Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello friends. Asher Witmer here with Unfeigned Christianity.
[00:00:05] It has been almost a year since I have released anything on Unfeigned Christianity. I did some via my email list and some on social media throughout the year, but I have not recorded a podcast, a YouTube video, anything in the last year. And I don't know if you noticed that at all or not, but I just wanted to give an update on where things are at, why that is. I have received some private messages or some emails and that communicated to me that, yeah, I kind of dropped off and people don't really know why.
[00:00:44] Essentially a year ago this week, I'm recording this on Valentine's Day, February 14th. It's Friday, 2025, a year ago February 14th. It was a Wednesday and I was taking my boys to Pueb.
[00:01:04] Every Wednesday we take them in. There's a homeschool co op that they're a part of with a private school there and I took them in. And essentially, to make a long story short, my day in Pueblo, first of all, I don't remember much of it. And then secondly, what I do remember of it I later discovered is just like fantasy. So let me dive into it a little bit more and just explain the end of January last year, January 31, 2024, I came down with a horrible flu. Me and our family, some of my kids came down, but basically this flu stretched out. I had a fever for three and a half days. It stretched out for our whole family, stretched out for about a 10 day period. We were incredibly sick. And towards the end of that, my wife had gotten sick and I was getting better and I was starting to feel better. And I remember on February 9th was the most clear day of the whole month.
[00:02:13] In fact, I'll just tell you now, most of February of 2024, I don't remember. I can't tell you what happened. What I was doing on a specific day, February 9th was very clear. The reason the week before that or the nine days before that, I don't remember, is because I spent most of it sleeping. I was sick and sleeping, had a fever for three and a half days. And then when I didn't have the fever then I was incredibly congested and it was a miserable start to February. And then in, in as I was getting out of it, my wife was having her fever and struggling.
[00:02:53] Something started happening with me that I didn't realize anything was going on until about a week later.
[00:03:01] My reaches out to my wife because I wasn't showing up at meetings and they were wondering If I'm okay. And I'm confused because I thought I was showing up now understand I work remotely, so our meetings are virtual.
[00:03:16] But that led to my wife.
[00:03:20] It kind of confirmed to her, she, as she tells the story, like there were some things that were already some conversations we had had that didn't really make sense to her.
[00:03:30] And that got the ball rolling as far as getting my health checked out. And the long story short, there was this significant mysterious health issue coupled with that I was so part of what my wife was noticing and kind of getting a little irritated by was I was sleeping a ton. I would sleep later into the morning than I normally do. I'd get up, I'd go down to my office and work and kind of be down there till supper, which is, it wasn't abnormal because my schedule was super full. I was in Bible college, I was working full time, I was doing some freelancing on the side. I was blogging and writing full time. Plus, oh, I'm involved in the leadership team here at church. So just a bunch of different stuff. There's often, if I'm not working, maybe I'm squeezing in some homework, study or a blog writing or something before supper. Our schedule just was not healthy. So it wasn't abnormal for me to be in my office most of the day, but to never show, never show up for a lunch break or for anything like that was abnormal. And then I would come up and eat supper with the family and then go lay on the couch and sleep all night. Like seven o'clock, I'd fall asleep and then just sleep till seven the next morning.
[00:04:49] And so that was kind of bothering her. People started making some comments about my weight.
[00:04:56] And that's one of the things I kind of remember from February was a friend making a comment about my weight. And I was like, I don't think I've lost any weight. I was sick for a while. Maybe that's making me look a little hollow. And I distinctly remember kind of around Valentine's Day, standing on the scales. And so just a little backstory. At New year's day of 2024, I weighed 170 pounds. And for a, for a guy that's five, nine, I was like, man, this is ridiculous. I'm getting a little chunky here. And so one of my goals for the year was to start. I frequently get out, get some form of aerobic exercise, but was specifically to tone in my body a little bit more. And so I bought this app that has a series of workouts that's tailored to your body and your diet and everything. And it's all body weight exercises. And so I had started doing this and all through the month of January and coupled that with run. And a few weeks later I stepped on the scales and I was 174 pounds. I was like, what the world? Like, I'm trying to go the other way even if I'm not losing weight so much. I just kind of wanted to get tone, which I don't know how you determine that exactly. But anyways, I remember by January 28, weighing myself again and I was at 172 pounds. So it had started to go the other way well around February, let's say February 16th. I don't remember when it was exactly, but we'll just kind of give a little. That's still, you know, three days. That's like 19, 20 days. I had stepped on the scales and I was down to 158 pounds. So I dropped 14 pounds in 20 days, less than 20 days.
[00:06:51] And I just remember being stunned. Just like, what the world. Like, how. How does that happen? I don't. I don't. My weight doesn't fluctuate easily. It. I have to eat a lot to gain weight and I have to really work out and. And not eat a lot to. To lose weight. I'm typically fairly steady throughout my adult life and my youth. And so that was kind of one of the moments that I remember waking up there. Then there was another.
[00:07:20] Another series of events. I took my one son snowboarding as a daddy, father, son, date. And a couple things happened throughout that day that was just clearly like, mentally things were not clicking. I couldn't find my tickets, which we purchased before the season starts because they're significantly cheaper. And I couldn't find them. The morning we went to go, I couldn't find. Couldn't find the tickets. My son, my two older sons, because they're between. They're for fourth, fifth and sixth graders here. Actually, it might go up to seventh grade here in Colorado you can get a pass that is significantly discounted ski skiing. And it's all online and stuff. And. And the way you do it is you book it the day before and then you show up and you show them the QR code and stuff. And. And I was standing there at the desk scrolling through my email, trying to find this, and I could not find it. I could not find the QR code. And I kept like showing the guy my phone and he's like, I don't. That's not it's an email from. From them. But it's not. It's not about the reservation stuff. So essentially I ended up purchasing two new tickets on the spot. I couldn't get the locker to work. It's very simple. I. I've done it many times, and for some reason I couldn't get the locker to work. And then probably kind of the. The biggest piece, two biggest pieces is I thought I saw like 3:30 on the clock. And I asked my son if he's ready to go home because he was. He was kind of having a rough day a little bit. And I was like, well, we could. Do you want to. We can go till four, till the list close, or we could head out now. And he's like, I want to head out now. And so we packed up and we hit the road and started coming back. And then at some point, we're looking at our clock and the clock in the van says 1:45.
[00:09:23] And it was so weird. It's like, I know I saw 3:30 and here it's only 1:45. Like, we're. We get home and my wife is like, why are you guys home so early the next day? Within a day or two, I could barely remember that whole day. I. I wouldn't have, like, it. It felt like this distant dream if it wasn't for the fact that we happened to take a selfie. And I'm looking at the selfie and it's like, oh, we actually went snowboarding. But I. I couldn't remember much, really. The only things from the day that I can remember are those specific things where. Where something, an event was triggered that made me realize, like, boy, something is not going well mentally.
[00:10:08] Somewhere in there. I preached a sermon at our local church. You can still go online. The February sermon where I'm preaching, it's there. I see it. I've watched it several times and am just stunned because I have absolutely no memory giving that sermon. I watch it over again and it feels weird. It just. I cannot describe the feeling of I have no memory.
[00:10:34] I shouldn't say no memory. Like, there again. I have a vague memory of being up in front of people, but it was like a couple things. I preach once a month regularly. And so I just couldn't really remember if that was a dream. Like, was I dreaming about preaching again? What I preached on was something I was planning to preach on. So it's not like things were really crazy because I know what I had wanted to say in that sermon. When I'm listening to myself, I'M like, oh my. Like, you can tell, you can tell I had not really prepared for it. Like, I, I just literally kind of got up and went off to sermon based on what was in my heart and what I had already thought about, but I have no vivid memory of actually presenting that sermon. And it's just super weird. All of that is just an example of some stuff that was going on around the 21st of February last year. We started a series of testing, went to the doctors and spent really a month and a half doing different testing, getting referrals, checking out both the medical side and the psych side of the brain. And like, what's going on? Nothing was showing up, had an MRI done, nothing was showing up. My doctor, when we went in for the first time on February 21st, my doctor said, Go home. And well, even before this, my job had relieved me and they were extremely generous with us in covering for us, covering for my role in the company, but then even helping financially in an extremely generous way. And they said, just take time to go find out what's going on, whatever doctor's visits you need, whatever, like go take time.
[00:12:27] A couple days later, go to the doctor and she's like, go home and just sleep. Like, just if you feel like sleeping, just sleep. And so I did that. Everything came crashing to a halt. Like, no more blogging, podcasting, none of that. I had already kind of dropped the ball on that because I was in this kind of loopy out of it state.
[00:12:51] I'm grateful for everything else that I did without being aware of it. I'm grateful I wasn't producing podcasts and blogs and stuff. It was like, oh my, like, who knows what would have happened or been done. But I had been planning to release the live free course in March and so all of that came to a halt. Work came to a halt.
[00:13:14] The leadership team here at church relieved me, said, hey, take whatever time you need to figure out what's going on. And I literally spent about a week to two weeks just sleeping. I would sleep 12 hour nights, wake up at 11 in the morning or something and be awake for a couple of hours and then just be tired again and sleep for another couple hours. I was, I was getting like 14, 15 hours of sleep a day for a while and, and to the, to the point where, where like, for me, part of what felt weird was so I had this week to 10 day period in February where, where I was doing stuff, I had a lot of energy and all this stuff, but I was unaware of what I was doing or I was seeing things. Like, there were even some conversations that I vividly remember having with people. That was another piece that kind of woke us up. So, like, something's wrong. And then later I'm messaging them and. And realizing that we.
[00:14:23] The way they responded, they're like, I don't know what you're talking about, and be like, didn't. Didn't we have a conversation around this? And somehow, like, my mind was jumbling all these things up and couldn't really. I didn't really know what was hap. Is this, like a psychotic breakdown? Is this mental something? And so that's what led my doctor want referred me to a psychiatrist and then a neurologist, the medical side neurologist and then psychiatrist, the psych side.
[00:14:52] Long story short, we were also running a number of other blood tests, some cardio tests, because I was starting to feel a lot of fatigue and just, like, windedness. I'd go up the stairs and just be winded. I'd do just a little bit of work around the house and just be exhausted and tired. And so there was definitely kind of this. There's this moment where Asher's kind of out of it, but has lots of energy. Well, then Asher kind of comes to it, and it's like my body catches up to me, and I was just exhausted. And so there. There were other testing and stuff that was going on, but the neurologist we couldn't get into until August 5th in 2024. Now, mind you, we're back at the beginning of March still. So this is like five months out.
[00:15:41] It felt kind of like, oh, like really? The psychiatrist I was able to see have an evaluation with them right away, within a couple of weeks. But when. When we did that, she. The psychiatrist is like, I've never seen this before. I don't think it's psychiatric. Usually psychiatric things, there's some sort of sign that you. As you look back on, it's like, oh, well, this was creeping in, or there's history in your family of psychotic breakdowns and stuff. And it's like, there's no history. There's. There were no signs. It came on really suddenly.
[00:16:20] And she did not want to give any sort of diagnosis until I saw the neurologist as well.
[00:16:28] She was like, if. If this happens again, then certainly come back in. We can. We can kind of help you learn how to navigate it and so forth. But she didn't think it was related to psychiatry, psych, psychiatric breakdown or anything.
[00:16:43] Well, that kind of left us so we get to April and we've done a host of testing, we've seen a couple of different doctors, and they're just kind of baffled what's going on. And so I'm heading into April and into the summer. Clueless. By April, I was starting to work again, at least part time. I was, My energy level was back up enough that I could do that. I wasn't sleeping near the hours that I was for a couple of weeks there, the end of February, beginning of March. But there was still tremendous fatigue. I even, even just working and not doing all the other stuff. I had backed out of Bible college back like everything had come to a halt.
[00:17:30] But even just working, putting in five or six hours in a workday, I would be exhausted at the end of the day. And I don't like, again, I work for a marketing agency. So it's, it's computer stuff, it's mental stuff, it's not physical stuff, but my body, my mind was, was just exhausted. And basically I spent the whole summer then not really knowing what was going on. And during that period, and I know even a bunch of you folks who follow my blog, my podcast reached out during that time and I, I just want to express gratitude, appreciation for, for your acknowledgement.
[00:18:14] I did not respond near to everybody, and a lot of that simply had to do with my mental physical state at the time.
[00:18:26] And part of, part of what I was dealing with was my doctor thought it was something psychiatric. The psychiatrist said it wasn't. None of the medical tests are showing anything. And then I have people, folks in my life who had Lymes, or folks in my life who had some other medical thing happen, or folks in my life who went through an emotional burnout period, or folks in my life who had their own mental breakdown. And everybody's coming to me with this sounds exactly like what I went through. And, and so I'm like, so is. Is this Lymes? Is this.
[00:19:06] I. I don't even remember some other virus infection that people were saying to get tested for. It's like, is this that thing? Is it a burnout period? What's going on? And, and definitely, as we reflect, reflected back. Like one of the things my wife said early on was like, this, this may be good for us. I don't remember how she said it exactly, but I just remember resonating with her in the sense that this is forcing us to reset. We haven't been going at a healthy pace and it's forcing us to reset. And so that was true. But what Was confusing was I've gone through burnout periods of time before where all of a sudden things you love to do, you no longer find joy in doing. All of a sudden you can't get yourself motivated. Like, I know what burnout felt. And none of that was ha. I was thrilled in January of 2024, even though I was kind of frustrated with how my workout regime was going. I was thrilled with what I was involved in and looking forward to the projects in the year ahead. I did not have tightness in my chest, I did not have anxiety in my belly.
[00:20:21] So I didn't think it was burnout. But definitely the pace of life we were at was not healthy. It was not healthy for us as a family, was not healthy for me. So anyways, all that to say I'm. I'm processing all these things, like, is this physical? Is it emotional, mental, Is it spiritual?
[00:20:39] Somewhere in there we had an anointing and yet nothing. Like none of our testing showed anything. None of our testing. So it's like, whoa, did God just miraculously heal me? Maybe. But at the same time into the summer, May and June, I still don't feel completely normal. The thing that hung on with me for the longest time was I felt like if you close your eyes and squeeze them really tightly and then you open up, that's how my vision felt all day long. I could blink, I could go and, and, and yet my vision was like blurred and slightly cross eyed, like it's trying to regain focus.
[00:21:26] I went and got my eyes checked out and the doctor's like, your, your eyes are great. Like your eyes are fine. And so I just started calling it a brain fog. But brain fog, coupled with the fact that I still don't have the energy that I used to, just a number of things, it's like, well, if I'm healed, then why, why do I still have this?
[00:21:48] If this is just emotional and mental, why am I feeling things physically? But then if I'm feeling things physically, why isn't it showing up on any medical test and any medical exam?
[00:22:01] And just a long story short, this uncertainty and mystery led me to some of the darkest moments of my life.
[00:22:17] I think I hit it. Well, obviously I wasn't public online a whole lot through the summer. I did some with the lift free course. Still kind of tried to release that, but that's all. Like, a lot of that content was prepared ahead of time, a lot of that. So any video released with that or whatever, it's like, that's not me in the moment.
[00:22:42] But I cannot.
[00:22:45] I cannot fully explain. I did. I wrote an article to our Patreon community, which you can check out. I'll link in the description. It is a paid article. What? There are 15 lessons that, when the fall rolled around, 15 lessons that I've learned about going through a mysterious health struggle.
[00:23:06] And 15 is like this huge number. But it's like I'm trying to put into words just. Just the turmoil that something like this puts a person into. And there's multiple layers to it because there's the unknown of, like, what's happening physically. How do I know how to restructure my life going on? Like, if this is burnout, I'm going to restructure my life a certain way. If there's something physical that affected this, well, I. I need to look at dieting. I need to look at, like, different. Different medical solutions possibilities. Like, I don't know what it is. So there's that level of stress with it.
[00:23:48] But then there's also the fact that everything that I was doing where I found a lot of purpose and value in, came to a halt. And so all of a sudden, now I'm sitting there, I'm showing up working, but no longer do I have all these different. I'm no longer engaging people, having meetings with people that are where I see, like, I'm adding value to them or producing content where people are emailing and messaging me. Neither did I have the negative feedback where they're upset about what I said or something. But a lot, like, I find tremendous value because people are being helped by that stuff, and that's why I do it. And yet all that came to a halt. And the other thing that I discovered, and I talk about this a little bit in that article about the 15 lessons, is when you don't know what's wrong with you, even people with genuine, sincere intentions begin to kind of back away from you. It's like they don't know how to engage.
[00:24:53] And it just produced a ton of empathy for people who deal with chronic sickness and ongoing kind of mysterious health issues. It just the uncertainty and the way people don't know how to engage or respond to you when you don't have a nice update to give people of like, oh, yeah, we discovered this and we're trying this. And that is like, I'm still the same. And they, they see you on a Sunday morning or they see you once every so often and it's like, well, oh, he seems to be doing fine, but they have no clue what's going on, on a day to day basis. And just the way that you cannot pull yourself out of bed at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning like you used to on a regular basis. Like something you sleep for eight, nine hours and you're still just tired and exhausted. Or, or you go and you work outside and we were doing some landscaping in our yard and stuff and I just spend an hour or two like doing some of this. I'm just worn out, just exhausted. Like, like, or, or just this. The way the brain fog or whatever was going on with my vision, like affects my energy level when in public.
[00:26:06] Like, I never thought about how that affects somebody until going through it myself. And, and I'm not going to rehash all that. You can read more about it.
[00:26:20] But the long story short is on August 5, coming up to August 5, the end of July, I'm like at that point the, the brain fog was still there. The energy level was coming back. I was starting to work. Um, I think it was also kind of around that time I was doing a number of stuff with the Live Free course. I was, I had energy to, to be working full time and then, and then doing some of this stuff on the side. The brain fog was still kind of there, but I was, I remember telling my wife as like, should I even go to the neurologist? Like they're probably not going to be anything. You know, whatever testing they do, it's not going to show up.
[00:27:03] And she really felt like I should go, even even though it's like, yeah, that may be true, but she had, there's a YouTube couple that she had followed that she follows. And the wife had gone through a similar kind of health thing for a couple of years. It was just kind of mysterious. And then finally they went and saw a neurologist and right away he pinpointed what, what she had. It was epilepsy. And so my wife is kind of thinking that it's like there's a ton of times that I'm by myself working and I have no clue what, what was going on. Like, was I having seizures or something during. There's no, there's no physical marking. I never, I never remember like waking up from something. Like you. You would think. And you'd also think that eventually it would happen in public too. Not just in private, but, but those were just the questions we were worried about. Like, is there, is there something there? There's huge memory gaps, especially the month of February and who knows what was going on.
[00:28:09] Yeah. Was I having some sort of seizure even. Like, and this is the thing with that lady, I, I think her seizures were really minor. Like, actually didn't cause her to fall down or anything. So if I'm sitting at my desk and I go into a seizure, like, well, maybe, maybe I don't fall at all. Like, maybe it's, you know, who knows what's going. Anyways, all of that led us to follow through on going to the neurologist on August 5th up in Colorado Springs. And so we drove up there and we go in, we wait and finally get into our appointment with the neurologist and we lay it all out. I don't know if it took like 15 minutes for us to say everything that was happening or going through. She's listened very carefully, had some questions, some follow up questions, but then kind of when we were all done, she says when a viral infection gets into the central nervous system, it can do everything that you're talking about. The confusion, the mental disorientation, the fatigue, the weight loss, like all of that. Memory gaps and.
[00:29:24] But we would have needed a lumbar puncture back in February to know for sure if that's what was going on.
[00:29:32] Now, I did not realize how much the uncertainty of what I had gone through weighed me down until I heard that. It's literally like if you imagine, I don't know if my boys are getting to the age where sometimes if I'm sitting down, they come up behind me and they, they're like leaning on my shoulders, looking at whatever, maybe I'm reading something or on my phone or whatever. They're like, like, you imagine that weight of somebody like just on your shoulders and then they leave and it's just like, oh, I can sit up and breathe. That's exactly how it felt just, just hearing that. There's a few reasons why.
[00:30:14] One, my, my sister who lives in California, works as a nurse in the neurology department of UCLA Hospital.
[00:30:25] I think that's what it's called. It's associated with UCLA somehow. It might be called the Reagan Hospital, I forget. But anyway, she works in the neurology department. She had come out as soon as she heard what I was going through. Like it triggered a lot of what she's seen and stuff. And so she was concerned right away. Came out graciously spent two or three weeks. I honestly don't remember how long it was there. There's a portion of the time where I was still not. Yeah, I still have some memory gaps.
[00:30:57] But she had asked my primary doctor, my primary care Provider about doing a lumbar puncture and the doctor kind of brushed it off is like, that's not going to show anything that an MRI wouldn't see.
[00:31:14] And that. That's kind of. Kind of hurt the. The way the doctor would respond to my sister.
[00:31:21] And just to clarify, this person wasn't actually a doctor. It was a nurse practitioner, because all the doctors, the family doctors, I. It was going to be a couple weeks till I could see them. The nurse practitioner, I could see in a couple of days. So we went with the nurse practitioner.
[00:31:37] And so there were some things that my wife and I like, man, like, should we be getting a second opinion or should we be getting somebody else? And, and hearing that from the neurologist. And the neurologist response is only a lumbar puncture would have told, like, you would not have seen through an MRI if there's a viral infection in your central nervous system.
[00:31:58] And so that confirmed to us some of what we were already feeling about, like, man, I don't know, like, maybe we need to get a different primary doctor.
[00:32:10] But then also with all the different suggestions that people were throwing at me of what it might be like, none of them. When people would talk, it's like, oh, you know, someone would come up and it's like, this sounds exactly what I went through. And here's what I was dealing with and dealing with and dealing with. The more they talk, the more I'd get kind of anxious inside because it's like, that's not what I'm. That's not what I'm experiencing. And I just couldn't explain, especially the mental state part, even to my. My primary doctor. I couldn't. I couldn't figure out how to explain what was going on. And she wrote down in the doctor's notes, like, disorientation and confusion. It's like, no, it's not. It's not a disorientation and confusion. Like, I'm not wandering around lost. I drove places. Oh, I forgot about the time. The one time where I was driving to Pueblo and drove off the road, like, fell asleep at the wheel. That never happens. Just for some historical context, I generally take melatonin every night because I struggle to sleep. I struggle to get to bed. Sorry, not to bed. I can get to bed, and then I'm wide awake all night. So insomnia, never been diagnosed, but just not being able to sleep.
[00:33:28] Tried out cutting out blue light, cutting out caffeine, cutting out sugar, like, all these different things. And. And generally, like, I still Struggle. And it's definitely correlated throughout the years with. With stress and, like, things, a running mind. Like, there have been many years where I cannot shut off my mind, which then develops bad habits. Because you go on after. After you try reading, after you try praying, after you do these things, you. You go on YouTube and it's like, well, at least I'm gonna watch something while I'm wide awake. And then that's more blue light and that's more stimulation.
[00:34:03] So I've. I've had a number of years, a good. I would say five to six years of just kind of this journey of like sleep. And never during that period is my struggle that I fall asleep at the wheel. Maybe if we're on a long road trip, my wife is like, hey, let me drive.
[00:34:25] But just like falling at sleep at the wheel, driving off the road. I had my two boys with me at the time.
[00:34:33] It was very startling, very shaking for all of us.
[00:34:38] What was I saying with that, though? I interrupted myself. Oh, yeah. Just like I was driving places, I wasn't disoriented and confused to a degree. You think back to how that ski day went.
[00:34:53] Yeah, that's kind of confusion. But in the moment, like, I was walking around confidently, like, I had tons of energy for things that was doing. Like, I wasn't. So I just. People would talk, and the more they talk, the more I'd be like, that's not what I'm experiencing. And so I started doing my own research, which is somewhat dangerous when you're researching on Google. Is like, oh, is this. And it's like, man, goodness, you could be dying by tomorrow if you just go off of everything you see on Google.
[00:35:26] But what I kept coming back to, there's different forms of encephalitis. And I don't. I should have looked this up before I.
[00:35:36] There. There is a something along the lines of a viral encephalitis. And encephalitis is the swelling of the brain, can be lethal, can kill you.
[00:35:49] But generally, like, if it's that serious, there's going to be a lot of nausea, like you're vomiting, throwing up, trying to remember what else was with there. There is. There can be dizzy dizziness involved with it, which I experienced for a little bit, some dizziness. But that, again, that. That kind of led my doctor down the cardio route.
[00:36:12] But anyways, the way it talked about the mental state of somebody experiencing encephalitis, I was like, that's. That's the closest thing that I've heard to experience to describing what I'm experiencing mentally. And literally, again, I should have looked this up so that I could quote it better. But the, the concept of like, having a really hard time distinguishing between what's real and what's not real. So it was like I, I went through a period of time where as I was kind of coming to in back in February a year ago and realizing like, oh, something's not right. The last 10 days, 12 days have not been right with me.
[00:36:57] And I'm realizing like, oh, I, I haven't actually done some of these things. And then I'm learning about things I did do that. You know, my work meeting, for instance, I talked about preaching and not having no memory, but I, I remembered showing up. Like, I have vivid memories of opening my laptop and logging into the Slack video call. I thought I was there, but they reached out to my wife because I hadn't been shown up to work. Well, then there's also a time where I shared a devotional at work and I have no memory of it. And so like these, I, I, as I'm beginning to piece this together, last year, all of a sudden, like, I began to like, really value, like, hearing human. So, so when somebody messaged me and it was an audio message and I could play it over and over again, like, I would, I. There was a good couple of weeks where I would literally just play some of these messages over again because that's real, that's still there. It didn't vanish from me or when, when people would come over. Like, I always enjoy hugs, but I would, I really valued hugs because it's like, you're real, you're here. I know you're here. Even though a couple days later I'd be asking my wife, like, did so and so really stop by? And so like, it, it didn't feel real when I gave it a couple days space. And, and so it's just like this, this really difficulty to distinguish like, what's, what's real, what's happening in my life that actually did happen, or was I just kind of thinking about it, fantasizing about it or whatever. And, and the way that version of encephalitis was describing kind of the mental state, that's what resonated. I told my doctor that she's like, oh, but, you know, there, there was a bunch of other stuff that she thought would also be at play if.
[00:38:54] And long story short, that's what the neurologist said happens is when a viral infection gets into your central nervous system, then you experience something, encephalitis, something along that line. I should. I. This is not very professional. Let me. I have my computer here. Let me see it.
[00:39:13] Oh, maybe this is what it. Men. Mening.
[00:39:20] Mening.
[00:39:24] I forget what word the neurologist was using.
[00:39:28] She did not. She could not officially diagnose it because we would have needed a lumbar puncture back in February. But it just resonated like, oh, so I'm not crazy, what I was researching and finding that resonant like that actually, like, I just. I didn't realize this was weighing me down until just like, oh, like somebody describes something, gives a diagnosis that resonates first of all with what I'm experiencing, but then secondly with what I was researching that accurately described what I was experiencing.
[00:40:11] Anyways, the long story short is she said it can take a long time to fully recover from that. It can take, for some people, it's over a year to fully recover from that. So it. It wasn't surprising to her that I was still dealing with a level of brain fog. Um, it was encouraging that I was getting energy back. Uh, she. She did not think, like, miraculously, that could have been really dangerous, could have been lethal if not diagnosed in medication. You begin. You begin treating it right away.
[00:40:48] And so I. I look back at that anointing and I. You know, obviously we don't. We don't know for sure even is that what it was.
[00:40:57] But it certainly resonates and makes a lot more sense than anything else. And I also tend to think that. I think God, whether it was through the anointing or whether just through his sovereign keeping us, keeping me.
[00:41:14] And I. I don't know.
[00:41:16] I don't know what to do with the fact that there's lots of people who have gone years and cannot find a diagnosis that resonates with their experience.
[00:41:29] Like we've been given.
[00:41:31] In August, even in October, life looked really dark. Felt really dark. Um, the year was ruined in some ways from my expectations.
[00:41:43] It brought up tons of baggage. And I'll make another video about that because I want to share more on lessons that I've learned even since writing that other.
[00:41:55] Excuse me, still getting over a little bit of congestion right now.
[00:42:02] But even since writing that other article on 15 lessons I learned through the mysterious health issue. Well, when I wrote that, I didn't realize the emotional and spiritual darkness that I would walk through even after that. And there's a whole host of things that God has been working in me that I would like to share more about. I'm learning about mental health and emotional health in a way because stopping all that activity brought tons of junk up. And maybe I'm, I'm going to link. I recently preached about this, shared about it with my church and I'll share a link to that. You can, if you want to learn more before I record another episode, you can, you can check that out. But the long story short is there's definitely like a physical thing happened.
[00:43:05] And, and the, the thing about the neurologist, we asked her, like, is there, is there any sign we could have known? Like, is the stress effect whether or not you get the viral infection? Because remember this all started with a bad viral infection, fever. Why can't I think of it? You have A and B of the flus. It was B, but what's the word for the flu? So I had this viral infection and, but she said it's really, it's really random there. Stress does not necessarily mean just because you're super stressed when you get the flu does not mean it's like, oh, there's a high potential, it's going to enter the central nervous system. It's, it's literally kind of a freak thing.
[00:43:50] And we had a young man in our church community this summer that had a, like he had a viral infection and he had, previous to that, had some ongoing heart palpitations and things that he was addressing with his doctor and so forth. But he, this viral infection got into his heart and he died as a result of it. And so I just look at like we had no clue what was happening. It wasn't diagnosed. And God kept us, kept me, healed me.
[00:44:31] And yeah, there's, there's not necessarily any telling of why this happened. But we know that the pace of life before was not healthy. We know that there were things in our own, as a couple, as a family, in our own emotional, even spiritual state was not healthy. And so this physical crisis forced us, but really gave us an opportunity to address that, to reset. And, and so I would like to share more about that in future episodes. But long story short, the neurologist did want me to go through a series of neurology tests just to check the boxes. Went through those things, everything came back clear. Have a follow up appointment, which I was gonna skip except for the fact that this is a whole nother basket of noodles. But I had my life insurance. I was changing something with my life insurance, right, right around the time that I got sick. And so I wanted to up my life insurance and the life insurance agent said well, the best way to be would be to let like when your annual renewal, your payment comes, just let it lapse and then we'll start a new life insurance thing. And so I let it lapse. Well, that happened to be right over the time I got sick. And so I'm out of it. I'm not getting this going. And by the time I'm getting this going, there's a bunch of medical notes on the, that, that the life insurance is flagging and seeing. And so in order to be reinstated back with life insurance, I needed a final write off. Final like here's everything's okay. So I went to the follow up appointment and this happened to be in December. The neurologist was busy or out of town at the time. So again I'm meeting with a nurse practitioner but every, all the tests came back clear. So it's okay. It's not like there's anything, any plan that needs to happen. I go in there, it's up in the Colorado Springs again and we're talking, kind of talking about the experience and, and then she said this happened, I had this happen to me 20 years ago.
[00:46:52] And she starts to talk about her experience and, and again exactly, exactly what I went through. And she's, we're, we're in there talking and doing. She, she went through a series of kind of motor tests just to confirm, make sure everything's good. Nothing new happened since August or whatever. And so we're talking as we're doing these motor tests and it's like, man, it was probably really scary for your wife. And that, that's something that I think my, I think my wife kind of hid through. All of that is. And in recent months we've talked about that more. But you know, there was a decent period of time where I thought I didn't realize anything was going on. But she's observing things like something's wrong, something's not right. And so she, her anxiety and worry and stress had definitely risen. And that was the thing that, you know, some, some people thought that I was just like going through anxiety and stress attack or whatever. And it's like I didn't, I wasn't anxious about anything. I wasn't, you know, I was clueless to, to the issues that were going on. It was my wife that was going through that. And so that was just kind of again, we, we did it to get the final write off so that I could get going on my life insurance again. But it was really encouraging to have someone who went through that same thing and be able to talk about it. And the more we talk, the more it's like, oh, wow. Like that's, that's exactly what I was experiencing as well. For her, it was over a year till she was back to full strength. I would definitely say, like, so back in December when I, when I met with her, that follow up appointment, I thought I was pretty much back to full strength. I was working and stuff. I would say even in the last month I have found a new level of energy and strength again that I didn't realize I would, I would reach to. So I look back and here we are a year later.
[00:49:05] God has been incredibly gracious keeping my health and I realize there's a lot of people who don't have answers to their health issues, who, who don't have a doctor that gives a plausible diagnosis and, and it's like that resonates completely or someone you can talk to who's like gone through the very same thing and, and everything's lining up. There's a lot of people that you kind of commiserate. It's like, well, yeah, there's a lot of overlapping things, but there's some key pieces that just don't quite seem the same or whatever.
[00:49:42] Not, not everybody has the journey I've had and I don't, I don't know what to do with that other than just receive the grace of God and the fact that God keeps us.
[00:49:58] We live in a broken world that is bound by corruption. And so I look at the graciousness of God. In a year later, we can stand back with a level of certainty that we know what happened and have renewed health, renewed energy.
[00:50:17] Our family got sick again same week as last year. And so it really kind of triggered some things for my wife. And I was like, ah, here we go again. Thankfully, my wife and I didn't get near sick. All the kids had fevers on and off for about a week. But, but here we are now, it's February 14th and we're all back to full health and I'm with it and have energy and so the grace of God.
[00:50:46] But the grace of God also shows up. He showed up a year ago and in April when I'm just kind of very cynical about any medical testing and just kind of like I have no clue what happened. Yeah, maybe I was just an emotional mental wreck and that's what caused all the, you know, or in October when I'm starting to reckon with the emotional effects of things, I found value coming to a halt and the baggage that that brought up in my life, whatever, like God keeping us through all these moments. And God keeps people. I have friends, relatives who have much more serious sickness that continues to linger.
[00:51:32] And all I can do now for myself and think about and encourage others with is to rest in the grace of God.
[00:51:42] This life is not as it should be. God did not want the young man to die this year.
[00:51:49] He doesn't want families to go through sickness, whether that's a year, a couple of weeks, several years. This life is not as it should be. And maybe I'll link again a sermon that I shared after the young man's death, Spencer Troyer's death. Just reflecting on like how do we grapple with. There's a lot of prayer for healing and yet he wasn't healed.
[00:52:20] Because those are very real questions and very.
[00:52:25] I think we need to be careful about just giving flippant answers to and we say so. So I stand here and talk about the grace of God. Does that mean God's grace is not that God was not generous with us, gracious with the people who lost a loved one or who have ongoing sickness and no, like God's grace is the oxygen to breathe another day. It is the fact that I'm here right now because of my sin.
[00:53:01] I deserve to be snuffed out, to not have life. I deserve death. But God's grace is holding everything in motion, everything, the restorative process in motion. And I have the space to come to him and to lean on him anew every single day. That's the grace of God. So does the brother down the street who, who's rebelling against God. And like God's grace, is holding back judgment, holding back the final culmination of his restoration, which means for those in rebellion are going to experience his judgment. And so God's grace is holding things in motion. And that means when there is healing and an answer to our prayers, that this temporary healing, because there's still going to be death, this temporary healing has the opportunity to glorify God, to point to his grace. But in the same way my aunt, who has dealt with chronic arthritis and dealing with incredible pain, goes through periods of not being able to move around, get out of bed long time like her, resting in God's grace itself glorifies God to God's goodness. And so those are I guess just an update why I've been silent and just some thoughts about understanding these types of journeys in our life that happen as it pertains to the blog and the podcast specifically. I, I am Basically when everything happened, we got into March last year and my wife and I just felt like I should take a year off. Yes, try releasing the lift free course, See how that goes. But as far as regular blogging, podcasting, just take a year off. I'd never really taken a year off and I've been doing it since 2014. So essentially a 10 year period. I, I don't know, I think I've taken months, like a month here or month there kind of off. But. But it's just kind of been going, going, going, and so I wanted to take a year off. Well, that year is now coming up and I'll be honest with you, before Christmas, I wasn't sure that I would blog and podcast again.
[00:55:41] And then this is. I'll get into this some more later. I'm not going to take a whole lot of more time right now. But essentially I really wrestled with, as I kind of stepped back, I wrestled with knowing whether or not this has added value to the church.
[00:56:05] There's some things that I'm really burdened about the church. How we, how we engage in politics, how we love other people, theological grounding, emotional and spiritual health. Like, different pieces. But when you address, and particularly now, if you're in the Enneagram, understand the Enneagram. I'm a strong one, which is the Improver. Some people call it the perfectionist. I don't really resonate with that because it's like, I don't know that I'm a perfectionist, but the improver is, is in crone, I think is his name. He talks about it as the improver. And that really resonated with me is like, I think through everything about how we could make this better. I'll moderate a church service and I sit back down and I'm critiquing like how I did that, like how I could have done that better. It's like me at my unhealthy moments is critiquing everything.
[00:57:01] And I think the value that I bring is that I can think through, you know, continue to improve. But how that plays out in my blogging and podcasting is I, I genuinely just don't have interest in writing or talking about something that I think we're doing well as a church because, like, you know, I've, I've even gone through periods of like, man, I wish I could be more like a journalist and just like, tell stories and tell like the good things that are happening. I've gotten that critique. Sometimes people like you always talk about what's bad, like talk about what's good. And so, so I go through periods of like trying to talk about what's good. It's like I just don't have energy.
[00:57:39] I get kind of bored with that. The things that I find myself having energy and passion about and honestly I think I do best is engaging areas of the church and of life as Christians that we can grow in, that we can improve in. The problem is that tends to be where a lot of controversy hangs out. It's, you know, when, when I see a great swath of the church in America being led astray by Christian nationalism and it's like, hey, let's, let's study the script. Like, let's put our political commentators on the shelf for a while and let's study scripture together and try to understand like, what is the vision that, that Jesus is setting forth for us.
[00:58:29] There are some Christians who really don't like that.
[00:58:32] Really don't like that. Even, even through some posts that I put on Facebook around election this year, like, man, I got, I got some messages and some interactions that from particular people that I was kind of shocked it came by.
[00:58:47] They, they do not want, like some people do not want you to step on their toes in that regard or talk about the. And it'll come at it in different ways. Sometimes it's super pious, like, do you think you're at your best when you're doing this? Other times it's a private message or email where, you know, a whole paragraph is in all caps and they're like, I don't know how else to read that other than that they're angry and yelling at you. All that to say that it's. That has had an effect on me, my own mental health, my own emotional health. And I'm not, I will let the responsibility of that hang awkwardly because I do think there is a level where people need to be more self aware and realize their role in, in affecting other people's mental health. But what my journey has involved is realizing the growth I need even to be able to navigate that. But, but as I reflect on that, I've wondered like, so is this doing any good or am I just creating arguments, people arguing? And that's the thing. A lot of people will point back in 2020, when I was writing about race a lot, one of the things people would bring up is you're just stirring up controversy. You just create arguments and it's, that's, that's a fast way to shut down any conversation.
[01:00:09] But then I keep Reading ephesians and Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3 is like, like man. We, we have got to be willing to address the ethnic divides in our society, but even within the church, because that is a core piece of the gospel, is that Jesus is bringing together people from ethnic, socioeconomic and religious backgrounds, bring them together one in Christ as they redeem the old man that is divided to a new man that is wanting for us. Anyways, that's not what I'm getting into here. Before Christmas, I wasn't sure that I would even continue. I wasn't sure if there was anything good happening from this.
[01:00:56] Since Christmas, I've had a reawakening vision and largely around three specific aspects. When I think about helping the church be theologically anchored, helping the church grow in emotional and spiritual health, and helping the church helping Christians love others, well, those are kind of the things that I keep coming back to. And that's kind of. It reminds me of really kind of the grounding, shaping mission that got me started seven, 10 years ago. And that is first Timothy 1:5, where Paul is writing to Timothy and he has sent Timothy back to teach and even rebuke because of false teaching, meaningless arguments.
[01:01:53] And Paul tells Timothy the goal of this instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
[01:02:04] And I remember reading that verse years ago and just like really read like that's what I want. My writing, my social media, my podcasting, whatever it is I'm doing, preaching, discipling my family, like, that's what I want, that we grow in a love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith. So having said that, I that along with the lessons I've been learning in even Deeper Healing, I've realized from my own journey and things I'm learning, I've realized that I'm missing some things. And so I've had a reawakening vision of getting back into this work. It most certainly is going to be at a slower pace than what I had done before, but I I do believe I will be starting some things and I just wanted to start with this update over an hour here. I don't even know if you you find it interesting, but I just kind of wanted to say, just kind of put it out there. A year ago, I was pretty cryptic when I when I first mentioned that I was going through some stuff and for a number of reasons. One, one is we just didn't know what was going on. But there was also this aspect of I didn't know how to talk about the mental stuff that I was going through. And I felt foolish, Like, I felt embarrassed. Is, how is anybody going to ever trust anything I say or do again? It's like, well, is Ash like, Asher's going through some psychotic breakdown? And I guess I feel a little bit more stabilized now that it's a year later. It's like, oh, well, that's not happened again. We've got some answers for why that happened. And, and so that's kind of why I wanted to share. People have messaged, emailed, and or even face to face, had some conversations like, oh, yeah, what, what, what happened with that? Or what was going on. So I wanted to come on and share what the journey has been like in the last year and kind of where I'm at. And you're gonna start seeing more content from me again.
[01:04:21] Some of this stuff, like, some of what I'd like to do is just even clean up my blog. Like, I have over 500 blog posts on there from the last 10 years.
[01:04:29] And it's like, I know that there are some blog posts on. Well, first of all, I used to kind of use it as when we lived in Thailand, I used it as a place to update. So I might just remove some of those update things. But I also have seen blogs come across.
[01:04:46] Every now and then, I'll check, like, the stats, like, what, what's still going, what are people finding and reading? And I'll see like, a, a post is like, oh, I forgot about that post. And I'll go and read it and be like, oh, my. Like, I'm not sure I agree with myself here. And so just realizing, like, there's kind of an evolution on one hand. On one hand, I think it's okay to kind of let that be there and people can see and discover. The other thing, though, is I don't think you can see the dates on my blog post. So if I share something on Facebook that I may have actually written five years ago, but people think I wrote it right now so that, that kind of. Because I've had that a couple of times where I would share something on Facebook because I just wanted to kind of reshare the post, and then somebody, because I think it still has value, but somebody responds as though I just wrote that, as though I'm just, like, thinking through it. And it's like, whoa, sorry. Like, I actually wrote this six years ago or eight years ago.
[01:05:48] You're right. That's a, that's a fair critique. I, I, I Could add that now or I could, you know, whatever, or, or they'll, they'll write to me and tell their whole big story and I'll be kind of like, where's this coming from? And then I real, oh, they're responding to a post that I published a number of years ago. And so, yeah, all that to say that one of the things you're going to start seeing is cleaning up blog posts, developing a better system for viewing archives and knowing where in the grand scheme of time those particular posts land. I'll probably also revise even the feel and the theme of the blog cast visually, layout wise and so forth.
[01:06:36] We need to update family pictures, stuff like that. Like, you'll see some of those changes. They'll come in time. A lot of ideas of resources to produce blog posts to write on. But yeah, I'll tell you more about them. You'll see them as they come. My question is to you, and I just say this honestly, if you're still listening, then you're someone who appreciates this work enough to listen to an hour and 10 minutes. So I guess my question would be for you is, do you see value in this work?
[01:07:14] And I'm not asking that for a pat on the back, but just kind of for an orientation of like, where does this fit into serving the church? Well, because that's been the goal. Is this something the church is helped by?
[01:07:34] You know, and I was not going to get into all this. Maybe I'll do another episode about this. Like, I have just an example of a way that I've had to process like mental health. And my own mental health is I'll go to funerals or to weddings and I'll meet people who I've never met.
[01:08:00] An example is from a funeral. My wife and I sat down. It was a funeral of some close friends of ours. We wanted to be there and support them. It was back east, so we traveled out of state. We sat down at the lunch after the funeral and we sat down across from some people. I was like, introduce ourselves. Hey, we're. I'm Asher, this is my wife Teresa. And the guys sit there. He stinks. Asher Whitmer. You're the guy that just makes me mad.
[01:08:27] And I, I just remember it's like a bucket of cold water or more actually I think was felt more like you're stepping on my air hose. And my, you know, I immediately kind of this panic of like, oh no, like what?
[01:08:43] What did I say? What did I do? And I think I responded a little bit like, oh, no. Like, that's. That's not what I intend to do. But I. I was just thinking about that recently. I was like, I don't remember at all what the rest of that conversation was like, but I can still feel how it made me felt. And.
[01:09:02] And so there's this. This aspect of just like man. Is that. Is that what's happening? Like, is that all I'm doing is I'm writing these things and I'm just making people mad?
[01:09:16] So it makes me want. Like, is that. That's the farthest thing from what I. What got me into writing, why I do that, Even when I'm talking about controversial stuff where people might strongly disagree with me. Like, I'm not writing that to just make people mad.
[01:09:33] And so I don't see value in continuing or doing it if. If it's just having that effect on the church.
[01:09:43] Now. Now, maybe that's.
[01:09:46] Maybe that's exposing that person's issues, but I guess I feel like at somehow some level, I kind of gotta have a pulse on the radar. Kind of beyond me, beyond my observation. I know especially having stepped away for about a year, I have tremendous.
[01:10:10] A lot more clarity. I continue to pray and seek God about it, but I have a lot more clarity on being able to tell, like, what is my own ambition versus what do I actually feel a divine kind of hand on? And I don't mean, like, I have been called to this work, and so everything I've done is flawless. Because God has called me. No, absolutely. I'm a human vessel with plenty of faults. So there's like, maybe. Maybe God has called me to something and I'm doing it in a flawed way that's actually being more damaging than whatever.
[01:10:45] But I guess my. Yeah, my. My question is just more broadly is like, I. I sense a calling, or I sense God's hand or God's burdening on some things.
[01:10:58] But then I also have this question of, like, is it actually being valuable? Is it generating conversations among local communities where. Where they're digging into scripture or digging into the reality of, like, our own level of mental health, like, emotional mental health for church leaders? Like, that's something I've come away as incredibly passionate about because I think, just to put it bluntly, I think sometimes we as leaders can be some of the most unhealthy people.
[01:11:30] And not because we're just horrible people, but because there's so much that is being thrown at us or that we're needing to navigate, and there's very little white space in life to kind of step away from some of that we see in Jesus's life, like, in the busiest moments of ministry, he actually made a bigger effort of withdrawing, having seclusion, having solitude.
[01:11:58] And yet if you're someone's like, man, I don't know what I'd do.
[01:12:03] That's exactly. At least in my own life, that's kind of the point. It's like, we need. We need emotional and mental health. And so anyways, all that to say, just rambling about some. Some burdens of mine. But I guess if you're still listening and if you've been tracking with me here, I'd be curious to know, is this being valuable? If you see value, I'd certainly love to hear that. And where, like, what is valuable?
[01:12:34] I'd be really curious. I definitely want to hear if there's, like, certain topics that, like, man, I'd really like to know more or know how to process this or maybe, like, this is an issue we're facing in our local church, our community, like, could you help us unpack this more? And to kind of give direction to my own study and the things I write on, I would love to hear stuff like that. But is there value in the work of creating articles, podcast interviews, episodes where we're unpacking things that help us grow and being theologically anchored, help us grow in emotional and spiritual health and ultimately with those two, but then even broader like that help us grow in loving others? Well, is there values or need for that? Things like the live free course, like, is that something people need? Things like finding my place in God's story, the course of just learning how to read the Bible and see your place in the Bible, in God's grand story, and then even specifically getting clarity on, like, what your role is in this life. Is there a need for that?
[01:13:52] Or what are the needs that people are feeling? How can we serve the church and Christians more effectively? I guess those are my questions. Anyways, I've been rambling enough and I will sign off there. And thank you so much for being a part of this work.
[01:14:16] One of the things I just want to say is I just want to vocally publicly acknowledge there's over a hundred of them. So I'm not going to list everybody off but the Patreon members who stayed members in the last year. I thought for sure if I'm not producing anything, people are going to drop off, but they stayed members and that helped tremendously with our finances in the last year. Just the fact that we were able to maintain that revenue, that income.
[01:14:47] So I just want to acknowledge that they haven't. Like I said, they got one post back in September or October. I forget when I published that, but. And I realized there have been some people who dropped off. There have been some people who joined in the last year, even though I'm not promoting it or doing anything with it. And so that's totally understandable. Different phases of life. Or maybe some of you were like, hey, he's not doing anything. I'm gonna stop my membership. I totally get that. But it's been huge. And I had told them a year ago that I was going to take pretty much a year break, so maybe they understood that. But that's been a big piece. When everything came to a halt a year ago, the thing I started worrying about was our finances, and we did not have much margin.
[01:15:37] And long story short, where we stand today, we actually have more margin than we did a year ago. Not. Not a lot more. But some of that is just because we didn't do. We didn't do much this year. We did manage to get a fairly significant trip into taking some reunions and a work event and stuff. So that was fun. But thank you to those Patreon members that remained members. There's going to be more activity, more content developed. Actually, I'm recording this. I will probably have. Have done an update to Patreon members before this one comes live, so. So I'll share more input and feedback there as well. I'm just brainstorming and thinking and dreaming about ways or how I can serve you all better, because that is really my vision, that we can grow in love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. And I think, I believe, part of how we do that is by focusing on growing and being theologically anchored, emotionally, spiritually healthy, and that that enables us to love others. Well, there's also things we need to talk about, like what that looks like to love others well. And so that. That'll be the type of thing I explore as well. Thanks for hanging with me this hour and a half. Grace and peace to all of you. I look forward to getting back into blogging and podcasting.
[01:17:20] It.
