164. Handling Rejection and Finding Courage with Hilary Morgan Ferrer

View Transcript of the show

Natalie Tysdal

Hillary, good to have you on the podcast once again. And the topic I want to bring up today, because I am a big believer in empowering our kids. And they get to this weird age. I know every parent out there is thinking, I know what you're talking about, that tween, teen, and they get so insecure, everything in their life, unless they have something that they feel really good about, that they just get weird, the teenage years. So they're just...

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yes. They're just weird either way, come on.

Natalie Tysdal

They're just weird. So how do we, even at the younger age, how do we give them courage?

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yeah, so I first off I want to just debunk the idea of what people think encouragement is. So encouragement is infusing courage. And so like usually when people, especially Christians, use the word encouragement, it's like, oh, your hair looks so good. Oh my gosh, you're the best at everything. And

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Like it's all these really things like I remember when I was a kid, like one of my biggest insecurities is singing. And the reason why is because I could never get someone to tell me what they actually thought. They would come to me and they'd be like, oh my gosh, that was so good. And then they would go to another kid that I was like, that was awful. And I would hear them going, oh my gosh, that was so good. I'm like,

I have no idea if I'm as bad as that kid or if I actually am any good. And so I don't even believe what anybody says because this idea of wanting to encourage was just making people feel good about stuff, whether or not it was true. And that bothered me. I wanted to know what was true. So this con-

Natalie Tysdal 

I relate to this. I just, I don't want to interrupt you, but I am so in tune with you because this whole notion of believe in yourself, you can do it. And I do. I mean, sure, absolutely. We should believe in ourself and you should try hard, but it's so, what is it? It's just so surfacey.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Thanks for watching!

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Mm-hmm.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

It's so surfacey and it's not infusing courage. It's infusing all the feel goods, but like, you know, we need to call that feel good in you. I'm gonna feel good you. It's gonna make you feel good. I know, yeah, it does kind of sound like something you can probably get arrested for, but. But infusing courage means there's a scary situation. I see the situation for what it is, and I have the courage to say, I am not gonna back down in fear. And so probably one of the best examples I've had of what

Natalie Tysdal 

Which sounds really creepy, but yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

biblical courage looks like was several years back, I was speaking at a youth conference and I had this girl and this guy, I was speaking on science stuff and genetics and all my biology stuff that I used to do primarily before I got into the cultural apologetics. But they were asking me just a bunch of questions and so at one point she kind of gets real somber and so she says, I have this fear. And she had already shown me, this girl radically loved the Lord, radically wanted to follow him,

what do I do if I get raped and I get pregnant? That's gonna basically, that would stop my career. It would be traumatic. I would, would I give up for adoption? Like would abortion be okay in that situation? And so she was like really wanting to know because this was something that haunted her. And I said, you know what? It's true. There are things that you are gonna have to shoulder that he and I pointed to the guy that was sitting with us.

He's never gonna have to shoulder. He is never gonna have to decide whether or not he wants to carry a baby to term in his body. I said, but part of following the Lord is whatever bad situation we are given, we learn a way to glorify God through that. Are you willing to glorify God even in bad hard situations? And she stopped for a minute and she thought, and I almost saw her go, like sit up straight and go,

Okay? She prepared herself and I hope this never happened to her and I hope this doesn't happen to anybody, but she mentally prepared herself for the situation that she could get raped, she could get pregnant, and she would carry that baby to term and the reason why is she, I there was courage that was infused to her because she knew one thing about herself and that was that she followed the Lord no matter what.

Natalie Tysdal

Wow.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

This is what it looks like to follow the Lord in this situation. Everybody had made it all complicated. No, this is what it means to follow the Lord in that situation. I know that I, my identity, I follow the Lord. Okay. Bring it on. And she was ready.

Natalie Tysdal

Wow. This could be used in, I mean, gosh, you think of any difficult situation, glorifying God in our difficulties? That is some tough stuff. But as we talked about last time, you're on the podcast, putting on that faith lens and saying, what does God want me to do? Putting that on first, always. And it's in today's culture, that's a really hard thing to do.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

And this kind of goes back to a lot of the stuff I talk about in our second book on the guide to sexuality how What kids are doing a lot of times is they're categorizing information and it's when things are in the wrong category that They are either acting in a moral way or they're kind of confused about doctrine And so I'll just say this category that she has the idea of this horrible thing happening to her

was in the category of things that will wreck my career, change my life, and which will stop me on the road that God has me on. And it got moved to the category of things that I can do to glorify God even when they're hard. And that category right there was not scary for her because she knew who she was in Christ that she would glorify God no matter what. And once we got it in the right category, she said, I can... okay, that's how it is.

And this is what encouragement is. It's infusing that courage. So we are looking at truth. We are looking at what's really going on. We are looking at everything kind of objectively. And then we are just saying, do I have the courage to continue even despite this? And knowing that we can continue on in Christ, being faithful, that can infuse a lot of courage. Now, if you have a kid who really doesn't know if they haven't grounded their identity in Christ,

that's not a powerful enough category. But there's a lot of ways of just preparing people. I find the other thing is that, in my opinion, the fear of the unknown, at least for me, is always the worst. And that would be either the unknown situation, I get blindsided, it's a question that I've never heard, it's a situation I haven't prepared for, even all the way down to, am I in a lake and I can't see my feet? That's the unknown right there and I will get terrified.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

So for me personally, being able to almost use a sanctified imagination of putting myself in all these different situations of, what's the worst thing that could happen? How do I mentally prepare for that? Okay, I'm ready for that. I'm gonna, you know, I've got a game plan. So if that happens, I've got a game plan. Now we don't wanna spend all our time obsessing over everything that could go wrong, especially if all it does is lead to fear.

But if it's a way of almost kind of emotionally preparing yourself for something, this is where the what's the worst that can happen actually becomes a really kind of sanctified game that you can play. There's so many people where they think what is the absolute worst that can happen? And it's like they haven't named it. And maybe it's something like a kid trying to, you know, trying out for a play. OK, the very worst thing that happens.

is that your voice starts cracking and then you drill on yourself and everybody laughs. Okay, can I handle that? Have I seen people do dumber things than that? Yeah, I probably have. I can bounce back from that. That would really not be fun to do, but now we've named what's the worst thing that could possibly happen. And sometimes just even in naming things, they become less scary when you realize it's not this kind of mysterious thing. So I don't know, in my opinion, that's one way of kind of infusing courage, but...

The biblical way of infusing courage is taking someone who really values the things of God and showing them how being faithful in those areas is something that they're called to be and that something that they can handle that God will empower them in that situation. Now I distinguish that from God doesn't always empower us while we're imagining the situation. So I think about times like, you know if I was being tortured and stuff, I'm like I don't know what I would do. But I can say in things that were really hard in my life.

Closest to torture I've ever had is probably the Whipple procedure I went through last year, which is a really horrific surgery I don't think I would have been able to stand that in my own strength But the God provides that strength in the moment and so also having that faith and that knowledge that every time I've gone through something hard God provide the strength in the moment even if I couldn't imagine it beforehand That's something that's also very empowering

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, I think, I'm sorry you had to go through that procedure and I don't know what it is, but I imagine it was really tough in times that we think, I don't know how can I, and then I had someone explain this to me in a beautiful way that she was talking about a friend and she was saying, I don't know how you went through this. I think she had lost a family member and stayed very positive.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal 

And the friend saying, well, you weren't in my shoes at that moment. God gave me what I needed in that moment, and you weren't in that moment. And it clicked with me that was, in the moment, He gives us what we need. We might not foresee, I don't know how I could ever go through that, but when we're there, having that complete faith that He will get me through this, and I will wake up, and the sun will rise tomorrow.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yes, and that's where looking back is the thing that infuses courage for looking forward, is if we can keep a gratitude journal or just look at what did God do in this horrible situation, go like, what did God do in that horrible situation, we realize all the ways he'd already been faithful. Like there was this kind of training that I went through a while back for something and they said, I want you to name one of your top ways that you have a hard time trusting God.

Natalie Tysdal 

One second, sorry. Yeah, I have my phone off, but my emergency contacts go off. It's my husband. He's the one who calls me most. He's my emergency contact. Okay, hold on one sec. Let me just tell him. No, I'm not gonna take it. I'm just gonna say, don't call me back. Yeah, I just said, can I call you later? Okay, pick up there.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

I'll start over with that question.

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, let me see. Yeah, if you wanna take that, that's fine.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Or just say interview is this in like, yeah. So I'm trying to remember what I say. Oh yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

So they asked us, what is one of the number one things that you have a really hard time trusting God in? And so I listed that out and then they said, OK, we want you to list three ways he's been faithful in the past. And I listed out those three ways and I thought, holy cow, I did not struggle at all even. So I'll just say it right. It was finances. I had a hard time just not so much anymore, but in the past, when my husband and I were really living like hand to mouth, you know, at a seminary and stuff that like trusting God with the finances was really hard.

three ways that God had been faithful. Like the first time I had cancer, we have no idea how in the world we did not go through our entire savings because we didn't feel like we changed our lifestyle all that much and yet we were always still able to pay our bills or when my husband and I were both out of work for nine months. And like all these different places where everything should have totally gone, you know, to the trash and they didn't. And...

Lord came through and I thought, oh my gosh, I've been fearing this area that the Lord has shown me abundantly over and again that He will provide. And so it robbed that fear. And so sometimes looking back and saying, okay, this horrible situation, yeah, I remember God really being with me. I remember having this strength. I remember knowing what to do. I remember being able to do it and, you know, do whatever it is that I needed to do. So I'm going to take that feeling.

of provision, that knowledge of provision, and then say whatever it is that I imagine in the future, God can provide that same amount of provision there. Okay, Lord, what are we gonna do? What are we doing? All of that, and it's not gonna scare me because I know that you can show up. Same thing for speaking engagements for me. Like I've said, I've got a lot of health problems there be times when it's like I can't get out of bed.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

until it's time to speak. And then when it's time to speak, I get up and the Lord provides the energy and then I go crash afterwards. But in that moment, he provides the energy. He is faithful.

Natalie Tysdal

Yeah. What about, so this is so good for kids and for us, but let's go in teaching that a little bit more. So, you know, when it's a young person who is going through, you know, bullying or, you know, something that to them feels like the world is crashing and they don't, maybe they don't have that foundation that you and I do. Where can we go in the Bible to guide them, the stories we can tell them to really give them, our kids, that courage.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yeah, I think that's it's this is really hard for kids because they don't have this history built up with the Lord of being able to look back and I say this is a lot harder. And I think this is where us we as adults passing on courage to say here's the situation I was in here's how I saw the Lord use it like I have I have stories from the time when I really struggled with depression at one point and I saw the Lord use it in my life to.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yes, right.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

minister to people who I would have never been able to minister to, or I see the benefits of how many health problems I have and the ways that I've been required to lean on the Lord. We have to tell them our stories of God coming through. The Bible stories are also great, but a lot of times those are so miraculous that people don't think, well, of course they did it for them. We need to be passing all along our legacy of what God's done for us and then telling them like...

the Lord can do this for you too. And sometimes it's going to be a little bit of that borrowed courage from us. But are we allowing them to borrow that courage in the sense that are we allowing to be vulnerable enough to share the things that really, really have hurt our hearts, that really make us vulnerable in order to let them borrow the courage that now gives us? And that's probably one of the biggest things.

Yeah, I did parenting news for so many years and health news as a reporter. One of the things that stands out to me that is so hard as someone who works with young people now and as a mom is that we should hope for hardship. I'm like, what? I don't want hardship for any of my young people.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's very not intuitive, but we should, we should.

Natalie Tysdal 

If we protect them from every piece of hardship, then they never have to have courage. They never build that.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Yeah.

I'll say that like, I have a history of just not quite fitting in with girls and kind of having a lot of rejection there. And the fact that part of that was because I'm so analytical and I want to talk about all these different things. And so, you know, you get that question, like if you could go back and tell your teen self one thing, what would it be? And I'm like, I would tell her that her particular brand of weird is going to be exact. Like the Lord made me exactly like that for a reason that now that makes me really great at what I do now.

And I don't have to worry about that fear of rejection because I lived rejection for so many years that I don't even have to worry about that because I'm used to it. And so it's like the Lord's almost preparing us to be in the ministry that he's gonna be having. So I have this girl that I mentor right now that's in high school. And so we talk about all the things that are struggling for her. And I was like, okay, your homework, you're gonna go back this piece of your personality that you really, really hate. I want you to think of five different ways that this would make you perfect for.

certain situation for this job, for that ministry, for whatever. And she has to go and look, I know the Lord's created me like this, what are some ways that he can use that to where she can start embracing the parts of herself that maybe her classmates don't really like? And then we start using our sanctified imagination to glorify and thank God for creating us the way he created us.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, that's beautiful. And it's such an awkward, like I mentioned when we first started, like there's just so much awkwardness in young people and finding just that I'm good, this is who God made me to be. And I just wanna sometimes give them a big hug and just say, you're perfect. Why do you think you're not? Like, you know what I mean? Like, is it the people around you judging you? Like, when can we just let that go?

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Yeah. And the kid that's getting bullied, I would say, you know what, the Lord is preparing you for empathy. He is preparing you to be a warrior for those who maybe have been pushed to the side, who have been silenced, and you are going to be their voice one day. When you come out of this, you are going to be their voice because you know exactly where they're coming from, you know exactly how that feels, and you have the exact amount of righteous anger to stand up to people who are doing that to others. And this is a way that the Lord is preparing you, and I look forward to seeing the warrior that you become.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah. And in the moment, that's hard for them to see. But to reassure that and say, you'll look back at it. Journaling, like you said, like such a beautiful way for them to be able to look back and go, wow, I grew from that. What are some of the things that mama bear apologetics, you all really, I mean, I see the comments and I see how people react, but what are some of the big issues you're dealing with right now that you get asked questions about?

I mean, you all have grown so much and I know you're teaching so much along the way and giving courage to the moms like me.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Yeah, like. We get so many different kinds of questions. We'll have people maybe that are coming that are saying, I'm hearing this teaching and it sounds like we just had a lady recently who's basically on the verge of losing her faith because she got through one of her support groups got turned on to like manifesting and all these things that they then drop Jesus's name in kind of like I don't know if we left it in the other podcast people wrestling for that name of Jesus to rubber stamp whatever it is they're doing to the point where she's like I don't even know if I'm a Christian I don't know anything anymore and kind of helping her to unravel maybe the some of the stuff that she's been through before and kind of instead of deconstructing I'm trying to think one of the Duggar girls says disentangling things from our faith, where we have to disentangle unhealthy things. So we get stuff like that. A lot of times we just get thank you letters from people that say, I was so scared about this topic or about that topic or just what I saw going on in the world. And I feel like now that I know the words to use, now that I know how to address this, I feel ready. We've had a woman say, you know, I've homeschooled my kids for this whole time and I feel ready to send them to public school because I know how to counter.

what they're gonna hear now versus beforehand, the only thing she knew how to do was shelter them from it. And so I would say my favorite things that I get are when people are able to grasp the way we can prepare for the arguments that are out there and prepare our kids in the way they say, this is not something I need to fear anymore. This is something that I can actively engage. And then you'll have a lot of letters from women.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

that are still in the process of getting there, of what about this topic, what about that topic, especially within sexuality, a lot of stuff within sexuality and just things that they're hearing.

Natalie Tysdal 

Why do you think that is? I don't want to go too deep into that. I know how controversial it is, but versus 10, 20 years ago.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Yeah, I mean, why are we seeing a 5,000% increase in a matter of a couple years of girls identifying as transgender, you know?

Like the podcast I was listening to the other day, there are some aspects of that we can kind of chalk up to a sort of teenage contagion, which girls can have a tendency to do. Back in the 80s and 90s, anorexia and bulimia were the big thing. And all of a sudden we had this explosion of all these girls identifying as that. And then cutting in the 2000s was the big thing. And we had this explosion of girls identifying as cutters. And now the big thing is transgenderism. And we have this explosion of girls

that are identifying as transgender and not quite sure what to do. So we there's always going to be just this aspect of suggestibility, shall we say. And the fact that when we hear about something that we've never heard about as teenagers, a lot of times we were always asking ourselves, ooh, is that me? Like there's this I never watched the show Frasier very much, but for some reason I watched

just enough of this one episode to have this epiphany for the rest of my life where, so the show Frasier, he was a psychologist who did an on-air kind of show where people would call and ask him questions. And so he had this person call and I can't remember what the person said. They're like, I think I'm struggling with, you know, with this disassociated personality disorder and narcissism and blah. And just basically went down this whole list of psychological

mental health issues. And he's like, what can he make of me? What can I do? Am I just, you know, beyond hope? And Fraser stopped and thought for a second, he's like, well, it's one of two things. You're either the craziest person I've ever talked to, or you're a first year psychiatry student, and you hear this awkward pause, and then he goes, okay, thanks.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

And the meaning behind that is a lot of times when we hear something, we wanna say, is that me? And so, especially as young people, we're trying things on to see if that's us. And the more we hear about some of these things, the more kids are gonna try them on and see if that's them. I mean, just think about what they're being told as far as transgenderism. If you don't feel comfortable in your body, if you don't really feel like you fit in, if you have some interests that...

you know, other people, other kids your gender don't have, well, maybe you're transgender. I'm sorry, but can you find me someone going through puberty who is not uncomfortable in their body, someone who's a teenager, no matter how popular they are that feel like they really fit in. Most of the popular kids were always like, I kind of felt like a fraud. This is, yeah, it's something that everybody deals with. And they're saying, well, this is a sign that, and then, you know, name your thing or...

Natalie Tysdal 

who's not uncomfortable. Right.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, that's so true. Yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

you know, just with the cutting that they say, oh, you know, I feel this relief when I cut. And so then other people are like, oh, well, if I'm feeling that amount of angst, maybe if I, yeah, maybe I can get that relief. Maybe that's my problem too. So, I mean, there's just all sorts of things that go into the sexuality, but I think just the proliferation of talking about all these options and even our sex education, the national sex education standards, which are not mandated by the way, by...

Natalie Tysdal 

Maybe I can get that relief. Yeah.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

by the government, but have still made their way into a lot of schools thinking that these are the national sex education standards actually say that, you know, basically exploration of all these different identities is part of the growing up process and sexual exploration is not exempt from that. So basically, don't knock it till you try it. You don't know who you are unless you try it all on. And this is explicitly said in the guiding principles section of the national sex education standards.

Natalie Tysdal

Wow. It's shocking but yet amplified by what we have talked about in the past of how media plays into this. And growing up for me, it was the nightly news, I've aged myself, but it's so accessible that it's like, well, maybe I need to try this and then I can try that. And then there's cutting and then there's this and then there's all of these, what do we call them? Like the silly things we should try because everybody else is trying it, you know, the challenges and, you know, there are all these things. It's like, Oh, I can try that too. And so trying on all these different hats or ideas that, um, are not based in faith.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Oh, yeah. Oh, golly.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Mm-hmm.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Well, some of that it really is finding your identity. I remember there was a girl back when I was in like in my early twenties and I worked with the youth group and one year she was like the like super hyper cheerleader. Yay. And then the next year she dressed like black and goth. And then the next year she dressed all like sporty snowboarder. And it's like, I remember going through these phases. I was trying to, it's like, you have to almost take on this persona and then evaluate. Is this me? Is this, does this feel comfortable?

Natalie Tysdal 

See you at the next.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

And so people do that with trying out art, trying out sports. They try out all sorts of different things to figure out what fits. It's when we start taking things that are dehumanizing us that really kind of, by dehumanizing, I mean, we're actually breaking apart what it means to be human. And that's what we're seeing right now with people starting to play with, am I actually, I'm trying to think of the furry community dressing up like an animal or the ones that are.

Natalie Tysdal

Cheers.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Saying I can't remember the name. I usually have this off the top of my head, but there's this whole group that says well You know, you've got fairies and sprites and all these kind of fictitious Creatures, you know, am I one of those do I identify as that? You have ficto sexual which is where I'm just attracted to fictitious in this fictitious People like this is what we're seeing happen a lot of times in the anime In fact, there's a guy over in I believe it's like in Japan or China. I think it's Japan

possibly South Korea, where he identifies as fictosexual. And so he has now been given massive grants to study this and to give lectures all over the world about, and he actually married an AI character. Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal 

Oh my, really? Wow. I mean, some of it's just so out there that you think, okay, but then doesn't that just go away? Are we really? Right.

Well, that's the unmaking of the human that we're seeing right now, just kind of on a massive scale. So it's like, trying to discover who I am as a person, once you start adding these things that are basically unmaking human, then that's when you start having, you thought the anxiety and depression were bad beforehand. You have not seen anything until you see someone basically unraveling what it means to be a human, unraveling what it means to be a man, unraveling what it means to be a woman.

Natalie Tysdal

Yeah. Well, we started talking about courage. We talk about many other things, but how would you like to wrap it up on just having that courage and being prayerful for ourselves and for our friends and our kids in having a courage that is based in faith?

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

First off, I would just say we humans are really good with forgetting. And start now with a some sort of, have one for your whole family that's a gratitude book or I've seen some people where they put this big jar out and it's a gratitude jar where you write down the things that you're thankful for and you put them in the jar and then at the end of the year you can pull out all these different areas where the Lord has been faithful. I think the practice of gratitude, my husband and I have done this, that every night we talk about what am I grateful for tonight.

Natalie Tysdal 

Oh, great.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

places that I write down ways that the Lord has really shown up because it's so easy to forget that God shows up when you don't have a written record of it. And this is why you see in Old Testament them building these monuments in different places to remind themselves it's a visual reminder that God was faithful because we are prone to forget. And so I guess preparing yourself knowing that you'll forget what can I do with my family to

make sure that we don't forget these ways that the Lord has been faithful and that we're reviewing them regularly because I think as long as the future seems mysterious and you don't know if God's provision is going to come through, it's always going to be scary. But when you start looking at even bad stuff that happens saying, what did God do through this? And then you regularly review it. And that's the thing, you've got to regularly review it. That I think starts making the fear go down.

Natalie Tysdal

Yeah, I have an app. When we talk about technology, it's not all bad, but a book, of course, like a gratitude journal, like such a great way to do that, especially for kids before they go to bed at night, like write down as many things as you can, come up with at least three. If you can get to 10, great, but to continue to do that. But I have this app that, and I'll put it in the show notes, that we started using, and it was such a great way through a hardship that we went through.

Natalie Tysdal 

to journal and what was so great about it is that you can attach a photo to it. I think it's called Diaryo or Diary, but I used to speak into it because that's easier than typing on my phone, but I could attach things to it and then I could tag it. So I could tag it with school or travel or fear or anything like that. So then I can go in and I can say, when I felt fear, I was like, oh, I'm going to go

Natalie Tysdal 

hear all the things that would come up under that, those diaries that would come up under those tags. Yeah, like I mean, and maybe for kids because they relate to the technology, like such a great way to, and we were using it to journal through a hardship, but then I realized it became very much things we were thankful for and grateful for. And I loved being able to tag some of those things. And now I can go back in and find those moments a little bit easier. So that might be a fun option for people.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Ooh, that's interesting! And how do you feel after you, if like, if you're realizing I'm feeling fair and you go listen to that, what changes in you when you listen?

Natalie Tysdal 

Yes.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I did it. My son did it. And then I did it. And then you can email your diary for that day or send it to someone in a text. So there are some great tools out there, but a good old fashioned gratitude journal might just be the best way. As a matter of fact, I need to do that. Yep. I love that jar. Maybe bring it out at the end of the year. So great. Hillary, thank you. It's such a pleasure.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Have it sitting in the family living room somewhere or that jar, you know, in the kitchen. Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal 

and I love what you're doing. I will link Mama Bear Apologetics in the show notes. Listen to their podcast. You will learn so much. I promise it'll be one of those podcasts where you have to write things down because you're gonna wanna remember the things that they say. All the best to you and to Amy and I appreciate you.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

I'm gonna go to bed.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer 

Thank you so much. Love being here.