Joni Eareckson Tada Discusses Milestones And God's Faithfulness

Are you watching what's going on around in our country and are you dismayed? Are you aghast? Are you fearful? A lot of people are. Well, I got good news for you. We don't have to be.

We can be calm and assured knowing that he who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. Now, my guest on this show today understands that in spades and she has been a mentor and a friend and she tolerates me. Bless her heart. God love her and that is Joni Eareckson Tada. Joni, you with us?

We got a good connection. I'm certainly with you and I'm tolerating you, Peter. God bless you for your lack of judgment, Joni. I asked Joni if she'd like to come on today and talk about some things because as I look around what's going on in our world and our country, there's so much unsettledness, so much division, so much outrage, so much fear and I thought, you know what? We need to talk this through from seasoned people of faith who've walked through some very difficult times and Joni is certainly one of those.

For those of you who do not know her story and I can't imagine that many of you don't, but for those of you who don't, she was hurt in a diving accident 54 years ago this month on July 30th. I know that because that is also my birthday and Joni and I swapped notes on that day because I think that's important to remember. By the way, do you have anything planned for my birthday this year, Joni? I don't know. What do I need to wear?

Do I need to dress up for this? No, I'm just kidding. She and Ken, her husband, Joni lives with quadriplegia. She's also had to deal with breast cancer twice and she and Ken just celebrated 39 years of marriage last weekend and I was watching the pictures that she was posting on social media and they were just so precious and the divorce rate in couples that have a disability in the family is right under 90% and that's whether it's a spouse or special needs child or whatever and here's this couple who has faced this for 39 years through severe challenges and so Joni, I want you to know that I'm grateful that you took the time to call into the show today and how are you feeling today because you did a lot of recording yesterday and I was concerned about that for you today. Well, bless your heart.

Thanks for your concern. Actually, Ken Tada and I celebrated our wedding anniversary up in the Eastern Sierra Mountains. We went up to the Jew Lake Luke just north of Mammoth Mountain and borrowed a friend's cabin and there I am sitting out looking over the lake and the Eastern Sierra Range and oh, Peter, you live up in Montana so you know there's nothing quite like being up in the mountains to revive your soul, refresh your spirit, expand your vision and give you an appreciation for how great and awesome God really is.

So Ken and I are faring well. I'm still in a battle against cancer. You mentioned that and of course chronic pain but then again you also understand that given your wife's struggle with chronic pain and these are not easy days for anyone but as you were mentioning earlier, we have no reason for fear or alarm. We hold fast to a sovereign God who is for us and not against us. I often say to people that God may allow things to happen that harm our bodies. Again, I'm a quadriplegic. I dealt with cancer, deal with chronic pain. Our bodies may get harmed but he will never allow things to happen that would harm our soul. So his grace is always available, always sufficient, always more than abundant to aid us and support us through every challenge, every need.

So that's a lengthy answer, Peter, to your question about how am I doing. Well, Gracie gave you one piece of advice before today's show because she said, look, just get out of Joni's way. Would you just get out of her way and just leave her alone?

Just let her do her thing and you just leave her alone. That's my wife. The support, I just felt it. It was so strong.

No, I'm just kidding. When I think of you, Joni, I think of hymns because you and I both have a deep abiding love of the hymns and I was thinking about one in particular this morning with you and I'm going and I'm going to circle back to your anniversary. People would ask sometimes, what is your secret?

Well, you and I would both share the same thing. I mean, Gracie and I would be married 35 years next month and there is no secret. It's like the old song that Stuart Hamblin wrote, it is no secret what God can do, what he's done for others, he'll do for you.

There's no secret. It is Christ and Christ alone and I was thinking about you with this hymn and I'm going to walk over to, I call it the caregiver keyboard because this is what I use on the show on Saturday mornings and I know you know this hymn. That's right, prone to wander for I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh take it, feel it, feel it, Lord I court the book. The second verse is what makes me think of you. Here I raise my Ebeneezer, here by thy great help I've come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God, he to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood. And when I hear that I think about you and how you and Ken have planted your Ebeneezer, that standard, that this is where this is where we are anchoring our lives, we are betting everything on this, which is Christ.

Well you said it exactly, yep, yep. Let me say that I raised an Ebeneezer when I turned 70 years old a couple of years ago. I went on an Ebeneezer hike as I called it and my husband went with me and several of the girls who get me up in the morning, sit me in my wheelchair, others who helped me lay down at night and get me out of my wheelchair and put me to bed. Anyway I asked each of them to bring a stone and to write on that stone some special scripture that had sustained them through difficult times. And so there's my husband and me, I'm in my wheelchair taking an accessible hike up to a high hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean and right on top of that hill we quote, raised an Ebeneezer, that is referencing of course the prophet Samuel who after a great victory over the Philistines set up a monument, a memorial of sorts, and he proclaimed, thus far the Lord has helped us. And that's exactly what I did Peter, we all piled our stones together on top of that hill and we sang that very hymn, here I raise my Ebeneezer, give her bye-bye, help us come. And I just prayed to the Lord on top of that hill overlooking the ocean, I said, Jesus you have been so faithful over more than five decades of paralysis, nearly 40 years of marriage, years of chronic pain and struggles against cancer, you've been so faithful, your grace has been more than sufficient. I'm singing my way through suffering, I'm smiling my way through suffering, why would I doubt you for the future? You have shown me in the past that your grace is my enablement and I'm going to claim it for the years to come. So that particular verse from Kamel Sounds, for him, is very special to me. Well you know you were very brave, I never let anybody come around me, all my friends with stones because I'm afraid they'll fling them at me and so I have to be very careful.

No, I was just kidding. But I think of that, I think of you when I think of that because you and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago and I introduced a hymn to my weekly show audience every week because I feel like we have gotten away from this treasure trove of hymns that were born out of great conviction and often great suffering and I shared with you one that I was going to share with my audience because I know that in the middle of the night you wake up and you sing these hymns to get you through some very difficult times. Gracie's the same way and this one was, you know, oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come and the reason I'm saying these things Jonny is because so much of our society right now is just in a free fall and people are scrambling on what to believe and I think this is what anchors us to realize, okay here I raised my Ebenezer, here by thy great help I've come. So far the Lord has brought us through this.

Oh God our help in ages past and I want people to have that great hope of looking back and seeing this is what God has done. The Lord has done great things for us and we can trust him with this even with disability, even with quadriplegia, even with amputation, even with chronic pain, even with broken marriages, even with all these special needs children, whatever we come to him with, all we need to come to him with is need and this is the message that I wanted to be able to extend to the audience today. Talk a little bit about that, oh God our help in ages past, what does that mean to you when you're crying out in the middle of the night Jonny? Well exactly Peter, that's one of the hymns that I recite at two o'clock in the morning or maybe four o'clock in the morning when pain wakes me up and I dare not, dare not get my husband up for a third time to reposition me in bed.

I want our listeners to know that I cannot reposition myself in bed when I'm uncomfortable or in pain because I'm paralyzed, I'm a quadriplegic, so Ken has to re-tuck the pillows and turn my hips and reposition my leg but you know I grab Colby once or twice, I just don't dare call him a third time. So I lean hard on the Lord Jesus and I recite hymns, just like the one you mentioned, oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, you are my shelter from the stormy blast, you are my eternal home. And Peter just last night, again I don't want to sound like I'm lamenting here, not at all but again last night was a very painful night and about three o'clock in the morning I find myself whispering to the ceiling, Jesus I am resting, resting in the joy of what you are. I am finding out the treasure of your loving heart. You have bid me gaze upon you and your beauty fills my soul, for by thy transforming power I'm going to believe you make me whole right now at three o'clock in the morning. You're going to come through from me, Jesus, because your promises are tested and tried and true, and they are the only thing that's worth relying on. The world's when I turn, Jesus, you've got the words of life. This is the way we should be talking to our souls, whether it's three o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the afternoon when we're watching the late afternoon news, we've got to talk to our souls and convince our souls, convince ourselves that God is trustworthy.

I mean, why wouldn't He be? He sent His own precious Son to the cross on our behalf and He who did not serve His only Son, why would not He give us the grace needed? So I just want to encourage our listeners today to memorize a few worship songs or timeless hymns or passages of scripture that provide that foundational support and lean on those memorized phrases when you become anxious.

Wouldn't you agree? I do, and it's like David at Ziklag, one of my favorite stories in scripture, when his own men were going to stone him. Again, that theme of stoning somehow resonates with me. But though his own men were going to stone him and said, David did what? He encouraged himself in the Lord.

And I think the reason I like these hymns so much is they reflect the theology of these wonderful writers and it provides an easy phrase for us to remember in these great moments. Did you ever see that movie We Were Soldiers once with Mel Gibson? No one has, but tell me about it. It's a hard movie to watch. It was about in Vietnam. It was a hard movie to watch, and there was one scene in there in particular that it was just all falling apart. Bullets are flying and young men were being just ripped apart. It was a terrible scene, and this was true.

It was a true story. And into this, Colonel Halmore, played by Mel Gibson, stood up and he said to these men, he barked out orders, we're going to take that creek. We're going to take that hill.

He wasn't talking about our taxes or back home or mowing the grass or anything else. We're just dealing with this moment. We're going to do this right here. And sometimes these hymns can anchor us in the present so powerfully so that when all is flying at us, when the bullets are flying, when we turn on the news and we see all these things going on, we can go back and say these things, sing them over and over again, wonderful words of life. I love that hymn. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.

I just love that hymn. And you're right, we've got to start preaching this to ourselves, just like David did at Ziklag, because how can we take this to the world if we're so busy scrambling and figuring out what we believe and why we believe it? And it doesn't mean we're not going to have moments of despair, but it does mean that this is how we do it.

Well, exactly, Peter. And in this day and age, when there is so much division, so much uncertainty, so much unrest and turmoil, sometimes we can't even find, we can't even think straight. I know sometimes at night, I find myself wandering, my thoughts wandering, and I can't even put two sentences together in a prayer.

And so that's when it's good to fall back on or default to things you've memorized, things you don't have to even think about, but that just come to the surface of your heart. And as Kim's do that for me, again, in the middle of the night when I'm anxious or fearful because I'm in great pain, I think of passages of scripture like, okay, here's one, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 8 to 10. It says, Though we are crushed on all sides, we are not crushed.

I mean, right there, what a great promise. Because I know our listeners would agree that there are times when you feel absolutely pressed in on all sides. Remember, you may be pressed in, but you're not crushed. You may be knocked down, as it says in that scripture, but you're not knocked back. Because every day we're so close to experience something of suffering, something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that in turn we might die to ourselves in wants and wishes and live by the power of Christ. And I think that's why I praise God for my difficult circumstances, for my disabilities, for the cancer, for the kind of pain, because it causes me to really, really, really lean hard into the Lord Jesus, right?

Indeed it does. And you whispered that in my ear 25 plus years ago, whom he calls his grief, he also calls his great compassion from lamentations. This is Peter Rosenberg, and we're talking with Joni Eareckson Tada. This is American Family Radio, and we are taking the gospel through the broken and the weary and the lost and the dying.

We'll be right back. While in the emergency room with my wife, as she was struggling with the COVID-19 virus herself, and I looked at her, I said, Are you scared? And she said, A little bit, but I've been through worse.

The Certainty of Mankind's History with Uncertainty, an article by Peter Rosenberger. And then as her fever was approaching almost 103, she started singing in Christ alone, I place my trust and find my glory in the power of the cross. And that's how she has anchored herself in the certainty of Christ through her huge medical journey that has included 80 surgeries, both of her legs amputated, 100 doctors have treated her, 12 hospitals, and now the COVID-19 virus.

And so when we live with those kinds of uncertainties, anchoring ourselves in Christ, in Christ alone, that's the only place we can run to where there is certainty. To read this article and more visit afa.net forward slash the stand. Welcome back to American Family Radio. I am Peter Rosenberger sitting in for this hour, and we are so glad that you're with us. I'm talking with my longtime friend, Johnny Erickson-Tada.

And what we wanted to do today is just provide you with some things that we have stood upon, leaned upon, wept upon, clung to, and been clung to from the things of Christ to sustain us both in our journey. And Johnny and her husband, Ken, just celebrated their 39th anniversary, a marriage that is forged through challenges that are beyond the pale of quadriplegia, cancer, chronic pain. Gracie and I, 35 years next month of lots of things I've had.

Gracie's had 80 surgeries that I can count in both of her legs gone, chronic pain, and then been married to me and through painful things that I've done. I had my own train wreck when you deal with immorality and so forth. I've given God way too much to redeem.

But the reason we share these things is not to glorify in the luridness or all the dysfunction, but to talk about this great Savior that He reaches in even to these things and pulls out something beautiful. Johnny told me this, gosh, it's been back. Johnny, it's almost been 30 years. I remember you saying this there in Nashville, when we lived in Nashville, and you said He reaches into the vilest of things and pulls out something extraordinary.

Don't know why He does it, don't know how He does it, just grateful that He does it. I'll never forget that. The quote was, He reaches down into what otherwise looks like awful evil and He wrenches out of it, positive good for us and glory for Himself. Just getting the quote correct, Peter, that's all. Listen, I tell you what, bless my heart. It was 30 years ago, Johnny.

It was a long time ago. But I love this. I was thinking about one more hymn for you. By the way, there's nothing like getting called on the carpet by Johnny Erikson Todd live on the radio.

There's just nothing like it. But Johnny says, I make her laugh. And I think you all see that now. There's another hymn that I wanted to do that I want to turn over some things to you. But this is one that I love.

And I think you do too. But I've never talked to you about this hymn, but I have a sign on my door from a particular phrase in this hymn. And I wanted to see if you know this one, Johnny. Well, there's a line in it that I cannot get away from. And I wrote it down on a post-it note. It's still on my office door.

And then Gracie had it engraved and framed. And it's ponder anew what the Almighty can do. Ponder anew what the Almighty can do.

And I wanted just to let you have your head with that one and just take that one wherever you want to go. Because I think this is the call for us, the invitation for us as believers to ponder anew. Think about these things.

Reflect on it. This is the whole point of this show today is for us to be anchored in the greatness of God, not the turbulence of the world, but the greatness of God. Johnny, talk about pondering anew what the Almighty can do. Well, that's a great phrase to share with you, a story that occurred when I was up at the cabin in the mountains just last week overlooking the lake.

And while Ken was up on the porch, I wheeled out onto the lawn overlooking the lake. And I was just praying, Lord Jesus, I don't know what new things you've got in store, but just know that I'm ready. I am willing. I would love to depart and be with you, Jesus. But it seems that you think it's better that I remain and that there is fruitful labor for me on earth. And so you're not about to call me home anytime real soon. It's just, Jesus, my hip is hurting more, and this cancer battle is not over, and aging with quadriplegia is not easy. So please, Jesus, if you're not going to call me home and you're going to leave me here on earth to work for you, you've got to supply the grace.

I need new, fresh grace for the days ahead. Well, Peter, just as I said that, there I am sitting on the lawn, and the sprinklers go off. But not just any sprinkler, the one in front of me did not have a sprinkler's head. And so this barrage of water came sitting straight out at me, hitting me full force in the face and the chest. And within seconds, I was soaking wet, and it wasn't about to let up. And so quickly, I reached down to the joystick of my wheelchair to get out of the way of the sprinkler, and what happens, but the joystick falls off. And so I can't move, I'm stuck. And I'm getting sprayed with, I mean, I'm drenched with water. Tim comes running, he's so upset at me.

Get out of there, he says. But then he's got to get wet because he's got to quick find the joystick that's got lost in the grass. And I start laughing, I cannot stop laughing. This is so funny, this is just so incredulous. And later that night, as I lay in bed, I thought, wow, how good of you, God, because immediately I thought of Proverbs 31, the Proverbs woman who clothes herself in dignity and grace and laughs at the days to come. God gave me new fresh grace that enabled me to laugh, absolutely laugh, at the conundrum of strange, twisted circumstances that assaulted me.

You know, getting drenched with water, I can't find the joystick, my husband's upset with me, can't get out of the way, I'm laughing, silly. But I'm thinking, Jesus, how good of you. The grace you are going to give for the days to come will enable me to laugh at the days to come.

And that was such a strange way of God to answer that time of prayer, pondering anew what the Almighty can do. You never know, you might get wet in the process, but he showed me that his grace can be laughing grace in the face of some pretty tough afflictions. Well, I'm counting on it because I have one of the lesser known spiritual gifts, the gift of mirth.

If I'd been one of the wise men, I would buy gold frankincense and mirth. I love to laugh and I love to make Gracie laugh. And it's, to me, it is a, and I like to make you laugh because I feel like if I've made either one of you two women laugh, then that's a pretty good day's work. I will tell you all a story. This is embarrassing, but I'm going to do it anyway, because it's funny. And don't tell anybody. This just stays between us here on the audience. Okay. It's okay.

Don't tell anybody this story. But once when Johnny was at our home in Nashville and she came over and Johnny, you may remember this, you may have tried to put it out of your memory. And, but it was, um, Rainey was there and we, and, and I was playing host and Gracie just had surgery and you wanted to see her.

And so you go in there to our bedroom and you're there she's in bed and you're there at her bedside and y'all are talking. And I was asking Rain, I said, what, what I've never played host to you before. And so I was like, well, what does Johnny like to eat or, or whatever. And, and I told her the inventory list of everything I had in the refrigerator and, and, and I mentioned grapes. She's oh, she loves grapes. And so I, I go in there with a bowl of grapes and you patiently teach me how to help you eat grapes. And I'm feeding you grapes one at a time. Well, for whatever reason, Johnny, my weird mind just said, you know, Johnny, when Gracie makes me feed her grapes like this, she makes me take my shirt off and rub oil over my chest, but I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable. And it, it, and you started laughing like you did now, but you had a grape in your mouth and, and you, it sounded like you were choking. And I thought, Oh dear Lord, she's choking. I've just killed Johnny Erikson Todd. I'm going to have the Mark of Cain on my head.

I will be cursed among the nation, the saint of a woman. And I didn't know how to give the Heimlich maneuver to somebody in a wheelchair. I mean, I was just like, what have I done? You know, and then you, but you kept laughing and it was okay. And, and I went and, you know, it just passed out, but, you know, those are funny moments and it's okay to laugh. Well, I'm so glad you said that because there's a guy who's right here by the microphone and he makes me laugh every single day.

I want, I want our listeners to just hear a word or two from my husband, Ken Tana. Hey Peter, how are you doing? Well, I'm fine. It'd be better if you came out here to do a little fishing, don't you think?

Well, uh, I plan on going, being there in a couple of months. All right. I didn't realize you almost killed my wife.

Sorry, you had to find that on live radio. Well, I just want to say thank you for all that you do. And, uh, you know, Johnny is an amazing woman. I am testimony to that after 39 years and Lord's willing another 40th year and maybe on further, but, uh, at this point she's, she is my hero. Oh my goodness.

Ken, before you jump on this, cause I know you got, you're like a ninja on the radio. You'd like to jump in and jump out real quick, but isn't it great from one caregiving husband to another of, of wives that have broken bodies, isn't it spectacular to know that we have a savior who himself cares for his wounded bride. And that just gives me great comfort and strength.

Yeah, no, I would concur with you, Peter. And you know, it is one of those privileges. If people look at it as a positive that God gives us and, uh, you know, it's, it's something that we can do. And when we talk about, we were talking about Colossians three 23, do your work hardly as unto the Lord, not as unto men. And so we do this with the idea that we are doing it for the Lord.

If this all happens, we're married to disabled women. Well, and I go back to this whole thing with laughter, Johnny and Psalm one 26, two, then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue was shouts of joy. Then they said, among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. And I, I would suggest to you that not only about you and Ken and Gracie and me, but that we as all believers, that they could say among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. Do people look at the church of Jesus Christ in this world and say, the Lord has done great things for them.

And if not, then why not? Because he has, and he's willing to do it. What he's done for others, he'll do for you. As Stuart Hamlin said in that great song, it is no secret. And I think as we go, if we see this, this world falling apart around us, can we stand firm and let the world look with, with, with envy and with Marvel that we can be peaceful in the midst of this, we can be calm. We can even laugh in the midst of this. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting.

Job's eight, Job eight 21. Can we do this? And I say to you, yes, we can. And I think that's the message I wanted just to bring today to this audience and let them know that what a mighty God we serve. And this is, this is, uh, between Johnny and Gracie and between Ken and I, this is, you're looking at what is that 40 and 35, 75 years of marriage through disability.

You got two women who have what, 90 years of disability and suffering. And, and we're planning our flag, our Ebeneezer in this, in the, in the great redemptive work of Christ. Johnny, you've got a, uh, a lot of things going on with Johnny and Friends. Would you leave us with one way that people can find out more about you and all the ministry aspects of what you're doing at Johnny and Friends before we wrap it up? Well, Peter, we are trying to, at Johnny and Friends, we're trying to take this exactly what we've been talking about today. And we want to give it to thousands of other people with disabilities and their family members, their spouses, all around the world. In fact, next week, Ken and I will be heading off to one of our Johnny and Friends family retreats.

We will hold 73 retreats for special needs families where there's lots of fun and lots of joy and laughter, but also some serious times in God's word. Because you were mentioning about the example that we can be to a skeptical, unbelieving world. I mean, one of the strongest evidences of our confidence in Christ is to not complain, no matter how hard the hardship and suffering. Philippians chapter 2, verse 14 says, do everything without complaining. Oh, listening friends, if we could just do that, what a witness of God's power through our afflictions. So you've got joy, you've got laughter, you've got peace, you've got not complaining, an uncomplaining spirit. All these are wonderful ways to testify how you are holding fast to the Lord Jesus, thus far as he has brought you. And you have every confidence that he'll, his grace will meet you for the days ahead.

Good ways we can witness to an unbelieving culture. Don't you agree? Indeed it is. And this is available to each of us right now. And these are principles that we can incorporate in our life and stand on in our life, that God has invited us to trust him, that there is peace. Even while tears are still drying on your cheek, you can still have the joy of the Lord.

You can. It is not, you don't have to have everything in your life working just the way you want, then you can be happy. That's not the point of this.

The point is you can have the joy of the Lord no matter what. As you, I watched Gracie come out of surgery one time, one of many times, but this was after her remaining leg was amputated. She's now a double amputee. They were wheeling her out of the surgery.

She was halfway sedated, but her hands were lifted to heaven and she was singing the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. And I thought that's what we're talking about right there. And so Johnny, you have blessed me today. You and Ken both. Sorry, Ken, that I nearly killed your wife. I'm sorry about that.

But it was, it was a funny moment. No, no, no, no, no, no. You did fine.

You did fine. We've got to go. And this has been our time. I'm Peter Rosenberger.

This is American Family Radio. Now you understand a little bit more of this great peace, this great grace, this great strength that is available to you right now. You don't have to wait. You don't have to clean up. You don't have to do anything. You just come.

All you need is need. Thank you for being a part. We'll see you next time. This is John Butler and I produce Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envisioned doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling, you see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry because I see the smiles on their faces and I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.

Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. And so, um, these men are so glad that they get to be doing, um, as, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought a peg leg, I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're, they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there.

What does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave. I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and the other ones like it, but I know about this one, is just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much. That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle, standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.