Ever find yourself caught in the relentless cycle of life, longing for a moment to simply catch your breath? Let me promise you, this episode of Finding Faith and Losing Sleep podcast is your lighthouse in the storm, guiding you towards peace and tranquility. Diving headfirst into the life-altering wisdom of John Mark Comer's book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry", we explore how the rapid pace of modern living is hindering our spiritual growth and well-being. Drawing inspiration from the biblical story of James and John, we discuss the profound impact of slowing down, and how it allows us to cherish what truly matters - nurturing our relationship with God and helping others do the same.
Ever wondered how the ticking clock controls productivity and rest in our Christian walk? Well, we've got some fascinating insights for you! We navigate the tricky terrain of schedules and deadlines, and how they often lead to more harm than good. Reflecting on our own experiences with guilt around taking breaks and the restorative power of vacations, we encourage finding that sweet spot between productivity and rest. Equally captivating is our conversation around the community-building effect of power outages, and the importance of rest - physical, mental, and spiritual.
As we get closer to the holiday season, we thought it would be fitting to talk about finding peace amidst the hustle and bustle. From personal techniques like solitude and prayer to sharing the true essence of Christmas, we've got a thought-provoking discussion lined up for you. So, tune in, slow down, and join us on this enlightening journey of faith and life. This isn't just another podcast episode—it's an invitation to a calmer, more fulfilled life.
Email: findingfaith.losingsleep@gmail.com
Twitter: @FindingFaithPod
Ever find yourself caught in the relentless cycle of life, longing for a moment to simply catch your breath? Let me promise you, this episode of Finding Faith and Losing Sleep podcast is your lighthouse in the storm, guiding you towards peace and tranquility. Diving headfirst into the life-altering wisdom of John Mark Comer's book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry", we explore how the rapid pace of modern living is hindering our spiritual growth and well-being. Drawing inspiration from the biblical story of James and John, we discuss the profound impact of slowing down, and how it allows us to cherish what truly matters - nurturing our relationship with God and helping others do the same.
Ever wondered how the ticking clock controls productivity and rest in our Christian walk? Well, we've got some fascinating insights for you! We navigate the tricky terrain of schedules and deadlines, and how they often lead to more harm than good. Reflecting on our own experiences with guilt around taking breaks and the restorative power of vacations, we encourage finding that sweet spot between productivity and rest. Equally captivating is our conversation around the community-building effect of power outages, and the importance of rest - physical, mental, and spiritual.
As we get closer to the holiday season, we thought it would be fitting to talk about finding peace amidst the hustle and bustle. From personal techniques like solitude and prayer to sharing the true essence of Christmas, we've got a thought-provoking discussion lined up for you. So, tune in, slow down, and join us on this enlightening journey of faith and life. This isn't just another podcast episode—it's an invitation to a calmer, more fulfilled life.
Email: findingfaith.losingsleep@gmail.com
Twitter: @FindingFaithPod
It's time to wake up and pray up here on the Finding Faith and Cruisin' Sleep podcast, the traditional podcast made by untraditional people for, hopefully, a traditional audience looking and seeking to grow closer to God and just to solve life's problems. I think I synopsed it. Is that even a word? Pierre, you are a producer. Is that an official word?
Speaker 2:I don't believe that's a word, but you made it.
Speaker 1:You know what I've missed? Yeah, well, I try. I'm thinking about coming up with my own dictionary one day. If you write the dictionary, basically you're writing everything, not only what words mean all the time, but you're just setting trends left and right. Dictionary is a live and active book, just like the Bible is. You can call it Westisms Westisms. I like that. Hey, michelle, that is Michelle. That is Michelle and Pierre. They are a married couple on this podcast and they have joined me for some reason. I'm not quite sure why, but they are. And look, they are in a hurry. I am in a hurry today and it's kind of fitting because, pierre, you texted me and you said, hey, we need to do a lesson on hurrying, because I'm reading a book about hurrying and I guess that's what we need to do with this episode. Pierre, we could talk about how to slow down during this holiday season a little bit as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. We're in a hurry, you're in a hurry, and I'm under the weather too. I'm fighting strep right now but it felt important to get an episode out, and the book I was reading is called the Roofless Elimination of Hurry and it's by John Mark Hummer, and it really just dives into a lot of things in life that have progressed from, obviously, not just the biblical times, but even from like the 60s 70s up until now, and how we really just need to think back to some of those simpler times and slow down to really enjoy life.
Speaker 1:Now, michelle, I always picture Pierre as being a slow, methodical man anyway, kind of the way he thinks, and him and I do a different podcast as well, talking about sports, and he's the one who always calms me down about things. And when I talk to you, michelle, I have perceived that you are more the reactionary person in that relationship, more like I am as well, just kind of reactionary here. Am I perceiving that right? I think you're right, wes, yes, okay.
Speaker 1:All right, I know I'm right. I thought I was right Two hours ago. Whatever I was thinking about it, I did. And, michelle, whatever I think about people that hurried in the Bible and wanted quick results about things I think about, well, I guess it was James and John, the sons of Zebedee, if I'm not mistaken. That's who it was over in the book of Luke, whenever people rejected Jesus' teachings and they're like hey, jesus, you want us to cast down fire? Ask God to cast down fire from heaven on them and strike them dead, and Jesus was like no, slow down. I don't think he quite understand the point of why I'm here. That's right.
Speaker 2:The sons of thunder, I believe, is what Jesus refers to them as, and that was the case, if I remember correctly. They were in Samaria around that time and had some pushback from that culture who didn't like them, and that was the response let's strike them down. And Jesus was like no, I came from them as well. And again, like you just mentioned, don't be quick to judge not just those people, but what I came here for.
Speaker 1:And it's easy to get in a hurry this holiday season, and I think that it is because we have so many different things on our plate, so many things to do, and maybe we forget our purpose on why we're doing those things as well.
Speaker 1:This is going to be an episode to try and encourage you to do things, to just not sit back and watch holiday movies all the time, but at the same time, we're going to try and persuade people to not only slow down during the holidays, but slow down in life in general, to be able to take time to grow closer to God, because our purpose here in this life is to grow closer to God, to form a relationship with Him, but also to pass that along to some other people that maybe don't have that same kind of ability or opportunity or know-how on how to start a relationship with God or even just to become better people and solve their own problems. I guess that's what we're here to do, I think, as Christians, pierre and Michelle, is to just help people along the way, just like we've been helped and by all means, we're not perfect at all, so we still need a lot of helping.
Speaker 3:Boy, isn't that the truth? I know I do, and I think you hit the nail on the proverbial head. Like we all have a tendency to try to rush through everything in life and I think we have for lack of a better term over simplified things, with all the technology and such that we have that it's always instant gratification, we want everything right now, and then we're on to the next thing and on to the next thing, and it makes that slowing down almost scary, almost fearful, like if I do that, something else is going to happen, and I think it's just always staying busy and hurried and I don't think it's healthy for us to be completely honest with you.
Speaker 2:So I know Pierre's probably got something to say about that too, I mean it's not and I know like so if in the book itself it just talks about hurry being the great enemy of spiritual life. And when you think about that, like, when you think of enemies I often think of like villains, you know obviously from like superhero movies and the villain comes to basically is trying to ruin, ruin everything, ruin the city, ruin marriages, ruin life. And when you look at the Bible it says you know, the devil comes to still kill and destroy. He wants to ruin you and a reason in a way to get, I think, to that is through distraction and through hurry. If you can have someone hurrying along in life to where they're missing, you know the things they should be taking in, the things they should be enjoying, maybe family members, relationships. If they're hurrying through all of that, then you're not, you know, really building, you know, relationship here on earth, and definitely not spiritually for those we should be recruiting for the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, and people don't really realize how much hurrying doesn't allow people to transform. And that's what we are to do. We're supposed to have a transformation in this life from you know, worldly creatures and everything to more of a spiritual mindset, and sometimes we're so fastly just going after information to be able to gain knowledge. I think a lot of times we don't slow down long enough after we've gathered a bunch of information to allow the information to transform us into becoming a different creature. I think about a tree or something that gains nutrients.
Speaker 1:And sometimes you know, if you ever take one of those little seeds and put it in the ground and you watch it, you're like, all right, come on, come on. You know after a week or two weeks even you do your due diligence, you put it out in the sun, you water it a little bit and the next thing you know after a month or I don't know how long a seed takes to grow. I'm not a scientist, okay, I'm not a horticulturalist. I might be making up words again, but okay, so, but you know you can't have that kind of transformation from a seed into something else overnight. And sometimes as Christians, especially new Christians, people want this transformation bam right overnight, especially people that I've worked with in the past who may be chemically dependent on things and stuff. Yes, you start out on fire, but you got to slow the pace a little bit at some point because you can burn out really fast. You know, you just burn out and then you don't have that long sustainable fuel that you need to keep going in that Christian walk.
Speaker 2:That's true and I know so. I know you're just kind of giving an example of a timeframe, but you said a month. So even with that, what is a month? Four weeks, Four weeks, 30 days? Okay, what's what's the day?
Speaker 3:24 hours 24 hours.
Speaker 2:So where does this all come from? It's a start and the reason I want to go there is so back in the days, you know, you look at, you know labor and work Folks with what work, basically from sun up to sundown. When the sun went down, that was there. That was their sign to stop. You know there's no light. You know before electricity, that you have to end. You have a stopping point. When time got involved whenever that was it was it was initially created to kind of help with productivity of those basically working sun up to sundown, because we know, throughout different seasons the sun's up for longer but time kind of did the exact opposite to where it kind of put. I know the word I'm looking for, but what basically?
Speaker 1:I can make a word up if you need me to.
Speaker 2:I can't. But what happened is so people got the sense of time and they became kind of less productive. Because you're you're now worried about how long you have, so, without thinking about the time itself, if you're not, if you don't have a number in mind, if you're just doing things when you know the sun comes up, the sun comes down, it's not the, it's not the same, whereas if you have seven o'clock, that's your time frame. You're now in a hurry to make it to seven o'clock. Something starts at seven o'clock and someone says you show it when you want. That's one thing. If someone says, hey, it starts at seven, you're now keeping track of that and you're trying to crunch as much time or things as you can into that time frame, into that window, and I think that even goes back into the Bible.
Speaker 2:You often see like people rising up early to pray and you're like there's no way I could do that. I can't rise up that early. You know I'm I got a. I struggle getting up at seven o'clock in the morning. But if you think about a people that didn't have time, that were going to bed because the daylight was gone, you know right now in the winter they're going to bed five, six o'clock. You're waking up, you know, two, three in the morning it doesn't feel like two or three in the morning because you're well rested, because you went to bed earlier, whereas we don't do that because there's so many different things now that have been created that are a distraction, that even once the sun goes down, you know we're finding something else to do, something to watch, and the one thing that you really you really pick up on it. So what do people tend to say when you kind of ask them how they're doing? I'm fine, fine, and they're what.
Speaker 3:Busy.
Speaker 2:Just busy. People are always busy, no matter what time of year, what's going on. People are always busy and I think what takes place is they're in such a hurry to fill the void of having downtime. People don't want to rest, they want to continue to stay busy. If you get time freed up, a lot of people don't take a nap. They figure out something around the house they got to clean up, or going to get dinner ready, or I'm going to go shop or pick this up real fast. They're wanting to stay busy and I think, again, that's going to be the root of evil, because you're not finding some of those relaxation, sabbath silence and solitude type of things that you need to get spiritually involved in your Bible and your prayers, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Boy, I can tell you I'm guilty of that one. That's why I actually enjoy vacation, because I can actually feel like I can rest, especially if we go on a cruise, because I don't have to feel guilty if I sit down. Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of nights that I sit on the couch and we watch something on television, but in my head I feel guilty for sitting there, that I have all this to do and I should be doing this and I should be doing that, and I never. Actually my brain doesn't ever really shut off. And here I'll be the first to tell you that if we go to bed and I'm looking at the ceiling, he's trying to go to bed, he's trying to go to sleep quick.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to go to sleep Because he knows there's a conversation about the start. I've got to go to bed.
Speaker 3:Because, all of a sudden, my brain has thought of everything. We need to talk about it.
Speaker 1:We had a tornado that came through our area, I don't know five, six, 10 years ago or something like that. It was just a while ago, but it destroyed power lines in our area and there were just sections of the city that had absolutely no electricity. As a bread man, I wake up early anyway and I never have a tough time going to sleep, but there's always something to do and there always has to be a place to be gone to with the kids or just a lot of stuff. But when the electricity was out, it was out in some areas here for like three weeks or so, I think is what the estimation was. It was out of my house and in my neighborhood, in area or section of the grid. However, it is for three days. Three days we didn't have any electricity. I'll tell you when it gets dark. It gets dark Whenever they're on street lights, it's dark.
Speaker 1:I mean it's time for babies to be made and stuff like that, but I mean it is dark. Well, I'm just saying do you think back to what you were saying about how people went through time and everything like that? They didn't have anything to do after dark. That's probably why they had a bigger family.
Speaker 3:They had so many kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just something that's pointing out the obvious, excuse me, all right, there's a family show here on the Finding Faith and Losing Sleep podcast. I don't know what that'll make. Keep you awake at night. It's real talk. But anyway, when it turned dark, it was dark and you had no other option but to go to bed. It was time to go to bed because you couldn't do anything else, you couldn't move around, you couldn't put your see your hand in front of your face, okay. So it was dark and, like you said, pierre, when it was time to get up, everybody was getting up at the same time. The bread man did. It was funny to see it, because usually the bread man gets up a lot earlier than everybody else, but everybody got up at the same time.
Speaker 1:The bread man did because they had stuff to do and you felt the time crunch because it was getting dark I don't know about six o'clock, maybe back then during that timeframe and so the sun would come up around six. So you had 12 hours to get done what you needed to get done, and then you had 12 hours to do nothing, and that's just how it was, and you felt the pinch, I guess of getting everything done in 12 hours, and when you saw the sun setting or about to set, you're like, oh boy, I gotta get everything ready just to even go to bed. Yeah, I can't, I gotta lock the door. I gotta make sure the door's locked. I gotta make sure this is done before I go to bed, because I'm not gonna be able to do it once darkness hits and because you didn't have any light or anything to do. So that was a good example, pierre.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's true, that's the example, and I think you had a good point to kind of modernize. It was just losing power or electricity. In these days where you're just kind of figuring out, if you don't have candles or flashlights, you're, I mean, what does it ever do? You know, your phones, if it's not charged, your TVs aren't gonna work. You're basically just in the dark and you gotta figure it out. And usually figure it out, you're waking up after you figured out nothing because it's pitch black. So, but again, I mean, yeah, I think how much that helps you. The rest, though, yeah, when you have no choice but to kind of shut down because everything else is shut down, what that does for not just you physically but also spiritually.
Speaker 1:Well, I was gonna say that and I'm gonna butt in now, but I was gonna say one of the other unique things too in the neighborhood was that everybody was kind of stayed here and people didn't have electricity. So all of a sudden it was like hey, what do you need? Can I help you? You know, with my neighbors right, maybe some even neighbors that I've never talked to or didn't have a great relationship, close relationship with hey, what do you guys need, need anything? You need anything while I'm out I gotta go to work today. You need anything while I'm out. And all of a sudden we were starting to get things for each other, or we were looking out for each other, and I think a hurried life decreases maybe our capacity to love others because we don't take time to understand their needs. Maybe a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, you don't take time for a lot Like. One of the biggest factors is to listen and if you're in a hurry it's really hard to listen. I struggle with that at times myself. If I'm like in a hurry to get somewhere or do something, my patience to listen is not there. If I'm not in a hurry, my patience may not be there either, but it just magnifies.
Speaker 2:I noticed it a lot like on the road these days just with like driving, interstate highways, et cetera. So folks already go over the speed limit, which is one thing. But to go over the speed limit, in addition to those going over the speed limit, like what are you in such a hurry to get to? Like, how many emergencies do you think are truly happening on the interstate? Or if I'm going 60 and a 50 and you're like you're in a hurry, you're flying by me. That's the norm. If you're on the highway right now, you can't even go 15 miles an hour over without people still flying by you and getting impatient and hocking the horns. Like what are you in such a hurry to get to or to get from that? You're driving like a maniac.
Speaker 3:Well, and what I was gonna say you kind of touched on, wes was as much as I didn't love COVID and the shutdown and all of that having to isolate and those things, the beauty in that was there was more time for family, there was more time to spend in your Bible and to really cultivate that relationship with God and to care for others, like if somebody had a really bad case of COVID, like my parents when I was sick, my parents when I had COVID, my parents brought things over. They bring food or groceries. Some people in our life group brought things and vice versa, like if somebody came down with it. We were dropping things off, checking on people and I think as much as it was isolating and it did hurt things, it also it depends on how you look at it it also helped in those respects.
Speaker 1:I think I can understand that whenever you don't get to intermingle with other people because you're just in such a hurry you're not gonna be able to listen to other people's injustices. You know, like, what they've gone through in their life and maybe how life has kind of hurt them a little bit and how you think back to segregation and all that. Maybe you would never understand that if you never took time to be able to talk to people about that. So it's gonna actually increase, I think, narrow-mindedness. And what legalism? Legalism would be another word for that, I think so, so for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's tough, obviously, but like so, when you're in a hurry, what's your solution, wes? What do you do to kind of get back on track when you're in a hurry? You got any techniques or things to help ground you?
Speaker 1:Look, I work hard and I wake up early. It doesn't take me long to unwind and to get into a relaxed state. All right, so and I don't feel really guilty about it either, it's just me. I mean, I know there's things to do, but there's always tomorrow as well. That may be my southern boy coming out, emmie. You know, I'll just get to it tomorrow. It'll still be there. That old gutter will still be hanging up there tomorrow. I can patch it up tomorrow. You know stuff like that. Maybe that's what it is. But one of my techniques is really, you know, I like to try and find a secluded place. I like to be alone. I like to take time and be with God whenever I feel like I am too busy or too hurried. You know, you just even if it's just me going into the closet for a little while and sitting down in there and just taking a time to breathe and meditate and relax a little bit and pray to God, just for all the things that's been going through my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's part of the resolution when it comes to slowing down and it's kind of in the silence and solitude portion of the book. But it talks about how Jesus often you know even a monk, the disciples following him he would often take his time to just go away and just him and God, just pray, even God, like the wilderness, for example, for 40 days. You know that was him going away to get right and get prepared, you know, for his own calling, his own task. And if we're not doing that, you know what makes us think we're better than Jesus. If he had to go the solitude and find his own peace as the Savior and Messiah, what do you think us mirror? You know humans that aren't that you know need to do in order to find our own peace and find our own connection to God.
Speaker 1:True, no, definitely a great example of that, for is what he, what he did all the time, and that's something that we can definitely learn from. In this holiday season, it is easy, pierre and Michelle, to get distracted from our real purpose, to getting a hurry enough to not understand what our you know, some of our goals may be in life. So, you know we said this a couple of months ago, I think to start thinking about candlelight services at church, start praying for people that you would want to invite to that, because it is a special time and you know, we talked about that, and it's so cool to be able to see Pierre in that a Timeline that we are living in right now, with the constraints of the calendar and the constraints of the day, how our calendar has set aside time to recognize Christmas and, as Christians, we recognize Christmas as being that day that Jesus was born, even though it probably wasn't his natural birthday. We understand that, but it still recognizes his birthday there and is a the day that he was born, and it's so cool to be able to see that on the calendar. And how, in my world, in my Little feeble mind, I see that as a way that God has set aside that time for us to be able to concentrate on God. But it also opens up a door of opportunity to be able to discuss that with other people, and I think that we need to take advantage of that door Already being open for us, because we didn't open that door. We're living in a calendar where the door is already open for us, and so to me, I think that God has already opened that door of opportunity for us. Now we just have to be bold enough to walk through there.
Speaker 1:And I do believe that if you Think about the things that you've already known and you go into that moment and you start talking to somebody, that God will give you the right words to be able to say and it's not always the right word, sometimes it's just the right attitude to be able to have of loving, of caring. You know, I think there's a statistic out there that talks about most people won't attend church Because most people won't invite them to church. You know and that's that's just how it is how many people would go to church if they did get invited. I Think that statistic is one out of every three or something, maybe even higher than that. I can't remember what that stat is, but nobody will come Unless they're invited, and so that's something that we can slow down long enough to be able to do. I think it's a cool thing, and the Candlelight service is a great way to make that introduction for people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you said, that's that's coming up and Christmas is a good reminder of that, and it's it's often frustrating at least for myself to To know how many times I've just personally been too caught up on gifts and, you know, like presents and that kind of the commercialized Christmas that that we kind of have in the world today and not really, at least early on in my life, understanding the, the real meaning behind Christmas, no, which, if I enter it seem for like Like those that are non-believers, I'm kind of curious. You know how they go about celebrating Christmas. Are they just worried about the commercialized stuff or do they realize? You know you're, you're taking the day off because you know our, the birth of our senior, but it's a good reminder. You get the music, you get the lights and it seems more often than not that people just become more, more pleasant, more joyful. The spirit of it. You know it's the most wonderful time of the year, you know, as a song, for a reason, and I think you do.
Speaker 2:You see, like changed hearts. Yeah, I know they're like the Grinch, the cartoon, or you know he's, he hates it, he's still in everything and his heart grows big, and I think that's a lot of people like this time of year. You know their, their hearts just grow bigger, they become more giving and sharing, whether it be, you know, salvation army, or donate in the toys for tots, things on those lines To just be more given and caring, which is great. But also do that and you know, in remembrance again of what Christmas is all about and you know why we're celebrating. And some people don't know that, like some people are, like young Pierre or you don't realize it and, like you stated, inviting them to church around this time of year Is a good time frame to really invite them so they can kind of come to that realization of what we're actually celebrating on that day and being cognizant of.
Speaker 3:Being cognizant of this is a season two of an increased suicide rate, like for you know people who this is a depressing time for them and it makes them sad, and so, if Just to be cognizant of that and keep your eye out and, you know, let people know that they're loved and cared for and invite them so that they have hope, and I think it's really important to keep that in mind too. I'd love to see the spirit and you know how A majority of people really are more kind and you know, just to one another during the season, and it's a beautiful thing and Too bad. It's not all the time like that and but I do think sometimes you you get what you look for. If you expect To see people being rude and nasty, you better believe you're gonna see it. If you are intentional about trying to see the good and looking for the good and things, you will find it. It's just, I think we're just predisposed to See the negativity and it's easy to see and it's easy to find, and you actually have to be intentional about Trying to find the good and everything Really quickly. I mean I even I told Olivia, our daughter, the other day.
Speaker 3:I said listen, I want you to understand something my cancer diagnosis Wasn't answered prayer and she looked at me like Really strangely, and I told her. I said I just want you to understand that there is good from everything. I asked. I prayed hard like God, please teach me how to give things to you. I need to understand it because I just keep picking them back up and thinking I can control it and I, I, I, I, I that I'm not saying that's why I got cancer. Please don't think that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:But God found a way to make good out of that and to answer. And I saw, I had to realize and I had to see that this is an answer to my prayer. Maybe not the way that I hoped it would come along, but me and his he'd been faithful in all of this and I'm doing well, I'm doing great, and you know he has been so faithful and that is 100% him. I am 100% convinced and you will not convince me otherwise. But like we're blessed and I just pray that people are willing to see the good even in bad situations, because it's there. That's my whole point.
Speaker 1:We're running short of time. I'm not trying to hurry anybody, that would be wrong but the little neighborhood church vehicle is getting ready to depart, with neighborhood kids in it. That's what we do, but it's a good time all the time. But I do wanna touch on just a couple of things. Michelle, one thing that you said was being cognizant of things that are going on around you.
Speaker 1:Because of that suicide rate and bad times during the holidays and stuff, people start thinking about those things, missing those people, that they, that the loved ones that they've missed, you know, because they passed away or maybe divorce or maybe, you know, people just get down on themselves this time of year. So if you know that there's those people in your neighborhood or in your life maybe it's a coworker or somebody else to take that time to reach out to them, maybe have them over for dinner close to the holidays and then touch base with them that day during Christmas time, somehow, some way. You know. Just reach out, just be a friend, just be a loved one, just be caring. Think about how many times Jesus did that with those people that were all alone, didn't it felt like they were outsiders, didn't belong. Jesus did that many different times, and I just wanna encourage us to do that Also find ways to get back to bless your life by giving this holiday season.
Speaker 1:I remember my mother and she instilled some good things in me, and one of these things was I should clear out my toys during the holiday season. You know, if I got a toy, I'd have to. If I was gonna get presents, it was time to clear out the old presents, kind of a thing. Right, that's what I had to do at Christmas time, and we would take them down to the orphanage. Now I was a confused young man at that time because I didn't know if she was taking me there to drop me off or take me there to drop off the toy.
Speaker 1:But we would donate that stuff to the local orphanage that was there in the area that I had and that made an impact on me. Even today I think about that. Maybe that is one of the reasons why we fostered whenever we became a married couple and stuff and ended up adopting you. That stuff makes an impact on you and your children. So I know our houses get awfully small really fast because of all the things we bring into it. Maybe it's a good idea to take that stuff and don't just drop it off. If you want to, that's fine. I'm not trying at a Salvation Army where you can't interact with people. But if you got those toys, maybe make the toys get cleaned up, make them look special, wrap them up, take them down there to the orphanage or the foster home care in your area and just give them away and interact with the people that are there. It's scary, it sounds scary, but it's a blessing at the same time.
Speaker 2:Amen, it is, and I mean blessing's in your own house. So we're talking about hurry and, as we wrap up, like, don't take for granted those around you right now. Don't be in so much of a hurry that you miss what's right in front of you because, as you stated, those people pass away, those people move on in life and you gotta enjoy them while they're here. Don't be in a rush to get back to this game or get back to wherever you think you're more important than your grandma or your grandpa or your mom, your dad, even aunts and uncles, like these could be the last holidays you spend with them. So just take your time, enjoy it. Enjoy them how they kinda helped you along your own personal path in life. Try, while you're visiting them in the first place, but slow down, slow down and again, enjoy what's all around you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, pierre and Michelle, for joining me on this episode of Finding Faith in Losing Sleep podcast. Thank you so much, all you listeners, for listening to us. We will revisit you before the end of the year. I'm going ahead and committing to that right now, pierre, but if you'd like to leave a comment, leave a review or leave a like or anything like that, on whatever listening platform you'd like to listen to the show on, we would appreciate it and hopefully this message will get out to more people that they may be able to slow down, listen and enjoy and figure out some other things in life. Thank you so much for listening and, as always, if you pray for us, we will pray for you Is.