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The Passing of Wynter

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine
The Truth Network Radio
August 13, 2021 2:00 am

The Passing of Wynter

Family Life Today / Dave & Ann Wilson, Bob Lepine

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August 13, 2021 2:00 am

Jonathan Pitts was married to his wife, Wynter, for many years, as they served in ministry together. Today he remembers her unexpected passing, his love for her, and how God has continually ministered to him and his family.

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If I could pick up a book to read, you'll never guess this, it would be what kind of book? The Bible. Oh yes, of course I have to say the Bible. But another book.

I don't know. I would pick up a romance love story. What? Not like a woman's romance novel. You usually do like a thriller.

I know, I like to go to thriller movies. Okay. But when I read, I want to read something tender and beautiful.

You're getting soft in your old age. I am. And I'll cry cry. You will cry. When I read.

Yeah. But not when I tell the story. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life.

Today. We talked earlier about this amazing love story with Jonathan Pitts and his wife, Winter, and we're going to continue that journey. It's a beautiful, beautiful love story.

It is. Jonathan, welcome to Family Life Today. It's good to be with you guys.

Welcome back. And we've loved hearing the beginning of this story. Yeah. Jonathan's been in Nashville for a few years. In fact, it's sort of interesting. Our son sort of interviewed.

Yeah. With you, Cody, a few years back at Church of the City in Nashville. You've done all kinds of things there.

You were in Dallas before that. And you've written how many books now? This is my third. I co-authored two books with Winter, one on parenting, one on marriage.

And then this is my first kind of solo book, I guess. And we've already talked about, and so we don't need to go all the way back through it, but the amazing story, you and Winter falling in love. And then the sudden death of her after 15 years of marriage.

You've got four daughters. You walked us through that a little bit previously. But take us back to like how, you know, you mentioned her sudden death, but some of us are like, how? I mean, she died in your arms. Was she healthy before this?

Winter was reasonably healthy. She had what's called mitral valve prolapse. She had a heart murmur, which I think I've heard like 10% of the US population has.

It's not like really uncommon. But she had a heart murmur that she knew about that we would go to a cardiologist every year to check up on this murmur. And they would say, oh, your heart looks like it doesn't look like it's growing.

It's the same size. Like you're fine. And eventually you'll probably need replacement or repair.

But right now you're fine. And we'd gone to the cardiologist less than a year before. And they said the same thing. And she also had a blood clotting disorder called factor five, which was basically she had thicker blood than most people. And that would impact her when she had babies. She has to take blood thinners for that. She had a blood clot passed her eye when she was pregnant with Alina, which by God's grace, we found out about because women normally find out about those after they have a miscarriage.

She did not. She found out while she was pregnant. And so anyway, she was healthy and we were in the middle of a big move to Nashville from Dallas. And the day that she passed away, I was at work. And you said that she wasn't feeling well that day. Yeah, she texted me that day probably.

You know, I was finishing my last week of work and so I was just busy kind of running around getting things done. And she texted me and just said, I feel that she sent me like the sick emoji. And so I just replied and said, what's going on?

And she never responded. So I turned in the final edited transcript of emptied our marriage book. And I headed home and stopped at Costco on the way home. I got some ribs and Caesar salad, which I'll never get those things from Costco again.

You can imagine why. I got back to the house we were staying at. And oddly enough, I thought she wouldn't be feeling well and maybe laying down. And she was sitting in the living room of that house with my sister-in-law, her brother's wife, and then my three youngest girls. And then her two girls were there and they were all doing each other's hair, like the just different girls doing each other's hair. And they were playing some game.

I still to this day don't know what it is, but they say, like, you can be an elephant, but you can't be a this or you can be that. I don't know what that game is, but they're playing that game. And I remember winter was laughing and they were all laughing, having a good time. So I just looked at winter. And in that moment, I'm like, oh, great opportunity for me to lay down and take a quick nap because they're playing. I took a run like five o'clock that morning. I was just tired. So I laid down and took like a 15-minute power nap. And then I got up and my sister-in-law was leaving as I was getting up. And then winter, I don't even remember if we talked much, but we kind of walked by each other. She said, I'm going to lay down for a little bit.

And we kind of had, you know, 15 years of history. I'm like, OK. And earlier, she also told me she had a final book she was working on, a prayer book for girls that came out called I Am Yours, Prayers for God's Girls, which is a beautiful book. She's a beautiful book of prayers on identity.

Priscilla Shire would actually write about that book and say that was winter's last will and testament, which makes me so emotional to think about. And so anyway, she went and laid down and I just kind of prepared, prepared, a strong word for getting ribs and a salad ready from Costco. But I just got plates ready. I went and knocked on the door and said, hey, babe, do you want to eat dinner?

And she's like, no, I think I just want to lay here for a while. I said, OK. So I went back and just ate with the girls. My oldest daughter was not there. So I went to Winter Park.

Thank God. Anyway, I went into the bedroom after I was finished eating. I think the girls were still sitting down, finishing up just to floss my teeth. And so I went through the master into the bathroom, floss my teeth. And as I kind of looked out, Winter had sat up.

She's just sitting up facing away from me. And then she just kind of like slumped over in a way almost like that, you know, that feel when you want to lay down, you don't feel like getting out of bed. And so you just like fall back over.

But there's just something that was kind of unnatural about it. And I remember saying, like, why are you playing like that? And then bottom line is she just kind of had like a cardiac reaction that to me looked like a seizure. And so I just started doing all the things.

I'm an Eagle Scout. And so I knew what to do and checking her pulse and sweeping her throat and just trying to figure out what was going on. And eventually would end up doing CPR on this tiny framed five foot, nothing, hundred and nothing pound woman who was my wife. So it was just one of the hardest things I've ever had to do and yelling for my girls to bring my phone. And obviously that was really traumatic for my girls. And they thought I was playing for a while. And eventually I got my phone. We called the paramedics. We were out in the middle of nowhere. So it really took probably at least 15 minutes. It felt like a half hour from the get there.

And so by the time they got there, I'm thinking as an Eagle Scout that's been trained, like you can only go so long without oxygen getting to your brain. And so I'm praying for a miracle on one side of my mind and the other side, I'm just preparing for what do I do? Like if I lose my wife and the whole time I'm telling Winter, like, don't leave me. Don't leave. Like, stay with me.

Stay with me. And had made a couple of calls. And eventually this was Priscilla Shire's old house that we were staying in, which is kind of like this ministry property. And friends of ours across the street came over that we knew well, that knew Winter really well and helped me with the girls.

And we followed the ambulance to the emergency room. And I'm still praying, texting my mom, texting a couple of people, asking them to pray. Were you scared at that point that you might lose her? I don't even know if fear is the right word. I was aware that I might lose her. And whatever state I was in, it was heightened, but it wasn't, I wouldn't call it fear.

I wouldn't call it peace. Probably shocked. Yeah, maybe shocked. I was just, it was a heightened awareness that I'm either going to lose her or God's going to perform a crazy miracle.

And either way, there's going to be some massive story here. I don't know what was going to happen. And so I just was being really practical, which made me feel lacking in faith and then trying to press into my faith and feeling shame for doubt. You know, it's like both things happening at the same time. And I wish I was a different kind of leader, but I'm like this type of leader that Murphy's Law, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. So I typically assume the worst in scenarios.

To prepare yourself? Yeah, yeah. And so that's kind of where I was while praying for a miracle at the same time. And so we get to the hospital and we'd walk into the emergency, or I'd walk into the emergency room where she was.

And what's really beautiful, another thing, seeing God's faithfulness in the shadow of grief. One of the families that I texted, really beautiful family, Greg and Val Gorman. Val is a general surgeon at the hospital they took us to.

Really beautiful friends of ours, good friends of ours at that point, still good friends of mine. Who, Winter and I were actually planning on staying at a hotel. They had extra rooms at a medical conference that weekend coming into that.

That was a Tuesday. That weekend we were going to stay at a medical conference with them at a hotel in Dallas. And anyway, I texted Greg and Val and just said, Winter's not breathing. And Greg actually said either, I can't remember, Val was either there or on her way. And so I wouldn't see her when I got there, but Greg would literally come. He told me this, I don't remember this, but he would come and just kind of like embrace me and just tell me that God's got me. And then Val, I would find this out later through a post that Alina posted on Instagram, that Val would, it's a really beautiful post in the book. But Val would walk up to her and grab her by her face and say, you serve a big God, a big, big God. Don't you ever forget it. So here is the general surgeon of the hospital walking up to my daughter, who she knows intimately, reminding her of the faithfulness of God.

How do I not see God's faithfulness in that, you know? You know, a few minutes later, one of the, I don't know if it was a doctor or some kind of attendant still to this day, kind of walked out and said, hey, probably a doctor. We had a pulse, we don't have a pulse any longer. You may want to come say goodbye to your wife. And so it was at that point that I went into the room, I'll never forget, like all the machines still working the sounds, but it might as well have been empty for me because I just went in and... It was just you alone?

Yeah. I kneeled down beside her and I just said, I want you to know I'm going to take care of the girls. You don't have to worry about our girls. I'll take care of them. And then I just, just began to sing that song.

It's actually funny. I now know him. Great are you, Lord, right?

Yeah. David Leonard, who wrote that song, is now a friend of mine, lives in Franklin, has a studio less than a mile from my house. And actually wrote about that in the book as well. Just singing that to Winter in the hospital. I think what I was doing in that moment was reminding her of where she was going. I was reminding myself the truth that I've always believed that my breath is God's, her breath is God's. He gives it, he takes it.

We can trust him in it. So anyway, that was it. What's hard for me is it was really traumatic. What's beautiful is that for Winter it was probably the most peaceful entrance into the kingdom of God that you could really experience. You really passed away in her sleep.

It wasn't painful. Anyway, that's given me a lot of peace. Yeah, it's amazing. As we've mentioned, you know, we're talking to Jonathan Pitts about this book, My Winter Season, Seeing God's Faithfulness in the Shadow of Grief. And it's just all we've heard so far is God's faithfulness, God's faithfulness, God's faithfulness in the middle of this darkness. And so many times when we go through darkness, we don't see that. And it isn't that he isn't faithful.

It's that we don't have eyes to see. And he kept over and over just revealing himself to you in the middle of this thing. I remember reading the story of the devotional you picked up that morning and then hit you later about having an exit strategy.

Another one, right? I woke up that morning and I went to the bathroom before taking a run and I was just trying to wake myself up. And what we oftentimes do is pull our phones out to kind of wake ourselves up. And there was a subject line that said, do you have an exit strategy? And I thought it was about leadership transitions.

I'm a nonprofit leadership and dealing with pastors. And in my mind, it was like an article about that. And so I just kind of left it on my phone.

And what about my day? But that evening after, I never forget going into the lobby of the hospital and not knowing what to do with myself. Were your girls at the hospital yet? Yeah, my girls were there, a bunch of family. Tony Evans, my boss, was there within a few minutes. My other guy, I got him Scott Wilson, who I would consider kind of our family pastor. He was there and other friends.

Like, I cannot forget how loved we were in that moment and I was really grateful for that. But I just didn't know what to do with myself. So I'm in the waiting room and I think we're waiting for the funeral home that we had selected to show up and all the things.

And maybe the county person responsible for marking death. I'm just waiting for all that stuff to happen. And so I just sat down with my phone and I had other people that had my girls at that point, other aunts. There were so many women in my girls' lives at that point, which was cousin Priscilla, her cousin Crystal, her cousin-in-law Kanika, Jonathan Evans' wife.

And then my sister-in-law Andrea, like all these women surrounding my girls and who have surrounded my girls since then, which in moments where I didn't know what to do, had been able to just relieve me of my responsibility, even if just for a moment, you know? And so I sat down and I was scrolling through my phone and I pull up what I think is an article. I open it up and it's literally Randy Frazee, who's a pastor, and it's actually a Bible gateway devotional that is, Randy's telling the story of going water skiing for the first time. And he says he's younger and he finally figures out how to get up on his skis on this lake and realizes once he starts getting tired, like, I don't know how to get down. And so he's like, they're circling the lake over and over again. His legs are getting tired and his friends are yelling in the back of the boat, just let go of the rope, just let go of the rope. And he's afraid because he thinks he's going to crash and break into a million pieces. And finally, he works with the courage to let go of the rope. And he just basically, for anybody that's going water skiing, they know this. You just slowly glide under the water, your skis first, then your feet, then your legs.

You just kind of slowly glide under. And he used that as an illustration for the believer in Jesus of what it's like to die and what it's like to enter eternity. And I'm telling you, like, there are not many people writing about death these days, even pastors in devotionals.

It's all kind of like fun, light kind of stuff. And that day in my inbox, God dropped a devotional on what it looks like for somebody to enter eternity who loves Jesus. And actually, I write about it, I got to thank Randy. And I actually, I know his wife, Roseanne, better than I know him, but I got to thank him.

And that story's in the book as well. And it's just a reminder to me that God's timing is perfect. Like, he knew that I would need that message. And I actually ended up reading that devotional to all of our family at my brother-in-law's house. I don't know, around one in the morning that night, just saying, hey, like, this is what God's given me.

I think he wants everybody to hear it. I read that. Yeah, just another beautiful way to see that God was being faithful to me, even in the hardest times. Talk about your girls, too, of how you saw God's faithfulness, caring for them and watching over them. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I was this type A pastor who's like, I'm going on to Nashville. I'm going to pastor. We're going to be OK. Are you kind of a planning control guy?

Well, I was going to call myself an idiot, but planning and controlling would be good, too. But yeah, so we get to Nashville and my church surrounded us really beautifully. I mean, even the fact that we were I'll just tell you this real quick. I also got a call from my now boss, Darren Whitehead, and Darren just said, hey, if you guys decide to stay in Dallas, like we'll pack your house up.

We'll sell your house. We'll figure it out. I had another conversation with Alina where Alina said she felt like we were supposed to go. Mom wanted to go more than anybody.

She's this 14 year old girl. She's kind of quiet girl who's just telling her dad, I think we need to go. And then Darren calls me and just tells me if we want to stay in Dallas, he'll just help us with the transition. Don't worry about it. He said, but if you come, you'll find a family ready to adopt you.

And Church of the City has adopted us. I mean, did you think, let's not go? I mean, I thought I got to be a good leader. I got to do what's best for my girls. I can keep my job with Tony Evans. Like, I'm not leaving because I had to. All of our families, they're like, why would I leave this? And ultimately now I can look back at it and know, like, I don't even think I'd know who I am in my own identity had we not left because I'd become like Evans in a way. Powerful, deadly people.

Yeah, I still am. They're a beautiful family. They're my best friends. Dr. Evans is my spiritual dad.

I see them all the time. But I think God wanted me to find myself again and allow my family to kind of have our identity. And I think if we were in Dallas, it would have been hard to do that.

I'm sure it would happen, but it wouldn't be hard to do that. And we entered into this story at this church where these people just want to love on us and didn't make any assumptions about, oh, you guys are already taken care of. Because I think in Dallas, people have been like, oh, yeah, they're Evanses.

They're fine. In Nashville, everybody and their mother was doing everything for us. And I couldn't take credit for it, nor could I ever pay it back, by the way.

Anyway, we find ourselves there with a lot of support. And I'm thinking I'm going to make this. I can do this. School hadn't started yet. Winter died on July 24th. We buried her on the 29th, I think. And then school started like on the 14th.

So we had these couple weeks where I'm in Nashville by myself, but I'm not working yet and they're not in school. One night I'm cooking a chicken and I just burned this chicken that I'm roasting. And I'm not a bad cook, but I burned this chicken.

I was just frustrated. I remember going upstairs and I called my sister, Carmen. The reason I called Carmen is because the day of winter's funeral, Carmen had come to me at the end at the dinner after the funeral and just said, hey, the Lord told me, like, if you need me, I'm supposed to come to Nashville.

So do you want me to come? And I was like, oh, we're good, Carmen. Don't worry about it. Like, I'm okay. We're going to make it. We're fine.

But that burnt chicken. Yeah. So I called Carmen in tears and was just like, hey, is that offer still on the table?

That was like, I don't know, August 12th, something like that. And Labor Day weekend, Carmen came to Nashville with three suitcases, had sold her car and broke her lease where she was living and moved in with me. She was single, never been married, praying for family. You described her as Mary Poppins. She is the Mary Poppins.

She is an amazing Mary Poppins. But she came in and the woman that my girls used to call Aunt CeCe, they now just affectionately call CeCe. And she became a part of our family and a surrogate mom to the girls and has been, I mean, this girl, okay, seeing God's faithfulness in the shadow of grief, Carmen has a master's degree in counseling. And all she's ever done is work in the mental health space since she's gotten into it.

That's what she's done. And so, and I needed the mental health space stuff more than my girls did. So she's just walked with me and walked with my girls and been a beautiful part of our family and a godsend and a new definition of what it looks like to be in singles ministry and selfless and caring. And she's still there. Yeah, she's with us now. She's with my girls. I've got one girl here in the studio with me. And she's back there watching right now. I can't see her. She's behind me. It's been a really beautiful season of recovery for us and mission for her, for my sister.

And my prayer is that my sister gets married and she makes a beeline for me to whoever God gives her, you know, but ultimately she's been with us and she's been a faithful friend and a faithful sister and a faithful sister in Christ to me and my girls. I mean, it's just, that's just beautiful. I just want to cry. I am crying. Yeah, you are crying. I am. But I want to talk about the future because your sister's not going to be living with you in the near future.

Yeah. What's on the horizon? My 40th birthday was in March of 2020. I had this Pebble Beach trip planned to go play golf in Pebble Beach. I had another trip to Florida to play golf. I'm like, I'm celebrating. I've gone through a lot. I'm celebrating.

And COVID canceled my birthday. Interestingly enough, it was beautiful. I mean, that night my girls made me a red velvet cake and then a key lime pie.

But the pictures, if you look at the pictures, I look so depressed. I just love Pebble Beach, you know. But I had a friend of mine, a guy I'd recently met about a year, a little over a year before then, reach out to me and just say, hey, are you dating again?

And I'm like, no, not really. I'm kind of dating golf. I'm loving my singlehood.

Maybe I'll just do this the rest of my life. Golf's not a good date unless you're good, you know. Well, I was getting better at that point. But anyway, he asked me that and I said, you know, if God has something for me, then great. But I'm not, I'm not out searching. I'm just taking care of my girls. And he said, well, I've got a friend. She's 40. She's single. She loves Jesus. Then he showed me a picture of her. And I'm like, what would that 40-year-old single beautiful Jesus lover want with a widowed data for pastor in Nashville?

And he just said, what you think is a liability is an asset and kind of rebuked me. And long story short, 41 days after my 40th birthday, I did a Zoom call with this girl. My story's big. Her story's big.

Both big Jesus stories. And we just connected over our stories. And basically, God stopped the world so I could meet. Her name is Peta.

Meet Peta. Is that why God did this? That's what happened. Sorry, guys. Sorry for the rest of you. Sorry about you.

I don't mean to make light of, obviously, the walls and all that. But in a way, you know, she was without work based on COVID. And God allowed us to spend crazy amounts of time together through a bunch of other stories, including one of her best friends who had randomly moved to Nashville, inviting her to come watch their girls for a couple of weeks, which ended up being like this seven-week period where she lived 0.9 miles from me, because that's how close her friends who had moved from LA were to my house.

0.9 miles. And so anyway, it's been about a year now of just really a beautiful change in my life. And, you know, it's funny. I'm a gut guy. When I met Winter, like, I just knew my gut. Like, she was my girl, you know? And it's the same thing where I'm at now.

Like, I just know my gut. This is the woman that God has for me. I mean, did you ever wonder, can I love again?

I did. You know, what's funny is I knew I would get married again, but the real pigheaded arrogant guy that I am was thinking, oh, I guess whoever I'll have next will be, you know, they'll support me. They'll support me in my ministry. They'll support me with my girls. Like, I was thinking more like a helper.

It won't be the same, you thought. Yeah, what's crazy is our first real in-person date, which was in San Luis Obispo during the beginning of COVID, my pebble trip was canceled, but my flights were still going out there, and she lived in LA. And so we literally met up in the middle three hours and 15 minutes exactly from where my sister lived, where we were at, and from where she lived in LA, met in San Luis Obispo and ended up having an opportunity to pray for my friends who I was staying with whose daughter was struggling with their emotional health in a real serious way. And she and I partnered in prayer on our first date, and I thought to myself for the first time, what if God could give me a life partner again? Like, you guys, like, my ministry was with my wife. Like, we wrote together. We did ministry together. We spoke together.

Right. And it was really beautiful. And in my mind, that couldn't happen again. And here we are finding ourselves praying for this family in a really deep, dark place for them, and I go, what if God could do that? And now the scripture that's really, it comes to mind for me and has come to light in multiple places is, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has planned for those who love him. And it's a, look, the journey I'm about to start on is a different journey than the one I've been on. It's all together different.

It's all together requiring as much faith as that one, a different kind of way. And I'm really excited for what God has, and we'll get married this fall and just really excited about that. Congratulations. Thank you.

How do girls feel about it? It's a hard journey to walk, because again, every part of newness for you means a reminder of what you've lost. And so there's a grief process in that, a pretty heavy one. It's been a difficult journey and a really beautiful one, because honestly, anything worth having is going to be difficult. And so it's actually really beautiful now.

I was actually just talking to her as I was driving here from Nashville, and she was on a call with my oldest girl, just having a beautiful talk. And they've all built different relationships. And it's a whole, you know, I've done family one way, and now I'm entering into, she doesn't have children, but somewhat of a blended family. And I'm going to have to trust God with that and learn a whole new different world that I've never known before.

And so is she, and so are my girls. And so it's a whole new journey. Of seeing God's faithfulness. Of seeing God's faithfulness.

We're all inspired. Like hearing how God has been there in the midst of your pain and suffering, like it's obvious He's there. But talk to the listener that feels like, I haven't seen that. How do I see God's faithfulness in the midst of my pain? I mean, I would start by saying you have to be looking for it, which is work. Maybe God will show you miraculously, and you won't have to work at all.

But I have to work now in my life. God gave me a really, some really beautiful things to see really clearly. But most of the time, it's work to see His faithfulness.

And that's why it's called faith, you know? And so I would say, there's a book I read by Leighton Ford called The Attentive Life. And it's basically on the discipline of paying attention to what God's doing.

It's a really beautiful book. And I read that actually at the beginning of COVID. And it really was explaining what I was experiencing.

Like just paying attention. That's really what Paul's saying. I can't help but go back to Philippians 4. Like, one of the hardest times in the history of the church, probably the hardest time, where persecution is running rampant. Any identification with Jesus Christ could mean death or imprisonment or torture. And Paul's saying, whatever is true, whatever is right, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, think about these things.

Whatever you've seen from me, put into practice. And God will be with you. Like, He's in prison writing this. His circumstances are terrible. The God of peace will be with you. His circumstances are terrible. He's talking to a group of people whose circumstances are terrible.

But the one common thing they have is peace in Jesus. And He's reminding them, in that peace, to actually see what's really happening. If all you see is what you see, Tony Evans says, you'll never see all there is to be seen. Be attentive. Open your eyes. God is always working.

And He's always good. And you said earlier, it's a discipline to think on these things, especially when everything around you is not those things, and you have to discipline your mind to say, I'm going to look for the faithfulness of God in the shadow of grief. Yeah, and if you think that you can't, and you say, I can't do that, I would remind you that you have the mind of Christ. If you're in Jesus, you have the mind of Christ. So, His very mind is working in your mind through the Holy Spirit to help you think about those things.

So, just submit to the Holy Spirit. This has been good. Thanks for being with us today, Jonathan. It's been inspiring.

It's good. It's always just a great reminder, because I'm really grateful for the fact that God showed me what He showed me the way He did in that season, because I need it even for where I'm going now. The verse from Scripture that comes to mind to me listening to Dave and Ann Wilson talking with Jonathan Pitts today is Colossians chapter 3 that says, set your mind on things that are above. We need a mindset change in the midst of our grief.

We need to remember that God is good, that He's in control, that He loves us, and that He will accomplish His purposes that will ultimately be for our good. Jonathan talks about how God has brought this home for him in the book he's written called My Winter Season. We've got the book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can order your copy online at familylifetoday.com or call to order at 1-800-FL-TODAY.

Again, Jonathan's book is called My Winter Season. Order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329 to order. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. You know, our hope and our prayer, our goal each time we sit down here at Family Life Today is to create programs, podcasts that will provide you with practical, biblical help and hope for your marriage and for your family. Our goal is to effectively develop godly marriages and families.

We believe godly marriages and families can change the world. That's the mission you're helping to support when you donate to Family Life Today. We're entirely listener supported. Today's program was brought to you by listeners like you. And next week's programs will be brought to you by listeners like you.

Maybe you can be one of those listeners. You can call us or go online to make a donation and help advance the mission of Family Life Today. Help us reach more people more often. If you're able to donate today, we'd love to send you as a thank you gift a couple of books, books by Matt and Lisa Jacobson about how to express love to our children, a hundred ways to love your son, a hundred ways to love your daughter. Those books are our thank you gift to you when you support the ministry of Family Life Today with the donation.

Again, donate online at familylifetoday.com or call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Thanks for being a part of the team that makes Family Life Today possible, and we look forward to hearing from you. And we hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together in your local church this weekend. And I hope you can be back with us on Monday when we're going to talk about how we raise sons and daughters who are spiritually resilient in the midst of all that is coming at our kids these days. How do we help them stand strong? We're going to talk with Valerie Bell, Matt Markins, and Mike Handler about that. Hope you can join us for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-15 19:32:00 / 2023-09-15 19:46:57 / 15

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