don't know why I overreacted like that like we never get get to the why. We just feel the shame of the what. And my encouragement for people through like these five rules in the book is going like,

no, get to the root and like pull up the root and do it in the safety of loved ones and biblical counseling. And then you're going to have healing you're not going to just like cope with this and band-aid it for the unforeseeable future i mean this this this is actually really hopeless it explains a lot that i'm thinking of you right now trying to process certain maybe um critiques of something i've written about or something i said. And I'm like, wait, well, I didn't say that. You know, like there could be, there could be something that I'm, it doesn't, I might've not said these words. Um, I might not even believe the thing you were hurt by me saying, but there's probably, there could be, could be some deeper, legitimate, um, painful situations that something

I said had resembled, triggered, reflected, sounded like something else that maybe has really caused pain. I mean, I say enough stupid stuff as it is that I can own and need to repent from, but it's just sometimes when things are like, you said the quotes, even I'm like, where did I say that? I didn't say that. I know. Well, and it's interesting. I think that's why we're so trigger happy online. And that's why there's so much anger online because you don't even have relationship to buffer and process what was heard or what was said. But it's helpful to first resolve that with the real people in your real life, you know, and then you have a lot more empathy for people

who get angry at you because you realize you're not responsible for their reaction. You're responsible for what you said and how and your intention. And so I've been a lot better to have tougher skin around that. Cause I'm thinking, wow, I'm sorry. I know this isn't even about me at this point. This, there's a lot of pain that you're processing and I get to be the person. Um, I get to be the scapegoat right now. And it's, it's not to be unkind or cavalier or dismissive. It's more to just go, it helps me have compassion for people who really are angry at me or, you know, a lot of us just compassion for people who are very angry online and feel fully justified in their anger. It's like,

that's not going to serve you well as far as healing goes, but it gives you instant relief to get it out of your body. But it's not going to bring healing until you get to the root. This episode is sponsored by World Concern. World Concern is a Christian humanitarian organization that is addressing some of the most significant needs in the world today. For instance, there's been a devastating drought that's hit Somalia. I don't know if you've heard about this, but it's become one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world today. Four relentless years of drought have destroyed the country of Somalia. In 2022

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There's no doubt about that. But I was most impressed with how utterly Christ-centered the school is. So at Biola, students become equipped for a thriving life and career. They'll learn how to articulate their Christian beliefs. And most of all, they'll be prepared to serve as God's instrument in their community and around the world. Now, through June 1st, 2023, you can use the promo code Preston to waive the application fee for any Biola program. Okay, the deadline used to be May 1st. They actually extended it for our audienceola program. Okay. The deadline used to be May 1st. They actually extended it

for our audience to June 1st. So get your application in before June 1st, put in the code, Preston, and get your application fee waived. Some restrictions may apply. Just visit www.biola.edu for more information. So, okay. So one more counseling piece of advice for me on this note um so if i am in that position where i feel like man something i said might have triggered something my my rash my prefrontal cortex is still firing and so i'm like well no here's what i said here's here's why you're actually wrong and you know probably not the best approach or even like an espousal conflict like like pointing out the irrationality of how somebody's responding probably not the best no you and gabe are very similar um in fact at some point i remember just you know sometimes

guys are like who are more um logic like they kind of hang in the logic. It's like you're kind of talking to an Excel spreadsheet. And one thing that Gabe would even say if he was sitting here, when he started to get healing from his own like story of origin, he was able to practice a lot more empathy and not practice it, but like feel it towards me or our kids. And I think both parties have healing. Like we all have healing to do, right? One might be more like visible and overt,

but we all, we marry to our emotional health. Like we literally find someone at the same level of emotional health and that's how we marry. But it's just that one might be more visible. So it's like, oh, you're the problem and you need to be fixed, but I'm, I'm fine. Cause I keep it all inside. The problem is it takes a little longer for those who are stoic or more or more kind of steady to get to their root. But it usually comes out when they're like, I'm not able to meet my partner emotionally. I want to,

but I feel like I don't have the faculty or the tools or the handles to actually be present with them in their pain without trying to fix them or hurry through this or find the logical resolution. And so what Gabe has gone through in his journey with me through us both co-hosting the Rhythms for Life podcast and having counselors on all the time, is I almost became like a healing, emotional journey for both of us. And he now is able to empathize in ways that just wasn't there the first, almost like a couple of decades.

I mean, he would try, but I would say now it's real it's, it's real and it's sincere and that's been really healing. Yeah. So is that your advice to me then when I'm in that moment where I feel like somebody, why might I triggered something legitimate pain, um, is, is to just basically really empathize with the pain they're going through? Is that my, like when you're in the moment, you know? Yeah. Well, it's hard to give what you haven't received. So I would say, I would ask the question, where in your life or your story of origin, were you not given empathy to actually feel right? Um, like where were emotions dismissed

or discarded? Were, were tears dismissed or discarded? Were hurt feelings or just like a need for emotional connection minimized. Unfortunately for a lot of men, you know, fathers don't always have the full ability to nurture because they didn't receive that from fathers. And so it kind of becomes this generational thing and it can go on both sides. It's not to like make a blanket statement, but if you're told like tears means you're feeling sorry for yourself or like, there's no reason to cry about this. Like, you know, I'll give you a reason to cry, right? Whatever those statements were. is if we if if we were not given empathy um just in our developmental adolescence then it's harder to give that empathy and so i would just go back to those places like where was i kind of like just dismissed in my own emotional need and then god would you heal that and feel and fill that so that I can be present for somebody else's emotional needs? And when I say present, it means not trying to fix, not trying to solve, but just being with and holding space and go, tell me more, help me understand, ask lots of

questions. And then when you do that, like you seek to understand, you learn so much. And then you go, wow, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you feel that way. I can see why you would feel that way. And I know that had to have hurt. And that just takes time, a lot of time and practice, but it becomes easier because usually if you can learn that with your own family and your own kids, it starts to just, you feel a grace and then you start to, you're able to extend that to even total strangers that can't stand you. Not perfectly, but better. But that's hard. I mean, that's a good point. It's, it's, that's incredibly hard to do online and stuff. Like, which is why when things blow up on social media, whatever, it's like,

this is probably not going to be resolved through an online disembodied. You don't know them. You don't know, they don't know you. There's such a distance there and almost maintaining that. It's almost like as a way to protect the pain they've gone through. It's like, well, I actually don't want, they might not say that, but I mean, I don't actually want to humanize you. Yeah. I don't think you ever try to begin this at practicing empathy online.

I mean, you can, but my point is, if you can do it with real people, with a pulse and in front of you, then it's going to more naturally just pour out as your kind of demeanor and your natural response. You'll just automatically start to feel that towards people. I'm sorry you feel that way. I mean, I've done a few things online where I've raised something and it, it created a response, positive or negative, really positive or really

negative. And, and I'm like, I totally respect you on following. If you need to do that, go do that. You know, um, you get to decide what you put in your ears and I'm sorry that you feel that way, but, um, you must have a good reason for that. So, and then it just like, let it go. And it does help us not getting so caught up in like making everyone happy. That's not our job. Our job is to be sincere, to be honest, to be loving and to let people just decide what they want. No, I've told you with online stuff. I've, I've, I've been years ago. I made it a policy. I just don't, I'm not going to invest a lot of emotional energy with that. It's just not,

it's not helpful for anybody really, you know? So I use it to say, here's an article, here's whatever, here's a cool quote, here's something that, you know, a thing that came to my head that might make people some mad, whatever, I don't know, figure it out. I don't know. I kind of play with it a little bit. Yeah. I don't, uh, I used to though. I mean, it's so easy to get sucked into this kind of back and forth, back and forth. And especially when you feel like you're being wrongly interpreted or whatever, it's like, especially if I don't know why I'm like, I can't, I don't want to let it go. I'm like, no, like this is what I meant. This is what, you know, and I just, but that

forum is just terrible for that. So I, for me, me i'm more i think you're so good at empathy and you tackle such controversial topics that you're gonna you're gonna always get a lot of perspectives and yeah i think you do hold that well in my opinion as your friend yeah i've had i've had it's well it's not natural yes have like, like you and gay. I mean, I've had to cultivate it, but I, you know, here I am. I'm, I'm a straight guy, evangelical white guy talking about traditional marriage. I, I, I probably embody and maybe even look like so many people very much like me who caused a lot of genuine pain in the lives of lgbtq people so i you know um when when there's something i say no matter how kind it is there's just i i get i totally get it that yeah um i'm and that's on the show that's a lot of that is on the church and just doing going about this conversation so poorly that we have, we're kind of complicit in some of that, you know, a lot of that.

So I, you know, so I, I do, I, I, over the years I've had to hearing stories and stories and stories. I'm like, oh my word, that's what you went through. Your pastor told you that. Oh my, that happened. Like, oh my gosh. And then here I come along, let's go to Romans one or whatever. And everybody's like freaking out.

Like I get it. That's why it's, I think going about it in a more careful nuance ways. So important. Not because we're ashamed of the truth or whatever, but people have gone about it so poorly in the past. Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir.

You, I mean, I've learned so much. Yeah, no, I know. And I think if we could just hold that space for one another more and just go,

we're not, we're not going to probably land in the same place on this but i i love you and uh and it doesn't even need to be landing in the same place on our view of marriage or sexuality or even gender but it kind of still goes to i want to walk with you if you want that, you know, knowing that I might not always, I'm not going to say what you want me to say, but I will hold space and ask you like, anytime you need something, I'm here. And I've walked through that, not around sexuality, gender, but I've walked through that about like someone just walking away from the Christian faith and now is walking back 13 years later. And they're like one of my closest friends.

And I just think God has got a lot of grace for this whole journey. He really does. He's very kind. Let's, uh, I want to, uh, turn the corner a little bit. So you write this book, um, uh, Oh, free fall to flies or first on, when did that you write this book, oh, Free Fall of the Flies, your first one. When did that come out? 2013, 10 years ago. Oh my gosh, 10 years ago. And that, I think I remember you hearing you say,

I mean, you weren't sure who's going to read it, whatever. And that, I mean, that book, I think did really well. And all of a sudden now you are the year of Rebecca's in the last 11 years. Apparently. Then you write, I mean, every book you've written since it seems like they just keep doing better and better impacting so many people's

lives. Now you're getting tons of speaking requests. Like you go from, you know, a stay at home mom with three kids in Manhattan with these panic attacks to now in the limelight on the stage. What, what's, how have you processed that am i describing that correctly i don't i mean you know yeah yeah i would just say real quick third 2013 was a unique moment because nobody in the church yet had written publicly about mental health struggle at least from a like a female like empathy again storytelling very raw not like prescriptive. I'm a clinician. And what was unique was in sad was that Matthew Warren, Rick Warren's son, um, had lost his life to suicide two days before my book came out. And then all of a sudden I am asked when my book comes out two days later to write on, um, see it, write for CNN, an article

on mental health called let's stop keeping mental health a secret and write about mental health and faith and mental health in the church. And it was definitely early because I was like, I'm still, I'm still recovering over here. But, um, I think that kind of catalyzed a little bit of a different shift for the church to finally go, okay, we're not going to shame people who are struggling with anxiety or depression as if they have not enough faith or that they have like some sin in their life. There's just, you know, a real brokenness attached to pain, no matter the topic, mental health or anything else, addiction, whatever. There's always pain in the backstory of this. And so I was really grateful for that

kind of being the catalytic moment. And I think that's why that book did so well. It was just, it was a front runner and now it's very normalized, right? Prevention care is very normalized now, 13 years later. But back in the day, there wasn't a lot of tools or a roadmap for how to navigate even a healing journey that involves God and also involves neuroscience. And honestly, neuroplasticity has only been the last 20 years that we realized the brain is malleable and it can actually heal from trauma, which now in the book, I put so much about how it overlaps with healing the mind and renewing the mind. Like there's all the things,

all the biblical principles are in neuroscience. He's the master scientist. So it's really cool for me to go like, science and faith absolutely collide in this conversation. And that's been my heart and my goal behind it all is that we wouldn't separate one from the other, that our faith and the neuroscience would all come together. How have you handled, that's really helpful, actually, really helpful. Yeah.

And I've done some stuff on neuroscience more from the gender conversation and it's, gosh, it's fascinating how exciting and new like this area is and how we keep making more and more discoveries as technology advances and so on. How have you handled, I mean, for lack of better terms, I don't say fame, but like maybe the attention, the, um, a lot of people wanted a piece of your time, even like sometimes even the, an overwhelming positive slew of responses. You saved my life, saved my marriage. That that's, that, that is an emotional, an exciting one but also a a weight that can be sometimes heavy um and obviously critique and attention and how do you handle that are you are you an introvert you're more introverted right or now i am 100 it's funny i feel like i've gotten

more and you do historically like research says we get more introverted as we age so wherever you start you're gonna slow down a little and part of it's just sensory overload let's be honest i'm like can we turn the lights down and the music down there's a lot coming at us on our screens we were meant to carry the burdens of the world every day on our phone so i think our bodies are all like needing a little time out in general and that that makes us more introverted. But I would say those first seven years, it was just up into the right nonstop. And then I think there was some price I paid. I was definitely on Instagram all the time up until about 2019, 18. And it cost my relationship with my kids again, like attunement. I didn't give them, I wanted to document what we were doing more than be present in what we were doing. And I really was in my mind serving my audience

and my readers and always on DMs that I would have people on suicide watch DM me, me in the middle of the night and wanting prayer. And I would just kind of just be all in, or I'd go on the road and teach and then pray over people who just, again, even just two months ago, a woman said, I tried to take my life yesterday. And it just, it just feels like people who are broken kind of are desperate. And I have again, high impact now. I'm like, I feel with them, but there is still, obviously there's gotta be people in their midst that are present in their lives that walk with them. And so having like kind of created better boundaries for my own marriage and family and my kids in these last three years, I got offline. I wasn't on my phone as much. And partly because I don't think you can write well if you

haven't lived. And I didn't want all my stories to be about like social media and hotel rooms or airplanes or airports. I was like, and 2020 helped with that. There's a lot of stories from just redeeming that. So I would say I used to care what people I kind of went all in like I did. It's like as raw as free fall to fly. It's as biblically sound as you are free. And it's as researched as rhythms of renewal. And I kind of felt like the Lord say, write like it's your last or just, just do it unto me.

Just do it unto me and release the outcome. And so I just hold it differently. I worked harder than I've ever worked on a book by far, but I also feel really at peace whether people like it or like whether, you know, I feel really at peace with like, I did this unto Christ and I hope it blesses people. And the early reactions from people are like, I read the first chapter and cried in my car and I just ordered 10 copies or whatever.

So I pray that it does encourage and bless and give people the handles they need. Um, because fame is tricky. And thankfully I don't have that idol. Um, just kind of, I used to, I used to, but I've, I just think I've just repented of that and just said, I kind of, I used to, I used to, but I've, I just think I've just repented of that. I just said, I don't, this is not about me. Never has been. I mean, he kind of made it happen quickly and it could be done quickly. So it's all about being faithful.

Who's in front of you. I just talked to a friend about this. He was asking me, you know, how, you know, how do you, you know, deal with, you know, having some kind of platform and stuff. And I said, honestly, like if you go back 10, 15 years when I didn't have any, I didn't have any books. I was like, you know, I was like, Oh, I was hungering for it. You know, I wanted to be the guy on the stage of this, that, and that. And now it's like, how about the opposite? Like I'm almost subtly secretly hoping to get, you know, canceled because I'm like, I would go back

to like in college when i had a pool cleaning job where i go around between seminary classes and drive around la and the beautiful weather and my flip-flops and i would clean pools and stuff and i would like try to compete with myself like how can how many can i knock out in an hour you know and i was drinking big gulp seed and sunflower seeds living the best best life. And I think, oh my word, I would literally love to do that job again. I couldn't afford raising a family on it. Or even doing construction and stuff.

And just where people that just can go do something physical outside and they clock in, clock out. And they're not... Once they clock out, they come home. And for us like our phones our emails and everything our work is always a second away from us you know yeah i kind of miss the days when work was a separate thing out there and you just kind of leave it there you

know so well you well this is to encourage you you can bring those rhythms back in because i had to do that when i wrote rhythms of renewal, because I was, we started gardening. I make sourdough now I get them. I spent, I spent an hour on my porch this morning, literally doing nothing, watching the birds wake up. So just so you know, it's, it's possible. I just have to be more like more intentional about carving that time. And what it does is it replenishes me so much. I'm more joyful in the work. I spend half the amount of time on my screen.

I was like down to an hour a day, like on, on my screen. But then I started listening to more podcasts while I walk. So it was two hours a day, whatever. And just trying to really, because I really do believe like, if we can get off our screens and still do the work we do, the work will be better and more vibrant and more poignant. And then we'll be able to do it for longer. And I would like the long game.

I'm, I'm in my upper forties. I want to still be doing this for the next three decades that the Lord has that. And I don't want to, I don't want to burn out. I don't want to numb out. And the phone only tempts me to do that. So it's my two cents on that. Gabe is still like treating our pool sometimes unsuccessfully, but it's like, he's like, it feels good to just get outside and we live on land. So it kind of forces us, we have chickens, we have gardens. So it forces us to

pull weeds and, you know, do that. And I feel like coming out of New York city, it's, it's been a nice counterbalance. We, my wife and I, one of our favorite things is on a weekend to spend all afternoon in the, in the yard, just doing yard work. And she's always having a tree that needs to be trimmed. So I'll be, you know, climbing up a rickety ladder with a chainsaw, which is.

And you guys are like adventurers. You're always hiking somewhere. Yeah, we like to get out. That's so good for the soul. I love that. Yeah, yeah. Real quick before... So your latest book just came out, Building a Resilient Life.

Can you just... I would love just a snapshot on, I guess, the book, but really the topic of resilience as a whole. First of all, I love, love, love that word. And I think it's the concept. I think it is kind of lost on our society the deeper we get into it. And I read a book, Anti-Fragile, or part of a book by Talib. Have you heard of this?

Yeah, I've heard of it okay it's not an easy it's for some reason he's the guy's so brilliant not seeing talib it's just hard to kind of follow but the concept you can get but it's other people like jonathan height and others who have kind of really and a lot of psychologists have just talked about kind of the danger of over protection or what height calls, you know, our culture of safety ism, you know, where everything is about safety, safety, safety, which, yeah, we don't, we should wear bike helmets. That's been shown to like cause death when you have bike accidents, whatever. But there's other things that we, I think having an overly safe, overly protective

mindset kind of does has a reverse effect. It's making us less resilient. I don't even know if that's what you're talking about, but with this whole idea of resilience, I've kind of been into more recently, especially as a parent and how to disciple people well. So anyway, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, obviously I have a ton of thoughts on this. 200 and some pages of thoughts. this. And 200 and some pages of thoughts. Yeah, thoughts. And you can go read it anytime. But the kind of the root of resilience, I heard so much, you know, I researched every

neuroscientist I can find on what is their version of resilience. And I finally went to the original root of the word, Latin word, resilie, which was in the 1600s in the Oxford English dictionary, which means to recoil or rebound, which is why we get this phrase bounce back. But then in the 1800s, there was a new definition, a second definition added to the Oxford dictionary. And it was to resume an original position after a season of compression or bending. And it was more about elasticity. after a season of compression or bending. And it was more about elasticity.

And I thought, okay, this really makes sense because we've all been compressed often without an end date. Like we've kind of been squeezed and squished and kind of almost like pressed and crushed. And it's based, the book is based on second Corinthians four, eight. We're pressed and crushed, but we're not destroyed. We're perplexed, but we're not given to despair. Why? Because we carry light shining in our hearts.

And that is why we never give up. So I wanted to go, okay, what is, what does a holy resilience look like? That's modeled by Christ who bends low, who weathers a storm, who takes death so that we can have life. And this idea of the Oak and the reed and the Aesop's fable, where the Oak says, the Oak tree just says to the little reed, you know, don't you wish you were like me. And I talk about this in the book, like I'm so tall and strong. And when the storms come, I'm still firm and standing. And the reed's like, I'm actually OK with how I am. I think I might be happier.

And then, of course, the hurricane blows through and the oak is overturned and the root the root balls on the ground and the reed bends low towards the wind and the storm. And then, um, when it's over, start stretching tall again. And I think there's like two ways we look at resilience. There's this like stalwart, really strong, overpowering, like we'll never bend. And then there's this other way of looking at resilience going, you know what? Jesus says that there in this world, there will be trouble. Like you're, you know, count it joy when you face trials, there's this, just like, um, suffering produces character and character produces hope. And, and all this, you know, the heroes of the faith were shipwrecked and, you know,

in prison, then we get the ep were shipwrecked and, you know, in prison, then we get the epistle of joy from prison and Philippians. And, and I'm thinking, okay, Jesus doesn't actually, like, God doesn't promise us easy. And in, and yet, what he does promise is that he gives us the legs to stand up again. And he does promise that he never leaves us. And so I just tell a lot of stories of kind of what that looks like in my own life and what I've learned through study. We just have so much trauma. Like we're in a broken place.

We live in a broken place temporarily. We kind of hold this space between the now and the not yet. And life is hard. It is. Let's just be honest about it. Let's not just keep saying we're fine in hopes that we will ourselves to being fine because whatever's not fine is just, you know, taking root in our bodies. Because not only did we have the trauma of a global lockdown, mental health declined for the first time. And where every other war prior to this, I studied mental health increased because people had agency.

They had a shared goal, a common enemy. They had a plan of attack. They kind of knew what to do and they took responsibility. But we were told to go home and sit on our hands and wait and just be wait for, and the terms kept changing. And so we really lost all agency. And we were just told to sit quiet and be still and wait. And we're not made, we're not people made by God to sit idle while like the house is on fire. Like we're actually really made to be strong and brave and have a meaning and purpose attached to that kind of suffering. So all that to say, the book then outlines five rules that I walk the reader through

to build a resilient life. Because I think if we could just come back to the primary ways of what it means to be human historically in our healing of trauma, that we can build resilient lives. Because resilience isn't like a one and done. Like I'm born resilient and you're not. Resilience is something that is on a continuum based on how you are reacting to that particular season of adversity. And so you could have like, I had really hard trials in my 20s, but I had the right tools in place. I was doing some of these rules without even knowing it.

And so I had resilience then. But now in my 40s, I'm not doing as well with adversity because I'm not practicing those rules anymore. And so it's just getting them back to the basics, the building blocks of what it looks like to live and demonstrate resiliency as a life and developing the character of resilience, not just the application, but the character comes over doing all these things over and over for our lifetime, even when adversity doesn't lift. Do you have like of the five, one that really stands out as the most important or top two that you feel like would be essential for people to build into their life? Yeah.

So it would just always begin with naming the pain. Okay. And then as a result of doing that, you then are allowed to shift the narrative, which is the second rule, because you invite other people in to process that with you. The third is embrace adversity. You now have confidence to go, okay, anxiety is a friend. It's not an enemy. Adversity is not an enemy. It actually is made to grow you. And the third is embrace adversity. You now have confidence to go, okay, anxiety is a friend. It's not an enemy. Adversity is not an enemy. It actually is made to grow you. And then the fourth is to make meaning, which means like you now have your pain becomes purpose

if you let it, you now get to help people struggling with the same thing. You, you know, God, God just uses all of our adversity for good. And then the fifth one would be endure together. And that's just this idea that we can't build resilient lives alone. And then all of a sudden, when you're, you know, what's formed in me, it begins to be formed in our family, and then our friendships and our community. And it's really all about helping create flourishing, resilient communities, ultimately, so that we can live in resilience together and lean on one another. And it sounds like they build up each other. Like if you don't first name the pain, the other steps aren't going to work. Yeah. And that's kind of how I do it. I'm

such a linear, like let's practically take one step at a time. If you can't name what's wrong, you're certainly not going to start modeling resilience for a whole community. Like we got to start at the starting point. Well, thank you, Rebecca, for being on the show. The book again, your most recent one is Building a Resilient Life, How Adversity Awakens Strength, Hope, and Meaning. Really cool cover, by the way. This is, did you have something to do with this? Oh yeah, all of it.

I'm big on aesthetic and design. So yeah, I can tell this is awesome. Yeah, sweet. Well, thanks for being on the podcast. Many blessings to you and your wonderful family. And I'm sure we will cross paths, hopefully, sooner than later. I hope so, too. Thank you so much, Preston.

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