97. Healing from Addiction, Codependency, and Shame: 7 Principles for Spiritual Growth with Kathy Heinen

In this deeply honest and inspiring episode of Curious for Christ, I sit down with Kathy Heinen, co-author of "Spiritual Discovery: Seven Principles for Spiritual Growth". Kathy shares her personal journey—from navigating a painful marriage to experiencing deep healing through Christ—and how God’s presence, not our performance, is the key to transformation.

Together, we discuss how our emotions are not obstacles but indicators—clues that can lead us back to the truth about God and ourselves. Through decades of ministry helping women overcome codependency and addiction, Kathy brings powerful wisdom and real-life application to what it means to grow spiritually and walk in freedom.

Yes, there were a few technical glitches—but the heart of this conversation is too rich not to share. :)

You’ll walk away encouraged, grounded, and reminded of just how personal and healing God’s love truly is.

What You’ll Learn:
• Why emotions are the bridge to our deeply held beliefs
• The spiritual battle behind the lie “I’m not enough”
• How God’s response—“You are mine”—shifts everything
• Why belonging is the foundation of true identity
• The seven principles of spiritual growth from Kathy’s book
• How spiritual transformation requires both truth and encounter

The 7 Principles of Spiritual Growth:
1. Stop and Consider
2. Recognize your Spiritual Battle
3. Tell the Truth
4. Look for the Lie
5. Ask, Seek, Knock
6. Find Peace in Forgiveness
7. Own Your Rescue Story

Mentioned in this episode: 

- "Spiritual Discovery: Seven Principles for Spiritual Growth" by V. Lefler, K. Heinen & J. Lefler

- Episode 74: Finding Peace Through Biblical Meditation and Mindfulness with Virginia Leffler 

- Learn more about Kathy’s ministry and resources at https://www.myspiritualdiscovery.com/

Alexandra’s Reflections:
One of the most powerful moments in this episode is when Kathy shares how God responded to her deepest lie: “I’m not enough.”
God’s answer wasn’t logic or evidence—it was simply: “You are mine.”

That response silences the lie. Why? Because it’s not based on what we do, but on who we belong to. God’s presence is the tool we need in our spiritual battles. Just like in Genesis, when He said “Let there be light,” His word still brings light to our darkness today.

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Final words of encouragement:
You don't have to earn God's presence. You don't have to fix it all to be held. Whatever pain you're in, whatever pattern you're stuck in, Jesus sees, and Jesus still chooses you. The invitation is simple and sacred: Come as you are... and sit loved.

Until next time:
Be true. Speak truth. Walk free. 

With love and light, 

Alexandra

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Want to go deeper? Let's connect—set up a FREE Discovery Call today. See you next time!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome back to Curious for Christ. I'm your host, Alexandra, and today's episode is for anyone who's ever felt stuck in patterns they don't understand, weighed down by emotions they've been taught to ignore or unsure how to move forward spiritually. We're talking about real healing, how our emotions, instead of being something to. Fear or suppress can actually be the very path God uses to bring about deep transformation. You'll hear how emotional honesty can become a doorway to spiritual growth and how God meets us, not just in our victories, but right in a mess through codependency, addiction, heartbreak, and beyond. And to help guide us through that conversation. I'm so honored to welcome a very special guest, Kathy Henan. Kathy has served in the Breaking free ministry in Chicago for over 25 years, walking alongside women as they overcome codependency and addiction through Christ-centered Healing. She facilitates groups, trains others to lead and pours her heart into the church Alongside her husband Doug, they have five children, eight grandchildren, and a deep passion for helping people discover true spiritual transformation. I, Kathy is also the co-author of Spiritual Discovery seven Principle for Spiritual Growth, a powerful book and curriculum she wrote with Virginia Loeffler, who you might remember from episode 74 on biblical meditation and mindfulness. So make sure you listen to that episode as well. Now, I'll be honest, we had a few technical glitches during this recording, but what Kathy shares is so heartfelt and full of wisdom. I knew I had to share it with you anyway. This conversation is a safe, sacred space. I hope it meets you right where you are. Let's dive in. I hope it meets you right where you are. Let's dive in. Welcome to Curious for Christ. Do you ever find yourself lying, awake at night wondering about God's plan for your life? Maybe you wake up with big dreams, but feel unsure where to start or what your next step should be. If you're curious about exploring your faith and finding purpose, then you've come to the right place. Hi, I'm Alexandra. I too felt lost and sure of the direction my life was taking. I yearned to understand my purpose and have someone guide me, but I kept telling myself I was too busy. The timing wasn't right, and my lack of clarity prevented me from being consistent until I found Christ. He brought peace into my life and revealed the way to find purpose by anchoring myself. In him. In this podcast, we'll journey together exploring the Bible to gain a deeper understanding of him and cultivate your own personal relationship with Christ. So open up your Bible, put in those earbuds and listen up because God is speaking to you. He's making everything new and you don't wanna miss it. Let's get started. Hi Kathy. Welcome to Curious for Christ. I love to start I always ask my guest speakers to start with their own stories'cause there's so much power to see how God works in our lives. It is the same God, and yet we're very different. And so I I believe that our listeners would relate very personally to hearing about your own journey, your faith journey, and what led you. To write and co-write Your book, spiritual discovery. The Seven Principles for Spiritual Growth you co-wrote it with Virginia Loeffler and her husband as well. Virginia was on the podcast, so I will put the link again. She spoke on meditation, biblical meditation. So please share about your journey and what led you to write this book as well. Thanks very much. So it's been a long journey and it's been wonderful. I grew up in a mess. No, actually totally in a mess. And just was making life work. I married my first husband who was eight years older than me, and we had three kids. It was a really hard marriage. And my third child, I was like, I need Jesus. I started taking the kids to church and God found me and I studied the Bible and realized a lot of things that I needed to change. I was in a super bad marriage and I thought it was all my fault, and the more that I follow Jesus. The more he didn't want to follow Jesus. And it got tougher. So we separated and during separation I got some counseling. And the counseling really showed me my patterns from childhood that's why I married my first husband. And so it was really a hard time, but it was such a good time. It was such a time of growth and. Codependency and addiction and the lies that we come to believe that move us to very unhealthy figures especially for women. I think that we tend to wanna control the whole world and it's, and we're not in charge, which is really a relief. But anyway, so we ended up divorced and I was a single mom for eight years and I married my wonderful husband. Now I've sponsored many people through the chains released ministry. And I saw a need for curriculum for some specifics to help people, but it's not just about codependency or addiction, but we all have habits and things that we don't want to do that hinder our spiritual growth. And so Virginia and I are very close and we started talking about writing a curriculum to help people process whatever the challenge is, whatever has gotten them stuck. And really what we came to was, our emotions are the bridge back to our deeply held belief. But when people say things like, I got triggered, what that means is there's something in my past that is coming up right now. And people don't know how to work those things through. So that would. That was the whole beginning of the book. We started doing groups and we had some wonderful women who were willing to open up their hearts. We also wanted to create a group within the church where you could be real, where you didn't have to free up your stuff to come in. We're gonna talk about sexual addictions, cutting food disorder. Pornography, whatever you got, we wanna talk about it.'cause there's something behind that behavior. And it doesn't have to be a big thing either. It can be just strife in a relationship. You can't figure out. So it's been, it was a long journey in writing the book and it was really good. And we continue to lead classes. My husband and I oversee the Spiritual Discovery Ministry in the Chicago Church and it's been great an honor. So thank you. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I wanted to talk about,'cause your book introduces those seven principles for spiritual growth. And we all want to grow. We all want to grow closer to God, most importantly. So could you give us an overview of these principles and how they have impacted even your own life and journey? Sure. Absolutely. The first principle is stop and consider. And honestly, the reason stop and consider came up is when I was doing my work with my first husband I was used to doing a dance with him. You're unaware that you dance with different people, but I decided to put up my shield of faith and stop whatever was coming at me so that I could take a look at it to evaluate it. He moves against me and I move to please him or he moves against me and I move away. I wanted to learn to move towards gum, and so stopping to consider, put that pause in before I reacted to stuff. The next one is why don't you stop and consider, you have to recognize it's spiritual battle because it's not that person. Our battle is really against Satan, and he's the one who always wants to divide us because we're all really, God created all of us. And he wants us to get along and to be one, but it's Satan in there. And so we recognizing it's a spiritual battle also recognizes that Satan's wanting me to move in a way that's unhealthy and then tell the truth, and tell the truth isn't. A lot of times we should on ourselves, we say, oh, you should feel this way. You shouldn't do that. You should and tell the truth is more saying. I feel sadness right now. I feel anxiety right now. I feel helpless right now. But it's naming your emotion. And we have a whole lesson on emotions because we tend to run away from our emotions. First thing when we're feeling something we wanna do is pick up the phone and scroll or put on Netflix or go get something to eat, just to move away from anything that is uncomfortable. And so we really try to help people to be willing to sit in that because there's things to learn. So identifying and saying, I'm feeling this way is powerful. And then we wanna look for the lie. What is it that we're believing in this whole thing? There's a belief that's moving this emotion and sitting in what is that is powerful. A lot of times people, they get awareness of, oh my goodness, I. Dia I was believing this thing. And they feel already victorious because they brought awareness to it. But the next step really is to ask, seek and knock is to ask God for the Holy Spirit. What is the truth here? What do you want me to know here? And I think that's one of the toughest things we ask women and men. Men's groups and women's groups are separate, but it's the toughest thing we ask people to do because to be still is really hard. To lean into pain is really hard but it's on the other side that we have free from. And so then we, after asic and Knock, the truth is, a lot of these things, these triggers are tied to childhood pain or just pain from the past. Pain from the past usually means that somebody's hurt us. Something's happened and we processed it in a way that it wasn't meant or it was meant, but somebody hurt us. And so the next principle is to find peace and forgiveness. And we talk a lot about what forgiveness really means. It doesn't mean accepting inappropriate behavior, it does mean you have to stay in a unhealthy relationship. It means that you're releasing the debt that the person owes you. And a lot of people talk about forgiving yourself and really it is, there is a release, but it does go back to God. It's. God forgave me. So I'm accepting that he's forgiven me, that he's not holding this debt against me, and he's big enough to do that. And then the last principle is to own your rescue story. Because a lot of times we have these messy parts in our life that we own, that we think, what would everybody think of me if they knew this? If they knew this about me or that I struggle with this, but owning your rescue stories where there's freedom and there's just so much freedom and you can look back at your life and see in those messy parts, those painful parts. God was very present. In the wilderness. He is always there doing something good, and so it's a way that we see God and that we can help others. By owning our story, we create a space for other people to own their stories. That's not gonna be shame. This is a safe place and we get to be real. You know what? I'm strength and struggle. I'm divine and human. And it's okay. We don't have a lot of self-compassion because we live in this world of put on your face and look a certain way or have a certain thing. But owning your rescue story has a lot of freedom. Yes, I agree. It's true that the shame is an open door for Satan to isolate us and to believe that we're the only one, in this situation, while actually it couldn't be further from the truth. It's so true, and I really appreciate you bringing up shame because we do a whole lesson on shame and self-worth because You're right. Shame just divides us. It makes us wanna hide, and that's where Satan wants us to be. Yeah. He wants to divide us and he can conquer us for sure. Definitely. You also mentioned the role of silence and listening to God, and we spoke about that in a previous conversation prior to us meeting again here, and it really stuck with me. You mentioned the importance of sitting with God and listening to the Holy Spirit, and yet it is very challenging for most of us. It's very hard to achieve this silence and unless we. We sit in silence. It's hard to hear God's voice as well. So could you please talk about this this dilemma and the challenges that come and the importance of sitting in silence with God? Absolutely. So we actually added meditation to the groups because we realized that people don't sit. And so we start each group with a meditation, and there's so many different meditations. Virginia has written a really great book on scriptural meditation, but there's other meditations as well. When we're sitting to listen to the spirit we're so hard on ourselves. We're like, oh, I'm doing it wrong. Everybody's getting something. I'm not getting, I'm doing it wrong. But if we can start training ourselves, just sit for two minutes, start with our breath, breath work is super powerful. If we will exhale longer than our. That for at least a minute, we can actually shift from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. So from fight, flight, or freeze to rest and digest. And then if we can just first start with being with ourselves, whether it's putting our hand on our chest or we, I'm just present. I'm present right here. And then notice what's going on are you feeling something anywhere? Notice any tension. Our bodies are always giving signals, but we don't listen. We just, we keep it moving. And so oh, okay, I'm feeling something right here. Or I'm like, feet in my throat, or, oh, I just feel like I need to just do this and be present with me and bringing this awareness to I'm right here in this moment and I'm safe. That you live in me and you say that you're right here with me. The core of who I am, my true self is just fully loved. Just full loved. And I wanna sit with you fully loved listening to anything you wanna say. You know what happens is our minds wander because they're just made to wander. If you look at a brain that's got all these little grooves and you think that's what we do, like this one thing happens and then we're down this groove, think about that. Or but you kind to yourself and you go, it's okay. I'm a human. You picture it like a cloud that just went by, or you picture oh, I'm. Back and the more that you'll sit and do that and more bringing yourself back and bringing yourself back, you. You're able to sit with God longer. One time I I identified a lie from childhood was that you don't matter. Get a long story where it came up, but you don't matter. And I was sitting in that with God and I got prepared and I was sitting there and I was like, God, is it true? I don't matter? And I started feeling all the emotions of that. I was doing the ugly crying. I had a box of tissue when I was, and I just sat there. God, I really wanna know, is it true I matter? And I pictured myself back, that little girl, four years old, in the living room where they left me. And I felt like Satan was screaming at me, you don't matter. And I brought back to that moment. Jesus is not bound by your space. And I said, Jesus, is it true? I don't matter? And I was still crying, feeling all of it. And I felt he just answered my, you've always mattered to me. Light filled. The room, there was this peace. It was like the. I didn't have the hold of me anymore. I felt like I stop crying. I felt like the truth in my inmost being shifted everything. But I had to be willing to be still, to sit with God and to do the ugly cry and to be like, wait, I'm feeling this. And it feels familiar. And allowing myself to go back to where I. Yeah. I like what you mentioned about, and you've mentioned that at the beginning, the feeling, the emotions, because we have an understanding in our head of, okay, this is not true, but we are afraid to go there emotionally and feel again. I. I am not enough or I am not worthy, or, whatever thoughts you had. And so allowing ourselves to feel it, to cry, to let it go. Actually an emotions to be felt takes only 90 seconds and it just move through your body and it's out, and it's out. Then you have room for God's truth to sit in your body more deeply. But we work so hard to avoid feeling these emotions because we believe that they're the truth while they are just an expression of how it felt at some point when we believe that truth, when we did not know better. Yes. We just shut ourselves down. We don't wanna listen to our body. We're we separate body, mind, and spirit and they're one. And I really love with that because crying is such a blessing from God. I know it sounds weird, but like it's your emotions coming out, your eyes. It's a release. Like you also release all these. Chemicals in your system when you allow yourself to cry and when you're willing to allow the emotion outta your body. Yeah. I love what you said. It's true, but we just, we don't like pain and we're in a try to be pain-free society and that's just not true. It is not. And it makes us human. We don't need to hold it all up together. We are human. We can feel it all. It's okay. God loves all of it. Yeah. And then he shows us the truth as well. I wanted to talk about unhealthy beliefs. You touched on that because in your book you do mention identifying and releasing beliefs that are not true, such as the belief. I'm not enough, what I just mentioned. Can you share. More about how someone can recognize these false beliefs. I mean you, you did mention sitting in silence Sometimes for me, actually, I have to say I do have my quiet times, but sometimes I hear God's voice as I go through my day, I drive in transitions. When there's moments of silence, then I hear his answer to my questions that I had asked earlier. In the morning or the night before. Is there anything that you'd like to share more about that, about recognizing the false beliefs and then finding healing in God's truth? Yeah. First I just wanna say I decided that I was gonna drive the speed limit and I don't know about anybody else, but that's. I can hear God better in the slowly lane. Because I'm not trying to get to the next thing because I'm not rushing. And what we really teach is that. That the emotion is going to be the bridge back to your deeply held belief. And so when you're triggered, very often you're triggered and you're the middle of something, you've got family over, or you know you're out and you're triggered. You can't deal with it Right then. It's not the time that you're gonna deal with it, but you can say, oh, stop and consider, I'm feeling an emotion. This is a spiritual battle. I'm tempted to move against this person. Or I'm tempted to move away. I'm gonna put this on the back burner and I'm gonna bring this back up later. And then when you have satisfied time, you sit and bring that back up. You go. You go back to where you were that happened. Felt like this. You sit in that and that's where you're gonna allow the emotion to be the bridge back ly. Now a weird example, I remember identifying that I had this, I'm not enough. You're not enough. And it was screaming at me. And so I was sitting, I couldn't identify one place that I felt like I wasn't enough. I felt like it was through my whole life. And so then I was like, okay, God, is it true?'cause it feels true that I'm not enough and I just sat with God and I listened and he didn't answer. So I said, okay, I gotta go to work now. I got up and I went to work the next day. I set aside time again. I did that for a number of days and one day I was on my face, on my on floor in my office, just crying God, it just feels so true. What is truth for my inner being? And I felt like he said to me, you are mine. And. I'm your, I'm yours. And then I thought that's your answer. Because I had never said that I was waiting for him to say no, you're enough. Or Jesus makes you enough or some sort of something. But he said, you're mine. And I sat in that and I was like, yeah, it's not about enough. Where does enough come from It from measuring myself to somebody else or some other standard or something instead of me, I'm just his. And it just, it washed away so much that I keep it on my desk. Now. Has it cleared up all of the I'm not enough. No. It'll still come up, but it's not like it was, yeah. There's still this humanity that I'm still in this fallen world, but it's not like it was. So I think that allowing yourself the silence and the perseverance to say, oh, I'm show. I had one sister in group Traumatic. But when she received truth, she just set aside time every day. But when she received truth, it's washed over so much. It's changed who she's, it changed the dynamic of her marriage and it's had an impact on her children. I'm just like, yeah, because that is the power of the Holy Spirit. We, the Holy Spirit working in us, that's power, love, and his sound just keeps messing with us. The more we keep going and going, we're not creating the space to hear the Holy Spirit. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an art of cultivating it. It's a relationship. It's not being perfect the first time. The Bible talks about to seek his face to always search for him, just like a lover, right? Someone that we can't get enough of, and our sense of identity is in him. So when we feel we're not enough. We, something has taken to place of us, like you mentioned, measuring our identity to something other than God himself. And so that's it's very personal. Like you saying that moment was a turning point for you. You're not the same after that moment. But it took you going after it for as long as it was needed. There's no comparison and there's layers to how much we have to uncover from our stories as well. Yeah. So that's why going over and allowing God to speak to us. So important. And identifying the lies, because sometimes a lie keeps another lie in place. This is gonna be too much for you. Or just keep it moving. Like you're okay. It's not that bad. And we really have to identify what we're believing, what lies we're believing, so that we can bring each one of them. I think what we do in our culture especially, is we compare. My trauma's not, my upbringing wasn't as bad of so I shouldn't, and that, and there's a proverb that says only a heart knows its own joy and its own and so creating space for ourselves is really key. Me God. And I'm in a safe, loving space. And if I don't believe that, that's the first lie I. So we are having the air show this weekend. Probably you're hearing the aircraft doing some practice. So hence the noise outside. But this is what Fort Lauderdale Beach has to offer lots of activities. Sorry, back to what you were saying, that was meaningful and I wanted to mention also. So that you've been helping people. Heal from codependency and addictions. How can someone begin to heal and experience true intimacy with God and then with others? Yeah. We in the book, we lay the foundation first of it being a spiritual battle, emotions shame. Like we wanted to identify the light to move towards God to forgive, and then we go to the behaviors. When we're triggered by a painful emotion, we usually move some way. What way do we move? Codependents usually tend to move to these people. And somebody who has addiction moves towards their addiction. And so it's actually we identify it's a way of moving up pain or moving towards pleasure because we're not making, we're worth. And in identifying it, we really, awareness is the beginning of change.'cause I don't change anything I'm aware of. Yeah. And so a lot of teaching on what Codependence is and how to overcome and obviously we're, it's all God's the one who gives us the power to do it. And we do the same thing with addiction. We talk about all the different addiction and how. We have lots of scripture. We overcoming with righteousness means that we're identifying what it is we're tempted towards, and then we're looking for the way out. God provided we're removing the obstacles that we put in our place. Okay, I've, food is my addiction. Stop buying Doritos, stop buying Twinkie, we talk about the basics of how you overcome, and we actually talk about sugar, which is as Christians, we have some addictions that we think are okay. And that's just okay. Everybody does that. But they hurt us. And a lot of times we think it's not hurting anybody, but it does, it robs us of time, of money, of self-control. We get this of I know I'm not supposed to. And so our conscience gets involved in it. And a lot of people have experienced a lot of freedom. Co-dependency is something that you it's a pattern of thinking. Just like anything, we can change our patterns. That's great. It starts with awareness. Thank you so much for sharing all that. Your book goes along with, there's an accompanying online course. How can someone make the most of the book? It's not a usual book. It's a workbook as well. There's a lot of annotations that we can take. How can someone make the most of your book, of the online course? Where can they find it? Okay. My spiritual discovery.com, we wrote the book and then we revised the book as we kept doing groups. So then once we revised the book, then we started considering, okay, it would be good if we could do this for teens and campus because most people are visual learners. It was suggested that maybe we do an online class and so the online class is actually the book, But by doing the online class, you can watch it as much as you want. And every time revision to it, you automatically get it. And then when we get together to process we ask everybody to bring a notebook so they write the question and then everybody answers. We make a really big point of it is the confidential group. What setting in groups stays in groups so that people feel safe, and the processing is amazing because when you process within a group, you hear your story in somebody else. And you get perspective on your own stuff by listening to other people. That's great. Thank you. What final word of encouragement would you like to leave our listeners with today? Is such a big question. The first is oh, loved sit, loved. And it's not about any struggle you might have. Once you get rid of that struggle, God isn't gonna love you more. He just loves you where you are and wants to help you out of that struggle. And saying that I have stuff I need to work on is actually very brave to be vulnerable. And willingness to see who I. That's where the healing starts. And it doesn't have to be a huge thing. It could be like, I just don't know why I have this low level of anxiety all the time. Or it, it could be anything but really it's always gonna land in you're just deeply loved who you are or who you are. I love you have a unique story, like nobody else's story. There's nobody on the planet like you, and you have a unique way of representing God. Wow. I hope this conversation spoke to you as deeply as it spoke to me. What I love most about Kathy's story is her honesty and the way she lets us see how God meets us right in the mess, not after we clean it up. And one of the most powerful moments for me was when she talked about the lie, I'm not enough, and God's unusual answer. You are mine. That's it. No reasoning, no list of accomplishments. Just himself. And that's the whole point. God's presence is the tool. What's the tool? What's the answer? God. In the face of darkness, in the middle of a spiritual battle, the only thing strong enough to silence the lie is God himself, his presence, his authority. When he enters in, it's like light flooding a dark room, exposing the lies, this spelling, the shadows, bringing truth. It's the same principle we see in Genesis when there was only darkness. God said, let there be light. And light came. His word still does that today. His presence still breaks through darkness. His truth still silences the lies. Remember. This is a spiritual battle. We are in the middle of a spiritual battle, and if we want to be victorious, we have to use spiritual tools. We need God on our side. We need God by our side. And here's the second reason why that answer. You are mine is so powerful. The lie I'm not enough is rooted in performance. It tells us that our value or. Our identity is based on the value of what we do or fail to do. But when God says, you are mine, he's declaring that your identity isn't tied to your success or your failures. It's rooted in belonging and especially in who you belong to. You were created by God claimed by him, rescued from darkness, brought into the light. That truth changes everything. That is it for today, my friend. But before we go, let me repeat the seven principles for spiritual growth as introduced in the conversation. These are the foundation of the spiritual discovery journey, Number one, stop and consider. Pause and reflect on where you are, what you're feeling, and how God might be working in your life right now. Awareness is the first step toward transformation. Number two, recognize your spiritual battle. You are in a spiritual battle. Recognizing this helps you stop fighting the wrong enemy and begin engaging with the real one through prayer, truth and faith. Number three, tell the truth. Be honest with yourself, with God, and with others. Truth brings freedom, healing, and deeper connection. Number four, look for the lie beneath our struggles. Our lies we've believed about ourselves, God or others. Identifying those lies is key to replacing them with God's truth. Number five, ask, seek and knock. Come to God with your questions, your needs, and your heart. He welcomes your pursuit and promises to respond. Number six, find peace in forgiveness. Forgiveness means to release or let go. When we truly forgive, whether it's others or ourselves, we experience a deeper inner peace in setting someone else free. We often discover it's our own heart that's been released. Number seven, own your rescue story. Live in the truth of who you are. All that's happened and all that you've done, you are uniquely made by God and every part of your story is used to shape the beautiful soul you're becoming. Owning your own story brings gratitude and a powerful testimony to share with others. If you want to go deeper, be sure to check out my spiritual discovery.com. You'll find a book, an online course, and more tools for healing and growth. And if this episode touched you, would you do me a favor? Please share it with a friend. Let's spread the hope, the healing, and the amazing relationship that God wants to have with each of us. It's not a lecture, it's an invitation. And if you'd like to stay connected, I'd love to welcome you into my Weekly newsletter. Each week I share a few more personal reflections on the episode, and you'll get a sneak peek before anyone else. So just head to Curious for christ.kid.com/insider friends, God is inviting you into the most beautiful love story. Don't miss it. Until next time, lean in, be true, speak truth. Remember your emotions. Don't define who you are. They're not your identity. They're signals. They carry information. So lean in and let God meet you there. Bye for now hi, I hope you enjoy today's episode. If so, would you like to take 30 seconds and share it with a friend who may also struggle with knowing God and his purpose for their life? Also, leave a review on Apple Podcast and let me know what topics you'd like to hear about in the future. Your voice matters. I'll meet you back next Friday. For another episode.