S3 EP 28: Exploring the Resilience of Single Mothers: An Intimate Conversation with Mirella Acebo on Faith, Self-Sacrifice, and Personal Growth

Hello, hello, welcome back. Oh God's diamonds in the rough. Amen To God, be the glory of the soul. Funny, get ready to say learning to live in truth Y'all. Oh, I love it. I love how God just uses us in his own unique way. He does not let us change your shift for anybody right on it.

I love it too because you know that lets you know us and people listening that know that we are genuine and this is not scripted Absolutely. You know because you know when you, when you try to do things scripted, you know you do not allow God to move. When you try to set things up and it's got to be this way, it's got to be that way, if I make a mistake got to stop it, got to race it, got to restart it Say you do not allow God to use you because he does not want things manufactured, he wants things originated. That's my new word Not manufactured, but originated. Woo.

All right now. So y'all, we are your hosts. I'm Catherine. And I'm Michael, and we are so glad that you are with us One more time. Diamonds, we surely do appreciate your presence, and we hope and pray that you are gleaning from what God is giving us and what he's doing here. Amen, we have a special guest with us. We're going to bring her in in just a moment, but her name is Marilla a SIBO. She's an author, she's a mom, she's a child of God. Amen. She has so, so much to bring to the table. Our stories are so close and so familiar that she just fits. Amen, hallelujah. And so, after we pray, well, matter of fact, let me let her go ahead and say hello, hello, to you, oh, hi, well, good morning.

I guess I'll start with saying hi to Catherine and Michael and hi to everybody who's listening. I'm excited about our conversation.

Yeah, yeah, we are excited as well, and before we pray, we're just going to let y'all know the topic or where we intend on going. Y'all know we know our plans ain't always God's plan, amen. So our goal is to be talking about single mothers and being raised as a child by a single mother and you know, and just all the dynamics would go with that and our different perspectives, and so y'all just have a general idea of what we're talking about today. But y'all know what we got to do first, so let's do it.

Let us pray, dear Heavenly Father, our Lord, and I say to Jesus Christ we just come to right now saying thank you. We thank you for your grace and your mercy, thank you for just allowing us to see another day. We pray in an image that your Holy Spirit will reign and rule and order our steps according to your will and purpose. We pray in an image that is counseling any assignment of the enemy that will be sent back into the picture where it came from, for it has no power, no dominion, no authority over us. We pray in an image that is for the one that has no desire to know and learn who you are. We pray in an image that you attest them right now, from the crowd of their heads to the souls of the feet, that they will receive the blessing and the revelation of what you want to tell them. We pray in an image for the ones that does not know how to pray for you. We stand interceding for them on their behalf. We also pray in an image for the ones that just has don't even know what to do and how to do it. We pray in an image that you will give them revelation that they need. We pray these things and also ask your forgiveness for anything we might have said, done or thought that's not pleasing your sight. Did you all grace you forgive us and catch back into the picture where it came from? These things and all things we ask, all in Jesus, mighty and maximum is name. We do pray, we say thank you, thank you, amen, amen, amen.

Amen.

So we are, we are. I'm sorry, I'm just fooling with this mixer board. Y'all Excuse me for a moment. It is all right, hallelujah. So, ms Acibo, please tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into this conversation.

Sure I'd love to, I was. I'm born, born in Los Angeles, I live in Los Angeles, I'm married and I have two adult children and, as you said, I am an author. I wrote a book that I published earlier this year. I'm also a mom and a child of God. I love that you describe me in those three ways those son Mariahs who I am, and I am first generation. You was born as well. So I was born in Los Angeles by a single mom. My mom came here as a 20 something year old from Mexico and she came here to achieve the American dream. Watch the story that she told me. She was born on a remote, remote farm and she would hear stories about Los Angeles and she knew that she wanted to come here. So at the beginning she came as an undocumented immigrant and she later did get her citizenship, but early, early on, you know, she came. She didn't have any skills in terms of education or higher education, I should say so. She was working minimum wage jobs and she was nannying and she was cleaning homes and doing those kinds of things. She was working under the table, making ends meet, and she ended up meeting somebody and she got pregnant, and so she was left with that decision. What do I do? Because he left during her pregnancy and so here she is having to make that decision on her own. She didn't speak English, by the way, and she had a sixth grade education because that was the kind of education that was available to her where she lived in Mexico. And so she decided that she was going to choose to give me life, become a mother and do the best that she could with what she had, and she wasn't a woman of faith at the time. So I think that's important also to share. She did become a believer early on, when I was a young girl, and I don't know the details surrounding that, but I can definitely say that that one decision to follow Jesus changed the trajectory of our lives. And all I know about that story, about her origin story of coming to faith, is that there were three women that invited her to church and she said yes, and she was never the same, and I know that story from a different family member who was telling me this recently and said, yes, I don't, something happened to your mom and that's all she could talk about once she started going to church. So I really credit, really my upbringing and the example that she set for me. She was such a strong believer, a prayer warrior and I'm speaking about her past tense because she did pass away about 18 years ago and now that I'm a mom of two grown children, I've had the time to definitely just reflect on my own childhood and my journey and I just stand amazed. I really do. I stand amazed at how God has carried us, carried me then, carried my mom then, and how he continues to do so. And we had a very simple upbringing and humble beginnings and not a lot of material things as you can imagine, but the wealth came in the spiritual ways. You know. Yeah, my mom worked. We lived paycheck to paycheck, sometimes it was day to day, but there was always food on the table. There were always people that were providing for us through her work or through church and giving us hand-me-down clothes and inviting us to holiday dinners. It was a simple way to live and also just a beautiful way to live to see that there was community out there willing to help us and ready to help us, and I just loved it because I never knew. I just felt like gifts were coming when they were just all around us and I credit her. I mean, I credit the Lord primarily, but I credit her for setting that example for me that it's okay where we are.

I was going to say did you have any siblings, or was it just you?

No siblings, no siblings, only child. Okay.

So, with all of that said, you know this is a female woman's perspective of being raised by a single mother. Michael, you have a perspective.

Yeah, I do. You know, on the male side of that, you know Seren, the same, not the same story, but the same outcome. You know I lost my father when I was nine and you know from my mother to raise us, you know, by herself, I knew it took a lot of Sacrifice to do that. You know my father's been Passed away over 30s, about 36 years ago, and just to look back and see that, you know it gives me, it gives me an Outward look of you know the things, how and what my mother had, must have had to endure and go through To raise three kids were four kids on her own, and you know it puts it in a perspective that you know, going through stuff like that it has to be a, a, a trying situation, mm-hmm. Because you know, as you know, and looking on the outside as a male, you know it makes us, you know, value the women in our lives a lot more. Because you know it's easy for a man to say, okay, I had to raise my kids, but when the men and, and, and I and I'm not trying to step on no means toes when I say this, but it's, it's a reality. You know we have to understand that the women are the backbone to a man's life. And I say that because if you, if you look back at in the book of Genesis, when God made Adam at Eve, you know he took a bone out of Adam to make Eve. So that means you know it was a part of the rear and the rear is connected to the back. So the woman has to be the backbone of a man and we're just looking at that. It Floors me to think back other things that my mother had to endure. You know, we sit back in and we don't understand the situation, to understand the story about it, and we always downsize that woman. Well, she could have got another man and all this. But you got understand something Things happen in our lives for a reason. We have to go through the good things as well as the bad. We just can't take the good things and the bad things. We just brush off our soda and and try to put behind us. Because those bad things we go through in life. We have to endure them to get to the strength of God, with God wants us to. Yeah, that's right, because if we, if you look at it and I'm not trying to take too much time. But if we take all the good things that we have and Bypass all the bad things and I've asked this question plenty time before and other podcasts that we don't had, if you did had only the good things in life, would you turn to God?

Well, would you turn to God?

When you don't need them.

And the answer to that is simply no.

Nobody can sit there and say that I would still turn to God with good things, because if we had all the good things in life, what reason will we need?

That's. That's who that's powerful, because you know, as you all have, come from the perspective of being the child of single, of a single parent. I was a single parent and you know that that that was for Me and Michael met nine years ago Um, well, ten years ago now, and, yeah, I was married previously before that, for Spain, of five years, but I was actually we, he and I were together all of two years, and so you know my oldest I think he's what I was he 24 out of my I'm 45. So that means he's about 23, 23 or 24 one of them and my daughter, she's 18. So there was a that was a significant amount of time where I was a single parent, trying to raise these two kids by myself for the most part, and what I, what I had I had to do, was what I had. I had to rely on the Lord, because there were so many times where we didn't have any money I didn't have this than the other. That was necessary and and I was a woman that I Truly believed in God. I truly believe that there was something bigger than me, and so a lot of the moves that I made was based on faith, and a whole lot of those faith moves left me short, if that makes any sense. Because I can remember one time you know, I was a ministry to kind of that that I had connected myself with One through the mail. It was like a mail ministry and they would, every time they were sent a letter, they would say, well, send money for this and this is gonna happen. And I was naive at the time, you know, just looking for this miracle to happen in my life. And but I was never drawn away, but drawn to. Through the course of that time period. I was always drawn to God and the things of God, but a lot of people, men and women, supposed to be my brothers and sisters manipulated that because I was a single parent trying to take care of myself and take care of my kids, and I think that you know that can, that can discourage a lot of Men and women, because it ain't just women who do it. It's men and women from doing it the right way yeah does that make sense. Any thoughts?

anybody yeah.

Anybody got any thoughts?

I would definitely say, you know, that's definitely got to be a warning sign to us. You know, as, even as and I know this is about the single moms, but this can also relate to the single dads too you know, we always got to use out of some, because, just because something, just because somebody says that they doing it for your well being or that God called them to do it, doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. We got, we got to be mindful and watch and use this sermon to see if it really lines up with the fruit that's that's being produced, right.

Yeah, yeah, I was struck by Michael. What you were describing is like the overall design of God her man and woman to come together and to compliment each other and to start a family and to be companions of each other and, I would add, to be leaders of the home, even women. She was talking about women being the backbone, and I love that visual of the role of mom and in your case I mean you saw it from a son's perspective you lost your dad and so mom had to rise up and and be an even stronger backbone as a single mom and so and that's something I really noticed just in my mom too it was a way of life for her. She just the strength of character and the strength of mindset, and that is only formed in the hard, in the hardship. Otherwise we wouldn't need to grow that muscle. Right, if we're flowing through life and things are easy and things are coming easily, and so that and that's remarkable for me, to see how God does shape us in the hard things, that definitely and how, as a single mom, even for you, catherine, right, we set the tone in our home. We're the example, we're leading our family, we're leading our children by example and through our words and and we get to speak life into our children instead of strong foundation and and point them to faith in the hard times. Right, these are no small things. We can gloss over them, but this is our day to day. This is what our daily lives are comprised of. Really. What, what, what make up our day is is just the daily quote, unquote, just the mundane. Yeah, but man, there's so much power in that and how we speak over it and how we navigate the day to day stuff, the really hard stuff, the painful stuff, the grief, the mourning, the pain, the suffering, all of it.

And I think also, I think that if it you know from the perspective of a single parent, and you know even a child as a child of a single parent, I think that man, when I say man, I would say the world devalues who you are because, because you aren't what they expected. You know what I mean, because I know and I know from experience, and I'm sure you, you too, can relate that you know, when we look at ourselves in the mirror, sometimes if, if it's not what we wanted it to be, we can not only they can devalue us, but we can devalue ourselves, because it wasn't what we wanted it to be. You know what I mean with things didn't line up the way that everybody else else's life looked like from what we could see.

You know what I?

mean as a child of it. Did you that? Either of you experienced that? Because I know for me, I experienced it because I felt like I had this, this, this, this expectation that I needed to feel. Because I was raised with two parents in the household, although one was an alcoholic and the other worked all the time. I had to stand up to be a leader in the house. Because they were. They were there, but they weren't there, and so I had never seen a thing called divorce. I had never seen a single parent in my family at all. I had never seen that, and so there was an expectation that I had put on myself that I thought I had to live up to.

Definitely, definitely so, because I would say from my own perspective, you know, when you, when we, when I used to look and look in the mirror at myself or look back over things in our life, you know my way of degrading myself or putting myself down with saying it was my fault that was my. I could see that yeah that it was my fault, that that my mother is a single parent, or it's my? fault that my father is gone. But we got to realize that and we can go even go further back into, like our very first episode when we talked about Ecclesiastry. We had to understand that, look, everything that we go through in life, it's for a reason. We have to live, we have to die, we have to cry, we have to laugh, we have to go through these things, these emotions in life, to get us to the ultimate place where God is has intended on us to be in, because this body, this body that we in, is a temporary home for our soul.

Absolutely.

And you know we had to realize that. Look, every time we we put blame on our self and saying it's our fault or we have these different ideas of it. Shouldn't look like that, it shouldn't look like this. We got to understand. We can go back to the book of I think it's in Isaiah, when he said for your plans are not my plans, my ways are not your ways. We have to understand that. Look, we're here on this earth just resting for the bigger mission that God has on our life, which is the eternal mission.

That's right.

Let's shout out to my brother.

Yeah, no matter what, yeah, no matter the role that that we're in and the role that we've been designed for, god is there helping us, shaping us, comforting us, being our strength and helping us move forward. I had a thought, based on something you shared, michael, and in terms of just my own upbringing, I want to go back to know. It wasn't easy, absolutely it was not easy. I remember looking at others and going well, they're able to take vacations, they just differently, and their lunches are differently Every aspect of their lives, you're like. I saw there was a difference, there was this distinction, and I was a latchkey kid. I literally had this key around my neck because my mom would leave before I would wake up and she would go to work and then I would come home before she would come home. I just learned to grow up really quickly I think that's for most of us and a single parent, with this being raised by a single parent and even all sorts of different scenarios, but we're talking about single parenting here Learning to really fend for myself, to mature quickly, to take ownership of what I was responsible for. I would set my alarm whenever time I would make myself my breakfast, and this was starting at 10 years old, I would make myself breakfast, lunch, walk myself to school, do school all day, come home, do my snack, do my homework, and my mom wasn't there physically to help me, nor was she there really mentally. She had, again, a sixth grade education, and so at some point pretty early on I passed which she was able to help me with, and so I just became really used to being alone and doing things by myself and figuring things out by myself, and that really tapped into, or I should say, opened up, a creative side in me, a side that was just really resourceful, a side that could be alone for long periods of time, I could entertain myself for long periods of time, I could be still and I could be content, and so all of those things are muscles, I think, that are being formed and shaped and developed early on in our childhood. Regardless of the home that you're in, whether it's double parents or single parents or whatever that looks like, but coming or being raised by a single mom, I got to flex different muscles and God got to strengthen me in different ways than other people, and that's what it makes. It's just so diverse in that, and I can say that.

I can say that too. Right, yeah, because it was five of us. It was five of us and I had to become. It was like I became mama. It was five of us and that started at around the same age, around 10, about 10, 11 years old, and you know, I see that.

Were you the oldest Catherine.

Yeah, I am the oldest of the five and it's like that muscle, that same muscle that you're talking about. It was like it was preparing me for now, because now I have to take care of a flock of people.

Yes.

Different mothers and different fathers. You heard me come on somebody.

Yeah, I mean, I get it.

You know I get it, absolutely get it, and so this is why you can't to everyone that's listening. You don't downplay your story, your journey, because your journey is important From where you are right now. You know, I always say don't ever regret a thing, because everything that you've been through has built who you are right now you need to love you. Love yourself enough to care for yourself, and that's really that just moves us on into talking about your book and why it's important that people get your book, because it's about managing your emotions and as a diamond you want to shine bright in the light.

That's right. You want to shine bright in the light.

So, marilla, will you please talk about your book and the name of your book, as we are? Absolutely, we got about 15 minutes and we're going to be coming into a close, when we really want people to get into your book, because I started I had just been so busy that I had time to finish it. But I'm going to finish this book because it's a good read. I've made it to about halfway through chapter one and so far so good. So I'm going to finish reading it. But I want you to talk about the book.

OK. Ok. So the title of my book is called SOS for the MOM, which sounds mom, but I just like to say it phonetically. So SOS for the MOM, a Christian mom's guide to managing emotions. And so God gave me this idea several years ago about focusing on our emotional well-being as moms, because emotions play a big part, not just in our day to day, but as parents as well, and it really it's an emotional journey that we're living through, and I don't want to downplay our emotions, but I also don't want to idolize them either. They're one factor. It's not everything that we should be paying attention to, but let's acknowledge that God did make us physical beings. We know that we need food and water to nourish ourselves. He gave us intellect, and so we were able to read His word and think about things, and we give it to sound mind. And he also gives us spirit and emotions, and so this emotional component is one that, for me, was very strong, especially early in motherhood, when my kids were really young, and it's still very strong. The emotional part is we feel deeply as moms I think we forever will because something is awakened once we become mothers, generally speaking, and so we care about our children. We love our children so deeply and so in that we can be very overwhelmed with our emotions, with worry especially. I find that that is a big one that moms talk about. We're worrying all the time about the present moment, about the future, what will happen, what might happen, and what I do today will bring consequences, and so there's worry, there's overwhelm. Mom guilt is a huge one. We're just really hard on ourselves and we take on so much responsibility for others and looking outward all the time caring for our children. And so what do we do with all of these emotions, with our tendencies to want to control situations? Because all of me, I do have that tendency, and patience is also a big one, fear is a big one. So what I decided to do with this book is just narrow it down to 10 emotions. The book is 10 chapters. We focus on 10 mom emotions quote unquote 10 common mom emotions and then the 10 Bible moms that we can learn from, that we can receive inspiration and motivation from. So I didn't just want to write a book with my own stories and my own advice. I am a certified life coach as well, and so I do have tools and ways to help moms and people manage emotions. I wanted my reader to go to God's word. I want to make Jesus known through this book and address these emotions from a biblical perspective. So what better way than to revisit some of those familiar stories most on our mark from Genesis, and let's review the stories that we know that involve the women. Now, the Bible is God's narrative. It's his story of his love for creation and wanting to redeem creation and people back to himself. So the story doesn't go into the emotional part of women, the emotional stories. So I decided to revisit these stories through the lens of moms. So, starting with Eve, for example and I talk about a failure, I talk about wow, I wonder. I just got really curious about these moms, really curious. How did Eve live her life after her failure in the garden, that big sin with the consequences, and now she's living in a world where she's having children? The world was now broken, sin has been introduced and she has two children at first, cain and Abel, and Cain kills Abel. So I'm thinking of Eve as wait a minute, wow, did you? First of all, her heart is broken and the regret she might have had, the guilt she might have felt. I guess that's moms. How guilty do we feel when our kids don't turn out the way we want them to be quote unquote or they make decisions that are just not right, and we can easily look to ourselves and feel guilty over oh this is my fault, I could have done this, I should have done this, or how did this happen? We take on this responsibility. So I address these 10 women in the Bible, explore their stories. So, even if you're not familiar with the stories, it's OK, because I explain them. They're very easy to read, very conversational, and so I set up the story as we know it in the Bible, and then I just take some liberties and go, let's explore. Is it reasonable to think that Noah's wife we don't even know her name, sorry, I refer to her as Mrs Noah is it reasonable to think that she was overwhelmed by this mission? I got head called Noah and her as well, because they're married right Called them to this biggest mission of their life and God says I'm going to wipe out the world, you're going to build this ark, you're going to get in the ark and you're going to survive it. Anybody who goes into this ark will survive it. And so I'm thinking to myself. Ok, let's pause here. Let's really wonder about Mrs. Noah what was going on in her mind, what was her emotional state of mind? And I imagine she must have been overwhelmed by all of this. Like was she trying to save people? Like, come on, people, like this is really going to happen, even though it hadn't rained before, get in the ark and we know that nobody else does except for their family. And how overwhelming even life on the ark was, because it turns out they were in that ark for about a year. And so just that day to day grind of taking care of a family, taking care of these animals, for over a year in quarantine oh well, that reminds me we kind of did that in COVID, in the lockdown. How overwhelmed were we living in this situation where we were in a lockdown situation and not knowing, oh, how is the world going to be once we get out of this? And so I draw a lot of parallels from these biblical moms of the past. And what can we learn from their story? What state of mind, what emotion Maybe they felt that we can relate to? And then so I talk about more moms like Sarah. I talk about impatience with Sarah. Her story is that well, she jumped the gun, she went ahead of God's timing. He had promised her a baby, and so let's talk about impatience, talk about a story, not to judge them, but to go. You know what I think this is here to point out to me. I also have impatient tendencies, I also can be controlling, and I'll talk about Rebecca's story and this topic of control, worry. Worry is a big one, as I said, and I talk about Jocobet, who's the mother of Moses, and she had to release or she felt like I need to release my baby in order to save his life at three months old into a river, and how hard it is for us to release our kids at 18 or whatever age when they leave the home. So what lessons can we learn about worry as we unpack these stories? And so that's the highlight reel of the book 10 chapters, 10 emotions, 10 Bible moms we can learn from.

This is what I like about the fact that you've written this book and how it's rooted in the word. And so because it's rooted in the word. We can rely on it. We can rely.

That's right.

We can, definitely, we can be confident that where you have elaborated outside of the scriptures that it has definitely been it's come from the spirit and how we are in fact, that we're made in his image and after his likeness. We can source this book and say, ok, this is definitely rooted from God, this is a God inspired, move, written book, and so we can definitely glean from it, I'm sure, as a mother, as a woman. And so I want you to tell us, or tell our audience, where they can get.

Yes, so you can buy it on Amazon. It's available there and also my website. So my website is www and then my name, morellaacebocom, m-i-r-e-l-l-a, and then last name, a-c-e-b-o.

Okay, alright, yeah, alright, michael. Do you have anything?

Yeah, I just got one question and then I gotta ask this question because it really just like stood out to me as I was reading your bio. I know you're an actor, I know you're an author, I know you're a life coach but the making life coach comedy videos what's that about? And what is that about and how do you get to this place?

That's a good question. So I am an actor. I've been an actor for about 16 years now and mostly in commercials. So I doubled in many, many things, but mostly in commercials, and I felt like that rose God really led me to that. It's not something I ever saw myself doing or ever wanted to do. I mean, if you knew me as a kid, I was as shy as they come, I was quite as a mouse, and that's a whole long story. But I ended up in an acting world and God called me to write this book a couple years ago, and so I pressed pause on the acting and I just had this almost revelation during this time I was writing this book where God was showing me. You know, all those years that you trained in acting and you took workshops and intensives and all those auditions, all of that I was shaping you for what I have for you next. And so what he has for me next is this book and then using everything I learned and improv and in those, all those classes, to now use that for God, for his kingdom. And so comedy comes really easily to me. I love comedy, I love creating comedy, and so I thought I would go to scripture and see maybe there's something here. Can I, or does this? What you want me to do is you want me to bring some comedy. How can scripture inspire me, or things inspire me where I can teach but also entertain? And so I decided to come up with some scripture inspired comedy, and where I landed with this is a character that I created of being a salty mom, a judgy mom, and so I have a bunch of videos on a different website. If you wanted to check those out, it's on it's wwwlifecoachmomnet, because that's what I call myself. I'm a life coach, I'm a mom, I'm the life coach, I'm a mom, I'm a life coach mom. So if you go to lifecoachmomnet, I have a, you can click on life coach mom comedy, and I have a bunch of videos on there about being a judgy mom and basically the lesson and I exaggerate it, I mean I mean it's satire, for sure. It's because moms tend to we judge yourself, we judge others Like we're, we're judged and we, we have this vent to judge others, and so I talk about, like being judged for breastfeeding, whether it's right where it's wrong, about how you vacation, about birthday parties, that they're about holidays, and and so the character I play is being a judgy mom and saying like, yeah, you're doing it wrong. Like you don't serve cupcakes at a birthday, that's not what we do. Like I wanted to take a picture for Pinterest but now I can't because you have cupcakes, and so I just sort of make light of of something that's very true and I think that we have to be careful of is really the. At the end, I always say flash a scripture and it says do not judge right, do not judge. Take care of the speck in your own eye before you. I mean, take care of the plank in your own own eye before you. You try to draw this, the speck in somebody else's eye, and so, um, yeah, that's what I do. So check it out if you want. And I also have Instagram. So on Instagram I have a lot of mom comedy videos as well, and you can find me at life coaching by Mirella. That's my handle on Instagram. So I do daily videos involving mom comedy.

Okay, well, I have pulled up a little bit of. I pulled up one of your videos and I'm just going to turn the volume up. We was going to listen to a little bit real quick, okay, okay.

You know, I totally would have pitched in, right? I mean, that's what friends are for. All right, all right. Who's in on this? Are you in on this? I saw this cake on Pinterest. I saw this cake on YouTube. I saw this Martha Stewart cake. There's so many ideas everywhere. You settled for that. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Are you okay? I was about to take a picture too. Oh, now I can't. That's embarrassing, it's not good for you. It's got a lot of food coloring. Food coloring is bad. Oh man, and why were you about?

to say that A little crumb on your face.

Right there, let me help you. Uh-huh Lower, you got it Right there, say you look so much better.

That's actually really good.

Making you laugh. I love it.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Y'all have definitely got to check that out, because she has cupcake frosting all over her face.

Yeah, that idea came to me about yeah, let me take the speck out of, or is it? Yeah, the speck out of your eye, but then I just swear this cupcake all over my face, Like never mind what I have on my face, Let me point out what you have for me.

You know, you know I like. I like that because you know, sometimes we can get into the word and we're so serious but just to see just to see you know a little, a little humor behind it. It it makes us where we can laugh and be serious at the same time. It'd be well balanced, yeah.

Absolutely. I appreciate that. That really was my intent, my heart behind it. It's like I really I don't want to be irreverent to scripture, but I also. I just wanted to be able to entertain and and share some deeper truths and and, hopefully, some conviction. Right, that's the job in the Holy Spirit. It's not my job but to go, oh, wow, maybe I did. I walk away from that dinner party thinking, oh, I could have done it better, or how, how, why would she have done that? Right, I just think like this is these are the small things that creep up in our daily lives. It's funny to bring attention to that Like this be mindful of how we talk and how we think and take all those things captive.

Absolutely so, as we are wrapping up here, we're going to give. I want to give you. I'm going to let you actually give your final thought and I'm going to ask you to pray us out. I'm going to ask Michael to give his final thought before, the final final thought, after you pray, and I'm going to give my final thought. And so my final thought is this love you so you can love them, love yourself so you can love the people that God has given you to take care of, which is your children, which is, you know, your daughters in your ministry, who I was assigned to. You love yourself so you can love them properly, that's that's my final thought. That's my word after today's conversation, honey.

My final thought is this look, um, you know, I encourage every diamond that's listened, whether you're male or female, to go to the website a WWW, life coach, mom dot net and subscribe to the videos, because we got to realize that we need humor in our lives to survive. And I encourage every male or female, every diamond, whether you're a single mom, single dad or not, to go and check out this book and buy this book, because we got to understand that, as a man, spent as a man standpoint, we have to understand what women have to endure in life. We can't, we cannot understand the concept of what they endure because we're a man, but we have to understand the reason why women go through so much things in life. So I encourage every listener, whether you're male or female, to go and get this book, read it and learn from it. And that's, that's my final.

That's my final word.

All right, miss, I love that, thank you.

My final, final word of encouragement is mom, if you're listening, if you're a single mom, just a mom in general, god has called you to be a mom at this time for such a role as this, and it is. It is no accident and he wants to help you and sustain you and and and shape you and show you that he is your anchor and you can endure. You can endure and persevere hard things because he has promises very present and if you're a believer, you have a Holy Spirit and that's what he does best is he leads and he guides, he comforts and he loves. And so those are words to meditate on just every day, like who you are in God's sight, and remember that. Just look up, look at who you, who you are, who you are, and he's got you Absolutely.

And I love you. I'm going to go ahead and pray us out.

Oh, heavenly Father, we are so grateful for this time together. I thank you for my sister and my brother, Lord, and for the unity here represented through your Holy Spirit. Thank you, lord, for their, their podcasts, for their ministry, for their heart, for you, their heart to to serve others, to encourage others, to point others to you as well, and we are just so grateful for it, for this time, for the fruit that it will produce. We know we'll not return void board and I just want to thank you, lord, for our stories, though they were hard and though there's a lot of painful, probably, memories that are, that are attached to it. Lord, that you use that, that you give us a heart and a mind that we can reflect back with, hopefully, just a different perspective, with the heart of compassion and deeper understanding for the things that our families have gone through, for the things that we had to go through, knowing, lord, that all of it will be used, can be used by you. You redeem everything, our past and our present, lord, and so we are just so grateful for the power that you, that you are, you are and that you give us, lord, for the cleansing power of forgiveness, that we can move forward. We can move forward, lord, within, with your strength and with your presence, lord, and so we're grateful for who you are. You've changed our lives and we're better for it, and we will live eternally with you in heaven one day, and so we just want to rejoice in that truth every day and give us heaven's perspective on our today and help us through them. So we ask for your blessing, lord, over this show, over the three of us and all the listeners here today. We love you so much. In Jesus name, we pray amen.

Amen, amen, amen, and y'all know it's coming. And the next time, remember you are a diamond in the rough.

Amen, we'll see you next week.